Vol. VII
2015
No. 1
Foundation
Edited and Compiled by St Chad’s College Middle Common Room
Editor in Chief: Sofia Ropek Hewson
Article and Manuscript Editors: Thomas Crowther, Megumi Chou, Laurens de Rooij, Eve Ropek and O. W. J. Burnham
For copyright and usage information, please contact the Editorial Board via the Acting-Principal of the College: Dr Margaret Masson St Chad’s College 18 North Bailey Durham DH1 3RH ISSN 1752-0398
Contents
Shifts in Clerical/Priestly Identities .............................. 1 Joe Cassidy
'The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth': A Discussion of Imagination in the Poetry of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley ............................................................... 15 Hannah Blincko
The Eurosceptic policies of the United Kingdom Independence Party and the Front National: a comparison ..................................................................... 27 Simona Falanga
What difference does using different research methods make? A comparison between two different methods of investigating changing political values between generations. .................................................... 59 Nat Guillou
Russia’s turn towards Asia: Shaped by a grand strategy? ......................................................................... 73 Mats Frank
On Nietzsche’s Poetry .................................................. 89 Sarah Lovell
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Scottish Home Rule in a Wider Political Context, 1889–1894...................................................................... 115 Frederik Seidelin
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Contributors The Revd Canon Dr Joseph Cassidy was Principal of St Chad’s College for 18 years and a member of the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. He was also a Canon of Durham Cathedral. Indra Werthmann is a first year PhD student in Archaeology. Her PhD explores the re-use of Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon society, 5th to 7th century AD. Her focus is Roman material found in the funerary and settlement contexts of the coastal line of England, namely Kent and East Anglia and comparing the results with continental data. Simona Falanga is reading International Studies at Durham University. Her main research interests include euroscepticism in Western Europe and Russian foreign policy. Sarah Lovell is a final year English PhD student. She is interested in all things Sturm, and sometimes those that are Drang. Hannah Blincko is currently taking the English Literary Studies MA. Her primary focus has been narratological approaches to landscape in long-eighteenth-century prose, and, more generally, the problematic nature and implications of representation. Mats Frank is a Masters student in International Relations (East Asia) at the University of Durham. His research interests include the political economy of the Middle East and security politics of the Asia-Pacific region. Frederik Seidelin studies Modern History. His primary research interest is the interplay between nationalism and imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century.
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John May is studying for a Masters in Archaeology. His specific focus is Iron Age Britain and his dissertation topic will be a discussion of ethnography in social models of British prehistory. He is planning to further his studies by expanding into computer science. Nat Guillou Nat is studying for a Masters in Arab World Studies. His research interests include the politics of the Gulf Monarchies and Social Research Methodology.
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Preface Reinstating the college journal, Foundation was an inspired initiative on the parts of Joe Cassidy, our former Principal and Oliver Burnham, our former MCR President. The MCR hosted 16 Chad’s postgraduates at our Research Forums this year: they spoke on subjects from Middle Eastern politics, to digital embodiment, to fishing in Iron Age Britain. I quickly became aware of the exciting intellectual diversity of Chad’s Middle Common Room. But I also became attuned to a common lively curiosity about each other’s work. I hope that Foundation will continue to be a great resource to inspire that curiosity. I would like to thank my Editors: Megumi Chou, Eve Ropek, Oliver Burnham, Thomas Crowther and Laurens De Rooij. I would also like to thank Chad’s, for being our home, and for helping us to develop a warm, friendly and stimulating postgraduate community. Joe Cassidy, our wonderful Principal for 18 years, died at the end of March this year. This edition of Foundation is dedicated to Joe, and to his work and love for our college.
Sofia Ropek Hewson St Chad’s College August 2015
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Shifts in Clerical/Priestly Identities Joe Cassidy
ood afternoon everyone. I’ve been asked to do a talk on shifts in clerical identity. The purpose of my talk is to get us reflecting on the shifts in our own priestly identities. So, taking Philip Chester’s advice, and given that there have been quite a few shifts in my own life, my talk is going to be almost entirely autobiographical. I know being very personal is not a particularly English thing to do, but I’m going to make it even worse by recounting a few personal religious experiences – an even bigger no-no. Apology aside, I hope there will be enough similarities to, and differences from, your own experience to provoke a few questions and conversations. I grew up as a Roman Catholic in a very Roman Catholic city, Montreal, of mixed Irish and French lineage. I inherited the neurotic guilt of the Irish, and the un-neurotic je ne sais quoi of the French. My early life was pretty unremarkable, though at my baptism my grandmother did place me on the altar and offered me, her first grandchild, up to God as a priest. I don’t know what effect that had, but I do recall that my superman cape could double as a chasuble of sorts; and though I had the usual Canadian boy’s collection of baseball and hockey cards, I also had a more unusual assortment of saints holy cards. I even had fun ranking the saints cards in terms of the size of the indulgence you could get by praying the fewest words. You may not know it, but most of these cards carried little indulgences; and boy did I need indulgences, because, even though all my sins were forgiven at confession, the Irish priests in our parish were fond of emphasising how we still needed to suffer the temporal punishment due to sin – that is, if these cards didn’t do the trick. I mention all of this not to get you to laugh, but chiefly to suggest that I grew up with a fairly high view of the Church and of priesthood.
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Skipping a few years, I had a life-changing religious experience whilst in College. I say ‘life-changing’ because, at the time, you can’t imagine that your life won’t be absolutely and forever transformed by such experiences. (It’s only when you look back 40 years later that you realise that the old-you had never quite fully co-operated with grace.) In any event, I had a powerful experience of God’s self-emptying, an experience triggered and confirmed by Phil 2.5 — you know the passage, ‘Though his nature was divine, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself....’ (Philippians, 6-7). I had a brief glimpse of what infinite divine Trinitarian self-emptying lookedlike, felt-like, tasted-like — it was simple and majestic and very attractive. The experience led to a reappraisal of my faith, with the result that I discovered that I really did believe, that I believed that this man Jesus was truly divine, and that such a belief couldn’t sit alongside a zillion other beliefs. It had to be central to my life. So what does a good Catholic boy do when he has a religious experience? Well he goes into religious life and/or gets ordained, or both. Not much vocational discernment there, I’m afraid. And probably not a very high regard for the possibility that lay-people might have religious experiences and might live fully-committed religious lives too. Well, I eventually entered the Jesuits (not before a brief stint with the Redemptorists). I became a Jesuit not so much to become a priest, so much as to live the gospel as radically as I could alongside others. I could say a lot about my motives for living radically, how earnest they were and yet how self-serving they could be at the same time, how they buoyed up a particular image of myself as somehow ‘radical’; but the point I want to make is that my dream really was to become a disciple, a companion of Jesus – hence my choice of the Jesuits—the Society or Company of Jesus. As you probably know, Jesuit formation is a very long process, with up to thirteen years of prayer, study and ministerial placements before ordination. Again, as you probably know, Jesuit spirituality is almost entirely based on the gospels, with the accent
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placed on becoming free enough to follow even the slightest indication whatsoever of the Father’s will. That said, my motives were a bit complex—it wasn’t just about the Father’s will. Along with a fair few of my confrères, I joined the Jesuits in part because I saw the order as a refuge from the Church. Even though many people consider the Jesuits to be the Pope’s frontline troops or something like that, those who know the Jesuits would know that things aren’t so simple. Well, to cut a long story short, when the time came for me to be ordained, I asked for a postponement, even after all those years of training. Ordination seemed to me to be an entry, albeit at a low level, into a hierarchy, into a power structure that too often seemed more concerned with control than with discipleship. I have to say that those sorts of criticisms are almost too easy; and when you get right down to it, they’re fairly adolescent. Deep-down, though, I was facing a different sort of crisis. It was a crisis of hope, really — a crisis of believing that God could work through sinful social and ecclesial structures, a crisis of believing that God could remain faithful to an old creaky Church that hadn’t exactly excelled in fidelity over the centuries, a crisis of believing that God could work through me, who hadn’t excelled in fidelity either. And once I realised that hope was the issue, I also realised that I didn’t want an intellectual sort of hope: I wanted to experience hope rather than read about it. So I went on my second thirty-day silent retreat, which is what Jesuits do when they’re not sure what to do. And I had a very unusual retreat. My first thirty-day retreat a decade earlier had blown my socks off, but this second time my socks stayed on, and I had a steady, very quiet and disarmingly gentle experience of the extraordinary ordinariness of discipleship. The Lord seemed to be taking away the compulsiveness of my desire to find hope, and I began thinking of a place where people had hope but a place where they also had very little obvious reason to hope. So I asked to be sent to work in Nicaragua, just as the contra war was breaking out.
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As odd as that may sound, it was a good decision. In fact every bit of negativity I had felt towards the Church was magnified there. The Church was divided down the middle, and the hierarchy seemed to be on the wrong side all the time. In fact, the wrong side seemed so obviously and murderously evil, that many of us down there were tempted to disown the Church. But I remember one of my fellow Jesuits saying to me that, before he came to Nicaragua, he’d thought the institutional Church was beside the point. Now he realised that the Church was the problem or at least a large part of the problem. The Church wasn’t some wonderful sacrament of God’s saving power in the midst of evil. No, the Church was intertwined with, and caught up in, the evil itself. And then, one day, as I was attending the funeral of a young man, a teenager, his mother came up to us and said, ‘even if they kill all of us, we’ll still win’. The word ‘eschatology’ suddenly made sense to me, and I experienced a kind of hope that was much more costly than I had anticipated. I also realised that the Church wasn’t just an accomplice to the evil around us, but it was also tied up with that very costly hope which emerged as we attended a sadly routine church funeral. A few months later, a friend of mine and I were chatting, and he was railing against the Church — something I usually enjoyed. He was doing a really good job of it, when all of a sudden something clicked within me. I started to take it personally. I surprised my friend, and I surprised myself even more, when I said, ‘I am the Church. It’s not abstract. Get angry with me.’ It wasn’t ‘l’état c’est moi’, but ‘l’église, c’est moi’. At that very moment, as I sat with what I’d just said, my resistance to ordination evaporated. Well, that’s a story about a shift in my understanding of clerical or priestly identity, and the key shift was from seeing the Church as something ‘out there’ to being able to identify with actually being the Church. And the Church the priest identifies with (or should do, I’d say) is not some sanitised, idealised, extrahistorical, almost-angelic institution. No it’s the same darned
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Church that can bless some of the worst human dictators of our century and at the same time bless the crumpled body of a teenager killed indirectly by its very own complicity in evil. It is a Church that can mediate the hope that comes from God alone and a Church that can also break your heart. Another story. When I finally did get ordained, the thing I most looked forward to was when, in the RC rite, I was prostrate, lying in the aisle, during the litany of saints. I wanted this to be a very special moment: lying there, symbolising my utter poverty before God, symbolising my desire to die to myself and to rise in the power of the Spirit for service. I had it all scripted. The cantor sang the Litany of the Saints, asking hundreds of saints from almost 2000 years of the Church’s history to pray for me. But all I could think of was how bad the carpet smelled. I almost had to laugh. I’m going to make an obvious point or two. You can’t call yourself to the priesthood. Nor can you be a priest without people praying explicitly or implicitly for the Holy Spirit to dwell within you. We put a lot of emphasis on the laying on of hands at ordinations, but this gesture is actually a prayer. You and I were ordained because people prayed that it be so, and in faith we believe that God not only authorised the prayer, but was also pleased to grant the request. And that granting of the prayer request had very little to do with me: I was, with my larger than average nose, more preoccupied with the smell of the carpet than with any superabundant flowing of grace. The Church prays to God that the Spirit will empower a person for ministry. And because we can never possess the Spirit, for she blows where she wills, we can never own this priesthood. Like all grace, ordination is a free gift, and it is a gift that always remains free. Like all grace, it is relational, not substantial or quantifiable. It’s not ‘possessable’. As Thomas Aquinas said, grace is the Holy Spirit. God never gives us anything less than God’s own self. And since you cannot own or control the Spirit, priesthood is, in a very real sense, much more relational than ontological. As the Orthodox Metropolitan John Zizioulas is fond of saying, ordination
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doesn’t change you ontologically, it changes your relationships, and this web of relationships constitutes the Church. A key shift, then, was to realise that ordination was not something I could choose, nor was it something that I would ever come to possess. What changed was people had prayed for me; they prayed for me to enter into a web of relationships, a new way of being dependent on them and on God; and my response was and must continue to be to allow the Spirit, the fruit of their prayer, to bear fruit in my life. Not long after I was ordained, my father died at the age of 57, after a long and painful struggle with cancer. He was the first person I’d ever anointed, and his was the first funeral I’d ever conducted or preached at. I could say a lot about how he died, but I want to mention three things really. One was an image I still have of my father holding his hand up to my mother’s cheek, just a day or two before he finally lost consciousness. It was a very tender, beautiful moment, and it struck me that I would never know such tenderness in my celibate life. It also struck me that I would never know the pain of loss that they were feeling. Well, the celibate in me, such as it was, died that day — if not in fact, at least in spirit. My celibacy was protecting me from the experience of loss that was part of the beauty of their love: I would neither have that sort of relationship nor experience that depth of loss – ever. My celibacy felt at once more cowardly than noble, more safe than courageous – too safe. The next day my father was saying his good-byes to each of us, his children, one-by-one; and he said to me that he wouldn’t be disappointed if I decided to leave the Jesuits and get married. He knew me better than I knew myself. I think he worried that I’d got ordained partly to please him. In terms of priestly identity, though, what was severed by all of this was the link between celibacy and priesthood — which for me was a huge shift in my understanding not so much of priesthood itself, but of priestly holiness. I have to say that I still have a lot of thinking to do about what priestly holiness means, but I do think it has something to do with
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spiritual freedom. When I was a celibate, my aloneness helped to reveal a level of hungering and a thirsting that ran deeper than a desire for a mate or for physical intimacy. The physical yearning can magnify the spiritual yearning (or probably vice versa); and it is this very conscious, focussed, consuming desire for communion with God that is the beginning of a serious prayer life. If we break the link, even if it is but an historical link, between celibacy and priesthood, then I suspect there need to be other ways of exercising our souls to groan acutely for God, for that is where true freedom comes from, from an ordering of the rest of our lives so that our desire for God and his desire for us puts everything else into proper perspective. I hate to say it, but reading Matt 17.21 recently, the inflaming of our hearts probably has something to do with much prayer and much fasting. So, for me at least, that was another huge shift in selfunderstanding, de-linking celibacy and priesthood, effectively delinking a particular type of affective reliance on God. Parenthetically, I have to say that presiding and preaching at my father’s funeral mass signalled yet another rethink in my understanding of my priestly identity. At times like that, even though you’re obviously still a member of your family, your key role is the formal, public, church-authorised role. And for me there was a kind of leave-taking, a growing-up, I suppose, where my identity did not come from my family any more, so much as from my ordination. Another autobiographical vignette. You can probably see the trajectory that led to my leaving the Jesuits. I’m not sure that my discernment to leave the Jesuits was as good as it could be. I fell in love and that fairly clouded my thinking and my praying. Even though I went on another retreat (though not a thirty-day one this time), I couldn’t easily connect with the Lord, and I doubt I had been free enough to make a free decision. Nonetheless I left. The relationship didn’t work out: I was far too set in my Jesuit ways, far too fearful of the risks of daily life, and far too controlling.
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So here I was, still a priest, bound to celibacy, but no longer a Jesuit. In time, I fell in love again (to my future wife, I should say), but this time I tried to discern properly. After months and months of praying, of speaking to spiritual directors and friends, I felt as though I’d reached a point of modest equilibrium, where I was able to say to God, as honestly as I could, that I would be willing to remain a celibate priest if that is what he wanted: I would be willing to make the sacrifices involved, if it were his will. Well, the way this worked out in prayer, still using Ignatian prayer, was to imagine myself willing to be crucified alongside Jesus – him to save the world, me to sacrifice my desire to love someone and to marry. I thought this was pretty good. But then, out of the blue, I imaginatively heard Jesus say to get off the &^&^*% cross, that he didn’t need me to be crucified, that he hadn’t asked me to volunteer for crucifixion. His was sufficient. He neither needed me nor wanted me up there alongside him. I was a bit surprised, shocked, even feeling a bit put-out. Here I was making this, to my mind hard-won, offering of myself, and he told me to get off my tree. I took the point. In Ignatian terms, when you have one of these unexpected experiences (a consolation without previous or proportionate cause), especially one that puts you in blunt touch with reality, you have to take this as potentially significant. You go back into prayer and you try to return to something close to the original experience, to test it, lest you find yourself deceived. You sit with it for days to see whether the ‘spirit’ leads you to any increase in faith, hope and love. You offer to God a tentative decision, again to see what ‘spirits’ get stirred-up. You bring it to your spiritual director, who will use his or her nose to help you discern whether it’s authentic or completely projected. And so on. No surprise then that I did decide to get married; I was also excommunicated, as happens automatically when you marry (I couldn’t get permission to be laicised). I became an Anglican, chiefly because I couldn’t stand the idea of not being able to receive
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communion (becoming an Anglican wasn’t easy or obvious, but that’s another story). All that said, I have a particularly vivid memory of the last Eucharist I presided over as a Roman Catholic priest. I had been told by my Bishop that, as I had declared an intention to marry, I had to cease acting publicly as a priest before the next Sunday. So my last mass was a weekday college Eucharist, oddly enough with an equal number of RCs and Anglicans in the congregation (I broke or at least generously interpreted all the RC rules about intercommunion all of the time). Anyway, I was the only one who knew this was the last time I’d ever preside, and I half expected God to pierce my heart with a sword or two. I had anticipated feeling great sadness, intense guilt, self-recrimination, a powerful urge to reconsider. Instead I experienced the most joy I had ever experienced at a Eucharist. Like most of you, I’d had my share of moving liturgical experiences over the years. In Nicaragua I had literally hungered for the Eucharist, feeling an almost desperate need to sense Jesus’ ongoing presence there. When I worked in Jamaica, the Eucharists there were exuberant, noisy, and wonderful celebrations. But this was different. This was sheer joy – as though my feet were being infinitely tickled. But instead of erupting into uncontrollable laughter, I experienced uncontrollable peace. What I experienced was an astonishing sense of both distance from and union with this little congregation, a congregation I was very fond of. There was only one prayer going on. There was no sense of me, the priest, doing something for the people. Even though I was saying parts of the Eucharistic prayer alone, we were one body, seemingly offering ourselves to God. This wasn’t my prayer, and in a weird sense it wasn’t exactly our prayer as though any of us were managing it at all. When you come to think of it, we weren’t really even offering ourselves: instead we were letting ourselves get caught up in a much more ultimate dynamic act of self-offering, our Lord’s own self-offering. We were the Body of Christ. Right then and there. It was the Lord’s prayer, not ours,
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because he made it so. I was present, but I was expendable. I was praying as one with them, but what I was doing was almost beside the point. In fact, not only was I expendable, but I was just about to be expended. It was as though I were fading from their midst. And it was absolutely wonderful. The memory of it still tickles me almost 20 years later. The point I want to make is the difference between presiding and it being our prayer, and presiding and being caught up in something that actually catches us all up together. And I don’t just mean the catharsis or buzz of group events. I mean something that remains true no matter what we’re feeling, no matter whether we all fade away. This reality becomes more visible if the priest is almost invisible, or if not invisible, at least transparent. To put it another way, the priest always points away from himself or herself. Christ is the priest and the whole Church is priestly only because it is the Body of Christ. And I am priestly only inasmuch as I am a member of that body. I am not a priest for the Body, but a priest of the Body, reflecting the whole Body’s priestliness. And the laity similarly always point away from themselves, for they are no less a walking sacrament than a priest is. And so even does the Eucharist point away from itself eschatologically. John the Baptist’s, ‘I must decrease and he must increase’ or St Paul’s ‘it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ – these sum it up and they catch the eschatological air that ought to characterise all authentic liturgy. In the old days, this call to transparency was expressed by a kind of formalism, by the use of a monotonous tone or even an ancient language for public prayer, by encrusting oneself with all kinds of vestments that symbolically pointed to holy tasks, or which defined the priest totally in terms of sacred function and tied him (and it was only ‘him’) to a universal church where all priests looked the same, did the same, and sounded the same. Today, and perhaps ironically, transparency is instead achieved in the measure that a priest is authentically himself or herself. That old way of expressing transparency actually encouraged transference and projection, to use two psychological terms. A
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Freudian psychotherapist keeps his or her interventions to a minimum, downplays his or her personality, and even sits just out of view of the client. And just as nature abhors a vacuum, so we abhor a therapist without a personality. So the client projects a personality onto the psychotherapist, imagining clues. The same phenomenon can come into play when a priest submerges his or her personality into the cult of the Church. Members of the congregation project all sorts of things onto him or her. And the priest is often in danger of believing it all. And so there was another shift, this time from a functional notion of priesthood to a more kenotic notion of priesthood, the one I experienced at that last Catholic mass — a much more wonderful notion. Another bit of autobiography. As a post Vatican II RC priest, I had never presided at an eastward-facing Eucharist. Oh I knew there were strong arguments pro and con, but I’d never done it myself, nor had I ever seen it done in the RC Church since I was a child. Well when I was received into the C of E, I was assigned to a traditional Forward in Faith parish in Salisbury. Not only was eastward-facing the norm, but the altar must have been about 60 feet from the people, at the end of a very narrow Victorian sanctuary. The first few times I presided I was more worried about doing it right than anything else; and I performed rather than prayed the Eucharist. But one day, after I’d become more accustomed to it all, I had a sense of the power of this form of worship. It was tightly concentrated, intensely personal, much of it very private. The congregation was with me, backing me, in a very real sense; but in another sense I felt as though they were almost voyeurs of this very, very priestly thing I was doing. There was a powerful, and again I think real, sense of the sacred, but I was also a bit spooked by the experience. I remember thinking that this sort of power could go to one’s head. In fact, it felt almost, but not quite, sexual — certainly different; and I could imagine how easy it would be for Anglo-Catholic clergy say to move into a kind of sexualspiritual underworld, for the experience was not only ‘almost’
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sexual, but it also felt very male. I could also almost understand why my Forward in Faith friends could be so against women’s ordination even though their arguments never seemed to convince me. There was something else going on here. Obviously, or I hope it’s obvious, this is not to undermine this way of celebrating, but to note the flip-side of this style of worship. My own style is still pretty traditional when you get right down to it, and probably as Roman Catholic as ever it was. A few points though. As our understanding of the Church has shifted over the last 40 or so years, so has our liturgical practice. A misplaced traditionalism is not just quaint: it is bound up with all kinds of issues of power, of priestly self-identity, and often, I have to say, with issues of self — self-acceptance, even sexual selfacceptance when the cult is used as a shield, as an escape from self, rather than a proper dying to self. And with all of these changes, so our conception of priesthood has changed, as we have moved from a temple-inspired cultic notion of holiness, bent on doing things to please or appease God, to one more focussed on actually living the gospel with humility and honesty and integrity and passion and, perhaps most importantly, with others. Well that’s probably enough. It’s certainly enough about me. Behind the narrative there have been a number of shifts in my clerical or priestly identity. There was an obvious shift from seeing priesthood as the best way of following Jesus to seeing it as a way of following Jesus. There was a shift from seeing priesthood as ‘my’ way of being radical to seeing the radical task as a communal task, not centred on me or on my supposed radicalness. There was a shift from priestly identity as something formal, hierarchically and externally-defined, to something more personal; and then from something personal to something again more communal: ‘l’église, c’est moi’. Then there was another shift from expecting the Church to be perfect to seeing the Church as almost tortured, literally able to destroy lives and to mediate God’s mercy at the same time,
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something true of all of us too – and a lesson many are struggling with as they try to come to grips with the sexual abuse crises. There was a shift from seeing my priestly identity in ontological terms to seeing it in more charismatic terms, and not in terms of personal gifts, but in terms of the more basic charism, a real relationship with God via the Holy Spirit, initiated and sustained by prayer. Though I didn’t mention this, I think this approach raises interesting questions about the kind of authority we have been given. For me, there was also a shift from aspiring to a kind of priestly holiness that is proper to a celibate life, to another type of holiness that is proper to a married life. That was a huge shift for me, as you can well imagine. It very obviously changed how I prayed, how I related to Jesus, and I don’t think the changes are over yet. I’d also say the same about my former vow of poverty, which captured something of the Gospel that I still feel strongly about, but which seems far away from me in terms of my putting it into practice. Then there was a shift from the institutional to the communal, from being part of something, to my being constituted communally. This was a shift from seeing the Church as the gathered community, a congregational model, to a more mystagogical, exchatological model, where the Church is the Body of Christ, even if it remains conflicted from day to day. In that model, I, the priest, am caught up with the congregation in a kenotic movement that defines all of us first and foremost in God’s terms; and my role as priest becomes chiefly one of discernment rather than of management, a model that I’d argue features prominently in the New Testament, where Christ is the only true leader, and indeed the only true priest. And, finally, there has been a shift in me away from a cultic notion of priest, where sacred power is wielded, and where things can go weirdly wrong, to a different notion deriving from the Eucharist itself, where the liturgy isn’t something that we do, but where something is done to us, where we are reminded that
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ultimate reality is Trinitarian, relational and communal; where we learn again and again that divine life and human life are all about relationships; where freedom arises out of relationship rather than out of self-determination; where identity, even priestly identity, is something we give to one another by dying to our attempts to define ourselves over and against each other. I don’t know whether it’s been obvious, but all of these shifts have, from start to finish, been shifts from ‘me’ to ‘we’. Without too much special pleading, I sense they all emanate from that original experience I had as a teenager of Trinitarian self-emptying. And the shifting continues.
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'The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth': A Discussion of Imagination in the Poetry of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley Hannah Blincko
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n a letter written to Benjamin Bailey on 22 November 1817 John Keats explains his conception of the 'Imagination' in Miltonian diction: 'The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth'.1 The assumption that imagination is the agent of creation, the origin within the poet of the eventual poem, is significantly disrupted by Keats's focus upon this particular moment in Milton's account of Eve's creation. What Adam imagines is indeed what is created, yet Keats's definition of 'Imagination' places emphasis on the comparatively passive act of waking and finding, not on the agency of dreaming. The passage in Milton, describing the dream in which Adam observes 'her heavenly maker' forming Eve from his rib, implicates the faculty of 'fancy', which elsewhere Milton personifies: 'She forms imaginations, airy shapes'.2 However, the status of 'fancy' in the creation of Eve is ambiguous, a quality that Keats's poetry acknowledges and perpetuates; it is not clear whether imagination is in fact creative, capable of 'form[ing]', or rather an impressed upon vision of another's creation. Crucially for Keats, whose poems perpetually teeter on the brink of conscious agency ('Do I wake or sleep?'), the potential displacement of agency from the poetic figure undercuts the dysfunctional dichotomy he enacts between dreamer and poet.3 Certainly in the Miltonic episode, the agency of creation is displaced from the one who imagines to a third party Creator, a force that overwhelms Adam '[i]n that celestial colloquy
1
John Keats, Selected Letters, ed. by Robert Gittings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 36. 2 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. by Alastair Fowler (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2007), VIII. 485; 461; V. 105. Hereafter, references to this edition are abbreviated to 'Milton, Paradise Lost'. 3 John Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale', in The Complete Poems, ed. by John Barnard (London: Penguin, 1988), l. 80.
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sublime' leaving him in 'a trance'. 4 For Percy Bysshe Shelley, the 'trance sublime' in 'Mont Blanc' is potentially the operative union of the poet (subject) with the natural landscape beheld (object) in an 'interchange' of agency.5 However, disturbing this ideal in the poem is the displacing third party, 'Power' (MB, 16) that threatens to exclude the 'human mind' (MB, 37) from creative agency, remaining 'unknown' (MB, 53). Yet, in a show of reflexive agency, Keats's 'Ode to Psyche' proposes the conversion of negatives, like Shelley's 'unknown' and 'unsculptured' (MB, 27), by venturing into 'some untrodden region' of the mind.6 Keats's unfinished 'The Fall of Hyperion. A Dream' complicates the question of creative agency in an explicit distinction between poet and dreamer. Saturn's priestess, Moneta, addresses the poetic figure: "Art thou not of the dreamer tribe? The poet and the dreamer are distinct, Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes. The one pours out a balm upon the world, The other vexes it."7 That a dreamer 'vexes' the world implies agency, though of a disruptive not a creative nature. Throughout, the dreamer strives to exert agency over the dream(s) in which he finds himself: 'I struggled hard against / The domineering potion; but in vain – / The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sunk' (FH, I. 53-55). The
4
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII. 455; 462. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Mont Blanc', in The Major Works, ed. by Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), l. 35; l. 39. 'Power' is capitalised throughout Version B of the poem (copy-text supplied by the version in Shelley's hand in the Scrope Davies Notebook). Hereafter, references to this poem are abbreviated to 'MB'. 6 John Keats, 'Ode to Psyche', in The Complete Poems, l. 51. Hereafter, references to this poem are abbreviated to 'P'. 7 Keats, 'The Fall of Hyperion', in The Complete Poems, I. 198-202. Hereafter, references to this poem are abbreviated to 'FH'. 5
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only instance it is not 'in vain' occurs '[o]ne minute before death' when he manages to save himself: 'my iced foot touched / The lowest stair; and as it touched, life seemed / To pour in at the toes' (FH, I. 132-34). Although this aligns with Moneta's statement that those absent from the altar 'have no thought to come' (FH, I. 165), with the implication that the dreamer was brought there by the agency of his own thoughts, Keats's syntax isolates the dreamer's agency in the foot, as though it were not the dreamer's mind inducing the movement. Moreover, the dreamer is otherwise victim to his indecipherable surroundings, their shifting locations and their eternally fixed visions. Most pointedly, in his entrapment as observer of the ever-still Saturn and Mnemosyne, bearing '[t]he load of this eternal quietude, / The unchanging gloom, and the three fixèd shapes' (FH, I. 390-91), the dreamer is as much a figure of the vision as an observer, subject to its stillness and potential eternity. His guide, the priestess Moneta, is the third of the 'three fixèd shapes' and the dreamer is similarly as present, '[g]asping with despair / Of change, hour after hour' (FH, I. 398-99), fearing his loss of self: 'methought I grew / More gaunt and ghostly' (FH, I. 395-96). He is at once disabled as an agent, merely capable of observing the vision, not formulating it, and at risk of being lost into it, fading into a 'ghostly' figure of a dream. It is not simply his agency that is obstructed but his very existence is under threat. If the dreamer's agency is compared with Adam's role as observer, it would appear to be compromised in this respect, too. The dreamer is rendered incapable of cogent perception. So he feebly ceased, With such a poor and sickly sounding pause, Methought I heard some old man of the earth Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes And ears enact with that pleasant unison of sense Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form And dolorous accent from a tragic harp With large-limbed visions. More I scrutinized:
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Still fixed he sat beneath the sable trees (FH, I. 438-46) The dreamer cites an earthly referent but, with a qualification recurrent in this poem, '[m]ethought', it is potentially a misperception. Keats destabilizes a potentially reassuring point of orientation, that would resemble Adam's recognition within his dream of the God he saw when awake: '[I] saw the shape / Still glorious before whom awake I stood'.8 Crucially, he cannot 'enact' (italics my own) a 'pleasant unison of sense', a correspondence of waking and dreaming states, out of the 'large-limbed', distorted perspectives of his 'visions'. The verb 'enact' would imply the agency of perceiving but it is employed within a description of the dreamer's failure to perceive: the '[s]till fixed' figures are unrelenting in their opacity. Thus, the dreamer is denied agency to the point of being dispossessed of his perceptive faculties, the former agency of which is now only a distant memory of unified 'sweet sound with the grace of form'. It is strange then that preceding this vision of Saturn and Mnemosyne, the dreamer experienced a surge of knowledge, perhaps analogous with the moment of revelation in which Adam 'awoke and found'. On seeing Saturn, the dreamer initially figures him as the temple's statue, a thing (potentially) conceived of by man, but '[w]hereon there grew / A power within me of enormous ken / To see as a God sees' (FH, I. 302-04) he perceives the god actual. However, where Adam wakes from his dreams to find his figured Eve a truth, the dreamer of Keats's poem continues within the dream-state. Though his assumption of a new consciousness promises the perceptive faculties of a deity, the insurgence of 'power' is followed by the inscrutable vision that suspends the dreamer in its fixity. Unlike the reader who 'can unwearied pass / Onward from the antechamber of this dream' (FH, I. 464-65), the dreamer is trapped and impressed upon; an unstable, potentially fading cipher. 'The Fall of Hyperion' cannot accommodate a stable
8
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII. 463-64.
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agent and thus, even Adam's passive role as observer and his eventual release to wake and find, is denied the figure of the poem who seemingly lacks creative function. By contrast, Shelley's 'Mont Blanc' would appear to stabilize the dreamer by placing them within a topographical structure, attempting to map 'an unremitting interchange' (MB, 39) of multiple agencies. Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by, Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there! (MB, 34-48) The figure of the 'human mind' gazes upon the ravine and in doing so enters 'a trance sublime and strange', bringing before him his 'own separate fantasy'. The emphasis of lines 36 and 37 is on the 'separate' and potentially self-originating nature of this vision. However, the lines that follow attempt to unite this duality of vision; the perhaps simultaneous perception of the ravine and the 'separate fantasy', in the figure of 'an remitting interchange' between the mind and 'the clear universe of things around'. Strangely, the passivity of the mind is what accommodates the actively 'fast influencings'. If one interprets 'renders' as giving up
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or relinquishing, as Shelley deploys it in Prometheus Unbound, the human mind's part in the 'interchange' is conceived as a relinquishment in defeat, overwhelmed by the force with which it interacts. 9 This passive experience of a thoroughfare of 'influencings' would appear to be the figure's 'trance sublime'. William Wordsworth argued that the sublime was an 'intense unity, without a conscious contemplation of parts'. 10 As Angela Leighton comments, Wordsworth's sublime is 'a state of mind in which subject and object are fused'.11 Seemingly in line with this idea, Shelley opens 'Mont Blanc' by figuring 'human thought' as part of the natural landscape. from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters, — with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume In the wild woods, (MB, 4-8) The created form, the 'tribute', is 'but half [the human thought's] own'. It is figured as 'a feeble brook' that 'will oft assume' a part of its environment, positioned within the collective agency of 'sound'. If the Wordsworthian sublime is achieved anywhere in the poem it is in this first section, with its allencompassing imagery of water. However, this is compromised by a 'conscious contemplation of parts', the conception of 'a sound but half its own'; the individual is figured in opposition to the other 'half', the vast landscape beyond. In section two of the poem Shelley's 'sublime' is once again figured as 'parts' in the
9
Shelley, 'Prometheus Unbound', in The Major Works, l. 218: 'Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead.' The OED cites 'Prometheus Unbound' in the entry 'render', v., 6a: 'To give up or relinquish (something owned or in one's control)'. 10 William Wordsworth, 'The Sublime and the Beautiful', in The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. by W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), vol. II, p. 354. 11 Angela Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 49.
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'unremitting interchange' of rendering and receiving. Thus, it is instead more profitable to compare 'Mont Blanc' with Wordsworth's second conception of the sublime, seemingly contradictory to his first, as 'a humiliation or prostration of the mind before some external agency' or, as Leighton describes it, 'a defeat of the mind'. 12 Shelley's 'sublime' could be argued as the universe's domination over the individual human mind, a defeat of its agency, and thus its subsumption into the 'universe'. As Milton's Adam is induced into a 'trance' by 'that celestial colloquy sublime', so too is Shelley's 'human mind' overwrought by the force of the 'interchange'. The imagination 'renders', relinquishes, to a greater creative agency. However, whereas Adam is singularly worked upon by God the Creator, Shelley figures his 'interchange' between man and the landscape alongside a third party, the potentially divine 'Power' (MB, 16). Intruding upon the aspired for union of the human mind and the universe, subject and object, the '[t]he secret strength of things' (MB, 139) complicates the sublime 'interchange' of section two with a shift of the human figure's view. —I look on high; Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death? or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly Its circles? [...] (MB, 52-57) Shelley captures his problem in the brilliantly oxymoronic 'unknown omnipotence'. This power, '[w]hich governs thought' (MB, 40), is not subject to the same sovereignty; in its 'omnipotence', the power is unknowable, a thing existing beyond man's imagination. Crucially, the expression of this idea is posed as a question (53-54), followed by another (54-57): the human figure
12
Wordsworth, 'The Sublime and the Beautiful', p. 354; Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime, p. 50.
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does not know what he sees or whether he is dreaming. The agency inherent in perception unravels in a manner similar to the moment in Keats's 'The Fall of Hyperion' in which the dreamer can no longer 'enact with that pleasant unison of sense' an understanding of what he sees. Most important in 'Mont Blanc', however, is the contrast of Shelley's disorientated figure of the human mind with the somehow topographically positioned 'Power'. In line with Wordsworth's secondary conception of the sublime as defeat, the human mind is displaced by a greater, potentially creative, agent. Though the figure is at times positioned in the act of gazing, the human mind is never orientated with the specificity asserted in section five: '—the power is there' (MB, 127). The declaration is topographically explicit: 'Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there', but it reaches a climax of confidence in the direct address to the mountain and its surrounding landscape in the concluding lines. The secret strength of things Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy? (MB, 139-44) This assertion of the power's topographical position is a final defeat of the 'human mind' by virtue of its comparative displacement. Not unlike the dreamer of Keats's 'The Fall of Hyperion', suspended in indecipherable visions, Shelley's 'human mind' is lost through indeterminacy, its agency relinquished. And yet, in the closing three lines of 'Mont Blanc', Shelley conceives of an interaction of agency, though indirect, between man and '[t]he strength of things'. Figured as a question, the poetic voice considers man's perception of 'vacancy' in parallel with the direct topographical relationship of the power and nature. All that has been professed about the power's presence would be overturned if
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human perception of its existence within seeming 'silence and solitude' were impossible. Consequently, Shelley's contending question attributes a kind of creative agency to 'the human mind's imaginings' in its implied ability to figure a presence within apparent absence. This perception is not an original creation but a figuring of what is indeed present, though unknowable. To imagine is to observe, like Adam in his dream, but it has agency in giving dream-like form to what would otherwise remain hidden. Through a paradox of presence and absence, Shelley has posited a question that perhaps answers how imagination can merely observe and still create. Keats's 'Ode to Psyche' figures a form in place of an absence in the construction of a temple for a goddess without one. Helen Vendler identifies this fulfillment of a void as a trope of 'reduplication': in terms of the aesthetic of the ode, whatever has existed in "life" must be, and can be, restored in art. [...] The internal world of the artist's brain can attain by the agency of Fancy—so the trope implies—a point-forpoint correspondence with the external worlds of history, mythology, and the senses.13 This interpretation of the ode implies a direction of agency, that the imagination merely replicates what was already present externally. Vendler's inclusion of 'the senses' in her conception of 'the external worlds' would appear to acknowledge that this poem is a fulfillment of something materially unrealized, though sensed, specifically seen, by the poetic voice. Yet even in these days so far retired From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
13
Helen Vendler, The Odes of John Keats (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 47.
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I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired, So let me be thy choir, and make moan Upon the midnight hours; (P, 40-45) Critically, the perception of something in the '[s]ilence and solitude' (MB, 144) is not conceived, as in 'Mont Blanc', as a figuring of an 'unknown' (MB, 53) presence; the temple he figures is not an internal response to a creation already externally in existence. Rather, with a strange, reflexive referent, the poetic voice is 'by [its] own eyes inspired'. Thus, critical emphasis should not be on 'reduplication', as the figured 'shrine' (P, 48) is not a response to an external example. Instead, attention should be paid to the significance of the reflexive point of reference, implying the opposite of a duplication: originality. Keats has cornered off the imagination from an 'interchange' with the external world, instead internalizing the creative act: 'Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane / In some untrodden region of my mind' (P, 50-51). Keats's 'untrodden' is analogous with Shelley's 'unknown' ('omnipotence'): the negatives are the pivot points of agency in the poems. The realization of what Keats's fourth stanza describes in hypothetical detail will convert what is pending into its positive state: trodden. To enact the conversion of an illusory absence into a presence, to tread it, to know it, is imagination's vital agency. Though present, things remain 'unsculptured' (MB, 27) until realized by 'the human mind's imaginings.' The concluding contention of 'Mont Blanc', conceiving of imagination as figuring a presence in apparent 'vacancy', is perhaps not at odds with the value Keats places upon Adam's waking and finding. Imagination's figuring of the 'unknown' exists on a pivot point converting the negative to its positive state; its agency resides on the brink of consciousness, at the point of waking to find the 'truth'. Crucially, however, the reflexive nature of Keats's 'Ode to Psyche' replaces the absent presence as referent for the creative act with the poetic voice's 'own eyes'. Thus, in an exit from the structure of duplication, Keats presents original agency. Moreover,
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the status of the imagination is elevated further in the reversal of the usual dynamic between poet and poem: the poem, in this case, is the hypothetical plan of what will be constructed within the imagination. Although this is not the case in either Keats's 'The Fall of Hyperion' or Shelley's 'Mont Blanc', their status as poems should not be overlooked. Though the agency of the poetic figures appears suspended or displaced by contending forces, he or she is simultaneously the poetic voice of each poem and thus With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. (FH, 9-11) The question of agency, then, is made problematic by virtue of its poetic enaction.
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The Eurosceptic policies of the United Kingdom Independence Party and the Front National: a comparison Simona Falanga
T
his paper aims at comparing and contrasting the reflection of the Eurosceptic sentiment into national party politics in France and the United Kingdom. In order to fill the gap in previous research, which mainly focuses on the mainstream political parties, this paper will analyse the policies of two ‘minor’ yet increasingly successful protest parties: the United Kingdom Independence Party (henceforth UKIP) and the Front National (henceforth FN). It will attempt to establish patterns in UKIP/FN propaganda and compare their policies towards EU membership and immigration.
Context: The rise of Euroscepticism The 1990s were marked by a rise of Eurosceptic discourse across Europe. The decade that saw the ratification of the Maastricht treaty also witnessed the emergence of Eurosceptic single issue parties 1 such as The Referendum Party and the United Kingdom Independence Party (henceforth UKIP). Both Britain and France can be considered as the progenitors of the Eurosceptic sentiment. The very term ‘Eurosceptic’ was coined in Britain in the mid eighties. When looking at the development of Euroscepticism in both countries it is however not sufficient to merely focus on its reflection on public opinion, the media and national party politics. In order for the sentiment to be adequately explained, one also needs gather background information on its wider historicocultural context. In fact, the incompatibilities between pre-existing historico-cultural values and the emerging European model will result in patterns of opposition at domestic level which will vary substantially across the nations.
1 Harmsen, R. and Spiering, M. (2005) Euroscepticism: Party politics, National
Identity and European Integration (Amsterdam - New York: Rodopi)
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Eurosceptic patterns in Britain and France Britain is characterised by a literal Europhobia2 (a cultural fear of ‘all things European’) which adds to the opposition to EU membership. British Euroscepticism is presumed to be rooted in the country’s postwar national identity crisis, as ‘hating Europeans and championing British’ has persistently dogged postwar AngloEuropean relations 3 . There is some truth to this, as shown by a striking 71% of Britons who claimed to identify solely with their own nation and not with Europe. Contrary to the British case, French Euroscepticism is somewhat of an enigma. This may be due to the fact that France is perceived as a generally pro-European country. France is indeed one of the founding members of the European Community, but it is however important to bear in mind the country’s long history of nation-state construction and an assimilationist-minded imperialism. The European issue has however been rather tacit 4 until the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht treaty, which saw France divided in two. French Eurosceptics are often referred to as ‘Souveranistes’, which identifies anyone whose views on European integration are strongly critical and seeks to preserve the sovereignty of the French state against Brussels.
Leconte, C. (2010) Understanding Euroscepticism (United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan) 3 Forster, A. (2002) Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservatives and Labour Parties since 1945 (London and New York: Routledge) 4 Guyomarch, A., Machin, H., Ritchie, E. (1998) France in the European Union (England: Macmillan Press) 2
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The Eurosceptic policies of UKIP and the Front National
Front National The French FN, which was founded in 1972, is considered to be the oldest far-right political party in Europe 5 . The party is characterised by a clear eurosceptic component, which is considered as one of the party’s fortés. However, unlike its British counterpart, FN presents a more ambivalent position on Europe. Former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen did in fact often refer to an ‘Europe des Nations’ (a concept that was also very dear to De Gaulle), stated his pride to be European and argued that the EU could act as a useful means to fight common evils. Even at such an early stage of the research, some differences between the two Eurosceptic parties can already be highlighted. In 2011, the lead of the party was taken over by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has since tried to improve the image of the party, which was often regarded as xenophobic and fascist. However, the party still maintains many of its core policies in respect to traditional family values and its ‘crusade’ against criminality, immigration and globalisation. The rise of the eurosceptic sentiment throughout Europe, including France, has proven to be an asset for the FN6, which topped the French polls in 2014’s European elections with an astonishing 25%. Furthermore, the FN leader is trying to block the European federalist project by creating a Eurosceptic block within the European Parliament. So far she has forged an alliance with the Dutch anti-Islamic leader Geert Wilders7 as well as other Swedish, Belgian and Austrian antiimmigration parties 8 , although attempts to build ties with UKIP
5 Ivaldi, G. (2012) The Front National at 40: The evolution of Europe’s radical
right [online] 6 Wieviorka, M. (2013) Le Front national: entre extrémisme, populisme et démocratie (France: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme) 7 Samuel, H. (2014) ‘Marine Le Pen says Front National and Ukip 'closer than they would like to admit’ The Telegraph 8 Waterfield, B. (2013) France’s FN to team up with other far Right parties for European Elections [online]
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have so far failed. In fact, despite Marine Le Pen claims to be in ‘regular contact with UKIP’9 and that the two share similar views, Nigel Farage has so far rejected any association with the French party because of ‘significant political differences’.
United Kingdom Independence Party Despite the considerable success at the 2004 and 2009 EP elections, very little academic attention has been paid to UKIP due to its insufficient performance in national parliamentary elections. However, that is no longer the case as UKIP challenges for victory in the Westminster by-elections and overtakes the Liberal Democrats10. This can be considered as a remarkable success for a party which was only founded in 1993 and has been regarded as ‘minor’ for most of its existence. UKIP is however very different from the party that was founded 21 years ago, as its success led its former and present leaders to expand and review its policies. Under its current leader (Nigel Farage), the party is adopting a more ambitious approach and is implementing a further diversification of its policies, as well as remodelling its public face. Much like the Front National, UKIP has also achieved extraordinary results at the European Parliamentary elections of 2014, gaining a total of 27.49% of the votes, thus getting ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. Despite these results, the party still retains some of its APE (Anti-Political Establishment) features and continues its dilemma between its defining single issue and its need to diversify its programme 11 . UKIP’s electorate identify immigration, the economy, crime and Europe as the most
9 Burgess, K. (2013) I’m in touch with UKIP, says far-right Marine Le Pen
[online] 10 BBC (2013) How UKIP became a British political force [online] 11 Usherwood, S. (2008) ‘The dilemmas of a single-issue party – The UK Independence Party’ Representation 44 (3), 255-264.
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The Eurosceptic policies of UKIP and the Front National
important issues facing the country 12 , which also represent the core elements of the party’s manifestos, campaigns and discourse. According to Usherwood, the party also tends to attract disgruntled Conservative voters, which suggests that the party may be considered as the anti-EU faction of the Conservative party itself.
Patterns in UKIP/FN propaganda The two parties seem to share many of their characteristics. It is evident, for instance, that both parties focus a large share of their campaigns on Euroscepticism and present similar opinions on the EU. Both parties also seem to target a similar share of voters: those who share the same sentiment of exclusion, those who believe their country has been taken away from them. The two also tend to base their discourse on a strong criticism of ‘the establishment’. In her speeches, Marine Le Pen speaks to the 'invisibles' and the 'forgotten'. Farage often attacks a political élite ‘who have never done a real day’s work in their lives’ and refers to the ‘madness of the political classes’ 13 . Both parties try therefore to appeal to the population’s anger towards the establishment so as to obtain protest votes. A patriotic element is also shared by the two parties. UKIP’s slogan: ‘Love Britain, Vote UKIP’ appeals to the nationalist sentiment of the electorate. UKIP is also not new to introducing patriotic elements to its campaign material. Notably, one of their most renowned leaflets which was used for the 2009 Euro Elections portrays the former PM Winston Churchill, whose figure has come to be one of the symbols of the United Kingdom. This pattern is also present in FN propaganda, as can be seen for instance in one of the posters for the 2009 Euro Elections. In ‘L’
12 Hayton, R. (2010) ‘Towards the Mainstream? UKIP and the 2009 Elections
to the European Parliament’ Political Studies Association [online] 30 (1), 2635. 13 Landale, J. (2013) ‘An evening with Nigel Farage' The BBC
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Europe fait mal’ [Europe hurts]14, the subject of the poster is the Marianne (the symbol of the French Republic) with a black eye, evidently caused by a European Union which ‘hurts’. Furthermore, both UKIP and the FN are classified as APE parties. However, such a label is nowadays challenged by their recent electoral results which suggest both parties are slowly shifting towards mainstream politics. Finally, both parties are labelled by their opponents as ‘racist’ and ‘fascist’: the FN has even been defined as ‘racist’ by Nigel Farage himself 15 . Despite their similarities, in-depth research of their policies, manifestos and party speeches shows that their policies differ more than is apparent to the general public. It can be argued that this is partially due to the differences in eurosceptic patterns that characterise respectively Britain and France.
1. Europe: Membership and Vision 1.1 UKIP Born as a single issue party, it is evident that one of UKIP’s most important policies is EU membership itself. The way the party has expressed its views has however changed over the years. In fact, in their early 2004 Euro Election campaign, the party message was simply ‘Say NO [to the EU]’, without any further elaboration on the subject. In 2005, UKIP published a manifesto for the general elections in which it expressed the need to leave the EU in order to regain the country’s national sovereignty, as ‘[The EU] is a political project designed to take control of all the main functions of national governments’. In the same manifesto it is also argued that the EU not only is no longer functioning, but is also a drawback to the British economic dynamism and prosperity, as well as a threat to
14 Front National (2009) L’Europe fait mal [online] 15 BBC (2014) France's Front National party leader 'opens arms' to UKIP
[online]
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The Eurosceptic policies of UKIP and the Front National
‘proper democracy’, national identity and belonging. In the 2010 manifesto, which was scrapped at the beginning of 2014, UKIP’s main policy remains withdrawal from the EU. The same wish is stressed in the local elections manifesto of 2013, in which UKIP affirms that withdrawal from the EU is the only way to rebuild Britain’s economy 16 . Moreover, UKIP leader Nigel Farage has stressed on multiple occasions that it is time to leave the ‘failed’ European project and regain control over its rule of law and borders17. Both the party’s leader and several UKIP MEPs have stressed that the party wishes to maintain friendly relationships with its European counterparts. Earlier this year, MEP Ray Finch spoke of a free and fair withdrawal from the EU and the negotiation of a number of agreements such as cross-border hospital treatment18. The party has strongly criticised Cameron’s proposal to renegotiate Britain’s position in the EU, as they believe renegotiation is unattainable. In fact, during the 2014 UKIP Spring conference Farage has stated that renegotiation is undoubtedly a ‘con’. For this reason, UKIP believes that leaving the EU is the only way in which the country can start solving the problems it is facing 19 . Were the party to win the elections, an immediate referendum would be carried out to decide whether Britain is to stay or leave the EU. In terms of UKIP’s vision of what Europe should be like, the party proposed a new approach to Europe. As previously mentioned, UKIP wishes to be friendly to its European counterparts and trade with them, but is however against being governed by EU institutions and is therefore opposed to a political
16 Ball, J. (2013) ‘Ukip's manifesto offers the world. Let's take a closer look’
The Guardian [online] 17 BBC (2014) Nick Clegg clashes with Nigel Farage in EU debate [online] 18 Wintour, P. (2014) ‘Ukip accepts EU exit could take several years’ The Guardian [online] 19 UKIP (2014) What We Stand For [online]
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union20. More specifically, UKIP proposes a union of sovereign free states as opposed to a political union run by bureaucrats21. Thus, UKIP wishes to set an example for the rest of Europe. UKIP’s vision of Britain outside Europe is a great global trading nation which is part of a Europe of sovereign independent nation states, 22 which will still be part of major global organisations (i.e. the UN Security Council, the OECD, the World Bank and the WTO), as written by UKIP MEP Roger Helmer23.
1.2 FN Front National speaks of a European Union that has lost its initial purpose, and has now been reduced to ‘un instrument au service d’une idéologie ultra-libérale mondialiste et des intérêts du secteur financier’2425. It laments that the future of the people is in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and that France is one of the countries that has been more severely hit by the EU (Front National 2014a). On several occasions, and notably in one of its recent leaflets, the FN identifies the EU as the cause of the recession that has hit the continent in recent years, which they write in bold headlines (‘L’Europe responsable de la crise’)26. Moreover, it also blames the EU for the open door to immigration which is also held as the main cause of unemployment, economic instability, poverty and the
20 BBC (2014) UKIP can win European elections [online]
21 The LBC Leaders’ Debate: Deputy PM Nick Clegg V UKIP Nigel Farage (2014)
Youtube [online] 22 There's No Consent for a 'United States of Europe' - @Nigel_Farage @UKIP (2014) Youtube [online] 23 UKIP MEPs (2014) Influence? What Influence? [online] 24 All translations herewith are the author’s own. ‘[The EU] is an instrument at the service of an ultraliberal ideology and the financial sector’ 25 Front National (2014) Une Europe au service des peuples libres [online] 26 Front National (2014) Pour sortir de la crise, sortons de l’Europe de Bruxelles ! [online]
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disruption of public services27. Notably, it seems that the FN finds particularly outrageous that Turkey is a prospective EU member. With regard to a further political union, the FN compares fixing the EU with more federalism to outdated medical treatments. In one of its posters for the 2009 Euro Elections, the party tried to appeal to the emotional side of the electorate (especially families with children) by picturing a toddler next to a large bold print: ‘Son avenir avant l’Europe’28 (‘His future [comes] before Europe’). FN’s solution is to renegotiate EU treaties along the lines of article 50 of the TEU (i.e. Treaty on European Union) and start a new European project which respects national sovereignty, identity and culture. This way, France will abandon a failed European project and will no longer be governed by institutions based in Brussels and Frankfurt: instead it would take part in cooperation and consultation projects with its European counterparts. Negotiations have also been mentioned by FN’s number two, Louis Aliot, who in response to an article against the party, has described a scenario in which Marine Le Pen is the French president. In his letter, he also describes how FN would bring in its wake countries like Germany and Great Britain, who have long been tired of austerity measures29. It can be argued that Marine Le Pen’s vision of Europe is comparable to that held by her father, who used to talk of implementing a project of a Europe of free nations. It is however mentioned in their 2012 manifesto that, were negotiations to fail, France will maintain its current position within the EU. In this scenario, the FN will use its MEPs within the European Parliament to block any attempt of the EU to further its political union. The party’s main objectives regarding EU membership are therefore the renegotiation of the treaties and the setting of
Front National (2012) Notre projet: Programme Politique du Front National [online] 28 Front National (2009a) Son avenir avant l’Europe [online] 29 Aliot, L. (2013) ‘Tribune libre - Louis Aliot répond au président du Crif’ Nations Presse Info [online] 27
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‘association libre d’Etats européens partageant la même vision et les mêmes intérêts sur des sujets tels que l’immigration ou les règles devant régir les échanges extérieurs et la circulation des capitaux’30. More specifically, the FN talks of a pan-European union which would ideally include Russia and Switzerland. Within the same manifesto, the party also wishes to stress that Turkey will not be a member of such a project. Earlier this year, Marine Le Pen has also specifically said that she wishes to ‘bring the Brussels wall down’, which is in line with the party’s anti-establishment pattern. Finally, the party wishes to put an end to its contribution to the European budget and to use the money that has been saved to finance other projects, such as French agriculture.
1.3 Comparison When comparing the two parties’ polices on EU membership and their vision of Europe, a number of similarities can be found. For instance, the parties share a similar vision of what Europe should be like: both speak of a Europe of free nations which cooperate together. However, UKIP largely focuses this union on free-trade agreements and the rejection of a political union, while the FN gives a more vague definition. In fact, the latter describes a union of sovereign states which co-operate together, but does not mention the extent of the co-operation Moreover, despite the fact that both parties heavily criticise the EU and lament being governed by unelected bureaucrats, the two have different opinions on what course of action should be taken. UKIP is totally opposed to the European project and advocates the withdrawal from the EU, while the FN only speaks of renegotiation. In fact, although article 50 (which lists the modalities in which a country can leave the EU) is mentioned in
30 ‘An association of free European states that share the same vision and
interests over themes such as immigrations control over foreign exchanges and the circulation of capital’
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their 2012 manifesto, there is no talk of withdrawal: only ‘renegotiation’ is mentioned. In other words, the FN wishes to renegotiate the EU treaties with its 27 European counterparts so as to give birth to a union which best suits the party’s values. If negotiations fail, the FN plans on maintaining its current position. UKIP on the other hand, believes renegotiation to be impossible. However, both parties are clearly opposed to further political union. In FN’s case, this can be seen from its comparison of more federalism to the use of leeches as well as its will to block any further attempts to extend federalism within the European Parliament. Seemingly UKIP clearly speaks of being willing to trade with Europe, but not to be governed by the latter. Finally, both parties believe they will act as an example to all the other ‘oppressed’ European countries. In Aliot’s scenario, France will awake other countries which will also start a process of renegotiation of the treaties, while UKIP has stated that Britain’s withdrawal from the EU will be an example to the rest of Europe.
2. Immigration 2.1 UKIP UKIP is renowned for strongly campaigning on immigration, as can be deduced from its manifestos, party conferences and promotional material. During both the party’s spring conference in Torquay and the LBC Debate against Nick Clegg (which took place last year), Farage has launched an invective against the country’s open door to immigration. He believes the UK is the country that has most been hit by the migration wave, which he blames on the EU. In its discourse, the party particularly refers to the Romanians and Bulgarians which, as of January 2014, are free to settle and work in EU countries. Nigel Farage tries in fact to appeal to the working class by reiterating the concept that cheap manual labour from Eastern Europe (and particularly Romania and Bulgaria) is creating an
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oversupply of labour which leads to a decrease in wages. In 2013, the party distributed a 2 page leaflet which specifically targets Romanians and Bulgarians 31 . This leaflet was primarily used to unsettle the electorate with an astonishing ‘Next year, the EU will allow 29 million Bulgarians and Romanians to come to the UK’ and a brief text on how that would affect people. However, one can also find a few elements of traditional UKIP propaganda: the criticism of the establishment (‘The Government have admitted there’s nothing we can do about it […] and Labour say they don’t want to do anything anyway’) and the positioning of the party as the only solution to leaving the EU (‘Join UKIP, the only mainstream party committed to getting the EU out of Britain’). The party does however try to make clear that its members are by no means against immigration or Eastern Europeans, as stated by Farage himself at his Torquay conference earlier in 2014: ‘I don’t blame people from Romania or Bulgaria or anywhere else (…) but when I see the impact (…)’32. This type of rhetoric has been identified by Van Dijk33 as a disclaimer. Disclaimers are semantic moves which are commonly used in extreme right propaganda to mitigate what might come across as a racist message. In this particular case it is an apparent denial, which consists in saying something positive about a certain ethnic minority (in this case Eastern Europeans), followed by a statement which says something negative about it (in this case how the former create an oversupply of labour and put British people out of their jobs). In order to solve the mass migration problem, UKIP calls for a five-year freeze on immigration and prioritisation of the British for social welfare, particularly social housing which will only be guaranteed for third and fourth generation immigrants 34 .
31 UKIP
(2013) Next year, the EU will allow 29 million Bulgarians and Romanians to come to the UK [online] 32 Nigel Farage MEP, the UKIP Leader at a packed public meeting in Torquay (2014) Youtube [online] 33 Van Dijk, T. (2008) Discourse & Power (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan) 34 UKIP (2014) UKIP news. Leaflet. Devon: UKIP
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Moreover, the party intends to treat EU citizens who entered the country after January 2004 as if they were non-EU, and all non-UK citizens will need to have their entry and exit recorded and to possess their own health insurance 35. Theoretically, UKIP said it plans to base its immigration policies on the Australian model36. Furthermore, UKIP calls for allowing migrants to settle in the UK on the basis of the skills they have to offer and the shortages the country may have in a given sector or moment in time. The party also wishes to prevent foreign criminals from entering the country altogether through the reintroduction of border controls.
2.2 FN Since its establishment in 1972, immigration was and continues to be an issue FN feels strongly about. According to Wieviorka, this is due to the fact that the party still retains its traditional elements of hatred and discrimination that characterised the party under its former leader. In fact, under Marine Le Pen, the party continues to campaign against immigration, which it blames for a variety of social pathologies ranging from unemployment to poverty and economic instability. Moreover, the FN believes that France has been particularly affected by the open doors which resulted from the Schengen agreements, and is particularly wary of Turkey possibly joining the Schengen union in the future. This type of discourse may be interpreted as a technique of social cognition manipulation, as highlighted by Van Dijk. In this particular case, in fact, FN is trying to change people’s attitude towards immigration by associating the latter with fear of increased unemployment, poverty and economic instability. Among the policies displayed on the party’s official website,is reiterated the concept that France is hindered by mass migration, which is believed to be triggered by the French welfare system, as
35 BBC (2010) At-a-glance: UKIP general election manifesto [online] 36 Love Britain. Vote UKIP (2014) Youtube [online]
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it supposedly attracts foreign migrants. The FN is also distressed by the decision to lift the restriction on migration for Romanians and Bulgarians. For this very reason, the party has created a petition that anyone can sign to prevent Eastern Europeans from settling in the country37. The lifting of restrictions on January 1st 2014 was described by the FN as an ‘aberration’, especially during a recession and given the high unemployment rates. In the description of this petition as well as on the party’s website, immigration is also blamed for the creation of unfair competition which puts the working class and small businesses out of work. In their 2012 manifesto, the FN therefore proposed to scrap the Services Directive (which establishes a single market for services and is allegedly creating unfair cross-border competition) and regain control of its frontiers. Consequently, there will be a renegotiation of both the Schengen agreements and the European Convention of Human Rights. In fact, the party accuses the former of causing mass migration and the latter to promote immigration towards France.
2.3 Comparison The two parties seem to share a good portion of their immigration policies. Both have a negative outlook on immigration, which they plan on reducing through the establishment of quotas or the renegotiation of free-movement agreements. Furthermore, both parties frequently blame immigration for other social pathologies in their political discourse. According to UKIP and FN, immigration is in fact severely affecting their respective countries and is mostly hitting the working class, which are put out of work because of cheap labour coming from other countries, notably Eastern Europe. Although Eastern Europeans are mostly referred to in UKIP discourse, both parties disagree with the lifting of restrictions for
Front National (2014b) Roumanie, Bulgarie : l'ouverture totale des frontières depuis le 1er janvier est une folie ! Signez la pétition [online] 37
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Romanians and Bulgarians. FN even went as far as creating a petition against such a decision. Moreover, both parties make a stand against immigrants coming to their countries to take advantage of their social welfare systems. However, while FN does not provide a clear solution to the problem, UKIP presented a number of policies ranging from a 5year freeze to prioritising the British for social welfare. Since, as previously stated, both parties often speak of the ‘terrible consequences’ of mass migration, it can be said that social cognition manipulation is in fact used by the two parties to frighten the electorate and gain votes. Finally, FN plans to renegotiate the Schengen agreement; this is not the case for UKIP, as the UK did not take part in the Schengen agreements and still retains some sort of border control.
Conclusion In conclusion, it can be affirmed that although the two parties share many of their views on the European project, the two also present substantial differences in the way they wish to handle the European issue. For instance, while UKIP strongly advocates withdrawal from the EU, Front National speaks solely of renegotiation of EU treaties. This is perhaps the most substantial and most evident difference between the two parties. One must also note that FN’s policies are generally far more vague when compared to UKIP’s. While UKIP’s line of reasoning is very simple (withdrawal from the EU), FN’s talks of renegotiation are often not elaborated and it is never explained which particular aspects of which treaties are to be revisited. Moreover, the renegotiation that FN calls for would require all the other member states to agree in granting France a special status within the EU, which is unlikely. It can therefore be said that, despite the fact that FN is not fundamentally opposed to the EU, its call for renegotiation is unattainable to the point that it can be concluded that the party is
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either not actually willing to do anything about the EU or that it is de facto opposed to EU membership. Both parties share the same resentment towards mass migration into their respective countries. The parties’ discourse on immigration is also very similar: they both blame immigration for unemployment and for creating an oversupply which hits the working class the hardest. As previously discussed, this technique is used to induce the electorate into fearing immigration itself. Other elements such as the criticism of Eastern European migrants and the claim that immigrants take advantage of their respective social welfare systems are also shared by both parties. The immigration subject also highlights the patriotic and nationalist aspect of both parties, which can also be found in other policies, such as their will to regain their national sovereignty and the rejection of a common European Army. The parties also agree on the deportation of foreign criminals and the imposition of restrictions on immigration as a whole.
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The Past in the Past – Curating Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon society Indra Werthmann
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his study will explore how Anglo-Saxon communities in England between the 5th to 7th centuries AD understood, used and discarded items deriving from the previous Roman period. Previous studies focussed on the relationships between Anglo-Saxon settlements, churches and cemeteries and pre-
Figure 1: Distribution map of case studies. Kent: Mill Hill, Deal, Buckland Dover II, Bekesbourne II Aerodrome, Hampshire: Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, Essex: Great Chesterford, Norfolk: Oxborough, Worcester: Beckford and Hereford.
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existing prehistoric and Roman sites, while the abundant evidence for the use of objects has been largely neglected.1 My PhD builds upon my MA dissertation The Past in the Past- the re-use of Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon graves. I was able to recognise patterns of re-use, in terms of the object types which were used as well as the context they were found in. The results suggested that re-use is highly regional, however, there also seemed to be common patterns in terms of re-used object types and their treatment. In this paper, the case studies of Kent, Hampshire, Essex, Norfolk and Beckford, Hereford and Worcester are discussed.
Roman objects as symbols of status Considering that Kent is the closest part to the continent, it is not surprising that its material culture is very rich, illustrating trade and mutual maritime links. In addition to contemporary items, there is also a great presence of re-used Roman objects.2
Hills, C. 2003, The Origins of the English, Duckworth, London.; Lucy S. 1998, The Early Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of East Yorkshire, BAR British Series 272, Oxford., 2000, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death, Sutton Publishing Limited, Strout 2 Parfitt K., Brugmann B. 1997, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Mill Hill Deal, Kent, The Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series No. 14, London., Richardson A. 2005, The Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of Kent, Volume I and II, BAR British Series 391, Oxford 1
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Figure 2 Roman beads from Mill Hill, Deal. After: Parfitt and Brugmann 1997
The most popular type of re-used object was Roman coins.3 They were primarily worn as necklaces or part of selected assemblages in bag collections near the femurs. These bags were worn around the waist, incorporating peculiar items, such as broken beads and glass fragments, animal teeth and fossils.4 It is therefore suggested by scholars such as Audrey Meaney that these collections were bearing amuletic values for the wearer and unlike the coins worn as necklaces, the coins which were incorporated in these assemblages were frequently heavily worn or unperforated.5 Apart from coins, Roman beads and glass fragments were also frequently re-used.6 Window fragments or broken glass bowls
3 Unfortunately no illustrations were given
Ibid. Meaney A. 1981, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones, BAR British Series 96, Oxford, 4 6 Parfitt K., Brugmann B. 1997, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Mill Hill Deal, Kent, The Society 4 5
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were included in bag collections, whereas intact Roman beads were parts of necklaces, supporting the visual display of the wearer. The most popular form is the Roman Melon bead. These beads are short to medium barrel-shaped or globular, with very narrow and shallow ribs created with rounded indents.7 In the cemetery at Mill Hill, Deal, Brugmann also identified three other types of Roman beads: a dark blue-spiral-on-white disc bead, a dark green-onyellow-dots-and-white-crossing-trails-on-black short cylinder and a rust-red-on-yellow-dots-and-light-blue-crossing-trails-on-black cylinder bead.8 It is questionable if the early Anglo-Saxon communities regarded those differently from contemporary ones, as it is quite possible that merchants were selling the beads alongside other imported beads from the continent. 9 The fact remains, however, that Roman beads were frequently re-used items and supported the wearer’s identity. The cemeteries at Kent incorporate very wealthy graves and most of the items are found in burials bearing large numbers of grave goods. It seems therefore, that Roman objects are a reoccurring factor in Kentish cemeteries and may have contributed to the status of an individual.
for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series No. 14, London., Richardson A. 2005, The Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of Kent, Volume I and II, BAR British Series 391, Oxford 7 Brugmann 2004, Glass Beads from Anglo-Saxon Graves: A Study on the Provenance and Chronology of Glass Beads from Anglo-Saxon Graves Based on Visual Examination, Oxbow Books, p. 77 8 Parfitt K., Brugmann B. 1997, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Mill Hill Deal, Kent, The Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series No. 14, London, p. 149 9 Semple S., Lecturer at the Dep. Of Archaeology, Durham University, pers. Comm.
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Charon’s Obol – Roman customs still continued? Some case studies demonstrated that the inclusion of Roman coins in early Anglo-Saxon graves may have served another purpose. In Bekesbourne II, Aerodome, Kent, burial 37/38 contained three coins, one was located at the waist, while the other two were placed in the skeleton’s hand.10 This odd positioning reminds of the old Roman tradition of Charon’s Obol, in which coins were placed in the hands and mouth of the deceased in order to be taken to the Otherworld by the Seafarer. 11 Previous archaeologists believed that the tradition was not carried out in Anglo-Saxon England, however, the cemetery at Great Chesterford proved to be another example for the continuity of this rite. In grave 29 of the female juvenile, one unperforated Roman coin was placed underneath the fingers of the left hand. The male inhumation of grave 122 included a Roman coin at the head of the grave, while another male burial in grave 149 contained a Roman coin at the skull. Examples of this tradition can be also found on the continent. 12 For example, the Merovingian Franks placed silver and golden coins in the deceased mouth and hand.13 Apart from this rite, there was also a high amount of coins being re-used in infant burials.
Richardson A. 2005, The Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of Kent, Volume I and II, BAR British Series 391, Oxford, p. 128 11 Alcock 1980, Classical Religious Belief and Burial Practice in Roman Britain. Arch. J. 137, p. 57-60; Clarke 1979, The Roman cemetery at Lankhills. Winchester Studies 3. Volume II, p. 357 12 Evison V. 1994, An Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Great Chesterford, Essex, CBA Research Report 91, York, p. 29, 113, 168 13 White R. 1988, Roman and Celtic Objects from Anglo-Saxon graves- a catalogue and an interpretation of their use, BAR British Series 191, Oxford, p. 157 10
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One intriguing example is infant burial 136 which incorporated nine coins, placed in four lots near the foot. 14 The infant inhumation burial 11 included an undated coin with two perforations, which might be regarded as evidence that these coins were not only inserted in graves, but may have been also worn during the lifetime of the individual, being occasionally repaired.15 This is also demonstrated by the female inhumation grave 29, which included a secondary perforated coin at the chest area.16 Great Chesterford only produced four re-used Roman beads,
Figure 3 secondary perforated coin of grave 29. After Evison 1994.
however, there was a wealth of other Roman material included within the graves. Additionally, infant grave 71 exclusively incorporated Roman material, it might be therefore tempting to consider if this burial is rather Romano-British than Anglo-Saxon, however, this is highly speculative. 17
Evison 1994, An Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Great Chesterford, Essex, CBA Research Report 91, York, p. 136 15 Ibid., p. 97 16 Ibid. p. 98 17 Ibid., p. 106 14
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There is, however, an unusual association of coins found in this cemetery, as a Roman coin together with a glass fragment and nail, was discovered above the dog burial 2. 18 This might be regarded as a counter argument to infant grave 71 being “RomanoBritish”, as a dog cannot inherit an “heirloom”. A dog, however, could have been a vital part to someone else’s life, who felt that the dog should incorporate the same grave goods as a deceased infant. Wealth seems not to be accumulated through a certain age or, in case of Roman objects, chance finds which become incorporated in the everyday costume, but are ascribed to a certain individual by birth. Taking into consideration the frequency of burying coins with infants suggests that there is a particular connotation of Roman objects among this community. Roman objects were not limited to inhumations, as cremation 32 was covered by the flat base of a Roman pot.19 These coverings do occur in cremation cemeteries, however, there are only a few examples using a Roman pot, which demonstrates that Roman pots are utilised in the same way as contemporary ones.20 Great Chesterford proved to give insights into the multiple implications Roman objects are able to obtain when integrated in graves.
Roman objects as symbols for social division There are, however, examples of Roman objects having other connotations than being items of prestige. The cemetery at Beckford, Hereford and Worcester, consisted of two cemeteries, 24 inhumations were discovered in cemetery A and 106 and 4
Ibid., p. 40 Ibid., p. 21 20 Observations made from case studies in: Werthmann I. J. E. 2012, The Past in the Past – The re-use of Roman objects in early Anglo- Saxon graves, 5th to 7th centuries AD, unpublished Master’s thesis, University College Dublin, Dublin, unpublished 18 19
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cremations were found in cemetery B.21 The evidence suggests that there is little or no contact to other communities and there is a clear separation of Roman artefact types between these cemeteries. Roman coins were exclusively found in cemetery B. The graves belonged to adult female inhumations, bearing a large number of grave goods. They were yet again part of necklaces or hidden in bag collections, however, the usage within the latter outweighed the open display at the chest area. 22 The example of grave 44 bore a coin which was perforated twice, due to the breakage of the first perforation.23 This suggests it was deliberately repaired to be worn. However, it belonged at the time of death to a bag collection, which can be regarded as an example for changing connotations of objects during their lifetimes. It is even more intriguing that no coins were found in cemetery A but two graves of female adults included perforated Roman spoon bowls in bag collections. 24 Their perforations suggest that they might have been worn previously, before they were deemed to belong to such a collection.
Evison V., Hill P. 1996, Two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Beckford, Hereford and Worcester, CBA Research Report 103, York 22 Ibid., p. 20 23 Ibid., p. 83 24 Ibid., p. 77, 78 21
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Figure 5 Finger ring made from Roman bracelet from grave 30. Scale 1:2, after Chadwick Hawkes and Grainger 2003
Figure 4 Perforated spoon bowls. After Evison, Hill 1996. Ostheological analysis suggests that in cemetery A, some graves were those of probable lepers, some also showing evidence of spina fida.25 It is suggested, that the cemeteries A and B might have been separated due to an outbreak of leprosy. 26 It appears that “healthy” inhumations contained all the coins, whereas the other “sick” individuals only included two spoon bowls in bag collections. There was one other example in Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, Hampshire, which incorporated a spoon bowl in a grave. Two coins and a Roman copper alloy spoon bowl were placed inside a handmade pottery jar above the skull in grave 63.27 The two coins are not pierced for suspension, reminiscent of the majority of coins used in bag collections. In this instance there is no evidence that the individual suffered any form of illness or physical
Ibid., p. 38 Ibid. 27 Chadwick Hawkes and Grainger 2003, The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, near Winchester, Hampshire, Oxford University School of Archaeology, Monograph No. 59, Oxford, p. 65 25 26
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impairment but the female individual, who was aged c. 45 years, was one of the oldest mature females present in the cemetery. The cemetery at Worthy Park comprised 94 inhumations and 46 cremations and showed significant similarities with the practices identified in the Kentish case studies, including the use of a number of Roman coins and trinkets within well-furnished graves. Roman coins were pierced for suspension and frequently reused as either part of necklaces or hidden in bag collections, often alongside Roman glass fragments, appearing in graves of high status individuals. 28 One interesting example creates the possibility of associating the re-use of coins with dates, is that of a bag collection in grave 30. Out of seven coins, three dated to the period of Antoninianus, of those two had an edge nicked. It will be therefore intriguing to investigate if there are more examples of nicked coins with similar dates. Yet again there are examples of a variety of items, such as a harness fitting, copper alloy strap and copper alloy bow brooch, in addition to this a Roman bracelet fragment and copper alloy mount was made into a copper alloy ring. The question remains why these random objects were being re-used as well as to which point a Roman object remains in his original state or is changed into something new There is a common thread in early Anglo-Saxon England which connects the re-use of Roman coins with the notion of being symbols of status. This might be the reason why no coins can be found with the impaired individuals in cemetery A, but that they were exclusively re-used within graves of “healthy” inhumations in cemetery B. Roman coins might have been regarded as “exotic” components within the individual’s appearance in such a remote area. Although more coins were found as part of bag collections hidden away from view, the fact remains that the majority of those coins were pierced for suspension, suggesting that they were openly displayed at one stage of their life time.
28
Ibid., p. 34
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The exclusive usage of Roman spoon bowls within the graves of impaired individuals might suggest that they may have served medicinal purposes. During Roman times, bone spoons were already associated with spices and herbs. Fairly similar in shape, it is suggested that they were used as measurements for medicine, which is also demonstrated by the notion of “spoonful” mentioned in Roman medical texts. 29 Bag collections were ascribed to amuletic purposes, it is therefore possible that they were regarded as “healing items”. Although no signs of physical impairment could be associated with grave 63 in Worthy Park, we cannot exclude mental illness. In Oxborough, Norfolk, the only burial containing re-used Roman objects, was that of an unusual individual in grave 9.30 The burial comprised a mature adult female, whose skull bore a “neat hole”, as a result of trepanation, which was partly healed. The inhumation included eight types of objects, amongst those a Roman copper alloy brooch beneath the chin. The brooch might have hung from a string between two copper alloy annular brooches at the shoulders on either side. Amongst 24 beads between the brooches, two were “gold-in-glass” beads, which might have been Roman in origin. 31 There is evidence for an occurrence of trepanned individuals in west Norfolk and Suffolk during the 6th century, especially around the edges of the Fens, which might have been the work of one particular person, “the master of the gilding gouge.”32 Trepanation was not a regular practice in Anglo-Saxon England,
Hill, J., and Rowsome, P. 2011, Roman London and the Walbrook Stream Crossing: Excavations at 1 Poultry and Vicinity, London: Museum of London Archaeology, p. 54-8 30 Penn K. 1990, An Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Oxborough, West Norfolk, excavations in 1990, East Anglian Archaeology, Field Archaeology Division, Norfolk, p. 12 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 25 29
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therefore it is fairly intriguing that a trepanned individual was the sole example of this cemetery associated with Roman objects.33 A Roman brooch was also found in the female inhumation of grave 127 at the cemetery in Great Chesterford, Essex. There were fragments of a foetus in her pelvis area, which suggests that she died in child birth. 34 This might be an indication for re-using Roman brooches with individuals who are enduring hardship. From being symbols of status, to mimicking ancient rites and symbolising the loss of an unwell individual, these are prime examples that objects are carefully selected and utilised according to the individual’s needs. For this reason it is of fundamental importance to examine such a phenomenon not as a whole, but from one case study to another.
Ibid. Evison V., Hill P. 1996, Two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Beckford, Hereford and Worcester, CBA Research Report 103, York, p. 107 33 34
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Figure 6 Roman brooch from grave 9, after Penn 1990
Discussion The discussed evidence demonstrated that inserting Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon graves is a localised process, however, common threads are also visible. Taking into consideration that the south favoured inhumation burials, whereas cremation burials were popular in Anglian regions, it should not be surprising that the re-use of Roman objects also varies. In the south, Roman items frequently occurred as symbols of prestige in extensively wealthy graves, intermingling with contemporary objects and being openly
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displayed. The use was not defined to one particular group, but could be found in all age and occasionally gender categories. Going further north from Kent, however, the re-use was much more limited and only a few objects were associated with certain individuals. Moreover, the examples from Beckford and Oxborough demonstrate that certain Roman objects were used for impaired individuals, who stood apart from the rest of the community, perhaps as “healing” items. It seems therefore that Roman objects were not only regarded as prestige items or symbols for affiliation, but that they were also markers for unhealthy individuals. Furthermore the examples of Great Chesterford and Bekesbourne II, Aerodrome suggest that the Roman tradition “Charon’s Obol” was still carried out in early Anglo-Saxon England. In these cases, Roman coins were rather favoured for their antiquity than as exotic components in graves. The placements of coins demonstrate that early Anglo-Saxon communities were aware of Roman traditions and deliberately chose to continue these rites. Another possibility is that the continuation of this custom can be associated with on-going rituals on the continent. It is widely known that the Merovingian Franks placed coins in the mouths and hands of their deceased, which might not come as a surprise, as the presence of the Roman Empire endured longer on the continent than in England. 35 Early Anglo-Saxon communities might have been eager to show their connections to the Franks and imitated their customs in these prestige burials. Taking these patterns into consideration, it is possible that the Roman objects were not regarded as items of the past, but rather as fashion trends, sweeping over from the continent and altered according to the specific needs of local communities. The female Alamannic grave 500 from Basel contained a female
White R. 1988, Roman and Celtic Objects from Anglo-Saxon graves- a catalogue and an interpretation of their use, BAR British Series 191, Oxford, p. 157 35
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inhumation wearing coins in pairs, alternating with paired beads.36 Such a skilfully made necklace may have been regarded as fashionable within the local community and was worn as prestige object of a high status individual. Another example for coins being worn as part of a necklace and the re-use of Roman keys is demonstrated by yet another prestige burial in Marktoberdorf, Allgäu. 37 Recent results of my research indicate that coins and fibulae were re-used in Merovingian graves in Southwest Germany.38 It seems therefore, that there is a common thread in the reuse of Roman objects, which can be traced back to the continent and spread from there to early Anglo-Saxon England. Such an interpretation is supported by the fact that Kent, being the closest part of Britain to the continent, demonstrated the greatest variety and vastest amount of Roman objects discovered in graves. From Kent and the southern regions, the trend might have expanded to other areas in early Anglo-Saxon England, in which local communities altered the re-use according to their individual funerary rites. A comparable trend is the spread of Kentish ring swords. These swords appeared in the 6th century and comprised a free running ring attached to the upper guards. Scholars argue about their true function, some believe that pledges and oaths were sworn on the rings between binding parties, others suggests that the rings were attached to the wrists from fighters.39 This ring was replaced in the 7th century by a single solid casting, called “ring knobâ€?. This suggests that the earlier form must have had some functional meaning, however, it was now stylised by a
Ibid., p. 158 Ibid. 38 Rau A., Archaeologist at Schloss- Gottorf, Schleswig, pers. Comm. 39 Davidson H.R.E.1962, The sword in Anglo-Saxon England: Its Archaeology and Literature, Oxford: Clarendon, 77; Underwood R. 2001, Anglo-Saxon weapons and warfare, The History Press, Stroud, p. 54 36 37
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“functionless” solid cast. Swords with ring knobs were more widespread across Germanic societies, there were also examples being found at Lombard Cemetery, Italy. 40 Such a “stylisation” of objects may have also applied to the re-use of Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon graves.
Conclusion Re-using Roman objects in Anglo-Saxon England seems to be a highly complex subject matter. The trend was fairly localised, the context and use of Roman objects varied from cemetery to cemetery. There is a tendency, however, of coins being used in exceptionally rich graves, especially in southern regions. On the other hand, the re-use of Roman objects may have made other “statements”, such as creating social divisions or continuing traditions from the Roman past in new contexts. This continuation, however, may rather be associated to affiliations to the continent than to the Roman past. If we assume that the re-use is a fashion trend, sweeping over from the continent, it is not surprising that wealthy individuals were keen to show their connections and links with the continental Germanic people. Early Anglo-Saxon society might have been aware of the Roman past, however, instead of valuing the objects for their antiquity, it is more likely that the objects were either regarded as “exotic” components in graves, favoured for their visual purposes, or as symbols for their affiliations to the continent. Exploring this topic further might give us new material on the process of migration and acculturation in Anglo-Saxon England.
Bone P. 1989, The Development of Anglo-Saxon swords from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century, Weapons and Warefare, p. 65 40
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What difference does using different research methods make? A comparison between two different methods of investigating changing political values between generations. Nat Guillou
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his paper sets out to compare and contrast two different methods employed to investigate changing political values between generations. The initial focus will be on the research topic and the key relevant concepts and issues. Having considered this, the discussion will move towards the two methods identified as relevant and employed within the author’s home discipline of political science. The paper will consider how appropriate the first method is and any limitations it may place upon the research. This will then be contrasted with an alternative method in order to highlight the differences that this would make in researching this topic. Philosophical and technical matters relating to both methods will be considered. Finally, a mixed methods approach and its potential advantages and limitations will be considered. This paper will conclude that such a mixed methods approach is likely to bear fruit in this area, as employing preliminary qualitative work can help make quantitative survey methods employed more precise and better able to represent the views of the individuals under study. Research on the topic of changing political values dates to the 1960s, with a particular focus on transmission of political values from parent to child 1 , with such repeated in the 1970s and
Jennings, M.K. & Niemi, R.G. (1968) The Transmission of Political values from Parent to Child. The American Political Science Review, 62 (1), 169-184. 1
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beyond23. Since then there has been a great deal of research looking at differences in attitudes and values of generations, ranging from analysis of these differences amongst generations in post-Soviet Eastern Europe4 and Russia5, through to modern studies focusing on generational attitudes to the welfare state6, and the supposed lack of political values of British youth7. These papers are typically quantitative in focus, seeking to illustrate the difference in opinion and attitudes of differing age cohorts in relation to specific political views and to provide comparisons between generations. A central challenge throughout is the nebulous nature of the concept of generations 8 . There is no clear definition, with some simply favouring a fairly arbitrary division into age based cohorts, whilst others conceive of generations as sociological groups bound by common historical experience. In any event, rapid changes in
Friedman, L.N., Gold, A.R. & Christie, R. (1972) Dissecting the Generation Gap: Intergenerational and Intrafamilial Similarities and Differences. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (3), 334-346. 3 Jennings, M.K. & Niemi, R.G. (1978) The Persistence of Political Orientations: An Over-Time Analysis of Two Generations. British Journal of Political Science, 8 (3), 333 – 363. 4 Reisinger, W.M., Miller, A.H., Hesli, V.L. & Maher, K.H. (1994) Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania: Sources and Implications for Democracy. British Journal of Political Science, 24 (2), 183-223. 5 Mishler, W. & Rose, R. (2007) Generation, Age, and Time: The Dynamics of Political Learning during Russia’s Transformation. American Journal of Political Science, 51 (4), 822–834. 6 Duffy, B., Hall, S., O’Leary, D. & Pope, S. (2013) Generation strains: A Demos and Ipsos Mori report on changing attitudes to welfare. London: Demos. http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Demos_Ipsos_Generation_Strains_web.pd f?1378677272 Accessed 30th November 2014. 7 White, C., Bruce S. & Ritchie, J. (2000) Young people’s politics: Political interest and engagement amongst 14-12 year olds. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. www.jrf.org.uk/system/files/1859353096.pdf Accessed 17th December 2014. 8 Rintala, M., (1963) A Generation in Politics: A Definition. The Review of Politics, 25 4), 509-522. 2
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society mean that even those very close in age may well have very divergent experiences of life, highlighting the difficulty in defining generations in a coherent and logical manner 9 . There are also issues as regards the political. Some of the studies considered have looked at the supposed lack of political values in younger generations. These papers argue that in conducting large-scale quantitative survey research, researchers impose their own understandings of concepts upon respondents in a misleading manner10. The key issue in any social research remains the methodological approach to take. Researchers must consider their own epistemological positions and ‘reflect upon the issue of how the social world should be studied and whether a scientific approach is the right stance to adopt’ 11 . Based on this, and the research question itself, the researcher must choose the most appropriate method. In general, when considering a ‘what’ question (for example, ‘what are the differences in political values between two generations?’), a quantitative approach is probably preferable as it is well-suited to generating data that describe groups or populations in a concise manner. Conversely, if considering a ‘how’ question (for example, ‘how do political values change over time?’) then a qualitative method will be of more use, as such will generate rich, complex responses that surveys are too crude to capture12 . The focus must be on linking theoretical and technical considerations to the specific question under study.
Vincent, J. A. (2005) Understanding generations: political economy and culture in an ageing society. British Journal of Sociology, 56 (4), 579-599. 10 O'Toole, T., Marsh, D., & Jones, S. (2003). Political Literacy Cuts Both Ways: The Politics of Non-participation among Young People. The Political Quarterly, 74 (3), 349-360. 11 Bryman, A., (2012) Social Research Methods: Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. P.6 12 Greener, I., (2011) Designing Social Research: A Guide for the Bewildered. London: Sage Publications Limited. 9
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The Quantitative approach Quantitative statistical methods dominate research in political science13. It is clear from the literature that the preferred method in the discipline for investigating the political values of those of different generations is the closed-question survey1415. Surveys can be put to numerous uses, but in the papers considered here the aims are twofold, namely to provide estimates of population parameters from samples, and to test hypotheses and models 16 . This approach ties into the positivistic view that the scientific method is an appropriate way to investigate sociological questions. Ontologically, such methods tend towards realism, the view that there is a consistent external reality that we can observe. By observing and describing this reality, realists claim that we can understand the world, and that human activity is no exception to this. An objectivist epistemology logically follows, which warrants as good knowledge that which represents the objective status of this independent reality17. Surveys record values across numerous variables for each individual respondent and the main aim of the
Bennett, A., Barth, A. & Rutherford K.R. (2003) Do We Preach What We Practice? A Survey of Methods in Political Science Journals and Curricula. PS: Political Science and Politics, 36 (3) 373-378 14 Goerres, A., & Prinzen, K., (2012) Can We Improve the Measurement of Attitudes Towards the Welfare State? A Constructive Critique of Survey Instruments with Evidence from Focus Groups. Social Indicators Research, 109 (3), 515–534. 15 Henn, M., Weinstein, M., Wring, D. (2002) A generation apart? Youth and political participation in Britain. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 4 (2) 167-192. 16 Fife-Shaw, C. (2006) Questionnaire Design. Research methods in Psychology: Third Edition (Breakwell G., Hammond, S., Fife-Shaw, C. Eds). London: Sage Publications Limited, 210-231. 17 Blaikie, N. (1993) Approaches to social enquiry: Advancing knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. 13
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method is to show how variables relate to each other18. This is the basis of the method’s ability to answer ‘what’ questions, by virtue of its capacity to show how the variable ‘age’ relates to differing variables representing respondents’ political values. The survey method in the papers considered has predominantly been used as a way of testing hypotheses. Reisinger et al.19 analysed survey data to disprove a variety of hypotheses, for example that Russian political values are distinguished by a love of authoritarianism. It is clear that the purpose of this research was hypothetico-deductive, with the survey used to generate data to test a pre-set hypothesis, an approach adopted in the majority of papers considered. The survey is well-suited to testing hypotheses, and is particularly useful in examining changing political values between generations as there is a great deal of pre-existing theory upon which hypotheses can be based. It is equally the case that this focus on theory testing may lead a researcher to fail to identify phenomena which may have significant uses for theory generation20. The abundance of theory makes surveys not only appropriate as grounds for testing hypotheses, but can be of assistance in enhancing survey instruments. Greener21 notes that ‘The language and concepts used in questionnaires, both in their instructions and questions, is therefore extremely important. It is vital that researchers make use of existing studies and pilots in order to find out not only what likely respondents regard as the important
Punch, K.F., (2003), Survey Research: The Basics. London: Sage Publications Limited 19 Reisinger, W.M., Miller, A.H., Hesli, V.L. & Maher, K.H. (1994) Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania: Sources and Implications for Democracy. British Journal of Political Science, 24 (2), 183-223. 20 Johnson R.B. & Onwuegbuzie, A.J. (2004) Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come. Educational Researcher, 33 (7), 14-26. 21 Greener, I., (2011) Designing Social Research: A Guide for the Bewildered. London: Sage Publications Limited. P. 43 18
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questions that they believe should be asked about the research area, but also the way they need to be phrased, and the responses that they need to be offered.’ If attempting to research an area about which little was known, the survey would be inadequate, as any prior hypotheses would have limited theoretical grounding, and it is highly unlikely that the questions posed would enable collection of data that properly reflected the respondents’ thoughts and feelings. Accordingly, the survey consisting of closed questions is an appropriate method here, allowing us to draw large samples such that we can make inferences about the values of populations and subpopulations. Pre-existing theory should facilitate the generation of rationally grounded hypotheses and development of survey instruments that are appropriately tailored to accurately capture the values of respondents. Written surveys of this kind also carry the advantage of being low cost, allowing researchers to maximise sample sizes to permit statistical analysis22. However, there are numerous critiques of the survey as a method. Firstly there is the philosophical rejection of positivism. Those who ascribe to an idealist ontology and constructionist epistemology hold that there is no independent external reality. Accordingly they hold that there is not one reality but a multitude thereof23. As a result claims that quantitative surveys generate data that describe an independent truth are rejected on the basis that there is no such truth to be found. It is argued that providing a standard set of questions to all respondents eliminates issues of bias, as all are presented with the same questions and instructions and the results gained are largely
Bourque, L.B. & Fielder, E.P. (1996) How to conduct Self-Administered and Mail Surveys. London: Sage Publications Limited 23 Blaikie, N. (1993) Approaches to social enquiry: Advancing knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. 22
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independent of the researcher’s influence 24 . However, it is clear that this is in fact a significant source of potential difficulties. Concepts and questions might be understood and interpreted very differently by respondents and researchers25, and this divergence may lead to the collection of misleading data that does not accurately reflect the attitude of the respondent. O’Toole et al. 26 state that quantitative survey methods naturally impose the researchers’ own rather narrow concept of ‘the political’ upon respondents and that this distorts the image of the age cohort under study. This work employed interviews and considers the use of survey methods as a reason for young people’s miscategorisation as apolitical, and highlights the inadequacy of the method in capturing and engaging with the diversity of individuals’ conceptual understandings. Further, the indicators used in surveys may be too simplistic to represent the relevant concepts being studied 27 . These issues are compounded by the use of closed questions, which offer no scope for a respondent to highlight misunderstandings and may fail to capture the richness and variety of respondents’ views 28 . This shortcoming can in principle be ameliorated to an extent by using multiple indicators of each of the conceptual variables under study, but care must be taken in developing the questionnaire to minimise issues of ambiguity. Additionally, with any survey there remains significant scope for
Bryman, A. (1984) The debate about quantitative and qualitative research: a question of method or epistemology? British Journal of Sociology, 35 (1) 7592. 25 Cicourel, A.V., (1982) Interviews, Surveys, and the Problem of Ecological Validity. The American Sociologist, 17 (1) 11-20. 26 O'Toole, T., Marsh, D., & Jones, S. (2003). Political Literacy Cuts Both Ways: The Politics of Non-participation among Young People. The Political Quarterly, 74 (3), 349-360. 27 Mahoney, J., & Goertz, G. (2006) A tale of two cultures: Contrasting quantitative and qualitative research. Political Analysis, 14(3), 227-249. 28 Greener, I., (2011) Designing Social Research: A Guide for the Bewildered. London: Sage Publications Limited. 24
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respondents to give inaccurate answers to straightforward questions. Parry & Crossley29 showed that approximately 30% of respondents gave inaccurate answers on being asked if they had voted in recent elections. Any analysis based on such false responses is bound to be inaccurate. In general terms, survey methods, in trying to describe and summarise relationships between variables in large samples, such that claims about populations can be inferred, may miss much of the fine-grain detail and consequently may fail to capture or misrepresent key elements of individual attitudes.
Qualitative Interviews as an alternative approach An alternative method employed by researchers to investigate this topic is the interview. Ipsos Mori’s paper 30 looking at intergenerational justice employed interviews and focus groups and highlights that ‘unlike quantitative surveys, qualitative research is designed to be illustrative, detailed and exploratory, providing insights into the perceptions, feelings and intended behaviours of people rather than conclusions from a quantifiable valid sample’. Qualitative interviews, where respondents are asked open questions and may direct the discussion as they wish, differ in their philosophical underpinnings to quantitative surveys. This method is associated with an idealist ontology that what we regard as the external world has no independent existence separate from our thoughts, and a constructionist epistemology that holds that
Parry, H.J. & Crossley, H.M. (1950). Validity of Responses to Survey Questions. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 14 (1), 61-80. 30 Ipsos MORI (2013) Intergenerational Justice, Ipsos MORI for Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, http://www.jrrt.org.uk/sites/jrrt.org.uk/files/documents/Intergenerational _Justice_050613_IpsosMORI_JRRT.pdf Accessed 17th December 2014. P. 11 29
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there are no absolute truths 31 . Arksey & Knight 32 state that interview methods reject the positivistic approach, and cite Rubin & Rubin’s 33 view that these methods are ‘… not looking for principles that are true all the time and in all conditions, like laws of physics; rather the goal is understanding of specific circumstances, how and why things actually happen in a complex world. Knowledge in qualitative interviewing is situational and conditional.’ Interviews, in contrast to surveys, are better suited to an inductive approach, when little is known about a research area34. Interviews allow respondents to report in their own terms and permit ‘thick description’ 35 and consequently can provide a powerful method for developing theory. The abundance of theory in this topic area may explain the relative paucity of qualitative studies in this area. Political science research is focused on generalising findings in studies and attempts to make inferences about populations. The survey, based on a large random sample, is well-equipped to do this. The key strengths of the survey in comparison to the interview are that interview data cannot be
Blaikie, N. (1993) Approaches to social enquiry: Advancing knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. 32 Arksey, H. & Knight, P. (1999) Interviewing for Social Scientists. London: Sage Publications Limited 33 Rubin, H.J. & Rubin, L.S. (1995) Qualitative Interviewing: the Art of Hearing Data. London: Sage Publications Limited. P. 38 34 Morse, J.M. & Mitcham, C. (2002) Exploring Qualitatively-derived Concepts: Inductive—Deductive Pitfalls. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1 (4), 28-35 35 O'Toole, T., Marsh, D., & Jones, S. (2003). Political Literacy Cuts Both Ways: The Politics of Non-participation among Young People. The Political Quarterly, 74 (3), 349-360. 31
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generalised as readily 36 and ‘are more easily influenced by the researcher's personal biases and idiosyncrasies’37. A qualitative approach has, however, shown that the conceptual basis of many quantitative surveys may be inaccurate. Goerres and Prinzen 38 undertook a study critiquing the use of surveys via interviews. Individuals aged 17-89 were split into twelve groups and asked to provide responses to a closed-question survey which aimed at capturing attitudes towards the welfare state. The respondents were then interviewed in groups in an attempt to see whether their responses in an interview setting matched their survey responses. This study identified several issues, namely inconsistency of attitudes (direct contradiction between response to the survey and at interview), uncertainty of attitudes (participants indicating strong views on the survey, but at interview were hesitant and unsure), non-attitudes (strong preferences indicated for certain matters on the survey, with no interest in these matters evidenced during interview) and ambivalent attitudes (respondents giving a definite positive or negative view in the survey, but showing mixed feelings at interview). There appear to have been marked discrepancies between survey responses and the views offered in an interview setting. This calls into question the utility of the quantitative survey, the notion that use of existing theory is sufficient to create a precise
Ipsos MORI (2013) Intergenerational Justice, Ipsos MORI for Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, http://www.jrrt.org.uk/sites/jrrt.org.uk/files/documents/Intergenerational _Justice_050613_IpsosMORI_JRRT.pdf Accessed 17th December 2014. 37 Johnson R.B. & Onwuegbuzie, A.J. (2004) Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come. Educational Researcher, 33 (7), 14-26 38 Goerres, A., & Prinzen, K., (2012) Can We Improve the Measurement of Attitudes Towards the Welfare State? A Constructive Critique of Survey Instruments with Evidence from Focus Groups. Social Indicators Research, 109 (3), 515–534. 36
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survey instrument, and indeed whether variables can ever be a reliable proxy for individual attitudes. Quantitative methods tend to focus ‘too much on internal validity at the expense of external validity’, but it is evident that no matter how well established the methods of statistical analysis are, if the variables employed do not accurately represent the underlying reality then the usefulness of data generated will be dubious at best 39 . Interviews have more power to capture the diversity of human experience and gain a deeper understanding of individual attitudes in a way that survey methods cannot replicate. Regrettably, it is simply unfeasible in terms of time and cost to generate, code and analyse qualitative interview data for a large enough sample to allow us to make claims about populations. Data produced by this method are narrow in focus, descriptive in nature, drawn from small samples and are closely tied to the particular situation and context in which it is obtained 40 . The aim of such research is not to generalise the knowledge it produces41. If we wish to make inferences and claims about populations, we need the quantitative survey. However, it seems we cannot always be sure that the questions and coding employed will generate data that is meaningful and accurately describes the attitudes of respondents by referring to existing theory alone.
Greener, I., (2011) Designing Social Research: A Guide for the Bewildered. London: Sage Publications Limited. P. 60 40 Johnson R.B. & Onwuegbuzie, A.J. (2004) Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come. Educational Researcher, 33 (7), 14-26 41 Mahoney, J., & Goertz, G. (2006) A tale of two cultures: Contrasting quantitative and qualitative research. Political Analysis, 14(3), 227-249. 39
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Mixing methods A mixed methods approach can theoretically assist in overcoming some of these issues. By way of example, Duffy et al. 42 first conducted surveys before conducting interviews and focus groups. Ipsos Mori’s 2013 work reversed this, with two rounds of preliminary interviews used in order to inform the design of a quantitative survey. Goerres’ & Prinzen’s study discussed above used focus group data in an attempt to confirm the findings of surveys. These studies illustrate the two main ways in which mixed methods are employed. Firstly, there are confirmatory designs which look to triangulate, where different kinds of data using different methods are collected to measure the same phenomenon under study, with the researcher seeking to corroborate their findings. Secondly, there are complementary studies, predicated on the assumption that the weaknesses of one method can be compensated for by another 43 . From reviewing the literature it seems there is a strong argument for pursuing a complementary mixed methods approach in considering changes in political values between generations. Preliminary qualitative work, inductive in approach, can be used to refine and hone questionnaires in order to maximise conceptual understanding between the researcher and respondent and provided better indicators of the underlying variables, thus ensuring that survey data generated more accurately captures the attitudes of respondents. Such an approach is recommended by Goerres & Prinzen ‘not only to achieve a better measurement of welfare state attitudes as such, but ultimately to
Duffy, B., Hall, S., O’Leary, D. & Pope, S. (2013) Generation strains: A Demos and Ipsos Mori report on changing attitudes to welfare. London: Demos. http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Demos_Ipsos_Generation_Strains_web.pd f?1378677272 Accessed 30th November 2014. 43 Small, M.L. (2011) How to Conduct a Mixed Methods Study: Recent Trends in a Rapidly Growing Literature. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 57–86. 42
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get to a better, more detailed understanding of how the welfare state is perceived in the minds of ordinary citizens’44. The mixed method approach is, however, not without its critics. There is a body of opinion that states that the epistemological underpinnings of quantitative and qualitative research are mutually exclusive and as such methods originating from differing paradigms cannot be combined 45 . It is clear from Goerres & Prinzen’s work that attempts at triangulation can lead to different methods producing contradictory data. Sale et al.46claim that ‘the quantitative and qualitative paradigms do not study the same phenomena’ and accordingly that triangulation is simply not possible. However, Sale et al. do not rule out a complementary approach, on the basis that in such a research design the methods are employed independently of one another. They specifically cite the use of qualitative methods in order to inform a quantitative measure as a philosophically sound approach. Howe47 rejects this paradigmatic approach, advising pragmatism, arguing that methods must be appropriate to the research question, but the focus should be on whether or not methods work, not their philosophical bases. This paper has compared the use of surveys and interviews as methods for investigating changing political values between
Goerres, A., & Prinzen, K., (2012) Can We Improve the Measurement of Attitudes Towards the Welfare State? A Constructive Critique of Survey Instruments with Evidence from Focus Groups. Social Indicators Research, 109 (3), 532. 45 Smith, K.J. & Heshusius, L. (1986) Closing down the Conversation: The End of the Quantitative-Qualitative Debate among Educational Inquirers. Educational Researcher, 15 (1), 4-12. 46 Sale, J.E.M, Lohfeld, L.H. & Brazil, K. (2002), Revisiting the QuantitativeQualitative Debate: Implications for Mixed-Methods Research. Quality & Quantity 36, 43–53. 47 Howe, K.R., (1988), Against the Quantitative-Qualitative Incompatibility Thesis or Dogmas Die Hard. Educational Researcher, 17 (8), 10-16. 44
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generations. These methods allow researchers to investigate and understand different aspects of this topic. Surveys provide the preferred method in that they allow large samples to be analysed, the results of which can be used to make inferences about wider populations. It is this method that most readily shows us the differences that exist between generations. By contrast, interviews allow us to look inductively, and to consider how these different values arise. This method focuses on fewer cases in great depth, and can allow researchers to adopt a mixed methods approach which facilitates the development of more precise survey instruments, better suited to capturing the values of a wider population. Research in this area could benefit from such an approach based on the principle that complementary methods can be mutually reinforcing. The central point is that in designing a piece of social research, ‘what is required is a procedure, a logic, for generating new knowledge’ 48 . The choice of methods must be grounded in reason. When considering differences in political attitudes between generations, I would argue that there is a great deal of logic behind a mixed methods approach. An overreliance on the quantitative approach alone, typical of studies in political science, is fraught with pitfalls.
Blaikie, N. (1993) Approaches to social enquiry: Advancing knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. P. 8 48
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Russia’s turn towards Asia: Shaped by a grand strategy? Mats Frank
Introduction
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he destiny of Russia has been for hundreds of years inseparably connected to developments in Europe and, with the emergence of the United States, as a global superpower with ‘the West’ in general1. Although more than 75% of Russia’s territory is geographically Asian, the historical connection as well as Russia’s cultural affinity with the ‘old continent’ significantly shaped the country’s strategic planning for centuries 2 . However this Eurocentric focus of Russia’s strategic planning has continuously diminished in the past decade and paved the way for a new geopolitical orientation of the country3. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and in particular since the second half of Vladimir Putin’s first term as president, Russia has increasingly turned towards Asia and ‘upgraded’ the region’s standing in its strategic considerations4. This ‘turn towards the East’ has been evident in recent strategic papers such as the “Strategy of the Development of the Russian Federation to 2020” as well as in several statements by President Putin and other government officials5 6. Much research
1 Tsygankov, A. P. (2007) “Finding a Civilizational Idea: „West,” Eurasia,” and
“Euro-East” in Russia's Foreign Policy”; in Geopolitics, 12(3); pp. 375-399. 2 CIA World Factbook (2015) “Russia”; last accessed 7th of January, 2015; <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/geos/rs.html> 3 Swanstrom, N. (2014) “Sino–Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond”; in Journal of Contemporary China 4 de Haas M. (2009) “Medvedev’s security Policy: A Provisional Assessment”; in Russian Analytical Digest No. 62 (June 18, 2009) 5 Putin, V. (2014)”Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club”; Kremlin-President of Russia; last accessed: 5th January, 2014 <http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/23137> 6 Putin V. (2013) “Putin: China is Russia’s reliable partner; Russia will continue to develop friendly relations between the two countries”; Council of
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has been carried out in the academic world with regard to this development 789 . Most of the named authors either focus on Russia’s strategic interests in a specific region in Asia or its bilateral relations with other Asian countries. The purpose of this paper however differs from these approaches to some extent as it aims to analyse Russia’s strategy in Asia from a more holistic perspective. This approach is in a way similar to the one chosen by Kuhrt who examines Russia’s role in the Asia-Pacific region and asks whether and how its conception of this role has changed10. Ultimately, this paper aims to answer the question if Russia has a grand strategy for Asia or if its position is primarily reactive and opportunistic. In order to do so, this paper is mainly divided into four sections. The first explores the key concepts of “strategy” and “grand strategy” and thus develops a theoretical foundation for the following discussion. The second section examines a key strategic paper of the Putin era, namely the “Strategy of National Security of the Russian Federation to 2020”, and aims to evaluate if a Russian grand strategy for the region exists “in theory”. The third and main section then analyses Russia’s strategic actions as well as its relations with main players in the region. The paper concludes by directly addressing the research question in the final section; that is, if Russia has a grand strategy for Asia or if its position is primarily reactive and opportunistic.
China’s foreign trade; last accessed 5th January, 2014; < http://www.ccpitccft.org/en/policy5.html> 7 Mitchell, G. (2014) “China in Central Asia: The Beginning of the End for Russia?”; in SLOVO; Vol. 26, No.1 (Spring 2014); pp. 18-31 8 Sumsky, V. and Kanaev, E. (2014) “Russia’s Progress in Southeast Asia: Modest but Steady “; in Russian Analytical Digest; No. 145; 31 March 2014 9 Swanstrom, “Sino–Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond” 10 Kuhrt, N. C. (2014) “Russia and Asia-Pacific: From ‘Competing’ to‘Complementary’ Regionalisms?”; in POLITICS: 2014; Vol 34(2) pp. 138– 148
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From Strategy To Grand Strategy: A Conceptual Leap In order to answer the previously presented research question it is necessary to explore and clearly define the key concept of “grand strategy” upfront. “Grand strategy” is etymologically closely related to the term “strategy” which is derived from the Greek word “stratēgia” meaning “art of troop leader” or “office of general command”11. Although The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term “strategy“ broadly as “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim”, 12 the term had a primarily military meaning in its original sense as it referred to the planning and execution of military operations. Correspondingly, Von Clausewitz describes the concept of strategy as “the art of using battles to win the war”. However, Kennedy points out that this focus on the military realm left “…no room for the consideration of the nonmilitary dimensions of conflict or for the longer-term and political purposes of the belligerent state as a whole”13. This was especially evident after World War I which showed that military victory alone was insufficient as it did not secure peace and stability in the long term14. Based on these experiences the English strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart provided a conceptual leap in strategic theory as he suggested that: “….the object in war is to obtain a better peace- even if only from your own point of view - … it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire….if you concentrate exclusively on victory, with
11 Liddell, H. G. and Scott, R. (1940) "στρατηγία”; in A Greek-English Lexicon;
Clarendon Press 12 The English Oxford Dictionary (2014) “Strategy“; last accessed, 12th December, 2014; <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/de/definition/ englisch/strategy> 13 Kennedy, P. M. (1991) Grand strategies in war and peace; Yale University Press, p.1. 14 Rosecrance, R. N. and Stein, A. A. (1993) The domestic bases of grand strategy; Cornell University Press.
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no thought for the after-effect, you may be too exhausted to profit by the peace, while it is almost certain that the peace will be a bad one, containing the germs of another war.”15 Hence, following Liddell Hart’s argumentation, a nation’s strategy has to “include much more than the supervision of battles” and should be “concerned with peace as much as with war” 16. This further development in strategic thought beyond the military realm is also visible in Liddell Hart’s observation of the scope of a nation’s strategy as he noted: “Fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategy –which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, of diplomatic pressure, of commercial pressure, and, not least of ethical pressure ... It should not only combine the various instruments, but so regulate their use to avoid damage to the future state of peace.”17 In more recent academic literature the concept of grand strategy has further developed and especially emphasises linking a superior and mostly idealised strategic goal to the effective use of the entirety of a nation’s external and internal resources. Rosecrance and Stein for instance define grand strategy as “...the adaption of domestic and international resources to achieve security for a state”18. They argue that grand strategy “... considers all the resources at the disposal of the nation (not just military ones) and it attempts to array them effectively to achieve security in both peace and war”. A more broader definition is provided by Goldstein who points out that “...what distinguishes grand strategy
15 Liddell Hart, B. (1967) Strategy; Faber & Faber; London, UK, p.351 16 Kennedy, Grand strategies in war and peace, p.2 17 Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 322
18 Rosecrance and Stein, The domestic bases of grand strategy; p.4
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[from strategy] as a concept is not its nature, but rather its scope” as it describes an “…overarching vision about how a country’s leaders combine a broad range of capabilities linked with military, economic and diplomatic strategies to pursue international goals” 19 . An example of a clearly defined grand strategy which meets the previously defined requirements is for instance the US strategy of “containment” during the cold war20. The previously presented derivation and subsequent definition of “grand strategy” shows that the concept rests on two central premises which build on one another. First, the existence of an “overarching vision” which logically and effectively connects a nation’s strategic actions; and second, the use of the entirety of a nation’s resources in order to achieve a common goal 21 . The absence of one of these central premises leads to a position which is characterised by reactive and opportunistic actions 22 . This antagonism becomes perspicuous by examining the term “opportunistic” which can be defined as “…exploiting immediate opportunities, especially regardless of planning or principle”23. The question of whether Russia’s position in Asia is opportunistic thus requires not only an analysis of its strategic actions in recent years but must also include a brief discussion about strategic principles and goals set out for the region.
19 Goldstein, A. (2005) Rising to the challenge: China's grand strategy and
international security; Stanford University Press, p.19 20 Walt, S. M. (1989) “The case for finite containment: Analyzing US grand strategy”; in International Security, pp. 5-49. 21 Goldstein, Rising to the challenge: China's grand strategy and international 22 Samuels, R. J. (2011) Securing Japan: Tokyo's grand strategy and the future of East Asia. Cornell University Press. 23 The English Oxford Dictionary (2014b) “Opportunistic”; last accessed 12th December, 2014; <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/de/definition/englisch /opportunistic>
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Asia In Russia’s Strategic Planning: Demanding But Contradictory A country’s strategic principles can either become evident in speeches of government officials or as part of strategic papers and doctrines. Since a detailed analysis of the first named would be far beyond the scope of this paper, this section briefly discusses the two main strategic papers of the Russian Federation in recent years and aims to evaluate first, if a coherent strategic goal for the APR has been formulated and second, if this is the case, which “overarching vision” connects the country’s resources to achieve this goal. Since the first presidency of Vladimir Putin, which began in the year 2000, the Russian government has released two “…serious initiative(s) to elaborate a long term strategy”24. These initiatives, namely the “Strategy of development of the Russian Federation to 2010” and its successor the “Strategy of National Security of the Russian Federation to 2020”, form the basis for Russian strategic planning as they serve as ”…umbrella documents for other policies prescribing Russian state approaches to strategic and security issues”25. “The Strategy of development of the Russian federation to 2010” was released in the year 2000 and included many aspects of government policy as well as a detailed step by step plan of measures to be implemented year by year26. Giles points out that this first strategic initiative was not aspirational but “…predominantly descriptive of current risks and threats” and in particular addressed internal problems which challenged what at that point of time appeared to be a “ very weak and fragile
24 Cooper, J. (2012) “Reviewing Russian strategic planning: the emergence of
Strategy 2020” in NDC Research Review; p.2 25 Giles, K. (2009) “Russia’s National Security Strategy to 2020,” in NATO Defense College, (Research Division, June 2009), p.3. 26 Cooper, “Reviewing Russian strategic planning: the emergence of Strategy 2020”
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Russia”27. In comparison to this, the “Strategy of National Security of the Russian Federation to 2020” published in 2009 describes itself as the “officially recognised system of strategic priorities, goals and measures” and takes a much more optimistic and confident stance28. Cooper argues that the overall goal evident in this strategic paper is “to develop a stronger, stable Russia, a leading power in the world which other nations will respect, with the capability to endure”29. Although this vision is not limited to Asia but is supposed to guide Russian strategic actions around the globe, de Haas points out that an “emphasis on partners in the East” plays an especially important role in the country’s plans to achieve this goal 30 . However, besides general statements about the importance of deepening the engagement in the format of the Russia-India-China Troika or the strengthening of bilateral relations with China and India, the paper does not include an overarching vision of how the country’s resources should be arrayed effectively to achieve this goal (de Haas, 2009). Additionally, this very general approach neglects the fact that especially India’s and China’s interests are often not similar and thus conceals that strengthening bilateral relations with one country can potentially damage relations with other ones. A more differentiated approach to strategic planning in Asia is also complicated by the fact that the paper primarily focuses on the West as a source of threat but “… [dares not to] breathe a word about potential risks from the East for fear of immediate political, diplomatic or economic pain”31. Excluding potential risks from the East in its strategic planning not only hinders Russia to formulate a coherent strategy for Asia but also makes it impossible to develop
27 Giles, “Russia’s National Security Strategy to 2020”; p.3-4
Schröder, H. (2009) “Russia’s National Security Strategy”; in Russian Analytical Digest No. 62 (June 18, 2009) 29 Cooper, “Reviewing Russian strategic planning: the emergence of Strategy 2020”; p.20 30 de Haas, “Medvedev’s security Policy: A Provisional Assessment; p.5 31 Giles,“Russia’s National Security Strategy to 2020”; p.14 28
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country-specific measures which are aligned with a greater common goal32. It can thus be said that although Russia’s strategic planning “…describes the international environment and defines Russia’s national interests and strategic priorities”, it does not provide any evidence for the assumption that the country possesses an Asia - specific grand strategy 33. However, Russia’s strategy in Asia could potentially be part of its attempts to develop into a global power which is respected by other nations and has the capability to endure 34 . If this were the case, Russia’s strategic actions in Asia should have been arrayed effectively in recent years and point towards this direction.
Russia’s Strategic Actions In Asia: Dominated By The “Chinese Problem” Ultimately it is your actions that define who you are. What is used in common parlance since centuries does not only hold true for the ordinary citizen but can also be adapted to the realm of strategy and in this case to Russia’s aspirations in Asia. In other words: Just because a grand strategy for Asia does not appear to exist on paper does not necessarily mean that this is also the case per se. Thus, the next step of analysis requires a closer examination of Russia’s strategic actions in Asia and a subsequent evaluation of these on basis of the previously defined concept of “grand strategy”. Kurth points out that “two questions have dominated Russian discourse vis-à-vis the region: Japan’s role as a ‘normal’ military power, and China’s emergence as a possible challenger to
32 Giles, K. (2010) “The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation 2010” in
Research Review, 1 33 Dimitrakopoulou, S., & Liaropoulos, A. (2010) “Russia's National Security Strategy to 2020: A Great Power in the Making?”; in Caucasian Review of International Affairs, 4(1),; p. 41 34 Giles, K. (2009) “Russia’s National Security Strategy to 2020”
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American hegemony”35. The question of how to deal with a ‘rising’ China has become a defining one for the nature and future of regional structures in Asia and thus has to be a key component of any holistic strategy for the region36. Sino-Russian relations can be described as at least complex and have “…swayed considerably in the second millennium”37. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, bilateral relations initially improved and peaked for the moment during the Yeltsin era at the end of the 20th century. This changed after Putin’s accession to the presidency in the year 2000 and his initial pro-western agenda which included Russian involvement in the global war on terror and an acceptance of US military presence in the former soviet republics of Central Asia38. It was not until the year 2003 that the Kremlin’s foreign politics became less Western oriented and Russia begun its ‘pivot’ back to Asia 39 . Swanstrom suggests that this was mainly due to the fact that “…Russia gained no tangible benefits from its engagement with Washington, yet was forced to make numerous unbearable concessions”40. This ‘pivot’ back to Asia occurred in many different areas such as energy, military and economics and significantly changed relations with The PRC and other key players in the region.
Kuhrt, “Russia and Asia-Pacific: From ‘Competing’ to‘Complementary’ Regionalisms?” p. 138. 36 de Haas, M. (2013) “Russian–Chinese Security Relations: Moscow’s Threat from the East?” in Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations; Report Number 3; March 2013 37 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond”; p.1. 38 de Haas, “Russian–Chinese Security Relations: Moscow’s Threat from the East?” 39 Shevtsova, L. (2009) “Russia’s “pivot” to China: is it real or fake?”; in Global Asia (March 2013) 40 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond”; p.2 35
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Today China is Russia’s second most important trading partner behind the European Union 41 . The countries cooperate through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in security questions; have held several large-scale joint military exercises (e.g. 2005 and 2007) and deepened their cooperation in the strategically important area of energy by signing two multi-million dollar oil and natural gas contracts in 2014 4243 . Although these developments suggest at first glance that Russia has pursued a clear and well defined grand strategy with a focus on China in the past years, they neglect the ‘fragility’ and ‘complexity’ of SinoRussian relations44. The immediate years after Russia’s ‘turn towards the East’ were indeed characterised by rapidly improving Sino-Russian relations in all of the named areas45. Examples of this increasing cooperation were the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2002, its further institutionalisation in the following years and also an increasing trade and economic interdependency between the two countries46. In addition to this, Russia developed into the biggest source of arms for Beijing which
41 WTO (2014) “Trade Statistics of the Russian Federation 2013” World Trade
Organisation; last accessed January 4th, 2015; <http://stat.wto.org/CountryProfile/WSDBCountryPFView.aspx?Language =S&Country=RU> 42 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond” 43 Paton, J. Guo, A. (2014) “Russia, China Add to $400 Billion Gas Deal With Accord”; Bloomberg; November 10th, 2014; last accessed January 10th, 2015; <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-10/russia-china-add-to-400billion-gas-deal-with-accord.html> 44 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond” 45 de Haas,“Russian–Chinese Security Relations: Moscow’s Threat from the East?” 46 Chung, P. C. (2009) “China and the Institutionalisation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation”; in Problems of Post-Communism; Volume 53, n. 5; pp. 3-14
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after the Tiananmen incident in 1989 was not able to import military technology from the West anymore47. However, relations experienced major setbacks in the following years as China became the stronger partner in the relationship, leading to an increased level of competition between the two counties in many areas4849. This competition is especially evident in the former soviet states in central Asia5051. Whereas Russia still views these countries as its sole sphere of influence, China increasingly pushes into the region to diversify its energy supplies away from a dependency on Russia 52 . China’s silence during Russia’s conflict with Georgia in 2008 and a growing Russian dissatisfaction with the character of traded goods increased tensions in the following years even further53. Russia’s increasing mistrust of China is especially evident in the development of Russian arms exports to the region, an important tool of security politics. Between 2007 and 2010 arms exports to China decreased significantly whereas Moscow increasingly sold and still sells military technology to Beijing’s potential rivals 54 . Russia’s increasing military cooperation with India and Vietnam for instance can thus be seen as an attempt to
47 Trenin, D. (2012), True Partners? How Russia and China See Each Other,
Centre for European Reform 48 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond” 49 Mitchell, “China in Central Asia: The Beginning of the End for Russia? 50 Blank, S. (2010) “‘The Strategic Implications of the Turkmenistan-China Pipeline Project”; in China Brief; Volume 10, Issue 3 (2010) 51 Kerr, D. (2010) “Central Asian and Russian perspectives on China’s strategic emergence”; in International Affairs, 86 (1) pp. 127-52 52 Mehdiyeva, N. (2011) “The three Ds: development, diversion and diversification. Reviewing Russia’s Energy Strategy to 2030 (Rome: NDC, 2011) 53 Swanstrom, N. (2006) “Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Georgia”; CEF Quarterly; Volume 6 (3), (2008) 54 Blank, S. (2013) “Russian Military Policy in Asia: A Study in Paradox”; in RUFS Briefing No. 20; September, 2013
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hedge against China55. In addition to this re-orientation in the field of security, Russia increasingly seeks to diversify its economy and thus establishes stronger trade relationships with Japan and the ASEAN countries56 57. This diversification strategy is also a sign of Moscow’s fear of sliding into a situation where the country’s only value to China lies in supplying cheap resources58. Despite these developments and the described fear of a strong China, Russia highly depends as indicated before on a functioning relationship with its Southern neighbour. This is not the case only because of geographic realities and economic interdependencies but also because of the opportunities a close cooperation with China offers59 60. Swanstrom for instance points out that “Both Russia and China know that they can raise their bargaining power vis-a-vis the US and the post-Soviet successor states (as well as Taiwan) by speaking in concert or as close as they can come” 61 . A different but also highly important area is highlighted by Kurth who suggests that a close cooperation with China offers Russia the opportunity to develop its Far East, a necessary condition to exploit the region’s natural resources and strategic opportunities 62 . Russia thus finds itself in a difficult situation where it depends on a strong China but at the same time
55 Blank, S. (2014) “Russia and Japan: Can Two-Plus-Two Equal More Than
Four?”; in Asia Pacific Bulletin; Number 251; March 6, 2014 56 Blank, “Russia and Japan: Can Two-Plus-Two Equal More Than Four?” 57 Sumsky and Kanaev, “Russia’s Progress in Southeast Asia: Modest but Steady “ 58 Kuhrt, “Russia and Asia-Pacific: From ‘Competing’ to‘Complementary’ Regionalisms?” p. 138 59 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond” 60 Buszynski, L. (2010) “Russia and Northeast Asia: aspirations and reality”; in The Pacific Review, 13 (3). 61 Swanstrom, “ Sino Russian Relations at the Start of the New Millennium in Central Asia and Beyond”, p.4 62 Kuhrt, “Russia and Asia-Pacific: From ‘Competing’ to‘Complementary’ Regionalisms?”
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fears this strength. This complex situation of “… professing identity with Chinese interests while arming China’s potential adversaries and supporting them politically” is what Steven Blank describes as the ‘puzzling paradox’ in Russian foreign policy63. As already implied, through the ‘puzzling’ paradox’ Russia’s ambivalent relations with China also have consequences for Moscow’s relations with other countries in the region64. It comes at this point as no surprise that Moscow’s foreign policy in Asia appears to be as mixed as its feelings towards Beijing. On one hand Russia tries to decrease its dependency on China and is willing to change its strategy in some regions to achieve this goal ; on the other hand Moscow does not pursue this strategy of hedging and diversification in absolute terms as it is unable or unwilling to completely normalise bilateral relations with traditional rivals such as Japan. One example of how the complexity of Sino-Russian relations influences Moscow’s foreign policy is for instance the development of Russian strategy in South East Asia. This region did not traditionally play an important role in Russian strategic planning and was widely neglected before the Putin era 65 . However, it has gained importance for Russia particularly in recent years as it offers inter alia the possibility for diversification especially in terms of strategic allies and economic possibilities66. Although Russia is not a major player in the region (yet) and still faces many obstacles, Sumsky and Kanaev point out that Moscow
63 Kozyrev, V. (2014) “Russia’s Progress in Southeast Asia: Modest but Steady
“; in Russian Analytical Digest; No. 145; 31 March 2014; pp. 8-12 64 Richardson (2014) “Russia’s Turn to Asia: China, Japan, and the APEC 2012 Legacy”; in Russian Analytical Digest; No. 145; 31 March 2014 65 Amirov, V. and Kanaev, E. (2010) “Russia’s Policy towards the Countries of South-East Asia and ASEAN: Positive Developments, But an Uncertain future?”; in Russian Analytical Digest 76 (2010) 66 Lavrov, S. (2006) “The Rise of Asia and the Eastern Vector of Russia’s Foreign Policy”; in Russia in Global Affairs, 4(3); pp 68-80
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is on a good way to become an important role in South East Asia67 68. As mentioned before, Moscow’s relations with Tokyo can serve as a counterexample and prove the incoherence of Russian strategic actions in Asia. Although Blank points out that “RussoJapanese rapprochement continues to move forward steadily…” the countries face many sensitive topics such as border disputes or the joint US Japan missile defence system and are still far away from a normalisation of their relations69.
Conclusion The concept of grand strategy differs significantly from the originally exclusively military concept of strategy as it “... considers all the resources at the disposal of the nation (not just military ones) and attempts to array them effectively to achieve security in both peace and war”70. The analysis revealed that according to this definition Russia does not possess a clearly defined grand strategy for Asia. The paper argued that although key strategic documents and in particular the “Strategy of National Security of the Russian Federation to 2020” emphasise the importance of the Asian vector in Russian foreign policy and are indubitably a sign for Moscow’s ‘turn to the East’, they do not give any indication of what goal Russia pursues in the region let alone how the entirety of the nation’s resources should be combined to achieve this goal. Cooper , among others, suggests that the overall strategic goal in the Putin era is “to develop a stronger, stable Russia, a leading power in the world which other nations will respect, with the capability to
67 Asean
Statistics (2014); “ASEAN Trade Statistics 2013”; last accessed December 29th, 2015; < http://www.asean.org/resources/2012-02-10-0847-55/asean-statistics/item/external-trade-statistics-3> 68 Sumsky and Kanaev, “Russia’s Progress in Southeast Asia: Modest but Steady “ 69 Blank,“Russia and Japan: Can Two-Plus-Two Equal More Than Four?”, p.1. 70 Rosecrance and Stein, The domestic bases of grand strategy,p.4.
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endure” 71 . However, Russia’s strategic actions in Asia in recent years do not allow one to conclude that this goal shapes a grand strategy for the region. On the contrary: Russia’s fear and simultaneous dependence on a strong China, the most crucial actor in the region, have led to what Blank coined as ‘puzzling paradox’, a situation in which Russia professes identity with Chinese interests “…while arming China’s potential adversaries and supporting them politically”72.This ambivalent relation with China also significantly shapes Russian foreign policy towards other actors in the region and prevents Moscow from developing a clear and holistic long-term strategic approach for Asia. One example of this is Russia’s strategy in South East Asia which has evolved and developed in particular ‘around’ Sino-Russian relations and especially because of Moscow’s wish to decrease its dependency on Beijing. This strategic behaviour allows one to conclude that Russia’s position in Asia is not characterised by a grand strategy but rather by opportunistic and reactive behaviour. A clear policy line towards Beijing has to be an integral part, if not the first step, in creating a grand strategy for the region; which at this point of time appears to be a rather a distant dream.
71 Cooper,“Reviewing Russian strategic planning: the emergence of Strategy
2020”, p.20. 72 Blank, “Russian Military Policy in Asia: A Study in Paradox”; p.2.
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On Nietzsche’s Poetry
Sarah Lovell I am a forest, And a night of dark trees: But he who is not afraid Of my darkness, Will find banks full of roses Under my cypresses. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, X)
I
n the sentiments of Hazlitt, humans have always a quantity of superfluous bile upon the stomach, and are often in want of an object to let it out upon. For the last century, this object has been Nietzsche. ‘All moustache and no morals’, the general portrait is of some sort of rat-like man, whose wild eyes and polluted theories sprung from a well of diseased, rightist drivel. Nazi ideologist, forefather of eugenics and self-professed Antichrist, Nietzsche reeks of the kind of foul-play humans have a remarkable weakness for. Indeed, few things show the human character in a more absurd light than the airing of a man’s dirty linen, and Nietzsche has a basket full. One could discuss at length the injustice of Nietzsche’s legacy: how it has been bent, twisted and abused to the point of abstraction. The fact is, there can be no greater error or more undeserved reproach than to presume that Nietzsche thrived only on contempt; that on things noble and good his soul was unmoved. He was a profoundly feeling man. As a boy, he was honest and loving; as an adult, sensitive and excessively kind. So genteel was Nietzsche’s pre-war reputation that a colleague from Basel once documented: When I heard the Professor’s footsteps, I dashed to conceal the vase of flowers Marta had picked that morning. By now they had withered in the afternoon heat, and I was anxious that if old Fritz observed them
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so shrunk, he might become quite out of sorts and develop one of his migraines.1 One of the many ironies accompanying Nietzsche’s legacy is that it is fed by the precise ‘slave morality’ he despised.2 It is true that Nietzsche procured a number of murky affiliations in his day: the Sorrento summers with Wagner, the venture capital of Hitler. But there was also the loathing of Wagner (that ‘human preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper!’). 3 There were the counterfeit publications by his nationalist sister, and the “academic” chicanery of Alfred Baeumler.4 The cynic will
This extract comes from one of the many unpublished letters kept in The Duchess Anna Amalia Library, Weimar. 2 Despite the unsettling terminology, Nietzsche’s ‘Master-Slave Morality’ has nothing to do with social supremacy. It refers to one of two models that any given world-view can adopt. The “slave” adheres to the moral narrative of its culture. It equates kindness, humility and sympathy with “goodness” because culture says these are the values that define “good”. The “master” defines morality independently. It never rejects the importance of kindness or sympathy, but might additionally recognise pride, strength, and nobility as values of “goodness”. Masters are made to feel such values inappropriate or shameful because they are not uniform with the “herd-instinct” (in other words, influenced like a “sheep”). Masters are not better than slaves. They are simply preferable because they live an authentic existence. Authenticity better equips the human to overcome suffering and social division. 3 Nietzsche’s break with the composer is related in the 1888 work, Der Fall Wagner: ‘The time I spent with him in Triebschen and Bayreuth is the happiest I have had in my whole life. But the omnipotent violence of our tasks drove us asunder and now we can never more be united; we have grown too strange to each other [...] All Wagner’s ideas straightaway become manias; how can such a man allow himself to be tyrannised over in this way! I have had to pay dearly for my craze for Wagner. Has not the nerve-destroying power of his music ruined my health – was it not dangerous to life? Has it not taken me almost six years to recover from this pain?’ 4 Elisabeth Nietzsche fabricated a great deal of her brother’s notes to win the esteem (and financial boon) of her anti-Semitic husband and the Third Reich. 1
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always be inclined to argue, at bottom, “Yes, yes – but where there’s smoke, there’s surely fire.” This is justly so. But it is also the case that if enough mud is thrown, some of it will stick. Many would be surprised to learn that Nietzsche was a poet, and more would be surprised to know that he was good at it. Those who have read his work may be familiar with the curious lyrical fragments of Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil. 5 The real bulk of his efforts, however; the dark, really delicious stuff, has lapsed into obscurity. Assumed either depraved or artistically fruitless, Nietzsche’s poetic endeavours were left untouched in a shattered Europe. Archival preservation was not exactly the priority of a post-war Germany, and certainly not for a nationalist tyrant. Consequently the works are affected, at best, a product of antiquated Weimar classicism. Such a premise is a grave misdemeanour; on the contrary, Nietzsche had an exceptional linguistic flair for communicating beauty. Often it was said that, even from youth, he had been agitated almost to fever by a lively and Romantic world-view: I still remember how the evening moon shone on my bed and how the golden meadow looked before me; [...] ‘The moon has risen/ The golden little star is
So successful was she that Hitler actually gave her a state funeral in 1935, which he attended with Rosenberg and Goebbels. Der Wille Zur Macht - often considered proof of Nietzsche’s proto-fascist values - is the most contrived of all his works. Professor Alfred Baeumler taught Political Philosophy at Dresden when he became advisor to Rosenberg. His 1931 work, Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker, was largely responsible for the parties’ endorsement of the “Nietzschean ideology”. He was a scholarly hack and profiteering half-wit. The best account of his deception is given in Thomas Mann’s 1926 essay, Pariser Rechenschaft. 5 A particularly nice example comes from Book XXIV of Zarathustra: ‘In the Happy Isles the figs fall from the trees. They are good and sweet, and in falling the red skins of them break. Like figs in a northern wind do these doctrines fall for you, my friend: imbibe now their juice and their sweet substance! It is autumn all around, and we delight to look upon distant seas.’
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resplendent’, and so on. Oh, I shall never forget this time. 6 The above passage (composed age nine) was to be a springboard for the emotionally complex and technically intricate verse that rivalled in substance those of his favourite poets, Goethe and Schiller. His first full composition, ‘Venedig’ (‘Venice’), was penned upon hearing an old-fashioned adagio on the steps of the Rialto Bridge: Lately I stood at the bridge In the Venetian night. From far off came a song: As of golden droplets it welled Over the quivering surface of the water. My soul, a stringed instrument, Sang to itself, invisibly touched, And with a secret barcarole Swam out into the dusk; Quivering with colourful bliss. Did anyone listen to it? Perhaps what is most notable about Nietzsche’s composition is its unexpected sentiment; the palpable warmth for the fellow mortal (if not especially, the oppressed). The Venetian tune made Nietzsche ‘bawl like a new-born’: an account that seems doubtful, but is only a fragment of the testimonials that expose Nietzsche’s mild and excessively feeling temperament. Letters to friends and family, in particular, are not more delightful for their ardency of sentiment, than for their most tender display of human nature. To
The single reputable translation of Nietzsche’s poetry comes from Philip Grundlehner. See: Nietzshce’s Poetry (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 6
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his sister and mother, he wrote with breathless affection; to the woman he loved, nothing less than poetry. A particularly beautiful example comes from the 1877 letter to Erwin Rohde: How can I express it? But every time I think of you I am overcome by a sort of deep emotion; and when, a day or two ago, someone wrote to me “Rohde's young wife is an exceedingly sweet woman whose every feature is illumined by her noble soul”, I actually wept.’7 This exquisite and delicate world-view is strongly palpable even in Nietzsche’s teenage years, reaching full fruition in the most physically challenging stage of his life. When he later travelled to revive his health, his lyrical composition thrived off the beauty of places like Sils-Maria, where he walked for miles as though ‘elevated with the clouds’: Just a line from this wonderful corner of the globe. [Out here] I have set great fires burning in front of me to watch the pure restless flame, with its white-grey belly, rear itself against the cloudless sky with heather growing all round, and the whole steeped in that October blissfulness which is such a master in the matter of yellows. Once in the wood a man stared fixedly at me as he passed me by, and at that moment I felt that my expression must have been one of radiant joy, and that I had already worn it for two hours. (Letter to Peter Gast, Ruta Ligure, August 20, 1880) What quickly emerges from the letters is the pervasiveness of poetry in Nietzsche’s life. At fourteen, he rebuked his thrifty sister (not for the last time) for not gifting him Shelley’s Complete Works for Christmas (‘the book costs only 1 Thaler and 25
(Rosenlauibad, 1877) in: Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 7
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Silbergrossen!’).8 At sixteen he founded Germania; a real-life Dead Poets Society where the ruins of Schönburg and a nine-Groschen bottle of red Naumburg wine served heady readings of Pindar.9 It was for this he composed the impressive ‘Ueber die dramatischen Dichtungen Byrons’, an elegant account of the ‘unhappy poesy of world-weariness’: The main attraction of Byron's poems consists [...] in the storm-stress of a fiery spirit, of a volcano that now devastatingly rolls out glowing lava, and now, its peak darkened by wreaths of smoke, looks down upon the blooming fields that garland its base with gloomy, eerie silence. [They are] poetic pearls, radiant with the most wonderfully gleaming colours’.10 Such esteem was to continue and intensify. Throughout his military service, Nietzsche was baited by fellow soldiers for bringing a copy of Byron to artillery training, writing home to his mother: ‘I must be deeply related to Byron’s Manfred: I have found all these abysses in myself – at the age of thirteen I was ripe for this work.’ When he heard Schumann’s Manfred Overture four years later, he instantly “corrected” it:
‘Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche (1861)’ in: Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 9 Elisabeth’s diary reads: ‘The friends bought a nine-Groschen bottle of red Naumburg wine and set forth in an earnest and dignified procession to the ruin of Schönburg, an hour’s distance from the town. By means of an extremely rickety ladder they climbed to the highest ledge of the watch tower [...] [and] discussed their plan for fulfilling their highest aspirations for culture.’ (July 5, 1858) 10 ‘I have no words – only a look for those who dare to utter the word ‘Faust’ in the presence of Manfred.’ Extract taken from Nietzsche’s Germania essay, ‘Uber die dramatischen Dichtungen Byrons’ (1861). 8
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[Schumann is] incapable of every concept of greatness. Out of anger toward this sugary-sweet Saxon, I composed a counter-overture to Manfred, of which Hans von Bülow said that he had never seen the like on music-paper.11 Actually, Bülow had called the work ‘the most unedifying and anti-musical thing I have seen put down on paper in a long time’ (‘Several times I had to ask myself: is the entire thing a joke?’).12 Despite the criticism, however, Nietzsche remained a vehement critic of poetry, praising the ‘American silliness’ of Twain and damning ‘that odd three-quarter imbecile of a Baudelaire’ (‘the old guff is a libertine, mystic, and satanic to boot’).13 Perhaps what is most surprising is that poetry was Nietzsche’s profession. At no stage in his life did he train or work as a philosopher; he never even studied it. The notorious Basel Professorship was expressly in the field of literature (mostly Greek poetry and the plays of Aeschylus). When he did pursue the Chair of Philosophy, his application was rejected: he had no experience, minimal training and little apparent flair. His reputation as a wordsmith, however, was so illustrious that an admiring Basel department bypassed the formal committee and made him a full professor at the age of twenty-four. Such ‘a phenomenon’ did they consider the young author, that Friedrich Ritschl (Germany’s leading Philologist at the time) was ‘willing to stake [his] whole academic reputation on the appointment’s turning out to be a
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 12 Letter from Hans von Bülow, Munich, July 24, 1872. 13 ‘I sat there for three hours, drank my second glass of cognac and, in all innocence and malice [...] marked the lines in his poems that were in any way redolent of Wagner's sensibility (how one gags!). I then resolved to mail them back to him with an annotated score of Bizet and a good scolding.’ (Letter to Peter Gast, Nice, February 27, 1889). 11
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success’. 14 At this point Nietzsche had not even finished his doctorate, and was appointed solely on his publication history from high school: works that had nothing to do with Schopenhauer or Kant, but composed on Dante, Emerson and Homer. The value of poetry to Nietzsche’s philosophical genesis should not be undermined. In the same way he saw music, the philosophical treatise was ‘a form of poetic art’ precisely because ‘the philosopher comprehends [erkennt] while he writes poetry and writes poetry while he comprehends’. The chief concerns of Nietzsche’s philosophy - temporality, language, authenticity – find expression in the poems which can be read as early blueprints to the later prose discourse. Their engagement with space, time and the Self, for example, anticipates the philosopher’s fundamental doctrine of Eternal Recurrence: the notion of “being” as a process of restoration - not reinvention - in a logo-centric universe. The composition ‘Entflohn die holden Träume’ (‘Fled are the Lovely Dreams’) for instance, determines the process of ‘revival’ in a reconstructed present that materializes time and again, with no foreseeable end: The eternal wheels of the universe Roll in a circular path; The rusty spring of the earth’s globe Winds itself up again and again. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche lays stress upon the fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetition, and just as a child cries ‘Again! Again!’ so the man who sees meaning in existence must also cry ‘Again!’ and yet ‘Again!’ to all his life. The lines of ‘Jetzt und ehedem’ (‘Now and Formerly’) endorse the active and meaningful
The offer was just as extraordinary then as it sounds today, and Nietzsche remains one of the youngest tenured Professors on record. On the day it happened, his sister wrote: ‘Everyone, even the newspapers were astonished at this 24-year-old professor. Praise, honour, adulation resounded on all sides!’ (1868) 14
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propulsion of Being into Becoming in a way that lampoons this unattainable position of infancy: I crouched feebly by the rotting wood; High and frowning over me The dismal bank of clouds hovered. The lilies moaned In the sighing breeze And seemed to know my ardent thoughts. Just as Zarathustra can never attain his ambition to become the Overman, so Nietzsche cannot grasp and contain his present. The ‘crouching’ gesture reduces the poet to a voluntary state of juvenescence, the posture being ‘feeble’ because it is physically uncomfortable to assume beyond childhood. Described later as an old ‘coin/ Covered with moss’, Nietzsche marks an entire juncture of time wherein nature has been left to flourish and germinate. The ‘verdigris’ of the pasture hints toward a prolonged duration in which the natural habitat has burst forth and cultivated. In other words, time has passed and cannot be renewed. As Hartman writes, we observe ‘flux and reflux of a mind aware of a loss that cannot be fixed precisely; a thinking which is always already a grieving.’15 The impending sky (‘hover[ing]’) and lamenting earth (‘sighing’) form a commentary on the poet’s existential finitude; a state that continually anticipates the threat of mortal annihilation. Such anxiety is outlined in The Joyful Wisdom as the custom of nostalgia. Take the poem ‘Ecce Homo’: Discontented as a flame, All I grasp like lightning flashes; Upon myself I live and glow,
Geoffrey H. Hartman, ‘Wordsworth Before Heidegger’ in: The Unremarkable Wordsworth (London: Methuen, 1987) p.203. 15
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But all I leave behind is ashes. Rumination here becomes the empirical apparatus by which one tracks one’s own temporal progression. The “again and again” process by which it unfolds anticipates Nietzsche’s later advocacy of “self-overcoming”. It is a Will-to-Existence that continually imitates and recasts afresh, the line ‘I have broken with the legacy of old times’ inferring Zarathustra’s plea: ‘how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of rings - the ring of the return?’ (Z.LX.1) The artistic focus on cosmic disorder anticipates Nietzsche’s later esteem of the Dionysian; that which is ‘everything fearful, evil, enigmatic, destructive, and fateful at the basis of existence’ The characteristic gloom of Hölderlin is especially prominent in Nietzsche’s landscape poems, where bleak skies canvas barren deserts and Nietzsche stoops like Estragon looking for Vladimir. 16 What we see at work is the same nightmarish whisper of Sturm und Drang foreboding, where ‘fir trees fume’, ‘oaks groan’ and misgivings of sorrow breathe from the earth: Isolated in the gloomy blue Night sky I see bright Lightning flashing on the brows Of a blackly arched bank of clouds. Darkness falls, and lonely Under the heavens I stand as always. Obscuring the stars, the black clouds act as an impediment between the poet and his otherwise unanimous landscape. Their disappearance represents the loss of a fixed and structured order, confirming the demise of both literal and imagined perception. They embrace a frustration between two fictive states that waver unsynchronised, and we are left with the profound impression of
In particular, the compositions ‘Lieder’ (‘Songs’) and ‘Der Herbst’ (‘Autumn’). 16
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mortal destitution where man stands ‘lonely [...] as always’. The poetry itself has the essence of something altogether darker than rural sentiment. There is at play a certain breathless and unaccountable dread that appertains to the Kierkegaardean notion of ‘Fear and Trembling’. 17 The works are marked by a disorientating quality unique to that particular tradition known as ‘the Absurd’. Anguished, hectic and strange, they leave with the reader a dull ringing in the ears: My heart is so heavy, the present so gloomy And never contentment. Melancholy, pain and amusement Overwhelm me. I can scarcely see the Spring-blue sky anymore: Deep misery deluges me now With happiness and horror. I greet you From my silent loneliness [...] From the fountains of my life [...] I look at you and quietly let My longing heart bleed to death. Perhaps it is true that Nietzsche lacked the eloquence of his Romantic counterparts: his poems are gloomy and intense; dark and often exhausting. The style is plain and unremarkable; the verse lacking in rhythmic and metrical prowess. But the words argue in favour of feeling, and if we are to believe Nietzsche’s credo that ‘He who wakes us always wounds us’, the craftsmanship is but
The feeling is an expression of anxiety prompted by the confrontation of mortality. The phrase shares the title of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s 1843 work. It refers to Psalms 55:5: ‘Fear and trembling came upon me’. See: Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. C. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 17
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trivia. They seek no applause, nor do they assume genius; they are affecting but not affected. The lofty, the abstract; anything that is not, at essence, the marrow of being, is shunned. The content is dense because the nature of grief is oppressive; the words are sometimes crude because the nature of speech is often indelicate. What one learns from Nietzscheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poetry is that his thoughts are not sexy: they do not argue in favour of cruelty of any kind. If some think them raw or too cynical, then the same may be said of every poet throughout history. What we discover is an expression of sentiment now lost to the public consciousness; values that bid humans are more gentle and loving than they often are. History has rallied against the outlaw and hatred of books. If we are to honour this fight then we ought to amend those judgements that sentence free-thinkers - especially when a man like Nietzsche is the very essence of free-thinking. If society is determined to show tolerance and growth, it needs to acknowledge the danger in assuming truths that appear fixed, canonical, and binding, because the effect of such pride is always deception. Everyone should read Nietzsche: eat their words, swallow their doubts.
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A "Boring" History: Is there a Warfare Taboo in Iron Age Studies? John May
I
n 1989, J. D. Hill contributed to a paradigm shift in Iron Age archaeology by 'calling out' the time period in Britain as ‘boring', and, in essence, asked for Prehistoric archaeologists to do a bit of soul searching. This request emerged from his belief in the misappropriated familiarity researchers had previously placed on the Iron Age, and the resulting back projection of the present created an 'easy to digest' history that was not substantially different from their own Eurocentric sensibilities. The ripples of his examination appear to be wide spread, but I would argue that the aftermath is not as much a result of J. D. Hill's ‘boring’ Iron Age as much as his argument is the logical extension of fashionable archaeological theories of the 1980s. After a thorough engagement with the material it became clear certain topics were avoided. For example, warfare is mentioned only briefly, and is then discarded. Warfare is suspiciously absent in his 1995 overview of the Iron Age in Britain and Ireland as well. This omission correlates with the theoretical frameworks that were 'fashionable' during the 80's. Niall Sharples proposed that in two theoretical volumes1 warfare was not once mentioned, but exchange received fifteen and eighteen references, respectively 2. This topic reemerges again in the 21st century, in Simon James' 2007 article ‘A bloodless past: the pacification of Early Iron Age Britain.’ The crux of my discussion was to explore whether James had created a 'straw man,' to study whether the Iron Age was pacified or not. After analysis, that was not the case, James simply readdressed an already present issue. His continuation of Sharples' discussion 26 years later advocated that there has been a theoretical quagmire and a pacification of the Iron Age. I argue in consonance with Sharples and James, who both affirm the archaeological evidence, or lack-there-of, does not
1 Shanks & Tilley:1987; Hodder:1986 2 1991: 79
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demonstrate a peaceful Iron Age. The absence of archaeological evidence does not illustrate an absence of warfare. Cunliffe suggested that the samples of grave goods are too small to make larger claims, but the norm of sword, shield, and one or more spears is clear enough 3 The mere existence of swords, shields, slingstones, etc. confirm interpersonal violence. Therefore, this visible pacification resulting from the adoption of fashionable theoretical paradigms wildly twisted early and present postprocessual understanding of Late Prehistoric Britain. This avoidance of warfare and interpersonal violence appears to be the result of archaeologists who are more interested in trending topics such 'exchange,' 'settlement patterns,' 'the household,' and 'the everyday.'
1989-2004 4% 11%
Violence & Conflict 13%
6%
9%
24%
"The Everyday" "the Household"
5%
13%
Warfare
15%
0%
Mortuary/deposition practices Settlement patterns Regionality Identiy& Agency Exchange Landscape
Figure 1. The percentage of particular topics discussed in 33 different articles from 1989-2004
3 1991: 489
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I collected the data from an assortment of articles from the period stated. Two further pie graphs also elucidate the conclusion that certain themes are discussed more readily than warfare. Warfare
2004-2007
"The Everyday"
4% 6%
8%
8%
"the Household" Violence & Conflict
6%
Mortuary/deposition practices Settlement patterns
13% 7%
31%
16%
Regionality 1%
Identiy& Agency Exchange Landscape
Figure 2. The percentage of particular topics discussed in 62 articles from 2004-2007 These two graphs collectively demonstrate that the topic of warfare was still in the minority from 1989-2007, and did not increase or decrease in percentage. It remained static, whilst 'regionality' and 'settlement patterns' had increased in popularity by seven and one percent, respectively.
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2008-present
Warfare "The Everyday" "the Household"
14%
4%
Violence & Conflict
18% 5%
7%
5%
18%
9% 11%
9%
Mortuary/deposition practices Settlement patterns Regionality Identiy& Agency Exchange Landscape
Figure 3. The percentages of discussions from 62 articles from 2008present Post-James revealed a sharp increase in discussions of warfare (fourteen percent), but this could be the result of a geographical widening of the data set. Previously, the data was taken from articles which discussed only the British Iron Age, whilst this most recent data set incorporates a book which discusses the continent during Prehistory4 In a volume of research student papers,5 warfare is explicitly discussed in only one article, King,6 further explicating that warfare as a topic is indeed avoided, and that students of the discipline are still adverse to it. The Prehistoric people have not themselves been pacified, rather the theories used to understand them.
4 Moore & Armada: 2011 5 Sterry et al 2008 6 2008
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Barry Cunliffe stands in defiance to this changing paradigm, and has attested the importance of warfare in his understanding of Iron Age Britain from 1978-2004 in all four editions of "Iron Age Communities in Britain." His Iron Age society cannot operate without interpersonal violence. It is the way that power relationships are managed amongst the warrior elite. Classical literature explicated a 'war-mad Celtic people' (Caesar's De Bello Gallico). And while this may be a generous oversimplification of Britains during the period, the image of men protected only by their shields, helmets and neck torcs7 roaring around the battlefield for blood and glory is far from 'boring.' J. D. Hill 8 made the valid assertion that to claim a unified Celtic people were all war-mad, throughout Britain, was overreaching current evidence. He claimed that Iron Age society must be studied regionally, and rejected the notion of Cunliffe's grand narratives. Collis 9 presents the discussion that maybe "J. D. Hill is the new Barry Cunliffe" and Hill's 1989 work truly did change the lens through which Prehistoric archaeologists viewed the past, and to some extent this is true, but as suggested above, Hill was a medium for the current social theories of the 80s. Over the past forty years our assumptions and understanding of Prehistoric warfare have changed drastically as the theoretical models have shifted. As time passed and we moved into the 80's, Cunliffe began to be critiqued and therefore the understanding of warfare also changed. Warfare was his beau ideal of Celtic society, but Maussian exchange theory provided adequate alternatives to relaying social power from one person to another. At a more structural level warfare definitions changed as well. Malinkowski's theory, which claimed warfare was "an armed contest between two independent political units by means of organized military force, in
7 Cunliffe 1991: 489 8 1989;1995 9 1997
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pursuit of tribal or national policy10" was also replaced. It assumed that warfare is inherently violent and familiar. This is a 'boring' definition. It mandated a measureable gain by the community, and that the individual has no reason to engage in warfare. Furthermore words such as 'political' and 'military' are familiar, modern western words that imply a sense of organized, functional conflict. Consequently, this definition cannot be imposed upon Prehistoric Britain. Sharples' 11 suggested Ferguson's definition 12 , â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;warfare is organized and purposeful group action, directed against another group, that may or may not be organized for similar action, involving actual or potential application of lethal forceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, to replace the earlier Malinowski definition. Conversely, I contest that there is still no singular explanation of war, just as there is no singular form of interpersonal conflict. An obvious downfall of defining warfare is that in focusing the issue, we risk oversimplification and misrepresentation. War must be characterized entirely within the context of the culture in which it is situated, but ethnographic analogy may be used to inform our interpretations. These interpretations therefore are worth discussing in the context of the wider theoretical debate because they demonstrate the changing paradigms and the avoidance of conflict as an agent of social change. For example, warfare parallels to sport, as Collis interprets the adoption of cricket in the Trobriand Islands as a proxy to warfare and has been used to resolve inter-village political conflicts.13 Similarities can be drawn between this model of proxywarfare to the warfare during the British Iron Age. Cunliffe examined a Roman retelling of a 'typical' Celtic battle and suggested that the two opposing 'hordes' would go through a structured process which began with charioteers hurling insults at
10 1964: 80 11 1991 12 1984:5 13 2011:233
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the front ranks of their opponents. Next, the field would clear and individual contests between heroes would commence, which would often decide the outcome of the hostilities. If this battle between heroes did not resolve the dispute, a general melee would occur which would end at nightfall.14 This retelling of warfare can tell us much about how the British viewed conflict. The women and children would presumably observe the proceedings as spectators, charged with emotions of entertainment and anxiety. This gendered division of activity is often an object of critique in postprocessual archaeology. Rebecca Redfern15, for example, presents convincing evidence of interpersonal violence amongst females as well as children and adolescents during the period. Slings, the most common projectile weaponry during British prehistory, were not a male dominated technology. Redfern's research showed that who is injured by a sling stone was not determined by sex. This contradicts Cunliffe's suggestion that in the warlike society of Danebury male deaths should eclipse female mortality earlier in life16. At the point of the 'melee,' or even before, the women and children would get involved, and hurl slings stones into the crowd of frenzied Fighters, whom of which could include females and adolescents as well. Also, the mention of one-on-one heroic combat is comparable to Hagan ceremonial warfare in Papua New Guinea. After the first casualty, the battle is concluded, and the dispute is resolved 17 . This has much to do with honor and respect, and connects the non-ruthless nature of warfare between these two cultures. The goal is not to destroy the opposition, but to resolve an altercation. The end of conflict at night in the Iron Age suggests the somewhat organized nature of warfare as well. It is not meant to accomplish conquest or destruction of the opponent. It is meant to accomplish prestige. Classical Celtic warfare was a means of
14 Cunliffe 1991: 496 15 2008; 2009 16 Cunliffe 1991:424 17 A. Strathern: 1971
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establishing social position.18 I would go further to suggest that it does not only establish social position, but also reaffirms or dismantles it. Interpersonal conflict has a victory, and a defeat, although that in and of itself is a back projection of how I myself view conflict. Warfare in Iron Age Britain was a tense exchange of interrelated social relationships that were resolved through the physical act of harming another. Parallels can be made to sport, as in Collis' example, where resolution occurs when once side concedes. Sport and warfare are fundamentally different in one clear case: war has much more at stake than a football game; death is inevitable. Like sport though, in the example above, the 'Celts' viewed warfare as a way to demonstrate their status amongst a large social background. This brief discussion of Iron Age warfare explicates the importance of interpersonal violence during the period. The omission of warfare as an agent of social change is an impediment upon a full understanding of Prehistory, and should be rectified in future studies. To follow the example set above, it is clear that during the Iron Age there was not an oscillation between 'peace' and 'war.' This dichotomy is too simplistic. James19 has suggested that these terms are too contemporary to impose upon the past, and instead stated that the time period was punctuated by intense insecurity . In agreement to this point, "Warfare was endemic and could flare up at anytime, but it was not the all-out, long-term affair we read of in Gaul at the time of Caesar's conquest: the presence of Roman armies of conquest created an unnatural situation.20" The Roman arrival in Britain interrupted the fine-tuned balance of warfare and exchange as devices for managing and manipulating social dynamics during the Iron Age. Hillforts, despite what the name
18 Cunliffe 2004: 541 19 2007 20 Cunliffe 2004: 541
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suggests, were not primarily used for defense 21as Wheeler22 and others23 advocated. They could be used as such, but in the mind of a warrior of Britain, skulking behind a wall rather than face open combat was out of the question. At the theoretical level, warfare in between the Romans and the Gauls was a conflict between two differently defined styles of interpersonal conflict, which ascribes with Ferguson's exposition. The conflict between the British amongst themselves still does not fully ascribe to that definition, for to call the violent process of exchange during the Iron Age 'warfare' is a misnomer. I also realize that in discussing warfare, I have associated it with the theme of 'exchange.' I am not implying in any way the 'fashionable' theoretical trends of the past thirty years are negative, quite the contrary. They have opened up new discussion as evidenced by the graphs above, but warfare has fallen between the cracks, so to say. Warfare as a theme is not mutually exclusive to the trends of today. The bias of this paper is obvious. I seek to confirm the endemic interpersonal violence during the Iron Age. Many times, when warfare or violence is discussed, it is dismissed quickly or mentioned parenthetically. 24 I do not mean to appear as if I am cherry-picking articles for their circumvention of warfare. It is a sample of a greater body of evidence. Respectively, there is still little movement in the direction of studying warfare. The introduction to the 2008 volume ‘Changing Perspectives on the First Millenium BC’, edited by Davis, Sharples, and Waddington25, does not discuss warfare or interpersonal violence in any detail. Their ‘thematic concern’ is how ‘the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age’ and Iron has traditionally led archaeologists to characterize the landscape as essentially 'domestic' in nature.’ What is meant by
21 Armit: 2007; Bowden & McOmish: 1987 22 1943 23 Avery: 1986 24 Collis 2011; Hill 1995; Lally 2008 25 Davis et al.:2008: 2
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the word 'traditional?' Cunliffe paints an image of a landscape punctuated by defensive hillforts amongst commonly raided homesteads. This aforementioned 'tradition' must instead refer to the fashionable theoreticians of the 80's which influenced J. D. Hill and later the rest of Prehistoric archaeology.
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Warfare "The Everyday" "the Household" Violence & Conflict Mortuary/deposition practices Settlement patterns Regionality Identiy& Agency Exchange Landscape
22
13 11 8 7 6 5 3 2 0 1989-2004
9 6 5 4 3 1 2004-2007
Figure 4. The trending themes from 1989 to today
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A minor clause: the graph shown in Figure 4 only explicates the articles discussed within it. It cannot truly demonstrate a larger trend, but I do hope to show that of over one hundred articles from 1989 to today, there has been a little advancement in the discussion of warfare. Surprisingly, there has been a sharp decrease in the regional goals of the articles. This is perhaps 'noisy data' and can be disregarded. An important note of this is how as warfare and violence are discussed, topics relating to the household and the everyday decline. Is there a change in fashion? Has some other theoretician made warfare 'trendy' again? Due to the articles comprising the data I concede that the answer is no. If we look again at the common theoretical books of today, for example, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Archaeological Theory Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;,26 warfare is once again glossed over in favor of exchange, landscape studies, and many other topics that have yet to be touched on by Iron Age archaeologists. An interesting note is how human behavioral ecology studies have arrived in archaeology 27 having been used in anthropology for some time now. How this may affect our understanding of interpersonal violence is interesting to imagine. On the topic of modern contexts, I wish to briefly discuss why some of these trendy theoretical frameworks may exist. It does not seem to be the case that anthropologists, sociologists, and archaeologists suddenly became squeamish and the thought of warfare greatly upset them. Archaeology can often descend into navel-gazing, and perhaps that is the case. But in this situation, Sharples reminds us to contextualize our discipline in a wider public context. It has to be relevant to people other than archaeologists. 28 Perhaps the public became disinterested in reading, seeing, or hearing about topics related to warfare. The late 80's and early 90's saw a rise in the conflict between the US and the USSR in Afghanistan, climaxing with Operation Desert Storm and
26 2012 ed. Hodder 27 Bird & O'Connel:2012 28 1991:79-80
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the Gulf War in 1990-91. The conflict in the Middle-East has continued for the past 25 years, punctuated by obvious events such as the revolutions in Egypt and Syria, and the emergence of ISIL. Perhaps these trendy theoretical topics which we as archaeologists have been gazing at for the past 25 years are the result of our desire to remain relevant to the public? I am certainly tired of war. This theoretical impasse that we find ourselves in is by degrees the result of a stagnant discussion on warfare, because it is too often discussed today. Placing archaeological discussion in the context of the modern world, it is reasonable to suggest that warfare may be a delicate affair. "The Iron Age is boring" was and still is an enflaming statement. It is also wrong. Hill deliberately 'stirred up a hornetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nest' of archaeologists to examine their own positionality in regards to studying the past. It also shows how much Iron Age archaeology has appeared to lag theoretically for the past 25 years. So what is the next step? We as archaeologists are a bit trapped in discussing warfare if it is indeed a sensitive topic in the public domain. I do not wish to create a straw man and proclaim 'warfare' has become taboo, but the word 'warfare' itself is charged with so many modern prejudices it cannot possibly be used to describe Prehistory. What then, is the proper course of action? I believe we do need to return to studying violence in the past, for it is so obviously a part of human nature that to disregard it is to 'dehumanize' the people we study. Therefore, if any change is to be made in the theoretical framework of Iron Age archaeology, we must redefine warfare during the period to better suit the needs of ourselves as well as the needs of those other than archaeologists. It is an overgeneralization to say that we are in some way affecting the overall 'violence' of the modern world, but it is enough to suggest that if we can better understand past interpersonal conflict, perhaps we can help to understand it today. Our study of violence in Prehistory may be a novel and applicable mechanism towards understanding the use of violence in the present.
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Scottish Home Rule in a Wider Political Context, 1889–1894 Frederik Seidelin
H
istorians agree that the First Home Rule Bill for Ireland (1886) created the impetus for a home rule movement in Scotland, leading to the founding of the Scottish Home Rule Association (SHRA) that same year.1 Unionist in essence, the SHRA policy was for Scotland to have a devolved parliament for the conduct of Scottish business, possibly within a wider British or even imperial federal framework. The Association never succeeded in achieving its goal, however. The ideological platform of the SHRA is covered well in historians' writings, as are the publishing and lobbying activities of the association. How legislative devolution was argued for and against in Parliament, however, is not as well understood. This paper will probe the parliamentary platforms of home-rulers and unionists at the end of the nineteenth century.
Historiography The principal reasons for the SHRA favouring Scottish Home Rule were that it would strengthen the Union with Ireland,2 that it
1 John Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution: the Debate over the United Kingdom Constitution, 1870–1920 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989), p. 61; Graeme Morton, ‘The First Home Rule Movement in Scotland, 1886-1918’, in The Challenge to Westminster: Sovereignty, Devolution and Independence, ed. by H T Dickinson and Michael Lynch (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2000), p. 114; Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 275; Elfie Rembold, ‘“Home Rule All Round”: Experiments in Regionalising Great Britain, 1886–1914’, in Reforming the Constitution: Debates in Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. by Peter Catterall, Wolfram Kaiser, and Ulrike Walton-Jordan (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 202. 2 Kendle, p. 59.
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would reinvigorate the British Empire, 3 that it would alleviate parliamentary congestion,4 and that Scotland should have the same powers as Ireland5 as well as be an equal partner with England.6 The arguments against the Scottish home rule movement were related to concerns over Home Rule in Ireland: it was seen as a threat to the Unions of 1707 and 1801 and British territorial integrity; 7 and in any case, England was considered too large compared to Ireland and Scotland (and Wales) to make Home Rule All-Roundâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;i.e. legislative devolution to all parts of the United Kingdomâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;workable.8 Thus, John Kendle, Colin Kidd, Graeme Morton, and Elfie Rembold all serve as guides to the provenance of the SHRA as well as the primary arguments for and against Scottish Home Rule. However, they predominantly focus on the policies of the SHRA and contemporary scholars, and, aside from Kendle's brief sketch of select politicians' speeches, there is little mention of parliamentary debates regarding Scottish Home Rule. For instance, they have not attempted to connect the various ideological positions on Scottish Home Rule. This is a surprising omission given their assertions that parliamentary debate of Scottish Home Rule was a Westminster fixture in the quarter-century from 1889â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1914 as a direct result of SHRA lobbying. 9 Moreover, understanding the platforms in the Scottish Home Rule debate as simply for or against as suggested by Kendle risks over-simplifying the case. As we shall see, politicians on both sides of the Commons mixed and matched arguments as they saw fit, and no clear consensus emerged along party or national lines from the debate.
3 Kidd, p. 275-77; Rembold, p. 213-16. 4 Kendle, p. 84. 5 Ibid., p. 238. 6 Kidd, p. 8. 7 Ibid., p. 13. 8 Kendle, p. 62; Morton, p. 119. 9 Morton, p. 114; Kendle, p. 61.
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The first aim of this paper is therefore to attempt to shed light on the arguments advanced in the 1889 and 1894 motions on Scottish Home Rule in the House of Commons. These two motions have been chosen because the one in 1889 marked the first time that Scottish Home Rule was debated independently in the Commons, and because the motion in 1894 was the first motion supporting Scottish Home Rule to be carried. In particular, the importance of parliamentary congestion and the Imperial and Irish dimensions will be examined. Moreover, while Kendle does draw on the discussion of federation and home rule in magazines and journals, none of the four historians addresses reactions in contemporary newspapers to the parliamentary debates about Scottish Home Rule. This is surprising, given that newspapers were the most important source of political knowledge for Britain's newly-created mass electorate.10 Luke Blaxill contends that the years 1880-1914 marked a period of great interaction between the electorate and political parties 11 and that newspapers played a central part in this communication as the ‘vast bulk of a speech’s audience were newspaper readers, not the electors who physically attended’.12 In addition to extra-parliamentary oratory, which is Blaxill's area of study, parliamentary proceedings were also widely reported in newspapers. The second aim of this paper is therefore to explore the responses to the debates in the press, and gauge the relative importance of the Home Rule debates as they were presented to the electorate.
10 Luke Blaxill, ‘Quantifying the language of British politics, 1880–1910’, in Historical Research 86 (2013), p. 313 <https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/14682281.12011>. For details on the impact of the Representation of the People Act 1884, see Neal Blewett, ‘The Franchise in the United Kingdom 1885– 1918’, in Past & Present, 32 (165), pp. 27-56. 11 Blaxill, p. 313. 12 Ibid., p. 321.
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It is outside the scope of this paper to survey how multiple newspapers responded to the Home Rule motions; and so, to provide an indication of the reporting of the Home Rule motions, we shall focus on the Glasgow Herald, published in the by-far largest Scottish city. Although the paper developed clear Liberal Unionist leanings after Gladstone's First Home Rule Bill, the newspaper is a useful source for the reporting of parliamentary matters because it gave extensive daily coverage of proceedings in the Commons and Lords.
First Scottish Home Rule Motion, 1889 On 9 April 1889, Gavin Clark (Liberal, Caithness, founding member of the SHRA) and William Hunter (Liberal, Aberdeen North) introduced a motion in the Commons to arrange for Home Rule in Scotland. Three years after Gladstone's First Home Rule Bill, it was the first time that Home Rule for Scotland was debated independently in the Commons. After 11 speeches, it was moved that the question be put, and the motion was defeated 200â&#x20AC;&#x201C;79.13 SHRA Home-Rulers were particularly keen to stress their commitment to Imperial unity and a continued strong Scottish voice in imperial affairs. Additionally, Home Rule All-Round was seen as a step towards a possible federation of the Empire. 14 Certainly, the 1880s marked the rise of the concept of Greater Britain, popularised by J R Seeley 15 and the Imperial Federation League map;16 the question is whether the Empire was actually a central concern in the Scottish Home Rule debate.
13 HC Deb 9 April 1889, in Hansardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 335, c. 124. 14 Kendle, p. 59; Kidd, pp. 275-76; Rembold, p. 213. 15J R Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (1883), 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1895). 16 [Walter Crane], and J. C. R. Colomb, Imperial Federation: Map of the World Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886, in The Graphic, 24 July 1886. Facsimile from the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library.
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Of the 11 speakers in 1889, five—Hunter himself, Michael Shaw-Stewart (Conservative, East Renfrewshire), James Hozier (Conservative, South Lanarkshire), William Gladstone (Liberal, Midlothian), and A. J. Balfour (Conservative, Manchester East)— briefly mentioned an imperial aspect in their contributions to the debate. For instance, Hozier feared that Scotland would lose influence in the Imperial Parliament under Home Rule, and he contended that Scotland had to retain its voice in imperial matters,17 while Hunter alluded to the Raj as an example of how Westminster's imperial responsibilities had expanded and led to parliamentary congestion. 18 Two speakers—Donald Crawford (Liberal, North East Lanarkshire) and Clark—spoke more sustainedly on imperial aspects of Scottish Home Rule. Clark contended that his motion for Scottish Home Rule would free up time in Westminster to consider more imperial questions.19 They also both mentioned the possibility of Home Rule leading to a federation of the Empire, although they did not agree on the likelihood of this: Clark said that they were ‘logically bound’ to have Home Rule All-Round and Imperial Federation, 20 whereas Crawford hesitated by pointing out that the matter ‘was coming into the horizon of politics, but that [it] is a distant thing’.21 The remaining four speakers, Arthur Elliot (Liberal Unionist, Roxburghshire), Robert Cunninghame Graham (Liberal, NorthWest Lanarkshire), Robert Reid (Liberal, Dumfries Burghs), and Robert Wallace (Liberal, Edinburgh East) did not engage with an imperial aspect in their discussion of Scottish Home Rule at all.
<http://maps.bpl.org/id/m8682> [accessed 5 March 2015]. For more information on Greater Britain, see James Belich, ‘The Rise and Fall of Greater Britain’, in Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 17 HC Deb 9 April 1889, vol. 335, c. 117. 18 Ibid., c. 76. 19 Ibid., c. 74. 20 Ibid., c. 73. 21 Ibid., c. 96.
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In short, while the centrality of the Empire to Britain and British prosperity may have been a latent assumption of a majority, or indeed all, of the MPs—an elusive influence of the Empire22— the sporadic mentions of the Empire in all but two speeches on 9 April 1889 do not suggest that imperial unity or Scotland's place in the Empire was the paramount concern in the debate. This conclusion can be corroborated by the frequency with which the Empire was mentioned. In all 11 speeches, direct references such as ‘imperial’, ‘empire’, ‘colonies’, and ‘colonial’ were made 65 times, but not all of these denoted an imperial discourse, particularly in the case of the 26 mentions of ‘the Imperial Parliament’, which denoted Westminster in its dealings with Scottish and Indian legislation alike. For comparison, ‘Ireland’ and ‘Irish’ were spoken 92 times, and ‘Scotland’, ‘Scotch’, ‘Scotchman’, etc. were said more than 400 times. In other words, multiple spatial categories were invoked in the debate.23 The imperial aspect was certainly one of them; however, the debate was, unsurprisingly, overridingly concerned with Scottish interests, even if the SHRA might have professed that Home-Rulers were avid imperialists. We should therefore look for other arguments to more clearly determine what the politicians' perspectives were. An issue which instigated much more discussion in 1889 than did the Empire was whether Scotland could also claim what Ireland was given. Although Gladstone and Balfour disagreed on Home Rule, both argued that Scotland was entitled to make the same requests of Westminster as Ireland did,24 but also both maintained that ‘the cases from a practical point of view are exceedingly different’ and that the Scottish case paled in comparison with the
22 See Andrew S Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2005), pp. 3-4. 23 See Alan Lester, ‘Spatial Concepts and the Historical Geographies of British Colonialism’, in Writing Imperial Histories, ed. by Andrew S Thompson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), esp. pp. 124-34. 24 HC Deb 9 April 1889, vol. 335, cc. 101 and 110.
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Irish.25 However, proponents of Home Rule did not use Scotland's presumed right to request what Ireland did as an argument for Scottish Home Rule. For instance, Clark stated that he would ‘keep back Home Rule in Scotland for half a century rather than put off Home Rule in Ireland for a year’.26 The unionists, on the other hand, readily used the difference between Ireland and Scotland as an argument against Home Rule. Crawford stated that ‘there is no presumption whatever that Scotland is to be treated in the same way as Ireland’. 27 Hozier, conjuring up Gladstone's exclusion of Ireland from Westminster, asserted that ‘no Scotchman would accept any scheme that would exclude the Scotch Members from the Imperial Parliament’, and even if Scottish representation remained in Westminster, there would be ‘the difficulty of distinguishing between Imperial and Scottish business’.28 The central issue in the 1889 debate was the challenge of parliamentary congestion, which, Clark especially contended, prevented debate on and enactment of Scottish bills. Indeed, he stated that the ‘main practical ground on which I urge this Motion is that Scotch business is neglected.’ 29 This was a matter where there was a clear party division for MPs in the debate, regardless of whether they supported the motion or not. Six of the seven Liberals who spoke in 1889—Clark, Hunter, Crawford, Gladstone, Reid, and Wallace—agreed that too little time was allocated to the discussion of Scottish bills, leading to the neglect of Scottish affairs. From the other side of the floor, Elliot addressed this concern by saying that time was being wasted on matters that could be settled in committees, which would free time for ‘proper business’.30 Balfour admitted to the problem, but he did not offer a solution and remained unswayed by the argument. However, despite congestion
25 Ibid., cc. 102 and 109. 26 Ibid., c. 73. 27 Ibid., c. 94. 28 Ibid., c. 117. 29 Ibid., c. 70. 30 Ibid., c. 89.
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being the primary argument in favour of legislative devolution, the fact that the motion was defeated 200–79 casts serious doubt on Rembold's suggestion that ‘the political demand for home rule on the parliamentary congestion argument was enormously convenient as it could appease Unionists’.31 The creation of the short-lived National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights (NAVSR) in 1853 heralded the beginning of a gradual move towards reform of the governance of Scotland. During the late 1870s and 1880s, some of the administrative devolution which the NAVSR had called for was put into place, including the re-creation of the Secretary of Scotland in 1885. 32 Thus, the debate on Scottish Home Rule did not happen spontaneously, and Home Rule was not the only scheme by which the MPs hoped to remedy the state of Scottish affairs. Hunter questioned the effect of this administrative devolution, especially because ‘the value of the office of the Secretary for Scotland is very much impaired by the fact that the holder of the office does not sit in the House of Commons.’33 More hesitant about Clark's proposal, Crawford agreed that the question of congestion had to be addressed, but it might be with ‘as little as a Grand Committee of Scotch Members, or as great as an assembly for business purposes in Scotland itself’. 34 Clark's Home Rule motion in 1889 was discussed on the evening after the presentation of the Conservative government's Local Government (Scotland) Bill, and some of the MPs in the Home Rule debate favoured further administrative devolution to local government bodies rather legislative devolution. Shaw-Stewart's contention was that ‘the measures of the Government, which are bold and comprehensive[,] will satisfy the Scottish people’. 35 Although most MPs in the debate thus agreed that Parliament suffered from congestion, we see here a
31 Rembold, p. 214. 32 Morton, pp. 113-14. 33 HC Deb 9 April 1889, vol. 335, c. 78. 34 Ibid., c. 95. 35 Ibid., c. 84.
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range of different approaches to remedying the institutional ills of the Commons. Clark's motion for Home Rule for Scotland was reported extensively in the Glasgow Herald on the next day with fully six page-columns devoted to the debate as well as excerpts of what other newspapers thought of the motion. 36 The coverage of the Home Rule motion was not far behind that of the Local Government (Scotland) Bill, which was accorded five-and-a-half page-columns to explain the bill and an additional three-and-a-half page-columns to report the speeches in the Commons. 37 It could therefore be suggested that the two proposals were seen as equally important. Length aside, the coverage of Scottish Home Rule was unfavourable compared to that of the government's bill. Whereas the Herald leader opined that the Local Government Bill had been well presented and was ‘a well-conceived, logical, and essentially democratic one’, 38 the correspondent on the Home Rule motion stated that Clark's speech was ‘uncommonly brief’, and ‘it was evident from the outset that his case had been very considerably damaged by the introduction of the Lord-Advocate's four bills last night.’ 39 Furthermore, the Herald correspondent observed that when the Home Rule debate was about to begin, there was a fear of Parliament being counted out and opined that ‘there did not appear to be any consuming desire on the part of the Scottish representatives, or on the part of anybody else, to debate the question of Home Rule for Scotland’.40 Finally, the excerpts from three other newspapers on Clark's scheme were all against it.41 In all, the Glasgow Herald covered the 1889 Home Rule motion extensively, but the editorial slant presented readers with
36 Glasgow Herald, 10 April 1889, pp. 7-8. 37 Glasgow Herald, April 9 1889, pp. 9-10. 38 Ibid., p. 6. 39 Glasgow Herald, 10 April 1889, pp. 7-8. 40 Ibid., p. 7. 41 Ibid., p. 7.
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a position supporting the status quo in Parliament, as well as the Conservative administration's Local Government Bill.
The House of Commons Vote in Favour of Scottish Home Rule, 1894 Between 1889 and 1894, the cases of Scottish Home Rule and Home Rule All-Round were discussed every year.42 Eventually, in 1894, Henry Dalziel (Liberal, Kirkcaldy) introduced a motion seconded by Augustine Birrell (Liberal, West Fife) for a resolution to devolve legislative powers on Scottish matters to a Scottish parliament. In essence, the resolution was identical to the 1889 motion. On the imperial aspect of Scottish Home Rule, the debate in 1894 resembles that of 1889 in the speakers' cursory treatment of the question. Dalziel argued that Home Rule for Scotland would let the Commons devote itself to imperial questions and to matters pertaining to the United Kingdom as a whole.43 According to Birrell, Scottish MPs were sent to Westminster ‘in the first place, to look after the affairs of the Empire; and, in the second place, to pass laws for Scotland.’ 44 Charles Pearson (Conservative, Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews) criticised the proposer and seconder of the motion for not having addressed the imperial aspect sufficiently, but ironically, he himself mentioned the Empire only insofar as he believed that Home Rule would ‘deprive Scotland of her fair share of the management and control of Imperial concerns.’45 Aside from these three brief mentions, the Empire was almost entirely absent from the debate, and there was no mention of Scottish Home Rule being part of a grander scheme for Imperial Federation. Thus, the 1894 debate strongly suggests that the
42 Kendle, pp. 70-81. 43 HC Deb 3 April 1894, in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 4th series vol. 22, cc. 1293-94. 44 Ibid. c. 1296. 45 Ibid., c. 1306.
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question of Scottish Home Rule had become even more firmly a domestic, United Kingdom-only matter. As in 1889, alleviating congestion and neglect of Scottish affairs in Westminster were the primary concerns of both homerulers and unionists. Indeed, it appeared to Pearson that ‘they were all, or nearly all, agreed in regretting that Scottish business did not get faster through the House’.46 In 1889, Home Rule was advanced as the only option for addressing the problem of congestion, and the opposition had little to say on the matter. In 1894, however, local government reform was no longer in its infancy and the Secretary of Scotland was now an MP in the Commons and a member of the Cabinet. Furthermore, the consensus that parliamentary proceedings were too slow had caused the Secretary for Scotland, George Trevelyan (Liberal, Glasgow Bridgeton), to move for a resolution in the Commons on the previous evening to set up a Scottish Grand Committee for dealing with exclusively Scottish bills.47 Although Dalziel contended that a committee was late in coming and ‘a temporary makeshift’ only, 48 the proposed committee gave opponents of Home Rule a strong platform against Dalziel's and Birrell's motion: something was being done, and safely within the Westminster framework. Moreover, the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 had created new administrative institutions, chief among which were county councils; and Pearson suggested that this had opened options for further administrative devolution. 49 However, Trevelyan's proposal for a Scotch Grand Committee on 2 April and his subsequent support of Home Rule on 3 April provided ammunition for Balfour: ‘Have we ever seen ... a performance like this, in which the same Minister proposes on two successive days these two inconsistent schemes ...?’50
46 Ibid., c. 1304. 47 HC Deb 2 April 1894, in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 22, cc. 1116-27. 48 HC Deb 3 April 1894, vol. 22, c. 1288. 49 Ibid., c. 1305. 50 Ibid., c. 1312.
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In the 1889 debate, it was mentioned several times that Scotland was entitled to the same treatment as Ireland in principle. Not so in 1894, where proponents of Scottish Home Rule suggested that the differences between Scotland and Ireland meant that even if objections could be made to Irish Home Rule, these objects should not apply to Scottish Home Rule. Birrell contended that it was impossible to compare Scotland and Ireland: ‘objections to Scottish Home Rule were not serious in character. There were no Fenians in Scotland and no Orangemen.’51 Herbert Lewis (Liberal, Flint) transposed this argument onto the claim for Welsh Home Rule in tandem with Scottish Home Rule: ‘He entirely agreed that the arguments against Home Rule for Ireland did not apply to Scotland. The case of Wales was similar to that of Scotland in several respects, and the arguments against Home Rule for Ireland did not apply to Wales.’52 Balfour, however, still advanced the case of equality in principle, although this was likely because it highlighted the inconsistencies of the motion and not because he believed in that principle: ‘Why are they going to refuse to London what they pant to give to Wales and long to give to Scotland? London is larger in population than Scotland .... Why are we to be put off with this futile and inconsequent treatment of a great Constitutional question?’.53 Indeed, what seemed to be Balfour's largest objection to the motion was ‘the idea that the Act of 1707 is to be reversed on a Tuesday night between half-past 9 and 12’ and ‘in the absence of the Leader of the House—in the absence of every Cabinet colleague of the Leader of the House, except one Scotch Member and the President of the Local Government Board’. 54 While it is no great surprise that a unionist Conservative would be of that opinion, Balfour's observation of the emptiness of the frontbench opposite does suggest that the debate—like the debate in 1889—was in fact
51 Ibid., c. 1295. 52 Ibid., c. 1301. 53 Ibid., c. 1314. 54 Ibid., c. 1314.
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not very well attended. The debate about Home Rule in Scotland was not like that on the Irish Home Rule Bill, whose second reading in 1893 stretched to twelve nights. Scottish Home Rule remained a fringe question in Parliament, and this might be one of the reasons why the 1894 debate did not occasion any bill on the matter, despite the motion being carried by a hairsbreadth with 10 MPs.55 In contrast to its extensive coverage of Scottish Home Rule in 1889, the Glasgow Herald did not afford much coverage to Dalziel's 1894 motion. It is possible that the novelty of Clark's 1889 proposal accounted for the priority given to that motion, but by 1894, Scottish Home Rule had been discussed several times, had so far come to nought, and was therefore not newsworthy material. To illustrate how insignificant Scottish Home Rule was presented as in 1894, the report of parliamentary proceedings on the Scotch Grand Committee was accorded approximately three-and-a-half times as much column space56 as the report on Scottish Home Rule.57 Neither Grand Committee nor Scottish Home Rule was reported very favourably, however. Indeed, the Glasgow Herald basically served as a mouth-piece for Balfour's politics: ‘Balfour struck a crushing blow at that very patriotism which, whether it takes the form of Home-Rule-all-Round, or of Grand Committees constructed on the mischievous principle of nationalities, can hardly fail to promote ill-feeling between England and Scotland.’58 Moreover, it is interesting to notice that, despite the preponderance of different home rule schemes, when not qualified by a premodifying ‘Scottish’ or postmodifying ‘All Round’, the phrase ‘Home Rule’ meant ‘Irish Home Rule’. On 2 April, there were four letters to the editor in the Glasgow Herald concerning the Mid
55 Indeed, it would not be until after the Constitutional Crisis 1909–1911 that a bill for Scottish Home Rule would be introduced. See T M Devine, The Scottish Nation: A Modern History, rev. edn (London: Penguin, 2012), pp. 30508. 56 Glagow Herald, 3 April 1894, pp. 5-6. 57 Glasgow Herald, 4 April 1894, p. 8. 58 Glagow Herald, 3 April 1894, p. 4.
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Lanarkshire by-election. In all but one of the eleven instances of the phrase ‘Home Rule’, it is Irish Home Rule that was referred to, and the one instance where an author referred to Home Rule All-Round, this was written explicitly. 59 This shows that although Scottish Home Rule was not an alien concept in the columns of the Glasgow Herald, ‘Home Rule’ was not a Scottish policy with popular purchase but was still predominantly a policy pertaining to Ireland. What seems striking about the period from 1889 to 1894 is that, despite the attempt at remedying many of the concerns advanced in Clark's motion, the case continued to be made for Scottish Home Rule. During those five years, a shift larger than that caused by the 1892 general election happened; from broad opposition to general support of the possibility for Scottish Home Rule. In 1889, the position of Secretary of Scotland had been created only four years previously, and as we found earlier, it was seen as problematic that the Secretary was neither in the Commons nor in the Cabinet. Additionally, the political commitment to reform Scottish local government was a novelty, and reform of parliamentary procedure was still in its infancy. Five years later, however, in 1894, the Secretary of Scotland was a member of both the Commons and Cabinet; the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 had been implemented; what would become the 1894 act by the same name was under consideration and would create the Local Government Board for Scotland, promising further devolution of administrative responsibilities; and measures such as the Scotch Grand Committee were being discussed to remedy parliamentary congestion. Despite these measures, which addressed the 1889 concerns and fundamentally changed the way Scotland was governed, Dalziel's 1894 motion carried. This should not surprise us, however, as Scottish politics were not conducted in a vacuum: extrinsic factors—insofar as we can identify ‘intrinsically Scottish factors’—and developments in British politics and beyond affected Scotland.
59 Glasgow Herald, 2 April 1894, p. 9.
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In particular, it is likely that the debate of the Second Home Rule Bill for Ireland in 1893 affected the view on Scottish Home Rule. Gladstone was forced to accept a clause in the bill which would have retained Irish representation in the Commons.60 This change in the concept of Home Rule—which was in 1889 seen as colonial responsible government without Westminster representation 61 —alleviated the concern advanced by some in 1889 that Scottish Home Rule need necessarily imply a loss of Scottish representation in Westminster. This ties in well with Lewis' and Birrell's contentions in 1894 that the objections to Home Rule in Ireland did not apply to Scotland (and Wales). The phrase ‘Home Rule’ might refer to an Irish policy as we saw above, but ‘home rule’ was no longer seen as a singular and exclusively Irish concept with the attached strings and prejudices of 1886.
Concluding Remarks In the words of Dalziel, ‘We are agreed that the disease from which the patient is suffering is congestion. We only differ as to the remedy that is to be applied’62—and differ indeed the MPs did on the matter of Scottish Home Rule. There were arguments for and against Home Rule, but no clear blocs formed around these. The main contention of this paper has been that beyond the question of whether parliamentary business suffered from congestion, there was little else that bound together the arguments of the HomeRulers on the one hand, and the Unionists on the other. Some wanted to solve the problem of parliamentary congestion by appointing a Scotch Grand Committee in Westminster, while others preferred further administrative devolution, and yet others full legislative devolution. Additionally, they had no consistent stance
60 Kendle, pp. 75-80. 61 See, for instance, Glasgow Herald, 10 April 1889, p. 7: ‘Mr Gladstone's Home Rule bill was based on the colonial system. It was framed to meet the peculiar needs of Ireland’. 62 HC Deb 3 April 1894, vol. 22, c. 1287.
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as to whether Ireland and Scotland were comparable or not. Finally, some were explicitly imperialist in their line of argument, while others exhibited a more banal type of imperialism,63 and the former type seemed to be on the wane in this particular debate. Working with this continuum of opinions suggests that the conclusion that ‘Scottish unionist political thought is not reducible to an unambiguous ideological position shared by all unionists’64 applies to home-rulers, too. In other words, Kidd advances a strong case for talking of home-rulers and unionists rather than HomeRulers and Unionists. With respect to the reporting of Scottish Home Rule in the press, we saw that the 1889 Home Rule motion in the Commons received significant coverage in the Glasgow Herald, whereas the 1894 motion was not given much coverage at all, considering the possible implication for the future governance of Scotland. It suggests that the Home-Rulers had exhausted any appetite the press and public may have had. Finally, the fact that the Second Home Rule Bill for Ireland (1893) was amended to allow for the retention of Irish representation in Westminster seems to have had the effect of allaying the fears of some unionists that Home Rule for Scotland would mean losing Scottish representation. ‘Home Rule’ on its own may still have meant ‘Irish Home Rule’ by default, but the Irish case showed that ‘home rule’ could be adapted according to individual cases. It is clear that there is much scope for further work regarding the Scottish Home Rule movement in order to get a picture of whether it was indeed a disparate fringe movement, or whether it consolidated over time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Central to this work would be the inclusion of more parliamentary
63 For the term ‘banal imperialism’, see Krishan Kumar, ‘Empire, Nation, and National Identities’, in Britain’s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Andrew S Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 298329. 64 Kidd, p. 300.
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debates and the response of the Scottish press than has been the custom in scholarship on the movement to date. This might seem a daunting task as the corpus of parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, and letters to the editor is vast, not to mention the numerous lobby publications, primarily by the SHRA. A good start, therefore, would be to glean topics and the frequency with which they were discussed through a quantitative approach, as suggested by Blaxill.65
65 See Blaxill.
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