The Histories & Humanities Journal Volume V by TCD Histories & Humanities Journal

The Histories & Humanities Journal

Volume V- 2014

Copyright ÂŠ The Histories & Humanities Journal All correspondence or complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, Histories & Humanities Journal, Publications Office, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Published by The Histories and Humanities Journal Committee. Funded by DU Publications. With special thanks to the School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity College Dublin, Trinity Publications, and The Central Societies Committee.

The Histories & Humanities Journal Volume V â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2014

E D I T O R I AL The founding aim of the Histories and Humanities Journal was to promote outstanding student writing in history, art history, classics, and archaeology. It is a credit to the work of past editorial teams and the reputation they established for the Journal that we received an unprecedented number of submissions this year. The nine essays we selected for this fifth volume showcase the strength and originality of student writing on the histories and humanities in Trinity College. Congratulations to those who have been published and commiserations to those who missed out this year. The publication you now hold in your hands is the result of a good deal of hard work by our committee members and it has been a pleasure working with such a dedicated and enthusiastic team this year. I would especially like to thank Trinity Publications, which funds the publication, and all who submitted essays over the past few months. We hope you enjoy the volume. Catherine Healy EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Catherine Healy; SECRETARY: Eilis Noonan; TREASURER: Meadhbh Keating Fitzpatrick ; HISTORY EDITORS: Ciara Coughlan, William Earle Ahern, Deirdre Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Reilly; ART HISTORY EDITOR: Teresa Basquel Fahy; CLASSICS EDITOR: Elizabeth Foley; ARCHAEOLOGY EDITOR: Claire Dunne; P.R.O. & COVER DESIGN: James Wilson; LAYOUT: Catherine Healy, GENERAL OFFICERS: Sarah Burns, Lia Flattery, Eoin McGrath. 6

CONTENTS A Study of Inlaid Early Mycenaean Daggers (Mycenae Shaft Graves) MILOSZ KLOSOWSKI

Did Athens Really Liberate Greece? PAUL CORCORAN

Does Ovid’s Ars Amatoria Make Any Attempt to Convey a Serious Message? LUCY WITHRINGTON

Paul and the Subordination of Women in the Early Christian Church ELIZABETH MOHEN

‘As Harsh as Truth and as Uncompromising as Justice’: Daniel O’Connell and his Stance against Slavery, 1824-1847 COLM MAC GEARAILT

Griffith’s Alternative: The Origins of Early Sinn Féin’s Dual-Monarchy Policy MARTIN MCANDREW

Patterns of Revolutionary Violence in Ireland and Algeria JACK SHEEHAN

How Sensitive to the Actual Dangers of Nuclear Weapons was Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove? VINCENT SHERIDAN

Demystifying Meaning in Abstract Art GERTRUDE KILGORE

A Study of Inlaid Early Mycenaean Daggers (Mycenae Shaft Graves) Milosz Klosowski SENIOR SOPHISTER TSM ANCIENT HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY OF ART & ARCHITECTURE

Mycenaean society was said to be a warrior society, and being a warrior at the time meant being a soldier on the battlefield and a hunter. A member of the ĂŠlite of Mycenae wanted to be associated with hunting wild animals in order to acquire food, as well as with fighting powerful animals such as lions. This is unlikely to have taken place in practice, though. However, fictional, almost legendary depictions of such fights were recorded on inlaid early Mycenaean daggers, found in Shaft Graves. These are the finest examples of the metal artefacts from mainland Greece of sixteenth-fourteenth centuries BC. On these bronze daggers one finds astonishing inlaid decoration in many valuable metals; the imagery consists of human and animal figures, often engaged in hunting. The period the analysed daggers come from is referred to as the Shaft Grave period. The date range covers the 16th century BC to the middle of the 15th century - roughly around 150 years. This was the time when ĂŠlite burials in shaft graves, discovered by Heinrich Schliemann, took place in Mycenae. The burials Schliemann encountered belonged to leading or royal families of the region, since the wealth found in them was very unlikely to belong to any other class. Bronze weapons were found with the male burials in these shaft graves, and consisted of various different kinds. Some of the weaponry found includes slashing knives, spearheads, swords, to name a few.1 The swords, which deserve special attention, were not homogeneous in respect to their materials or imagery. The craftsmen produced lavishly decorated swords using stone, ivory, gold and other metals. The imagery often depicted animals, such as horses, and fantastical creatures, such as griffins. However, the most interesting examples seem to be the inlaid daggers. The technique is unlikely to have originated in Mycenae, and the most plausible explanation seems to be foreign influence from the Middle East. The Levantine 1.

http://www.greek-thesaurus.gr/Mycenaean-Grave-Circle-A.html, accessed 10/10/2011

craftsmen, most likely from Syria, introduced the technique of metal inlay in the Aegean.2 The products are so sophisticated that modern scholars believe that these were Minoan, if not even Syrian, craftsmen who produced these decorative weapons for the Mycenaean élite.3 This is not to suggest that the same kind of daggers would be found in Crete or in the Levant of that period. The style is distinctively Mycenaean and the daggers look strikingly new and different to Middle Eastern equivalents. Today one refers to the technique found in bronze daggers from Mycenae as “painting in metal”. There is no doubt that the inlaid Mycenaean daggers found in Mycenae belonged to the élite. Such a lavishly decorated object was not buried with its owner without good reason. Looking at the examples depicting men fighting lions, one can see that it served at least two purposes. Firstly, it emphasised the warrior status of the deceased, since a weapon of such kind would easily be associated with a warrior. Secondly, it gave its owner the status and prestige he wanted - of a brave individual, daring enough to fight the king of all animals. It was not to be thought literally, since it is unlikely that any Greek would ever fight a lion, but the association of the élite with heroic acts like this, however vague, was the aim. The burial, as it happened in many societies, was an arena for social display. The deceased wanted to be remembered as having the beforementioned qualities, which was easily achieved by making other members of the society associate him with what could be seen on the bronze dagger. The bronze daggers found in the shaft graves of Mycenae are worthy of attention. The materials used to produce the daggers were subject to reexamination over years. The problematic material referred to as niello (an alloy of copper, silver or lead sulphides) was at first believed to be used as a background for the decoration or as means to heighten the incised detail.4 However, scientific examination does not seem to support this view. What is certain, on the other hand, is that silver and gold or electrum, and sometimes copper, were used to produce a piece, often against the black background for reasons mentioned before. Many scientific examinations have been conducted in order to find out the material composition of the alloys used by the ancient 2

M. Boss and R. Laffineur, “Mycenaean metal inlay: a technique in context”, in R. Laffineur and P. Betancourt (eds), Techne. Craftsmen, Craftswomen and craftsmanship in the Aegean Bronze Age (Liége, 1997), p. 194

K. Demakopoulou, E. Mangou, R.E. Jones, E. Photos-Jones, “Mycenaean black-inlaid metalware in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens: a technical examination”, Annual of the British School at Athens, 90 (1995), p. 137 4 Ibid., p. 137

craftsmen. The black inlaid decoration always consists of the following materials, in varying proportions: bronze, gold, silver, lead, and sometimes arsenic.5 The quantities of specific metal in an alloy vary from dagger to dagger. Three daggers from Grave Circle A, shaft grave IV of Mycenae give a good view (labels from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens): NM 395 (Fig. 2 - three running lions on both sides), NM 744 (Fig. 3 - intertwining spirals on both sides), NM 764 (Fig. 4 - lilies on both sides, broken at nearly half length). The body of NM 395 proved low tin bronze (94% copper, 5% tin, 1% lead);6 the black inlay was composed of low tin bronze, just like the body, although with addition of small quantities of silver, gold and lead (88% copper, 3% tin, 1% gold, 5% silver, 3% lead);7 the gold foil of the dagger, observed in the reddish lionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mane of gold (85% gold, 15% copper)8 and in the yellow lionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body of gold (95% gold, 5% copper).9 The metal composition of the body of NM 744 dagger was slightly different. It is again low tin bronze, but with some lead (94% copper, 4% tin, 2% lead).10 Another difference is the absence of the black inlay, but there is only a reddish gold panel (due to high copper content) with significant amounts of copper and low silver, tin and lead (c. 8590% gold, 5-10% copper, 1% silver, 1% tin, 1% lead).11 The body of the third dagger, NM 764, proves low tin bronze with low lead (94% copper, 5% tin, 1% lead).12 The black inlayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s composition is similar to that of the body - it is low tin bronze, but with some gold and silver (90% copper, 5% tin, 1% gold, 2% silver, 2% lead).13 The decoration of NM 764 - silver lily - is mainly composed of silver, with some gold and copper, and the gold handle was made of gold with small quantities of copper.14 As one can see, the material composition of the 5

Ibid.,p. 138

Ibid., p. 145

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 146

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 147

Ibid.

daggers vary. Yet even though the metals differ in their quantities, the overall compositions of the materials do not deviate far from a standard recipe of alloy preparation that seems to have existed there, nor do they differ much from one another. Both the bodies and black inlays of the daggers are made of low tin bronze with addition of small quantities of other metals. The black inlay is typically composed of bronze with some gold and silver, as well as lead or arsenic in the case of NM 395. Complex combinations of many metals and their alloys prove the skill of ancient craftsmen who produced these daggers. Such sophisticated products required knowledge and highly developed techniques of manufacture. What can be easily seen is that the work was difficult, yet there is not a single error made during production of the daggers. This raises the question of what techniques were used in their production. The first thing one can notice is that U- or Vshaped incisions, made in gold or silver sheets, were used which show the black material underneath, as seen in the case of NM 394 from the National Museum in Athens. This is how the craftsman was able to form the bodies of the lion and of the hunter. What is more, taking the example of the dagger with running lions (NM 395), where three-dimensional metal plaques were inlaid forming the embossed bodies of the lions, one can assume that the craftsman added the final touch by flattening the surrounding area with a file.15 On the same dagger one finds a darkish-gray material in the gap between two inserted gold sheets. It helps one see that the craftsman melted the material that penetrated the above gap, since tiny holes there are evidence of gas bubbles which can occur only when the material is in a liquid state.16 Therefore, as seen above, the ancient metalworkers did not use cold hammering alone in order to juxtapose different pieces permanently, but also melted them, and it can be concluded that they were, in fact, very good at working with melted material. This required substantial skill and experience, since the control of temperature and precision necessary to inlay such materials without making a stain could only be executed by a master metalworker. Such highly developed skills as described above provided a possibility for the decoration to be of remarkable quality. The fact that pure gold or pure silver were not used does not mean that daggers were produced at a cheaper cost. The 15

M. Boss and R. Laffineur, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mycenaean metal inlay: a technique in contextâ&#x20AC;?, in R. Laffineur and P. Betancourt (eds), Techne. Craftsmen, Craftswomen and craftsmanship in the Aegean Bronze Age, p. 192

Ibid., p. 193

alloys were used to achieve different colours, suitable to the taste of the Mycenaeans. That is why one can say that the Mycenaean blades outclass the Middle Eastern ones of the same period, for the expertise in manufacture that resulted in the desired aesthetic effects was much better developed. For example, the gold alloys achieved by mixing gold and copper, in various proportions, let the craftsman produce aesthetically pleasing juxtapositions in colour, as seen in the case of the lion’s mane and body on the dagger NM 395. NM 394 shows that the concept of gold against a dark background was also a very successful idea. The figures of men and lions are emphasised and appear almost illuminated. The NM 394 dagger (Fig. 1) presents a typical Mycenaean theme. It was a response to the nature of that society, expressed in its warlike symbolism on a blade. Here one sees a fight between hunters and a lion. The scene is concerned with domination. Mycenaean art used animals as means to draw parallels between animal and human nature. An animal dominating over something is not a depiction for its own sake, but to create a parallel for man’s behaviour and control within his own sphere. In this case, a symbolic model serves to convey the idea of dominance, and it can be depicted as a fight between a hunter and a beast conveying the idea of conquest. The daring contest between a man and a lion gives the man a heroic nature. Heracles’ first labour consisted of killing the Nemean lion, and later he wore the lion’s skin as a sign of his great strength and heroism, and even in death he lies on a lion’s skin. This idea is related to the notion of appropriation, for instance, appropriation of power, which is a form of dominance.17 This happens when a man fights with a lion and wins, thus gains control over an enormous, dangerous force. Such a scenario can happen only with a stronger animal, for only a powerful beast has such force that can be appropriated.18 That is why on this dagger the hunters fight against a superior, stronger enemy. However, to kill a lion is an extraordinary feat, and that is why the task can only be achieved by combined effort, hence, five men fighting the lion. Even the valour of an individual is not enough to kill the beast, and one of the hunters lies dead before them. It can be seen that the closer they get to the lion, the weaker their boldness becomes. The man just before the lion is protecting himself with a shield instead of advancing to kill the animal. There is a sense of balance between the strength of the two parties, and through this 17

L. Morgan, “Of animals and men: the symbolic parallel”, in C.E. Morris (ed) Klados, Essays in honour of J.N. Coldstream, (London, 1995), p. 172

Ibid.

uncertainty of the outcome of the fight the man is glorified - glorification can only be achieved by defeating an immensely formidable enemy. Therefore it is not surprising that the élite of Mycenae wanted to be associated with such qualities. The heroic qualities, however vaguely related to them, did help them elevate and continue to maintain their status in society. From the above analysis it can be seen that inlaid early Mycenaean daggers from Mycenae shaft graves are artefacts of tremendous value. They give insight into the technique of manufacture that the ancient craftsmen employed as well as an insight into the social values of the Mycenaeans, essential in the understanding of their culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY M. Boss and R. Laffineur, 1997. “Mycenaean metal inlay: a technique in context”, in R. Laffineur and P. Betancourt (eds), Techne. Craftsmen, Craftswomen and craftsmanship in the Aegean Bronze Age (Liége, 1997) pp. 191-197 K. Demakopoulou, E. Mangou, R.E. Jones, and E. Photos-Jones, “Mycenaean black-inlaid metalware in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens: a technical examination”. Annual of the British School at Athens, 90 (1995), pp. 137-153 L. Morgan, “Of animals and men: the symbolic parallel”, in C.E. Morris (ed) Klados, Essays in honour of J.N. Coldstream (London, 1995), pp. 171-184 http://www.greek-thesaurus.gr/Mycenaean-Grave-Circle-A.html, accessed 10/10/2011

INDEX Fig. 1 - Lion-hunt Dagger (Athens NM 394) Fig. 2 - Dagger with three running lions on both sides (Athens NM 395) Fig. 3 - Dagger with intertwining spirals on both sides (Athens NM 744) Fig. 4 - Dagger with lilies on both sides, broken at nearly half length (Athens NM 764)

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Did Athens Really Liberate Greece? Paul Corcoran SENIOR FRESHMAN TSM GREEK AND HISTORY

When the dust settled on the glorious victories of the Greeks at the end of the Persian Wars in 480/479 BC and the vanquished Medes skulked eastward, expansionist plans in ruins, Athens’ imperial endeavours were all ahead of her. From the ruins of one empire, would soon come the dawn of another; one led by the chief victor of the Persian Wars, Athens. Any analysis of the question proposed in this essay must focus on the nature of Athens’ leadership at the head of what would originally be known as the Delian League, and eventually, the Athenian Empire. By dispatching the looming threat of Persia and the future of slavery and subservience to foreign rule that would have followed, Athens’ had, in a very real sense, liberated Greece from a frightful fate during the triumphs of the Persian Wars. The Athenians themselves argue this point in defence of their empire to the Spartans in years to come.1 However, seventy years later, when the Peloponnesian War brought an end to the period of Athenian dominance, Sparta was hailed throughout much of Greece as the ‘liberator’ of the Greeks from Athenian rule. Many of Athens’ imperial subjects had revolted, and Thucydides, the leading historian of his generation, was denouncing the Athenian Empire as a contemptible tyranny. The black picture of Athens’ rule painted by Thucydides in Pericles’ funeral speech, the Mytilene Debate, and the Melian Dialogue has long formed the basis for the view that the Athenian Empire was little more than an unjust, self-serving institution of exploitation. In truth, the conduct of Athens in running her empire, as will be discussed in this essay, makes it difficult to reject Thucydides’ reproachful appraisal of Athens’ behaviour towards the Greeks. This essay will demonstrate that Athens did not, in any conventional way, liberate the Greeks during the Persian Wars. However, a less denunciatory judgement than Thucydides’, one that accounts fully for the extraordinary transition from Persian War hero to imperial oppressor is required, and will be the true focus of this work. Though she no doubt failed to fulfil it, Athens had at least given herself the potential to be the beloved liberator of Greece in 479BC at the end of the Persian Wars. This essay will propose an outlook that the 10

evolution from saviour to repressor was not a brutal, premeditated one, but a gradual, shrewd reaction to the opportunities Athens’ increasing power presented her with. While not ignoring the wrongs of the Athenian Empire, this proposed approach will challenge the unwavering opposition of Thucydides and others to Athens’ rule during this period. It will provide a more informed, objective platform from which to ascertain to what degree, and why, Athens turned its back on the chance of 479BC, and, through the excesses of the Athenian Empire, failed to liberate the Greeks. Greek The Delian League, an alliance of Greek cities established the in the wake of the Persian Wars with the aim of “retaliate for their sufferings by ravaging the king’s country”2was the earliest form of post-Persian War Athenian dominance. An analysis of its structure and the attitudes of the members towards it reveal much about Athens’ intentions for imperial power at this point in time. Though ancient sources disagree, it is fair to take Thucydides’ assessment that the inter-state alliance created by the Delian League was nothing wildly new in Greek history.319What’s more, it is clear from oaths connected to the League that while Athens was undoubtedly to lead the League, the allies were content with this arrangement, and appreciated that “it was the allies who had most to gain from Athenian leadership”.420With Sparta unwilling, Athens had been left as the natural leader of the Delian League, but as the prospect of Persian revenge attacks loomed, Athens took charge of the League as much out of fear than anything else.521Athenians were more concerned with the immediate measure of rebuilding their city’s defensive walls than they were with formulating expansionist plans for now.622From this perspective, there becomes evident in the Athenians at this point, if not an indifference, then certainly an uncertainty towards imperial ventures. The first campaigns of the League, against Persian-held Eion(477/6BC) and pirate-harbouring Scyros(476/5BC), caused little stir and don’t point to any rising ambition in Athenian outlook on empire.723The case of the island of 2

Thuc. 1.96.1.

P. Low, Interstate Relations in Classical Greece (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 234-237

R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1975), p. 43

Ibid., p. 43

J. Roisman and J.C.Yardley, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander (London, 2011), p. 247

Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, p. 69

Carystus on the island of Euboea (cir.472BC) provides then the first indicator of Athens diverging from the path of conservative leadership that had defined the early phases of the Delian League.824Carystus had a tarnished record due to its intermittent cooperation with the Persians during the Persian Wars. When Carystus refused to join the Delian League voluntarily, Athens moved controversially against the city, conquering it soon after. The description of this engagement as a “Πόλεμος”925by Thucydides indicates its dissimilarity to the League’s previous interventions, and the historian reveals the uncooperative reaction of the allies to this move by Athens, saying that Carystus was attacked “without the rest of Euboea”.1026If their unremarkable opening moves had been indicative of a rising power learning on the job, Carystus’ fate indicates that the Athenians were learning quickly of the advantages of Empire. The actions that came next showed a clear progression in Athens from the tentativeness of the early Delian League years to a growing assuredness and comfort in her position of power in response to the increasing temptations of Empire. In the fifteen years after Carystus, Athens’ leadership of the Delian League became more assertive, and as she explored and discovered the advantages of a more aggressive, dominant form of headship, Athens moved closer to transitioning from the authoritative member of the alliance to a fullyfledged imperial powerhouse. The next episode after Carystus was the revolt of Naxos (circa.469-466BC), the most prosperous island-state in the Delian League.1127Athens swiftly ended any possibility of the island leaving the League, blockading Naxos into submission and imposing a settlement on the island that, according to Thucydides, “contravened the League’s constitution”.1228This dramatic statement is probably an exaggeration but this revolt holds significance as the first in a recurring pattern of revolts from the League.1329Naxos was forced to change its tribute to the League from ships to money as a result of the revolt, diminishing even further any threat to Athens’

Ibid.

Thuc. 1.98.3.

10 11

Ibid. Hdt.(trans. Godley 1920) 5.28.

Thuc. 1.98.4.

Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, p. 70

military and political stranglehold on power in the League.1430The battle of Eurymedon (469BC), meanwhile, provided a chance for Athens to redirect her military thrust back towards the intended target of the League- Persian. However, the emphatic victory achieved there soon called into question further the authenticity of the Delian League as purely an alliance against the Persians. With the Persian threat seemingly abolished at Eurymedon, and thus its chief purpose achieved, “the Delian League would have disintegrated unless Athens had held it together.”1531From this point onwards the League increasingly became a vessel for Athenian dominance of its ‘allies’ in Greece. This break on the Athenian’s part from any pretensions at conventional League leadership as originally conceived is underlined by their response to revolt on the northern island of Thasos in 465 BC. In a relatively unprovoked attack, the Athenians laid siege for three years to the mineral-rich island in what “must have seemed the most flagrant violation of the spirit of the League that the allies had seen yet.”1632 Indeed this impudence did not go unmarked by the allies; Diodorus claims they became deeply disillusioned with Athenian leadership at this point, and “ignored the League council and remained aloof”1733for some time. This series of questionable actions by the Athenians in their exercising of authority put an end to any doubts that lingered over the legitimacy of the Delian League. These latter years of the Delian League marks Athens’ steady and irreversible decline into a despotic ruler. The taste for power that Athens had enjoyed had proved too enticing to let go. Now the righteous protests of aggrieved League members were something Athens felt she could ignore, and as the following events show, soon any arena for these protests would be removed altogether. In the years after Thasos, and specifically from the year 454BC onwards, Athens displayed a firm intention to depart from the strictures of the Delian League, and to make its clear military and political dominance over the other Greeks manifest through a plainly imperial system. In this year, the treasury of the League, originally based on the sacred Aegean island of Delos, was moved to Athens in an act that proves “a useful symbol of growing Athenian influence,

Thuc. 1.98.4.

Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, p. 205

Ibid., p. 90

11.70.4 cit. by ibid., p. 90

even if it did not seem sinister at the time.”1834The Erythrae Decree from 453/2 BC demonstrates Athenian efforts at this time to establish an independent identity separate from the allies. In the wake of recent Erythraen collaboration with the Persian, the Athenians had garrison placed on the island and imposed legislative limits on the courts in Erythrae. This ruthless move exemplified Athens’ bid to extend her influence by intervention in the affairs of other Greek cities. Interference in the judicial affairs of the other Greeks now became a favoured tactic of Athens in reaffirming her dominance over the allies. At the outset of the Delian League, little thought was given to judicial powers, as the autonomy of each ally was assumed.1935However, Athens now directed many of the allies’ court cases to Athenian courts in an attempt to be seen as the official dispenser of justice in Greek society.2036 The most unpopular facet of this judicial stranglehold was Athens’ use of informers and summoners to root out any enemies to Athenian rule in allied cities, especially oligarchs.2137Then in 450BC a sudden peace brokered between Athens and Persia officially ended the threat that Eurymedon had tamed twenty years previously. Instantly, The Peace of Callias called into question the legitimacy of Athen’s rule since Eurymedon and ushered in the 440s as “vital years of transition from League to Empire.”2238Suddenly, the language of Athenian decrees referred not to ‘allies’, but to ‘the cities which Athens controls’.2339The deliberate step towards empire that Athens had made as far back as Thasos, and which the Athenians had backed up less by force than by subtle management of the League’s institutions, was now showing its consequences. The most contemptible imperial indulgences of Athens that follow the Peace of Callias were simply the result of the long process of power-garnering that Athens had engaged in over the previous decades. They would be the actions of a city that had initially been tempted by the attractions of Empire, and was now to become corrupted by them. 18

P.J. Rhodes, “The Athenian poleis: demes, cities and leagues” in M. H. Hansen (ed.) The Ancient Greek CityState (Copenhagen, 1993), p.23 19

Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, p. 221

Idib., p. 220

Ibid., p. 224

Ibid., p. 15

Ibid., p. 153

The years after the Peace of Callias marked a final stage in Athens’ decline into despotic rule over the cities of Greece, as both the nature of their decrees and the military actions they took were no longer mired in concerns of just ruling. The Cleinias Decree(448/447) and the Coinage Decree (445) dictated Athens’ demands and threats to their subjects regarding tribute collection and currency laws with language and tone that “leaves little doubt that the main interest is that of Athens.”2440Athens’ deployed Phrourarchoi and Episkopoi in their subject cities, officials whose vague job descriptions included military control of the Athenian garrisons abroad, a part in the election of Councils, and keeping an eye on any rebellious trends in local politics.2541These were “men sent by Athens to review the situation in various cities”2642but evidence suggests that the persuasion employed by these officials, ensuring the adherence to decrees such as the two aforementioned examples, was far from gentle.2743Athens’ military ruthlessness was made apparent when further cases of revolt in Euboea (446BC) and Samos (441/0) engendered swift and comprehensive reactions from the Athenians.2844The descriptions of barbaric Athenian brutality by Samian historian Douris towards the trierarchs and marines of Samos are dismissed by Plutarch, but there is substance in his account of Athenian fury and excess.2945 Within ten years of this offensive Athens’ hegemony was challenged by the onset of the Peloponnesian War, which saw much of Greece rejoicing at the prospect of liberation from Athenian domination. It is during the course of this brutal war that Thucydides, though the inclusion of no less than eight long speeches,3046gives his most damning verdicts on the Athenian Empire. Pericles himself warns the Greeks that “to recede is no longer possible…for what you hold… is a tyranny”3147while in the Melian Dialogue3248Athenian ambassadors 24

Ibid., p. 172

Ibid., p. 212

Harpocration, s.v., cit. by ibid., p. 212

Ibid., p.165

Thuc. 1.114.3.

Douris F67, cit. by Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, p. 192

Ibid., p. 376

Thuc. 2.63.2.

make the unsettling assertion that ‘might is right’. However, holding such a vital position in the formation of the conventional criticism of the Athenian Empire, Thucydides’ judgements in these speeches must be examined closely. The difficult task at hand is “to apportion responsibility for the cynicism of the history between the historian and his time.”3349De Ste Croix has challenged many of Thucydides most critical points about the nature of Athenian despotism.3450Taking these speeches and their content in context with contemporary scholarship, it is difficult to take seriously most if not all of Thucydides’ condemnation. However, what can be clearly seen is that Athens rule in the years before and during the Peloponnesian War reached a height of corruption, showing the distasteful climax of a fifty year-long descent into tyranny. After resounding defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Athens grip on her empire loosened and collapsed. Athens’ next attempt at hegemony- the Second Athenian League of 377BC- granted equal votes to all members and included no true tribute requirement; underlining the important fact that Athens had learnt her lesson from her years of dominance in the 5th century.3551Athens recognised, perhaps too late, that she had pushed things too far after the Persian Wars, that she had underestimated fatally the deep rooted devotion in Greek city-states to autocracy.3652Through her prying courts, uncompromising tribute demands, insistent decrees and watchful garrisons, Athens had eventually alienated the Greeks to the point of widespread insurrection. Despite these shortcomings, Athens biggest failure was not her decision to develop from the Delian League a dominant hegemony in the form of the Athenian Empire, but that she lacked the ability, or rather willingness, to display political nous and expedience at critical stages to make such hegemony stable in the long-term. The chronological format of this essay has sought to highlight that the former decision was the natural, if somewhat dissolute reaction to the inescapable influence that Athens held after the Persian Wars and onwards. The 32

Thuc. 5.89.1.

Shorey 1893:85, cit. by Low, International Relations in Classical Greece, p. 222

G.E.M. de Ste Croix, “The Character of the Athenian Empire”, Historia, 3 (1954), pp.1-41

Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, p. 412

Ibid.

idea of an all-powerful leader in Greece was not the problem in itself; a strong, responsible guiding force in Greek politics could have large benefits, and the Athenian Empire did up to a point. For one cannot dispute that “the Aegean World gained considerably from the use made by Athens of the wealth that she drew from the cities”.3753Athens’ empire, while keenly exploitative, was never truly brutal, and in fact “made considerably less use of force than imperial powers were expected to use.”3854In regards the latter, and more crucial decision, Low has stressed the significant point that despite stretching them to the limit, Athens’ never worked outside the norms of interstate relations in the classical period during her years of supremacy.3955While this may be construed as somewhat of a veiled pardon for Athens’ imperial indulgences, it has another lesson to impart. Athens, at the head of her Empire, had not broken with the form of dominance history had shown to be standard. What was needed, however, if Athens was to liberate the Greeks as a ‘friendly tyrant’ in the aftermath of the Persian Wars, was for the Athenians to tread new ground and abandon the conventional method of imperial rule. Thus, while Athens was never much worse than any of the despotic powers of the ancient world, nor was it any wiser, fairer, or more thoughtful. In this regrettable reality lies the true reason for the failure of Athens, through her empire, to liberate the Greeks during the Persian Wars.

BIBLIOGRAPHY de Ste Croix, G.E.M. “The Character of the Athenian Empire”, Historia, 3 (1954), pp.1-41. Low, P., Interstate Relations in Classical Greece (Cambridge, 2007) Meiggs, R., The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1975) Rhodes, P.J., “The Athenian poleis: demes, cities and leagues” in M. H. Hansen (ed.) The Ancient Greek City-State (Copenhagen, 1993), pp.161-182 Roisman, J. and Yardley, J.C., “Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander” (London, 2011)

Ibid.

Low, Interstate Relations in Classical Greece, pp. 250-251.

Shorey, P., “On the implicit ethics and psychology of Thucydides”, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 24 (1892), pp.66-88

Does Ovid’s Ars Amatoria Make Any Attempt to Convey a Serious Message? Lucy Withrington SENIOR SOPHISTER SINGLE HONOURS CLASSICS

The Ars Amatoria is a poem dedicated to the instruction in the ‘art of loving’. In a later work (his Tristia) Ovid himself would have us believe that the Ars was nothing more than a joke (mendax…est et ficta meorum1)56and, in referring to it as his carmen et error2,57critics from the time of its creation up to recent scholarship understand that there is no conclusive opinion regarding the ‘serious’ nature of the poem. Does the Ars Amatoria convey a ‘serious’ moral message, as would be expected from a traditional didactic poem? Is it to be taken as a ‘serious’ handbook on the instruction of love? Does Ovid regard love ‘seriously’ in the same way as Lucretius and Virgil in their respective works: De Rerum Natura and the Georgics? Does Ovid take himself ‘seriously’ as a poet? In this essay I will consider these questions (and more) and look at the content, technique, language and style of Ovid’s most controversial work, looking in particular at the ways in which the work relates to the elegiac and didactic genres, with the aim of deducing a concrete opinion as to whether any serious message can be conveyed from it, and thus from Ovid himself. Looking at the time in which the Ars Amatoria was written, the poem must certainly have been regarded as a serious enough work by the Emperor Augustus358to be considered a contributory factor into Ovid’s exile from Rome to Tomis in 8AD. Twelfth-century and thirteenth-century aficionados of Ovid read his work as genuine pieces of serious poetry, extolling his views on love to 1

Tristia (2.355)

Tristia (2.207). However, simply the fact that Ovid wrote this post-exile is, in my opinion, an unreliable source of the author’s true opinion on this work. Firstly hindsight is a blessing, and secondly the Tristia was likely to have been written with the intention to try to persuade the authorities in Rome (namely Augustus) to allow him to return from exile.

By AD 1 Octavian, having ‘restored the Republic’ and taken the name Augustus, had secured his rule and initiated rearmament in morality very much on a political agenda. This moral reform included an introduction of the leges Iuliae (intended, mainly, to elevate the moral standing of the upper classes in Rome), laws which Ovid’s Ars threatened – assuming one doesn’t accept the disclaimer at A.A.1.31-4.

the extent that Ovid is the acknowledged ‘forbear’459of ‘courtly love’5.60The twelfth-century writer Andreas Capellas took on the ‘Ovidian role as [a] legislator of love’661in his own work De Amore. Ironically, it is this notion of “courtly love” that our own modern romanticised conception of ‘love’ has derived. But, according to Myerowitz, it is because of the idealised romantic view of love in Western society that we, as modern readers, take offence at Ovid’s depiction of love. It is the ‘absence of exclusivity’ and the ‘element of calculation’762in Ovid’s instruction that bothers us as modern readers. I believe that Myerowitz is correct in suggesting that the manner in which we are advised, by Ovid’s persona, to conduct love is one of contrivance – to be objective, duplicitous and detached (not emotionally involved). This is starkly at odds with the modern conception, which is one that is honest, subjective, not contrived. Therefore, by Myerowitz’s implication, in order for the modern reader to remain necessarily objective; Ovid’s approach to love must be one of a non-serious nature. Perhaps, in order to try and understand whether there is a serious message suggested in the Ars Amatoria, it is necessary to determine what sort of ‘love’ Ovid is trying to educate his readers on. There are various interpretations, and while the poem is an instruction on seduction, it is not just a poem, as many critics believe, ‘about sex’8.63In fact I do think it is lesson on the physical act of 'eros' at all. There is no instruction on sex presented in the first book of the Ars Amatoria because it does no need to be taught – in a similar way to Lucretius, for Ovid sex is natural, a base need that should be indulged9.64This ‘love’ is ‘amor’ as Lucretius, Virgil and the Roman love Elegists saw it.1065But whereas these poets regarded it as a feeling; an overwhelming and uncontrollable force 4

M. Myerowitz, Ovid’s Games of Love (Michigan, 1985), p.21

Courtly love was a medieval conception concerning the expression of love in a chivalric manner, practised by the nobility but not generally by those married.

D. Kelly, ‘Courtly love in perspective: the hierarchy of love in Andreas Capellanus’, Traditio, 24 (1968), p.147. 7 Myerowitz, Ovid’s Games of Love, p.22. 8

F. O. Copley, Latin literature from the beginnings to the close of the second century A.D. (Michigan, 1969), p. 268

However ‘eros’ is a natural need for Lucretius in a different way; for reproduction.

Amor was viewed as an irrational force, madness, but it is treated differently by Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid and the love elegists separately, as I will later unpack.

(divine for Virgil, not so for Lucretius), Ovid views it as mode of behaviour; something inherently human and possible to control and master so long as the steps laid out in his didactic poem are followed. By being in control of ‘amor’, the lover can to refer to it as a social practice of starting up and partaking in a sexual relationship. In the same vein, Myerowitz believes that ‘love’ in the Ars Amatoria is a socially constructed convention created from geography, history and society – a cultural phenomenon1166depending on the culture one is living, in Ovid’s case the convention of love that has been created in the first-century B.C. In making himself explicitly aware of the conventions, love is still the construct that Lucretius criticised and the love that the Elegists indulged in and are subject to, but for Ovid love is a practical and elaborately ‘literary game’12.67. Ovid boasts his literary prowess, immediately, within the first twenty-five lines of the first book of the Ars Amatoria by utilising the traditions of various genres of verse interweaving specific echoes and elements of style and technique from them.1368The opening couplets emphasise the practical didactic character of the work (lecto carmine doctus amet14)69A new dimension is added, planting the poem into the epic tradition (mythological references to famous characters such as Automedon, Tiphys, Chiron, Achilles and Hector). In ll. 1920 Ovid’s speaker moves out of myth and into the pastoral world of the Georgics, mentioning the bull bowed beneath the yoke (tauri ceruix oneratur aratro), and the spirited horse (magnanimi equi). But Ovid in the next two couplets moves, again, this time from the agricultural world into sphere of love elegy, using the language of a typical elegiac lover (mea uulneret arcu pectora15)70but after a uniquely un-elegiac statement: et mihi cedet Amor –16 71

Myerowitz, Ovid’s Games of Love, p.25.

R. M. Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic (Cambridge, 1965), p. 40

The following is adapted and expanded from: S. Mack, Ovid (New Haven, 1988), pp.88-9.

Ars Amatoria (1.2)

Ars Amatoria (1.21-2)

Ars Amatoria (1.21) It is important to bear in mind, however, this as a striking (and therefore ironic?) echo of Virgil Ecl.10.69, where the love-elegist Gallus is speaking: omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus Amori.

Amongst the quick succession of references to well-known verse genres, Ovid introduces a statement innovatively unique and contrasting. In the hierarchy of poetry, the didactic genre (seen as morally useful) is the top but generally lower down compared to elevated epic (concerning heroes and their deeds). Although epic and didactic aren’t separated from each other as a poetry genre the content and use of an active, personal and indirect, impersonal narrative, respectively, is a difference. The Ars Amatoria embodies the structure, language, themes, style and technique that is associated with the didactic genre. Ovid establishes a teacher and pupil relationship between himself (as praeceptor amoris) and his readers and he urges these pupils to listen to him and take note. While commanding and questioning his readers, with an ultimate goal in mind, Ovid articulates each of his arguments by stating his own personal experience and using instructive language ‘appropriate’1772to this genre which had been supplied to him by his predecessors Lucretius and Virgil18.73Generally speaking didactic poetry is addressed to someone.1974There is no direct or individual addressee specifically named in the Ars Amatoria but similar to Virgil, Ovid directs his instruction to the Roman people in general. Ovid takes on the persona praeceptor amoris, a self-seeking hedonist with a wealth of experience and skill. He needs to do this because as a didactic poet one cannot teach what one does not know and by displaying his experience and mastery of love, Ovid qualifies himself as the appropriate person to administer his advice on the subject. Indeed Mack argues that Ovid’s persona is the didactic equivalent of the putatively sincere lover of Roman elegy. As is customary in a didactic poem, Ovid sets out his instructional program in advance, marking his own progress through that program in a manner established already in Hellenistic didactic.2075He uses nautical and chariot imagery also found in earlier didactic poetry; teaching his audience how to manage and control love, as a helmsman would a ship, and a charioteer would a chariot and to tame it as you would a bull or horse. But it could be argued that 17

A. S. Hollis, ‘The Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris’ in J. W. Binns (ed.), Ovid (London, 1973), p. 91

In fact, Gibson states that the ‘heavy predominance of imperative expressions’ is more so than in both Lucretius’ and Virgil’s works, p.102. 19

For Hesiod it is his brother Perses; Lucretius, Memmius; the addressee for Virgil is twofold – his patron (and the political associate of Augustus) Maecenas, who is named, and farmers in general, who aren’t named. 20

R. K. Gibson, ‘The Ars Amatoria’ in P. E. Knox (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Oxford, 2009) p.102.

Ovid is speaking figuratively when he argues ‘Tiphys et Automedon dicer Amoris ego’21.76He might not actually mean that is the tutor of Cupid – in the same way that Chiron actually was the revered tutor of Achilles – but that he has been clever enough to systematise an approach. Ovid’s boast of his control of Cupid is a way of the author’s technical control of the poem, since it focuses our attention to his verbal wit.2277. A direct echo between the Ars Amatoria (1.399-420) and Virgil’s Georgics (1.204-30) can be seen. Virgil suggests and advises the appropriate time for farming and Ovid caps and parodies this passage in recommending the appropriate way to approach a woman (not on her birthday, or on the day of Venus’ festival in the March-April crossover). Also a comparison with Virgil could be made if one agrees that neither the Ars Amatoria nor the Georgics are to be taken as genuine practical manuals, no matter what the purport.2378Both have examples of good practical advice, on the art of seduction and on pastoral care respectively, but there are also exaggerated elements added by the authors for poetical, or in Ovid’s case, humorous, effect. Looking at Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura IV and his attitudes on ‘love’ in particular, one can see that Ovid doesn’t disagree with his definition of ‘amor’ (as previously stated). And, although Lucretius regards ‘amor’ as an overpowering and irrepressible force, and for Ovid it is something equivalent to human ‘error’, Ovid agrees with Lucretius’ sentiment that it is simply an illusion.2479But, whereas Lucretius urges us to recognise this illusion and avoid it using ‘ratio’ (our rationality of mind), Ovid would have us recognise the illusion also – but to indulge in it for the sake of fun. In this way, the Lucretian form ‘undergoes an Ovidian metamorphosis’2580and Ovid uses it to criticise and deride Lucretius for not playing the game. The Ars Amatoria is not a guide to the principles of elegiac love. Ovid chose instead to make a poem out of the material of love elegy and, by changing 21

Ars Amatoria (1.8)

Mack, Ovid, p.90

A. Dalzell, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry (Toronto, 1996), p.138

Something which is the antithesis of how the Roman Elegists view ‘amor’. For them it is an uncontrollable force of divine nature that they are subject to as a servitium amoris – see Hollis, ‘The Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris’, p. 95. 25

J. Shulman, ‘Te quoque falle tamen: Ovid’s Anti-Lucretian Didactics’, CJ, 76 (1981), p.253

the genre to the didactic, radically altered its working suppositions. Although Elegists argue to give advice to their readers, Latin elegy is truly the ‘poetry of failure’26.81Their triumphal moments are short lived, and more often than not the elegiac lover is pining in despair or freezing outside his mistress’ door, or even contemplating suicide or emigration. The didactic poet, in contrast, can teach one how to be successful as, in the case of Ovid, he is the master and in control of love. Ovid has a commitment to ‘moderation’27, between the elegiac and didactic traditions, and in creating this moderation his poem is presented as a ‘hybrid’2882of the two genres. An example of this moderation is the female body, which often reflects the poetic programmes of the elegists. Similarly in Ars Amatoria III, the grooming recommended to the ‘puellae’ reflects the poetics of erotic but is also humorously reminiscent of the grooming suggested to men in Cicero’s De Officiis, and this cements the didactic’s middle position between elegy and the higher genres. There are many similarities and many differences between love elegy and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. Starting with the similarities, Ovid shared many conventional situations and characters that are reminiscent of love elegy but Ovid manipulates them for his own didactic purpose. The motif of the locked door and ‘ianitor’ (‘gate-keeper’) provided the elegiac lover with an occasion to allow himself to reflect on his romantic sufferings, whereas Ovid uses this as an example of a practical obstacle for his lovers to overcome, heightening the excitement of their pursuit. The Elegists and Ovid regard the topic of infidelity as important but for different reasons: for the Elegists the act of infidelity by his mistress is a moment of overwhelming crisis but for Ovid, he suggests that his pupils should take it as a reality check, or even to add spice to the relationship; to accept that rivals exist and they must temper their reactions accordingly. Ovid also advises men how they might even make themselves successfully unfaithful to their own partners, inverting elegiac protestations of devotion and fidelity. Similar topics are addressed in both: how to deal with his girl’s maid, how to accompany his girl to the Circus, how to write love letters. Ovid also applies these topics to his earlier work, his Amores. In this work Ovid takes on a parodist role of the traditional elegiac lover and his mistress (Corinna) humorously seems to be taking instruction from Ars Amatoria III. It could be suggested that the Ars Amatoria is the didactic equivalent to the Amores. 26

Dalzell, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry, p.144

Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, p. 29

Including the differing views on love itself, elegy showed relatively little interest in the local urban setting of the lover’s affair, this is unlike Ovid’s emphasis his setting in the city of Rome. Elegy favoured indoor, private or night time occasions, and this is in stark contrast to Ovid’s context of seduction in public, set outdoors on the very streets of Rome in daytime. The Elegiac lover acts on impulse and is immediate in his actions whereas Ovid exhorts his lovers to have a long-term strategy and to focus on restraint. Ovid also moved love elegy in a new direction to include all Romans: in hoc populo. In earlier elegy the life of love and civil life were strongly opposed so that figures such as lawyers and government officials were excluded from the fun.2983Ovid breaks down these restrictive barriers, broadening his sphere of pupils. The word ‘ars’ (used four times in the first two couplets of book I) can be translated as ‘skill’, ‘ability’ or more generally as someone’s own personal ‘art’/‘work’. The former would be used in reference to a game or sport. One needs ‘ars’ to be adept to participating in a game of any sort and in the game of love Ovid is the coach. But Ovid it teaching the ‘ars’ of love also displays his ‘ars’ in his literary competence and prowess and this use of wordplay is provoked throughout. Leach provides an excellent example of this in Ars Amatoria 1.303-26, with Ovid’s description of Queen Pasiphae and her love for the Cretan bull. Ovid depicts the Queen expressing lust for the bull and pastoral envy for the other cows. This mirrors Virgil’s representation of ‘amor’ breaking down the boundaries separating man and beast and levelling the playing field between them, as this type of love degrades men from their supremacy down to the level of beasts. Ovid applies this Georgic dimension with mythology which brings ‘nature before us and compares its ways with the ways of society’3084but, as Leach points out, there is another level underlying this. Although Ovid appears to show the same empathy for animals as Virgil does85, Ovid is really using this example to boast his outstanding literary capabilities. Having read this essay one would understandably assume the position that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of serious message with the Ars Amatoria; Ovid parodies and undermines the didactic genre, up to and including the rare 29

Volk, Ovid (Oxford, 2010), p.242

E. W. Leach, ‘Georgic Imagery in the Ars Amatoria’, TAPA, 95 (1964), p. 142

By this description of Pasiphae Ovid demonstrates that the only thing marking the division/difference between the bull and the Queen is their physical appearance.

and unique use of elegiac pentameter when all other authors of the didactic have used dactylic hexameter. He derides and ridicules the subject matter that defines elegiac poetry, using rhetorical and, sometimes, archaic language and mythological and historical digressions to show off his stylistic technique. If anything one could say that the only thing Ovid takes seriously is his own literary ability and prowess. Ovid, as the magister amoris, purports to be teaching the art of seduction, how to flirt and how to get a woman into bed, ultimately how to be a master in control of this game called love. But I think there is a serious message within the Ars Amatoria that Ovid is determined to convey, one that is loaded with humour: Ovid advises us not to take love too seriously, because after all of the instruction by the master and the effort made by the pupil, at the end of the ‘didactic elegy’86 ‘the game is o’er’87 and it will start all over again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ovid, Ars Amatoria I, ed. A. S. Hollis (Oxford, 2009) Ovid, The Love Poems, trans. A. D. Melville (Oxford University Press, 2008) Copley, F.O., Latin literature from the beginnings to the close of the second century A.D. (Michigan, 1969) Dalzell, A., The Criticism of Didactic Poetry (Toronto, 1996) Durling, R.M., The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic (Cambridge,1965) Gibson, R.K., Excess and Restraint: Propertius, Horace and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (London, 2007) Gibson, R.K., ‘The Ars Amatoria’ in P. E. Knox (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Oxford, 2009) Hollis, A.S., ‘The Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris’ in J. W. Binns (ed.), Ovid (London, 1973) Kelly, D., ‘Courtly love in perspective: the hierarchy of love in Andreas Capellanus’, Traditio, 24 (1968), pp. 119-147

Shulman, ‘Te quoque falle tamen: Ovid’s Anti-Lucretian Didactics’, p.250

Melville (2008), A.A.1.771

Leach, E.W., ‘Georgic Imagery in the Ars Amatoria’, TAPA, 95 (1964), pp. 142-54 Mack, S., Ovid (New Haven, 1988) Myerowitz, M., Ovid’s Games of Love (Michigan, 1985) Shulman, J.,‘Te quoque falle tamen: Ovid’s Anti-Lucretian Didactics’, CJ, 76 (1981), pp. 242-53 Volk, V., Ovid (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Paul and the Subordination of Women in the Early Christian Church Elizabeth Mohen JUNIOR FRESHMAN TSM ENGLISH LITERATURE AND WORLD RELIGIONS & THEOLOGY

It is impossible to deny that religion has been used to justify the subordination of women throughout history. Among the most damning passages in relation to women are those attributed to Paul of Tarsus, who is arguably the most influential figure of the early Christian movement. The implications of accepting these passages at face value are severe. With them, one is able to deny women the right to full participation in the church and justify their oppression in all facets of life. Without them, we are implying that Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teaching on the matter is irrelevant and invalidated. If we are to refuse to accept Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s writings on this subject, then it is impossible to say that the same rejection cannot be applied to anything else in the Bible. Therefore, it is critical that exegetes further explore the passages in question and determine the situations from which they emerged, because it is only by looking at the broader circumstances that one might be able to determine their true meaning and intention. In doing so, one is able to conclude that Paul did not, in fact, condone misogyny, but actually acknowledged and praised active women leaders in the church, centred his teaching around a core messaged that established equality and broke down divisions between all of mankind, and the passages that have been used to repress women for centuries need to be understood, like the rest of his teaching, in regard to the specific situations they were addressing. The Bible is notably androcentric. The writings that we know today as the New Testament are the refined and redacted remnants of a large and varied body of writings about the Christian movement, and are only available to us having first squeezed through a strict patriarchal censor. Even the books that are now suspected to have been written by women would not have escaped the patriarchal mind-set that coloured all language, and so nothing can be excluded from the critical spotlight.188In the books that eventually dominated the struggle to orthodoxy, women are often cast to the side, and when they do appear in a 1

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (Michigan, 1996), p. 48

positive light, it is usually playing a supporting role to the male heroes who are doing God’s real elbow-work. We see this particularly in Acts of the Apostles, where women are typically depicted by Luke as nothing more than wealthy patronesses who are only significant to the Christian movement because of their ability to fund the men. Elsewhere, women are honoured only for their ability to bear children, or worse still, demonized as evil temptresses who caused the downfall of man in the Garden of Eden. This story of Genesis, relaying how Eve was made second to Adam, and how her weak femininity made her so susceptible to Satan, is often cited in the subordination of women. Paul’s explicit declarations on the authority of women and relation to man seem to perpetuate this thought.289 Those who attempt to negate such passages and reimagine Paul’s attitude toward women as positive typically turn to Galatians 3: 27-18, in which he write that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” However, Daly notes that even this hopeful sentiment is firmly rooted in patriarchy. It is impossible to escape the sheer maleness of Jesus of Nazareth, and imagery planted in his name cannot possibly grow toward any sort of androgyny.390Additionally, Elliott notes that, while this may be true “in Christ,” it certainly isn’t the case in the political and social realm.491Theories about women’s equality and women’s education had been floating around philosophical circles for years, but even the theorists themselves were unwilling to put them into practice. By the time Christianity began to blossom, religious justification for the inferiority of women had solidly infiltrated society, much of it stemming from Eve’s transgression at the beginning of time. It was her femininity, her soft vulnerability that caused humankind to submit to temptation and dragged man into ruin. In Judaism, it was not uncommon for men to express their gratitude in prayer that they were not “born a woman.”592With this foundation, it is difficult to imagine a beginning to Christianity that did not bend to the patriarchal traditions surrounding it and from which it essentially emerged. Surprisingly, though, its initial establishment rejected these 2

1 Corinthians 11; 1 Corinthians 14; The Holy Bible, New International Version (Colorado Springs,1973)

Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston, 1993), p. 70

John D. Elliott, What Is Social Scientific Criticism? (Minneapolis, 1993), p. 51

Victor Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issues (Nashville, 1985), p. 85

misogynistic customs. However, as the Christian movement swelled in size, it began to buckle under the old traditions demanding a crackdown on their leniency toward women, and after a couple centuries of attack, the legacy of the women leaders who were so instrumental in the movement’s spread could not help but fade.693However, it is undeniable that the early Christian movement and the teachings spread by Paul opened doors for women that were otherwise firmly shut, and it is indeed possible to strive toward an understanding of Pauline Christianity that is completely aligned with the goals of feminism. As Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza notes, the representation of women in the Bible is only “the tip of the iceberg” depicting the activity of women in the early Christian movement.794In order to seek out the role played by women in the immediate Pauline circle, one must not only examine the literal depiction of women in the Pauline letters, but also search for the implications of word choice, potential mistranslations of the passages that may have occurred, and observe the importance of what was not only mentioned, but what was not mentioned. In doing so, we are able to sketch out a somewhat surprising flurry of female activity within the early Christian movement.895The women in question are so much more than supporting characters in possession of uteruses. They are key players in the movement, highly commended by Paul, and in certain cases, acknowledged to be not only equal to him, but superior. Junia is one such example. Initially translated as “Junius” and thereby characterized for centuries as masculine, she has suffered the indignity of hundreds of years’ worth of mistranslation by interpreters who have fallen prey to patriarchal assumption. Junia was nonetheless commended by Paul as his fellow prisoner and “foremost among the apostles.”996As a diakonos, or minister, of the church at Cenchreae, Phoebe is another notable woman leader in the Christian movement. One can only assume that Phoebe was responsible for all of the duties that come with leading a congregation, and as the only person, male or female, to receive an official letter of recommendation from Paul himself, it must be concluded that she was a fulfilled those duties exceptionally well. Paul was not only aware of the authority she held, but acknowledged and praised it himself, regarding her as not only a diakonos, but a sister and prostasis, which 6

Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 56

Ibid. Ibid., p. 58

Ibid., p. 170

should be translated as effectively meaning “superintendent” or “governor.”1097As his admitted “co-worker” and therefore, his equal, Paul would have expected the Corinthians to respect her leadership and trusted her to maintain the church. He also demonstrates his extreme gratitude and respect towards Priscilla, who along with her husband Aquila, “risked her neck” in her work spreading the gospel. Priscilla and Aquila were most likely converted prior to Paul, and their missionary work rivals, if not surpasses, his own. He relied upon them at the very least to not only house him, but help him establish the bases for his various churches as they travelled around evangelizing. Significantly, when Paul writes of the married couple, he addresses Priscilla first. Fiorenza theorizes that this means Paul held her in even higher regard than her husband.1198Additionally, the Church of Philippi began with the conversion of the businesswoman, Lydia, who dealt in purple goods (Acts 16:15), and a disagreement between Euodia and Syntche had serious enough consequences that Paul took up the matter himself with the aim of reconciliation.1299 This raises the question of both why and how women were able to gain such prominence in the early Christian movement. More women became converts in the early church than did men, as evidenced by later complaints about women having to either marry pagan men or live “in a sort of civil partnership” with Christian slaves, and this was no coincidence.13100Women were attracted to Christianity because it “stood in conflict with the dominant patriarchal ethos of the Greco-Roman world”.14101In the Pauline movement, women were provided with a much better chance of achieving equality with men than there was in contemporary Judaism.1514Wealthy women were also aware that by becoming benefactors to the movement, they could gain the authority that they were so often denied.1615As women were allowed to own and overlook their own property under Roman law and Jewish-Hellenistic custom17102and the Christian movement was rooted in house-churches, women who offered their houses to congregations thus held natural authority within a 10

Ibid., p. 171

Ibid., p. 172

Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issue, p. 102

Ibid., p. 43

Schussler, In Memory of Her, p. 92 Ibid.

sphere that was traditionally their own. Paul’s advisement of chastity and avoiding marriage would have allowed women to escape the rule of a husband, as demonstrated in the Acts of Paul and Thecla.18103 It is difficult to reconcile the important roles played by these women with Paul’s infamous passages, such as 1 Corinthians 14, which reads that, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” This passage must be viewed as uncharacteristic and outof-line with everything else we know of Paul’s teaching. It appears so abruptly that it can be inferred that it was interposed by a later source.19104The very essence of Paul’s teaching does not agree with this passage, and therefore this must be treated with caution and scepticism and as an anachronism. 1 Corinthians 11: 2-16 is also controversial, declaring first of all that “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.” On first reading, this seems to imply woman’s natural subordination. However, it is important to note that woman is referred to as not the image of man, but the glory of man.20105The passage continues, “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” This certainly seems to establish the hierarchical pattern that’s been applied in both the church and society for years. However, this cannot be read as woman having been created for man to serve him, but for his companionship, created to live alongside him as his equal.21106Paul actually refutes the arguments for inequality perpetuated by The Garden of Eden in his conclusion to this statement, saying outright that “For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.” Overall, Paul takes it for granted that women are preaching and prophesying in the church. He assumes that they should and do, and so directs his concern toward how they do it. He is concerned with order in the church and respectability in relation to social customs of the time. 18

Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford, 2003), p. 323

Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issue, p. 91

Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 229

Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issues, p. 92

The Christian movement is not immune to outside traditions and the social context from which it immerged, which explains the pressure on the early Christian movement to accommodate the realities of the patriarchal social world. There was certainly a sense of dissonance caused by women such as Prisca, Lydia, Phoebe, and many more, who “headed households, who ran businesses, and had independent wealth, who travelled with their own slaves and helpers.”22107Some of these women held such power that it would be simply inadequate to imagine them as Paul’s helpers. Paul may even have relied on their authority in order to be accepted into certain communities.23108However, as Christianity spread, this clash with societal norms became increasingly difficult to maintain. In order to continue to grow as a movement, later leaders submitted to the patriarchal society structure, causing women’s gradual subordination into practical nothingness.24109 It is critical that we interpret Paul’s perceived misogynistic stances in light of the circumstances of their writing and his ministry as a whole. By doing so, we are able to establish that Paul’s entirely ministry centred on love and respect for the marginalized, and far from pushing for the subordination of women, he worked ceaselessly for the equality of the sexes and alongside a number of passionate, powerful women.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Daly, Mary, Beyond God the Father (Boston, 1993) Ehrman, Bart D., The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford, 2003) Elliott, John D., What Is Social Scientific Criticism? (Minneapolis, 1993) Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler, In Memory of Her (Michigan, 1996) Furnish, Victor, The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issues (Nashville, 1985) Meeks, Wayne A., The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, 2003)

Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, 2003), p. 24

Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 177

Ibid.

‘As Harsh as Truth and as Uncompromising as Justice’: Daniel O’Connell and his Stance against Slavery, 1824-1847 Colm Mac Gearailt SENIOR SOPHISTER TSM HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE

“We recognise in Daniel O'Connell of Ireland, the champion of religious freedom, the uncompromising advocate of universal emancipation, the friend of the oppressed Africans and their descendants and the unadulterated rights of man.”1 110 In the pantheon of great Irishmen, Daniel O'Connell is a figure who has been vulnerable to changes in public perception. Despite his achievements in raising Irish Catholics up from a subservient position under British rule with the granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and despite promoting the possibility of constitutional change and passive resistance, O'Connell is not remembered in the same vein as later physical-force nationalists such as the military heroes Pádraig Pearse or Michael Collins, being forgotten in the upper echelons of national pride. Not until Barack Obama's memorable speech outside the gates of Trinity College in 2010, in which he referenced O'Connell's importance to his own hero, Frederick Douglass, did Ireland seem to stand up and take notice. Internationally however, O'Connell holds a soaring reputation, in particular with regards his anti-slavery campaigning. By 1840, O'Connell was considered to be one of, if not the most influential abolitionist in the 1

'Resolution, Meeting of Free People of Color,' New York 26 December, 1832, cited in William Lloyd Garrison, The Abolitionist: or Record of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, Volume I (Boston, 1833) 2

See American abolitionists James Fuller, 'Speech at World Anti-Slavery Convention', London 1840, quoted in Patrick Geoghegan, The Liberator (Dublin, 2010), p.205; and John Greenleaf Whittier, 'Historical Papers, part 3', in The Works of Whittier: Old Portraits and Modern Sketches Volume VI., http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9593/pg9593.html, viewed 10/02/13.

The Dictionary of Irish Biography, Vol. 7 (eds.) James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge, 2009), only mentions abolition once in O'Connell’s entry, and in passing (p.197). The 2007 commemorations of the abolition of the slave trade sparked a wave of new scholarship (e.g. Kinealy), and Patrick Geoghegan's Liberator (Dublin, 2011) devotes a chapter exclusively to O'Connell's campaign against slavery.

world.2111An historiographical issue must subsequently be noted with regards the treatment of this topic. Glossed over in most histories of O'Connell to date,3112those which do discuss O'Connell's abolitionist agitation have almost exclusively compared and considered it in relation to his work for Repeal of the Act of Union of 1801, the tensions it caused among the Repeal association, and his agitation's damaging effect upon that campaign.4113Abolition has consequently been intrinsically linked with the latter. This essay will attempt to rectify this by not focusing exclusively on Emancipation or Repeal. It will instead discuss O'Connell's campaigning against slavery in its own light, under its own considerations. It will focus on the theme of O'Connell and slavery under the headings of his castigation of American slave-holding, and his belief in universal liberty and hatred of oppression. It will discuss his rebukes of the Irish in America in the light of his own conception of Irishness, whilst also discussing the conceptualisation of the Irish as slaves themselves under the yolk of British oppression. To understand Daniel O'Connell's stance against slavery, it is first necessary to discuss his castigation of the American slave-holding tradition. American slave-owners were the target of O'Connell's most vitriolic abolitionist agitations. To O'Connell the premise that America had been founded as a safehaven for freedom and liberty according to the Declaration of Independence was negated by their continuation of a system which created “the worst of all aristocracies...that of the human skin.”5114As an “advocate of civil and religious liberty all over the globe”6,115O'Connell subsequently fashioned himself as the enemy of those who chose to perpetuate a system which “would treat human beings as brute beasts of the field” being adamant that “man cannot have property in man.”7116This can be seen notably in an encounter between himself

Christine Kinealy's work Daniel O'Connell and the Anti-Slavery Movement', (Dublin, 2011) in essence a chronology of O'Connell's beliefs and manifestations of anti-slavery, attempts to rectify this juxtaposition. However her work repeatedly aligns the two, especially with regards the impact of O'Connell's refusal to accept money from pro-slavery repealers and its damaging effect on support for repeal in Ireland and America.

Daniel O'Connell, Daniel O'Connell Upon American Slavery; With Other Irish Testimonies (New York, 1860) p.13

6 7

The Liberator, 24 October 1845; Daniel O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p.31 Speech at London Anti-Slavery Society, 1830, in O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p.7

and the Knight of Kerry in 1829. With Catholic Emancipation on the agenda in parliament, O'Connell was asked not to voice any strong opinion against slavery, as the Emancipation Bill was in the power of the West Indian interest group. O'Connell spoke out regardless, arguing that “come liberty, come slavery to myself, I will never countenance slavery, at home or abroad.”8117To O'Connell, what was important was not an insular nationalist agenda, with the sole focus on Emancipation or repeal of the Union,9118but a universal desire for change: My sympathy with distress is not confined within the narrow bounds of my own green island...It extends itself to every corner of the earth...Wherever the miserable is to be succoured and the slave is to be set free, there my spirit is at home.10119

He wanted universal emancipation, liberty, and equality, regardless of the cost to his political popularity. O'Connell's abolitionist agitations began following a meeting with Liverpool Quaker James Cropper in 1824, who was campaigning for a proposal to undermine West Indian slavery. O'Connell supported and voted to pass The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, abolishing slavery in the West Indies, and subsequently lobbied to end the Apprenticeship system which took its place, which effectively continued slavery as before, until 1838.11120Upon entering Westminster as an MP in 1830, and being offered support for Irish issues in return for silence on the slavery issue, O'Connell claimed he would prefer that “my right hand forget its cunning and...my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth before, to help Ireland, I keep silent on the negro question.”12121Though he was criticized and faced entrenched opposition by many, even intermittently amongst his fellow repealers and abolitionists, O'Connell remained a constant champion of human rights and reform, never wavering from his support of abolition.13122At a Dublin meeting of the Loyal National Repeal Association on 29 September 1845, O'Connell consolidated his 8

'Speech at ‘Repeal Association Meeting', 29 Sept. 1845, in Ibid, pp.31-33

A belief which many of his later Young Ireland colleagues maintained, see Kinealy, Daniel O'Connell, p.131

Speech, 29 Sept. 1845, in O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p.31

Kinealy, 'The Liberator: Daniel O’Connell and Anti-Slavery', History Today, 57/12 (2007) http://www.historytoday.com/christine-kinealy/liberator-daniel-o%E2%80%99connell-and-anti-slavery, viewed 26-02-13

12 13

Ibid. Kinealy, Daniel O'Connell p. 167

thoughts and opinions on abolition into a manifesto-like credo. He accepted the personal attacks on his abolitionist stance as welcome as, [W]herever tyranny existed I am the foe of the tyrant. Wherever oppression shows itself, I am the foe of the oppressor; wherever slavery rears its head, I am the enemy of the system or the institution...I am the friend of liberty in every clime, class, and 123 colour.14

This then informed his agitation in America. The United States, in its Declaration of Independence (1776), declared the need to free itself from the tyrannical rule of Britain and establish its own independent state under the principle that “All men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'15124To O'Connell this was a farce. In his eyes, Americans were hypocrites for espousing freedom with one hand and maintaining slaves with the other. At the Great Anti-Colonization meeting in London of 1833, in the immediate aftermath of the passing of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, O'Connell argued with regards America that “it is not the white man,[nor] the copper-coloured man, nor is it the black man alone, who is thus endowed; it is all men who are possessed of these inalienable rights.” Any man who could support slavery in America “has the atrocious [and] murderous injustice, to trample on these inalienable rights...and to appropriate to himself his brother man as if he could be a slave.”125 O'Connell believed the Americans, in their conduct towards their slaves, were “traitors to the cause of human liberty, and foul detractors of the democratic principle...blasphemers to that great and sacred name which they pretend to revere.”17126He held America in contempt for this inconsistency, whilst never failing to agitate through his speeches against the holding of slaves in America. Following the 1833 act abolishing slavery in the British colonies,18127O'Connell's abolitionist attentions turned almost exclusively to 14

Conciliation Hall (Dublin), 29 September, 1845, reprinted in Daniel O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p. 31

Declaration of Independence (1776), http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html,viewed 26-02-13

O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p.10

Speech at the Emancipation Society's Address to Mr. O'Connell, 1835', in Ibid, p.12

Importantly, O'Connell never left Europe. His campaigning was done through his rhetoric, rather than direct action.

America, with special interest being paid to the juxtaposition between the founding principles of their nation and the practices in play. An earlier speech, given in 1829 voiced the charge which O'Connell would level against America over the next two decades: I will say unto you, freemen of America...that God understands you; that you are hypocrites, tyrants, and unjust men; that you are degraded and dishonoured;...[for] boasting of your freedom or your privileges, while you continue to treat men, redeemed by the same blood, as the mere creatures of your will; for while you do so, there is a stain upon your escutcheon which all the waters of the Atlantic cannot wash out.19128

O'Connell was noted for re-using the same speech numerous times until it had lost its power.20129Consequently, the same rhetoric and denunciations of American slave-holders and oppression can be witnessed time and again throughout his public career. However, with their re-publication by Garrison, and also with the continued rise in his stature amongst the abolitionists of America, O'Connell's speeches, though their rhetoric seem strained through repetition, never lost their bite and effect upon readers. As William Lloyd Garrison noted, “They will seethe like lightning, and smite like thunderbolts. No man in the wide world has spoken so strongly against the soul-drivers of this land as O'Connell.”21130This buoying of O'Connell's reputation was consolidated by American Abolitionist James Cannings Fuller who declared that “there is a charm in the name of O'Connell all over the Universe” and who, through his agitations “could do more for the oppression of slavery in the United States than any other man.”22131 The violent rhetoric of O'Connell's speeches was defended by Garrison, who - having received similar criticisms on the severity of his own language argued, “Is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth and as

'Speech Delivered at an Anti-Slavery Meeting in 1829', in O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p.5.

As noted by contemporary journalist William J. O'Neill Daunt, “O'Connell always wears out one speech before he gives another”, quoted in Geoghegan, King Dan: The Rise of Daniel O'Connell, 1775-1829 (Dublin, 2008), p.90. 21

Letter from Garrison to George Benson, 22 March 1842, quoted in Geoghegan, Liberator, p.205

M. R. O'Connell (ed.), The Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, 8 vols. (Shannon and Dublin, 1972-80), Vol. vi, p.383

uncompromising as justice.”23132This abrasive style of oratory was evident, outside of O'Connell's denunciations of American hypocrisy, most noticeably, when he addressed Irish-American support for slavery. Daniel O'Connell, as a champion of liberty, detested any system which placed any nation, race, or religion above another. His subsequently pleaded with the Irish in America not to support slavery in their newly adopted land. As historian J.J. Lee noted, “for O'Connell, there was no contradiction between an Irish urge for freedom and a universal desire for freedom.”242133He viewed slavery as immoral and wrong, and obstinately refused to identify with anyone who supported it. The main technique he employed in his pleas to the IrishAmericans was concerned, not so much with historical events, but more-so with the moral and ethical make-up he believed was intrinsic to the Irish people. For O'Connell, to be Irish meant that one had an instinctive love for equality and an inherited sense of moral justice: “I feel that I have something Irish at my heart, which makes me sympathize with all those who are suffering under oppression.”25134He implored the Irish immigrants in America not to lose touch with this internal sense of justice. The dangers of this were expressed in a later speech by former-slave-turned-Abolitionist Frederick Douglass who stated that “the Irish-American will find out his mistake one day. He will find that in assuming our avocation, he also assumed our degradation.”26135As the selfprofessed representative of the Irish people “who had themselves suffered centuries of persecution because of their attachment to humanity, and to what justice and reason demanded,”27136O'Connell decreed that any Irishman or woman who did not oppose slavery would be recognized as Irish no longer, and that “those who commit and those who countenance the crime of slavery, I regard as the enemies of Ireland, and I desire to have no sympathy or support

William Lloyd Garrison, In editorial “To The Public”, Inaugural issue of 'The Liberator', 1 Jan. 1831, republished in Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 7th Edition, (New York and London, 2007), p.1691 24

J.J. Lee, 'Daniel O'Connell', in Maurice O'Connell (ed.), Daniel O'Connell: Political Pioneer, (Dublin, 1991), p.5

'Speech given at Meeting of the British India Society, London, 1839, O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, pp.17-18 26

Frederick Douglass, 1853, quoted in The Life and Times Of Frederick Douglass (London, 1882), p.441

Ibid, p.30

from them.”28137In what became known as 'the Cincinatti Letter' of 11 October 1843, O'Connell questioned that there must be in America “men of sound heads and Irish hearts”, calling upon them to “join in crushing slavery, and in giving liberty to every man, of every caste, creed, and colour.”29138O'Connell's use of the adjective 'Irish' is interesting. He equated being Irish with loving liberty and freedom, and, consequently, with denouncing slavery. If they did not, or as when Garrison confronted O'Connell about Irishmen who supported slavery in the United States, O'Connell would declaim that “They are not Irishmen! They are bastard Irishmen.”30139 The rhetoric of slavery was also used in relation to Irish Catholics throughout O'Connell's career. To him, Catholic exclusion from political life, as well as their inability to attain the highest positions in the civil service was demonstrative of the inferior position which they were held in under the Union. At a meeting of the Catholic Committee on 24 February 1807, he noted how the government, having abolished the slave trade, should have included a clause in the bill, elevating the Catholics of Ireland from slaves to freemen.31140This argument was given greater weight following the Veto debate of the Catholic Committee over the appointment of Catholic Bishops. In a speech before the Catholic Board, 14 Jan 1814, O'Connell emphatically stated that “I did imagine we had ceased to be white-washed Negroes and had thrown off for them all traces of the colour of servitude.” The power which the British government held over the Catholics of Ireland was considered by O'Connell to be equitable with the position of master and slave. He repeatedly noted the need for action on the part of the oppressed Catholics of Ireland, quoting the poem 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' by Lord Byron,“Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not, who would be free themselves must strike the blow” for this purpose. O'Connell saw the Irish as 'bondsmen', who needed an exertion on their own part to remove the 'shackles' of oppression and emancipate the Catholics. Frederick Douglass, 28

The Times, 14 May 1832, declared the Irish people to be unanimous against slavery.; 'Speech delivered at Meeting of Loyal Repeal Association, 9 May 1843,' in O'Connell, pp. 27-30

‘Address...to the Cincinatti Irish Repeal Association, on the subject of Negro Slavery in the United States of America, 11 Oct. 1842, p.12

William Lloyd Garrison to Theobald Matthew, 5 October 1849, in W. M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames (eds.), The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol III, (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p.671 31

The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 25 March 1807, became law 1 May 1807 and stated that the use of British ships in the Slave Trade “is hereby utterly abolished, prohibited, and declared to be unlawful.” See Patrick Geoghegan, King Dan, pp. 106-7.

during his visit to Ireland in 1845, on the eve of the Great Famine, considered the condition in which the impoverished Catholics existed in Ireland, to be equal if not worse than many plantation slaves in America; “Men and Women...old and young, lie down together in much the same degradation as the American slaves. I see much here to remind me of my former condition.”32141Thus the comparison by O'Connell of the Irish to slaves was not mere rhetoric, but was grounded in the reality of the social conditions in which the poor Catholic tenantry in post-Union Ireland existed. In the aftermath of Catholic Emancipation, O'Connell continued this mode of thinking, calling for assistance for his abolition agitations from the Irish. “He who has liberated himself may have the pleasure of striking off the chain from others.”33142The Irish, now as freed slaves, should, in turn, help others become free. This tied into O'Connell's perception of himself as slave. O'Connell had been born in a country in which the repressive Penal Laws against Catholics were still in place. With the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, O'Connell became one of the first Catholics to be able to become a lawyer, joining the bar in 1794. However, he considered himself still subjected to the domineering anti-Catholic politics of Westminster and the Crown, a slave, under the yolk of British dominance.34143This can be seen clearly by regarding his meeting in London with the Irish-born Archbishop of New York, John Hughes, in 1840. When asked to be less severe in terms of his chastisement of slavery, as he was damaging American support for repeal, O'Connell responded that “it would be strange, indeed, if I should not be the friend of the slave throughout the world, I who was born a slave myself.”35144O'Connell's agitations in America can

Letter from Douglass to W. L. Garrison, 1845, quoted in Kinealy, Daniel O'Connell...p.136

O'Connell to Cork Anti-Slavery Association, September 1830, quoted in Anti-Slavery Reporter' Issue 111:19, (September, 1830) p.391 34

O'Connell declared himself a slave at an anti-Slavery Meeting London, 30 April 1825: The Times, 2 May 1825 35

O'Connell to Archbishop Hughes, in John Hassard, The Life of the Most Reverend John Hughes, First Archbishop of New York, (New York, 1865), reprinted (2008), p.216. This belief was again reiterated during the Repeal debates with Isaac Butt in March 1843. O'Connell quoted Thomas Moore's poem “Oh where is the slave so lowly/ Condemned to chains unholy,” to which, refusing to accept any position of servitude, he responded emphatically: “I AM NOT THAT SLAVE! I will never submit to it.” See John Levi (ed.), A Full and Revised Report of the three days' discussion in the corporation of Dublin of the Repeal of the Union, (Dublin, 1843) p.193

subsequently be seen as stemming from an internal desire for freedom for all, with his own Irish upbringing providing the personal impetus. O'Connell is widely remembered as the Great Liberator of the Catholics of Ireland, who succeeded in elevating them from a position of subservience with the Catholic Emancipation Act of 14 April 1829. He was also however the great advocate for universal abolition. O'Connell fought for liberty, and freedom for the enslaved, all over the world. He castigated the Americans, labelling them perjured hypocrites for “the inconsistency of...talking of freedom while they basely and wickedly continue the slavery of their fellow-men, the negroes of Africa.”36145The Declaration of Independence, the cornerstone of the American constitution, conflicted with the actual practise of slavery in the States, a point O'Connell never failed in making. O'Connell believed also that the Irish, owing to their own history of oppression, were born with an inherent love of freedom. He used this belief to challenge support for slavery amongst the IrishAmericans, as it was firstly an affront to justice, but also an affront to the Irish themselves, who had been, and as his later rhetoric declared, still were, slaves under British misrule. 'King Dan' then was the recognised advocate for universal freedom, vehemently opposing slavery. Closer to home, O'Connell was the man who in leading the Irish Catholics, persuaded them to rise up, to believe in better and to believe that they were more than simply slaves, that they were men.37146

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary: Address, which was read by the Liberator, at the meeting on Wednesday: the Committee to whom the Address from the Cincinnati Irish Repeal Association, on the subject of Negro slavery in the United States of America (1843). Douglass, Frederick, The Life and Times Of Frederick Douglass (London, 1882) Garrison, William Lloyd , The Abolitionist: or Record of the New England AntiSlavery Society, Volume I (Boston, 1833) 36

‘Speech delivered before the London Anti-Slavery Society, 1831', in O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, p.8

Geoghegan, King Dan, Introduction, p.ix.

Levi John (ed.), A Full and Revised Report of the three days' discussion in the corporation of Dublin of the Repeal of the Union, (Dublin, 1843) Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection [pamphlets]: http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/mayantislavery/browse.html Merrill, W.M. and Ruchames, Louis (eds.), The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971-81). O'Connell, Daniel, Daniel O'Connell Upon American Slavery: With Other Irish Testimonies (New York, 1860) O'Connell, Maurice R. (ed.), The Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, 8 vols. (Shannon and Dublin, 1972-80) Whittier, John Greenleaf, The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier: Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, Historical Papers, Etc. (Boston, 1892) Newspapers: Anti-Slavery Reporter Dublin Evening Post, Freemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journal The Liberator The Times

Secondary: Baym, Nina et al. (eds.), Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 7th Edition (New York and London, 2007) Geoghegan, Patrick M., King Dan: The Rise of Daniel O'Connell, 1775-1829 (Dublin, 2008) ----, Liberator: The Life and Death of Daniel O'Connell, 1830-1847 (Dublin, 2010) Hassard, John, The Life of the Most Reverend John Hughes, First Archbishop of New York, (New York, 1865), reprinted (2008) Kinealy, Christine, Daniel O'Connell and the Anti-Slavery Movement: The Saddest People the Sun Sees (Dublin, 2011)

-----, 'The Liberator: Daniel O’Connell and Anti-Slavery', History Today, 57/12(2007) http://www.historytoday.com/christine-kinealy/liberator-danielo%E2%80%99connell-and-anti-slavery Lee, J.J., 'Daniel O'Connell', in O'Connell, Maurice R. (ed.), Daniel O'Connell: Political Pioneer (Dublin, 1991) McGuire, James and Quinn, James (eds.), Dictionary of Irish Biography, 9 vols (Cambridge, 2009) 'Historical Papers, part 3', in The Works of Whittier: Old Portraits and Modern Sketches Volume VI., http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9593/pg9593.html, viewed 10/02/13. Fergus O’Ferrall, Daniel O’Connell (Dublin, 1981). Owens, Gary, 'Nationalism Without Words: Symbolism and Ritual Behaviour in the Repeal Monster Meetings of 1843-5', in Donnelly Jr, James S., and Miller, Kerby A., (eds.), Irish Popular Culture 1650-1850 (Dublin, 1998). Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Ulster and Slavery (Belfast: PRONI), http://www.proni.gov.uk/ulsterandslavery-3.pdf, Rodgers, Nini, Ireland, Slavery,and Anti-Slavery: 1612-1865 (London, 2007)

Griffith’s Alternative: The Origins of Early Sinn Féin’s Dual-Monarchy Policy Martin McAndrew POSTGRADUATE MA MODERN IRISH HISTORY

Arthur Griffith is probably the most neglected of Irish revolutionaries. Having had the misfortune to pair a (comparatively) uneventful life with an uneventful death, he is now chiefly remembered as the leader of the Irish delegation which signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and as the man who predeceased Michael Collins; his demise having been subsumed into the context of that greater national tragedy. But this ignominious legacy belies that fact that for the first two decades of the twentieth century, Griffith was one of the architects of political events in Ireland. Indeed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during one of the frequent lulls along the journey towards Irish self-determination, Griffith stepped onto the political stage to present his dual-monarchy policy as an alternative constitutional arrangement, to toe the often-blurred line between constitutional and physical force nationalism and progress the cause of Irish legislative independence. The policy was given final form in his 1904 pamphlet, The Resurrection of Hungary, but it is possible to trace the evolution of the policy through his writings in The United Irishman, the newspaper he edited from 1899. What follows is a demonstration that Griffith pursued the dual-monarchy policy as a conscious effort to occupy a new ideological space at a time when established ideologies were proving both ineffective and unpopular. By examining the preexisting political movements in Ireland at the start of the twentieth century, namely Home Rule embodied by the Irish Parliamentary Party; and physical force republicanism represented by the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood, it becomes evident that to a contemporary observer neither seemed likely to achieve their desired outcome. It will be demonstrated that Griffith himself came to reject these political ideologies in favour of the dual-monarchy policy and the initial non-violent principles of the first Sinn Féin movement. Though the phrase ‘dual-monarchy’ itself is well known, the terms and origin of that arrangement are not. Griffith supported an Irish mirror to the ‘Ausgleich’ (‘compromise’) between Austria and Hungary. In 1867, Austria 45

conceded Hungary’s right to a distinct sovereign identity following a prolonged period of passive resistance. The Hungarian elected representatives, led by Franz Deak, had declined to attend the Imperial Diet in Vienna and had instead set up an alternative parliamentary assembly in Budapest. Though the march of Hungarian history cannot be detailed here, it is sufficient to say that the Ausgleich established a dual-monarchy.1147Hungry regained its status as a separate kingdom. The throne was to be occupied by the same monarch as in Austria but the countries retained separate legal and legislative identities and political structures. Griffith drew parallels with Ireland in this regard. He felt that the pre-Union Irish parliament under the 1782 constitutional settlement of King, Lords and Commons of Ireland (Grattan’s Parliament’) remained its sole legitimate governing body.2148Griffith proposed that the Irish MPs follow the Hungarian example and withdraw from the House of Commons and, together with representatives of the local authorities, set up a ‘Council of Three Hundred’ to act as the legislature of Ireland and to eventually force Britain to recognize Ireland’s innate right to self-government. Griffith saw the pre-union parliament as having given Ireland parity with Britain. As the satirist Jonathan Swift—a champion of Irish autonomy in the Eighteenth century—3149had once stated; ‘the people of England, having obliged themselves to have the same monarch as us, we oblige ourselves to have the same monarch with them.’4150 The parallels between Ireland and Hungary were irresistible to Griffith. Hungarians, being largely ethnically Slavic, differed from the Austrians culturally and linguistically. An Austrian, Griffith argued, is as much an alien in Hungary as he is in France or England and that the Hungarians’ distinctiveness, their cultural and ethnic ‘otherness’ had given them legitimate right and cause to secede from the Austrian Empire,5151so too, did the Celtic Irish differ from their Saxon neighbours and presented to them justification to withdraw from the United Kingdom. Cultural distinctiveness was very much a 1 2

R.P. Davis, Arthur Griffith and Non-Violent Sinn Féin, (Dublin, 1974), pp.114-116 Arthur Griffith, The Resurrection of Hungary; A Parallel for Ireland, ed. Patrick Murray (Dublin, 2003) p.84

R.M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Féin (Dublin, 1972), p.7

United Irishman, 23 July 1904

Griffith, Resurrection, pp.88-89

part of the political discourse as the nineteenth century drew to a close and Ireland underwent a cultural revival. For Griffith, a distinctive Irish literature and art was not only desirable politically, but was an expression of Ireland’s cultural distinctiveness. W.B Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen, for example, despite earning the condemnation of the Cardinal Primate in Armagh was given a spirited defense in the United Irishman.6152 The relationship between Yeats and Griffith itself is indicative of this; ‘Yeats is Irish literature, and Irish belief, and Irish faith, hope and aspiration. In every properly governed and sensible community, the people would spend half their time making, reading and comprehending poetry.’7153But though cultural and historical parallels with Hungary could be identified, the contemporary political climate and its many faults were the more convincing argument for the alternative political policy. Not least among these faults being the impotence of Home Rule politics. In 1893 the House of Lords, resting on their red leather laurels, had punctuated Liberal benevolence to Ireland by defeating the second Home Rule bill. The continued existence of this Conservative-dominated chamber, within the framework of the contemporary constitution was enough to ensure Home Rule was off the agenda. The facts that the next general election returned control of the House of Commons to the Conservatives, and that the new Liberal leader, Lord Rosebery viewed the divisive Home Rule issue with distaste only salted the wound further.8154The Conservative alternative to legislative independence for Ireland, a series of concessions aimed at ‘Killing Home Rule with Kindness’, whilst in itself a positive and thoroughly practical policy, with some varied degrees of success,9155lacked the symbolism a devolved assembly in Dublin would have commanded, and which had captured the Irish imagination. Though the decade of undignified squabbling between the various factions of the Irish party resulting from the Parnellite split in 1891 had left the Irish Parliamentary Party’s MPs ineffective in the Commons, even a unified party would have struggled to make an impression in that House in the 1890s. Home 6

United Irishman, 13 May 1899

7 8

Davis, Non-Violent Sinn Féin, p.13 Ciarán Ó Dúibhir,, Sinn Féin, The First Election,1908 (Manorhamilton, 1993), p.7

N.S. Mansergh, The Irish Question 1840-1921 (3rd ed. London, 1975), p.255

Rule only ever seriously entered onto the political stage when the Irish party held the balance of power in the Commons. Unassailable parliamentary majorities meant that the ‘Irish Question’ would not be given an answer. This failure of the Home Rule party had undoubtedly frustrated many nationalists back home and the dual-monarchy policy presented a proactive alternative to the niceties of the current policy. To Griffith, the ‘eighty Irishmen in the British House of Commons are no match for the six hundred Britishers opposed to them’.10156Rather than waiting for the electoral tides to present the Irish with the numbers that they needed, they could simply begin the work of legislating for themselves. He urged the public to reject Home Rule: ‘we call upon our countrymen abroad to withdraw all assistance from the promoters of a useless, degrading and demoralizing policy until such time as the members of the Irish parliamentary party substitute for it the policy of the Hungarian deputies of 1861’.11157 Even more vulnerable was the policy of Home Rule itself. The Gladstonian Home Rule model was a form of devolved government that though radical then has since become the norm within the United Kingdom. The second bill in particular, continually restated the primacy of the Imperial Parliament. Home Rule also necessitated the retention of Irish MPs in the Commons. It is important then to bear in mind that Home Rule was not dissolution of the United Kingdom as one monarchical entity, nor an attempt to repeal the Act of Union that had brought that kingdom into being.12158The crux of the matter for Griffith though, who held Grattan’s Parliament in reverence, was that Home Rule was not only not enough for Ireland, but that the entire Act of Union had been illegal in the first place. The Renunciation Act of 1783 had made the Irish Parliament masters in their own house. It was a declaration by the British Parliament that only laws passed by the Parliament of Ireland were valid there and that Westminster no longer had any claim to legislative jurisdiction over the country. For Griffith, the Act of Union was a direct contravention of this. He claimed that Westminster was breaking its own rules in accepting Irish MPs and Lords and those Irish parliamentarians were themselves in turn committing an illegal 10

United Irishman, 1 November 1902

Ibid, 1 November 1902

Alan O’Day, Irish Home Rule 1867-1921 (Manchester, 1998), pp.319-22

act.13159The fact that Irish representatives had been attending the UK parliament for over a century did not, in his view make this any less illegal and in fact the text of the Renunciation Act was even included as an appendix to the third edition of The Resurrection of Hungary in 1918 .14160 While this argument is interesting, he was ignoring one vital aspect of British constitutional practice, namely the ‘Transcendent competence of Parliament.’15161This in essence is the principle whereby any Parliament can simply repeal or counter through new legislation any Act it has previously passed or any enactment of its predecessors. The British government in 1801 was not bound by the previous 1783 decision to leave Ireland to the Irish.16162The dual-monarchy policy, then, was not simply an attempt to supplant the current constitutional movement but an attempt to correct the focus of constitutionalism away from the illegitimate (and ineffective) Home Rule towards a former historical model which had, in his view, the greater constitutional legitimacy. Though never a mass movement, the other nationalist philosophy in Ireland at the turn of the century was the ever-present threat of violent republicanism. The Irish Republican Brotherhood remained a constant shadowy presence on the margins of Irish politics. Writing in the early 1970s, R.P. Davis was keen to place the origins of Griffith’s early Sinn Fein party in a position where they would be free from the legacy of the Troubles that had erupted in Northern Ireland.17163As tempting as the idea of a pacifistic Griffith is, his own writings betray it as inaccurate. Though it is debated when (or indeed if) he left the Brotherhood, no one disputes the fact that Griffith himself was a member of the IRB.18164Nor indeed does it appear that he feared violence. Though lacking a glorification of bloodshed, his writings certainly do not denounce the idea of military action. Rather it was the futility of such action that drew him away from advocating it as a solution to the current political situation. In March 1901 13 14

Henry, Evolution, p.52 The Resurrection of Hungary 3rd ed, (Dublin, 1918)

Nicholas Manseragh, Unresolved Question; The Anglo-Irish Settlement and its Undoing (London,1991), p.24

Mansergh, Irish Question, p.249

Davis, Non-Violent Sinn Féin, p.xi.

V. E Glandon, Arthur Griffith and the Advanced Nationalist Press, Ireland 1900-1922 (New York, 1985), p.84

he wrote that ‘we believe that the four-and-a-quarter millions of unarmed people in Ireland would be no match in the field for the British Empire: if we did not believe so … our proper residence would be in a padded cell’.19165Griffith had spent almost two years in South Africa and the fate of the Boers had taught him a valuable lesson.20166Military action was not out of the question for the future, however: ‘We cannot drive the English out of the country by force of arms at present, since we have neither the morale, the discipline nor the leaders necessary for such a desirable object. We do not despair of acquiring them in the future.’21167 Griffith’s Sinn Fein was an organization that did not particularly revel, at least not overly so, in Ireland’s military and revolutionary past. And certainly the dual-monarchy was a consciously non-violent alternative. But it was ultimately Ireland’s inability to fight, and the need to lure the Irish party away from London that informed this decision and led him to advocate for passive resistance. His first editorial in the United Irishman was a classic example of Griffith’s attempts to reconcile military and parliamentary nationalism. It ended with ‘Lest there might be doubt, in any mind, we will say that we accept the nationalism of ’98, ’48 and ’67 as the true nationalism and Grattan’s cry of “live Ireland— perish the Empire!” as the watchword of patriotism.’22168For a statement intended to end any doubt, it was, by mentioning in one breath both the revolutions of the previous century and the hero of Irish Parliamentary achievement, remarkably ambiguous. One of Griffith’s biographers has commented that he ‘gave to the Irish nation a coherent and rational philosophy. He put forward his Sinn Féin programme as the inclusive compound of all the Irish Traditions.’23169The dualmonarchy policy was indeed a conscious, if only quasi-historical, alternative to the established political activities. It aimed to reignite the drive for Irish independence at a time when Home Rule was lost in the parliamentary wilderness and in that pre-1916 world where physical force nationalism had yet 19

United Irishman, 30 March 1901

Brian Maye, Arthur Griffith (Dublin 1997,) p.85

United Irishman, 28 Mar 1903

United Irishman, 4 Mar 1899.

Sean Ó Lúing, forward to Maye, Arthur Griffith, p.v

to capture popular approval. Though himself a republican by instinct and inclination; ‘the time has passed since Jehovah anointed Kings’,24170faced with a military impossibility and an unwilling electorate, he formulated a policy which was ‘intended to be broad enough to hold all Irishmen who believe in Irish Independence, whether they be republicans or whether they be not. Republicanism as republicanism has no necessary connection with Irish Nationalism … what the form of an Irish national government should be is an interesting but not a material question. It is the thing itself that Ireland wants.’25171 It is largely idle to wonder whether his hopes that advocating the once existent legislature of Kings, Lords and Commons of Ireland would have ultimately enticed constitutional nationalists away from the untried formula of Home Rule had the Irish Parliamentary Party not once again held the balance of power in the Commons from 1910. But his dual-monarchy policy, specifically the abstentionist aspect, found vestigial expression in the aftermath of the 1916 rising. Consider the first Dáil; that assembly was little more than the Sinn Fein deputies’ mimicking their Hungarian counterparts of eighty years before. Consider the Irish Free State; how different was Dominion status from the Ausgleich? The answer is of course, only minutely. Though he has received less than the acclaim of his contemporaries during the Irish revolution his proposal to weaponise the machinery of parliamentary politics has secured his contribution to Irish history. The dual-monarchy expression found an unlikely parallel in the decades following his death. The Statute of Westminster gave to the Commonwealth legislative autonomy and severed any links with the Imperial Parliament, save the common head of state. It may not be too great a stretch of the imagination to wonder, given what we know about the Irish delegations’ performances at imperial conferences,26172how much of this autonomy was realized as a consequence of the actions of men who came to political maturity on a diet of Griffith’s political writings.

United Irishman, 22 April 1899

Sinn Féin, 18 May 1907 F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1971), pp.508-9

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary: United Irishman Secondary: Davis, R.P., Arthur Griffith and Non-Violent Sinn Féin (Dublin, 1974) Glandon, V.E., Arthur Griffith and the Advanced Nationalist Press, Ireland 1900-1922 (New York, 1985) Griffith, Arthur, The Resurrection of Hungary; A Parallel for Ireland, ed. Patrick Murray (Dublin, 2003) Henry, R.M., The Evolution of Sinn Féin (Dublin, 1972) Lyons, F.S.L., Ireland since the Famine (London, 1971) Mansergh, N.S., The Irish Question 1840-1921 (3rd ed. London, 1975) Maye, Brian, Arthur Griffith (Dublin 1997) O’Day, Alan, Irish Home Rule 1867-1921 (Manchester, 1998) Ó Dúibhir, Ciarán, Sinn Féin, The First Election,1908 (Manorhamilton, 1993)

Patterns of Revolutionary Violence in Ireland and Algeria Jack Sheehan SENIOR SOPHISTER SINGLE HONOURS HISTORY

Why compare Ireland and Algeria? The two wars took place some thirty years apart, on different continents, and involved different empires. Yet the patterns of violence in Revolutionary Ireland found many echoes in Algeria. The rhythm of attack-and-reprisal, assassination-and-execution seemed as familiar in North Africa as in West Cork. There are many striking parallels in the pre-war status of the two nations, and in many respects Ireland and Algeria took similar revolutionary paths, at least on the surface. Ireland occupied a similarly idiosyncratic place within the British Union as Algeria did within France’s empire. Ireland was in the United Kingdom, but not of it, being a separate landmass. In many respects it was still regarded as a colonial possession. This led to the puzzling situation of a zone in the empire with both parliamentary representation and a Lord Lieutenant. Algeria was regarded, at least in theory, as an integral part of the French nation, despite its distance from the mainland and the strict limitation of citizenship rights to the European settler minority.1173In both cases a broad-based separatist movement gained legitimacy and widespread support for their cause, despite initial fracturing on the nationalist side.2174Both movements splintered shortly after an independence settlement was made with the occupying power. The revolutionary conflicts in both nations were marked by similar modes of violence: irregular attacks, escalating assault-and-reprisal cycles, extensive civilian violence and torture on both sides. The response from the colonial power was excessive and disproportionate in both cases, and there was a similar unwillingness to acknowledge that anything other than a particularly large and bloody police action was taking place.3175

Lizbeth Zack, “Who Fought the Algerian War? Political Identity and Conflict in French-Ruled Algeria”, in International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall, 2002), pp. 55-97, p.88

Bill Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, Oxford, 2007, p.18

The French state did not acknowledge the 1954-1962 conflict in French Algeria as a ‘war’ until 1999. Nancy Gallagher, “Learning Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence”, Middle East Report , No. 225 (Winter, 2002), pp. 44-49, p.47

Of course, disproportionate is a relative term. Ireland and Algeria do not provide a very good numerical comparison. The war in North Africa was much longer and claimed far, far more lives, even considering Algeria’s larger population.4176While both conflicts caused some amount of public outcry and political turmoil back in the homeland, the level of violence that the English people were willing to tolerate, and the level of blood and treasure they were willing to invest, was much lower than that of the French nation. The consequences of the war for France were grave. Aside even from the lives lost and the psychological scars of fighting a dirty and polarizing war, the conflict led in large part to the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, and a full scale military coup d’etat was averted only by a slightly more constitutional takeover by Charles De Gaulle.5177 There are however, patterns of violence that occur in both Algeria and Ireland. In most cases Revolutionary Ireland suffered under a less virulent strain of the disease, but still carried its unmistakable scars. The French Algerian war is notorious for the use of torture on both sides.6178Particularly after the 1968 amnesty for all crimes committed during the conflict by serving members of the French military, many former French soldiers came forward to admit their complicity in what was already common knowledge. Torture on the part of the French Army was widespread, and took place on a massive scale.7179The justification typically given for its use is that such inhuman tactics were necessary to win such an irregular war.9180A key element of this argument is the so-called ‘ticking time-bomb defense’.8181The idea that torture is justified in

Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, p.21. Approximately 1 million people were killed in the Algerian Revolution (out of a population of ~10m), against about 10,000 in Ireland (out of population of ~3m).

Andrea Smith, “Place Replaced: Colonial Nostalgia and Pied-Noir Pilgrimages to Malta”, in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Aug., 2003), pp. 329-364, p.333

Torture in the Algerian War and its effects have been represented in French film several times, from Jean Luc Goddard’s seminal 1963 work ‘Le Petit Soldat’, to more recent works like ‘L'Ennemi intime’ (2007). French popular culture seems at times haunted by its memory. 7

Tzvetan Todorov and Arthur Denner, “Torture in the Algerian War”, in South Central Review , Vol. 24, No. 1, On Torture (Spring, 2007), pp. 18-26, p.19 8

Ibid.

Ibid. This concepts asks the hypothetical question of whether one would torture a suspect to find the location of a bomb that will cause enormous loss of life. The ‘ticking time-bomb defense’ turns up repeatedly in the canon of torture apologia, from Bush administration OLC lawyer John Yoo’s infamous ‘Torture Memos’, to depositions given to the ‘Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas’ (National Commission on the

situations in which it can prevent a greater loss of life held much sway among the French military at the time. Both concepts were stunningly misguided. Not only did torture not win the war, it contributed hugely to France’s defeat, by making the French state a barbarous existential enemy in the eyes of the Algerian people. It created a situation in which the only way that Algeria could be held was with a totalitarian state backed by many multiples of the already enormous troop numbers deployed. Even aside from the obvious appalling moral odiousness of using such a tactic, the number of situations in which torture prevents an imminent loss of life is practically nil, and the negative national psychological effects of its use far outweigh the benefits.10182As General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa put it during the abduction of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, ‘Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction of torture.’11183 The question of course arises: did such events occur in Ireland? The answer is a qualified yes. Certainly, state forces and the IRA were responsible for acts of torture during the revolutionary period.12184The forces of the British Crown were far more systematic in their use of this tactic, and the British command less likely to condemn such actions than IRA GHQ.13185A comparison of the actions of the British forces with those of the French is at once productive and misleading. Torture, it might be argued, is torture. Whatever the level of state complicity in such acts, they occurred. Yet here is a distinction that occurs with great frequency in comparison of these two nations: that between complicity and action. Torture in Algeria was encouraged; was close to official

Disappearance of Persons) after the passing of the military junta in Argentina, to the long running Fox television show ‘24’. 10

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Translated by Constance Farrington, Paris, 1961, (This Edition, London, 2001), p.215. Fanon (Himself both a participant in the Algerian war and a psychiatrist) outlines a theory of the negative psychological effects of violence, and recounts the damaged psyche of several torturers in their attempt to return to civilian life.

Quoted in the 1984 “National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons” (Argentina) http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_002.htm

Gerald Murphy, The Year of Disappearances, Political Killings in Cork, 1921 - 1922, Dublin, 2010, p.37. Murphy gives one account of a protestant man (or possibly boy, evidence suggests he may have been 15-16 at the time) referred to as Mr.Parsons who was tortured by the IRA by slow hanging for information on local informers. 13

D.M. Leeson, The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 19201921, Oxford, 2011, p.55

policy.14186Torture in Ireland was ignored, and even then not for especially long.15187Moreover, widespread torture of civilians did not occur in Ireland, and even the most depraved of Black and Tan soldier could scarcely match the brutality described by one French soldier, in which a man’s daughter was brought into the interrogation room and forced to torture her father.16188 Interestingly, the Algerian and Irish examples provide parallels in the form of the previous experience of those engaged in counter-insurgent warfare. The Tans and Auxiliaries were famously populated by men who had served in the most psychologically scarring conflict in history to that point, the First World War.17189The oft repeated lie about them being the ‘scum of British jails’ was nothing but nationalist propaganda, but it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that such an experience of war coloured the responses of men untrained in police work to the irregular and clandestine attacks they experienced in Ireland. As for the French military, they faced, if possible, even more problematic legacies. Large numbers of those serving in Algeria had previously fought in the disastrous colonial rearguard action in French Indochina. Memories of that ignominious defeat could arguably have had a huge effect on the willingness of the French military to resort to extreme tactics to maintain the integrity of what was then considered the French nation.18190Deeper still than this shadow was the memory of serving in the French Resistance during the Second World War. A non-trivial amount of soldiers had this experience, and a certain number had first-hand knowledge of what it was like to experience torture.19191This elicited a variety of responses, from disgust with the similarities between French actions and those of the Gestapo, to a bitter and hardened acceptance of this new reality of war. Indeed, some of the most enthusiastic torturers were those who had been on the receiving end of it at the hands of the SS.20192It is difficult to take much of a conclusion from this without a more 14

James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War, Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria, Philadelphia, 2001, p.159 15

Leeson, The Black and Tans, p.224

Todorov and Denner, Torture in the Algerian War, p.23

Leeson, The Black and Tans, p.68-69

Todorov and Denner, Torture in the Algerian War, p.20

Ibid.

Ibid, p.21 One Sergeant Samson, whose father had served in the Free French, remarked, “The FLN guys, they were the Resistance.” Examples of those who had experienced torture participating in it are found on p.22.

detailed study of the psychological effects of employing military veterans in police action and counter-insurgency. Perhaps the only obvious conclusion is that shared experience is no guarantee of shared empathy. One area in which there is considerable divergence between the two experiences on the surface is that of counter-revolutionary violence. The history is far easier to parse in Algeria, where an organised, documented, underground counter-insurgent group called the ‘Organisation de l’armée secrete’ was formed in response to a referendum on Algerian independence held by the government of Charles de Gaulle (by then President of the newly-minted Fifth Republic) in 1961.21193This group was comprised of existing hardline Algerian settler paramilitary organisations who banded together in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the imminent transfer of power to the FLN, and the native Algerian people.22194Their chosen method was a short, but astoundingly bloody, campaign of bombings, massacres and political assassinations both in Algeria and France. Some records claim that the number of civilians killed in Algiers as a result of OAS actions in their short lifetime exceeded those killed by the FLN throughout the entire war.23195There is perhaps a comparison to be made between the OAS campaign and that of the Irregulars in the Irish Civil War. Certainly, there is the same idea that an excess of violence would draw all parties back into an interminable war, and prevent the outcome so desperately feared.24196It is a tenuous connection, however, and any link between the AntiTreaty IRA and the OAS ignores fundamental issues of identity, place and ideology. Is there then an Irish equivalent to the OAS to which a more useful comparison can be made? Some historical work would suggest so, particularly that of what might be termed the ‘Nationalist’ school of history. Countless exIRA men and others claimed the existence of a shadowy counter-revolutionary group working against the cause. It was variously named the ‘Anti-Sinn Féin Society’, the ‘Anti-Sinn Fein League’, the ‘Protestant Action Group’, the ‘Unionist Anti-Partition Lodge’ and various other monikers that combined the 21

Zack, Who Fought the Algerian War?, p.87

Ibid, p.87

Gallagher, Learning Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence, p.45

Ibid, p.47. Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, p.3

hated pro-British groups with awkward syntax.25197However, there is almost no documentary evidence to suggest that any such grassroots organisation existed.26198It is impossible to imagine a group with such power, influence and organisation leaving behind no trace of itself, particularly in YMCA records, Orange Lodge records and similar organisations.27199As such, we must conclude that these organisations did not exist. Why then, has the myth been so persistent? It is tempting to chalk it up to IRA propaganda designed to justify the questionable killings of some (mostly Protestant) civilians during and after the war of independence. The answer, I would argue, is more complex. Firstly, we must look at who benefitted from the idea that such organisations existed. Obviously, the IRA benefitted, but the British forces did as well. The idea that independent and self-starting grassroots counter-revolutionary groups operated in Ireland served a dual purpose for the British government. One, it legitimised their presence in a country that was rejecting it on increasingly violent terms. Two, the concept allowed the British military to keep their hands clean of the very worst atrocities committed in their name.28200The ASFS was a convenient clearinghouse for any military action that needed to be quickly disavowed before the more liberal sections of the British press excoriated them for it. Indeed, the connection is deeper than this. Often ignored in the history of the Tans and Auxiliaries is the fact that a reasonable number of Irish, and often local, men served in these brigades.29201They also served in covert British murder squads, created at the darkest part of the conflict to counter IRA groups such as Collins’ ‘Squad’. In addition, many clandestine RIC operations were carried out in civilian disguise.30202As such, the IRA can perhaps be forgiven for creating a phantom enemy where none existed. The ASFS, if they could be said to have existed, were entirely state-sponsored and as such are more usefully viewed as an extension of crown forces, perhaps the 25

Murphy, The Year of Disappearances, p.76

Ibid. Membership of or assistance to is never mentioned, for example, in the claims for compensation submitted by those who lost property as a result of IRA attacks.

Ibid, p.84

Ibid, p.82

Ibid, p.78. The burning of Cork was especially sectarian in nature, and many local Orangemen served in the ‘K Coy’ division of the Auxiliaries.

Ibid, p.76

most egregious of them. The crucial distinction is between an actual grassroots organisation of anti-SF militants and the recruitment of some locals with antiSF sympathies into British murder squads; conceived, founded and funded by the British government. It suited the purposes of both the IRA and the British government for the ASFS to exist. It did not however, suit several vulnerable groups living in Ireland, and most particularly in Cork. Much has been written in recent years about the killing of non-combatants in Cork. Historians like Peter Hart have highlighted the sectarian nature of some of the killings, and the seemingly senseless nature of others.31203A nationalist reading of history would suggest that those killed were ‘spies and informers’ or in some way assisting the British crown, and therefore legitimate targets for assassination.32204Few would take issue with the fact that at least some of those killed were targeted mistakenly, or for other reasons than stated. I would suggest that there was a certain unconscious synthesis involved in the killing of civilians in Cork. To the IRA, operating in a field where RIC members commonly used civilian disguises, where reprisals were carried out with increasing brutality, where known local protestants had joined British-created forces, some level of indiscriminate killing was inevitable. Orangemen, Freemasons, members of the local YMCA or other traditionally loyalist organisation and even plain protestants were at severe risk of being identified as a ‘spy’, or simply part of the ‘garrison’, and summarily shot.33205 The chaotic and uncontrolled nature of IRA warfare is widely acknowledged, and the killings became more indiscriminate the farther down the command chain one went. Much of the activity that took place in Cork and elsewhere was never sanctioned by the IRA GHQ, and indeed they condemned many attacks severely.34206A parallel vision of Irish Pied Noirs was created, and it certainly held sway among some on the ground, with deadly results. It is to the credit of the leaders of the IRA however, that they were an avowedly non31

See Peter Hart, The IRA at War 1916 - 1923, Oxford, 2003, particularly p.80, p.223 and p.239

Meda Ryan, Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter, Cork, 2003, p.283

Murphy, The Year of Disappearances, p.82

Hart, The IRA at War, p.245-246. Hart, for all the controversy over his ‘revisionist’ methods, provides an excellent account of the way in which the condemnation of sectarian violence from, and staunchly non-sectarian ideology of the IRA and SF, controlled sectarian violence at levels far below what could be considered ‘eliminationist’ or ‘mass murder’.

sectarian organisation and often spoke of the place of settled protestants and Anglo-Irish in the new Irish republic. These statements are often viewed as empty rhetoric in light of some of the outrages against protestant communities, but they arguably prevented a much greater catastrophe. Had they demurred, or even encouraged such violence, the result would have been a twofold disaster. Firstly, local IRA units would have had a freer hand, and the impetus, to eliminate a now official enemy group. Secondly, it could well have led to the formation of a real ASFS, an Irish OAS to add yet more bodies to the count of the Irish Revolution. There was an exodus of protestants both during and after the war, but nothing on the scale of the almost total disappearance of 1 million Europeans from post-war Algeria.35207 This is not to either absolve the IRA of any wrongdoing or to excoriate the FLN for their failure to conciliate with the settler class. The Pied Noirs were far more of a traditional dominant settler class, enjoying a great deal more constitutional, agrarian and economic hegemony than the fortune-faded, harmless and broadly integrated southern Protestant and Anglo-Irish class.36208Furthermore, the extraordinary level of brutality on the part of the OAS, as well as the French army, probably made the departure of the Pied Noirs inevitable. It could even be argued that for a disenfranchised and broadly invisible Algerian Muslim underclass, not only a decolonisation of land, politics and capital was necessary, but a decolonisation of the self. A connected concept is the idea of a ‘liberal decolonisation’ versus a ‘revolutionary decolonisation’. This is the distinction between an ideology of decolonisation that wishes to gain equality and respect and one which repudiates utterly the values and structures of the centre colonial power.37209Acts of violence against the dominant settler class are sometimes viewed as a means of establishing one’s humanity, and entering a period of ‘true’, revolutionary decolonisation.38210It is hard to picture 35

Murphy, The Year of Disappearances, p.73. For example, a record from one Alice Holder records that after the Dunmanway killings ’For two weeks there wasn’t standing room on any of the boats or mail trains leaving Cork for England.’ According to Hart, The IRA at War, p.223, ‘Between 1911 and 1926 the twenty-six counties that became the Irish Free State lost 34 percent of their Protestant population.’ This number was not even close to fully accounted for by the departure of the ‘garrison’ of soldiers, sailors and British civil officials after 1922. 36

Zack, Who Fought the Algerian War?, p.56. Hart, The IRA at War, p.229 calls the Protestant community in Cork ‘passive’ and ‘politically inert’. He points out that they were often just as disgusted with the excesses of Tan and Auxie violence as any ardent nationalist. 37

Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, p.29

George Ciccarello-Maher, “Jumpstarting the Decolonial Engine: Symbolic Violence from Fanon to Chavez”, Theory & Event 13, no.1 (2010), p.86

the Irish people, buoyed by a cultural revival, expectant of a peaceful Home Rule settlement and already enjoying a good deal of political and economic power, as such a severely oppressed group. This is especially true in light of the conservative level of upheaval that followed the British exit, and the continuity in governmental and civil services. This may account for the divergent paths of bitterness, violence and exodus. That said, it is possible to identify traces of the same violent decolonial zeal among IRA fighters, but nowhere was it officially sanctioned and never did it approach the kind of unified ideology that Frantz Fanon outlined in ‘The Wretched of the Earth’.39211 A comparison of Ireland and Algeria thus becomes more useful for its differences than its similarities. Asking the question of why the two nations took divergent paths during and after their respective revolutionary wars tells us more than drawing surface parallels. What points can be taken in conclusion? Firstly, a long-term decolonial war can be destructive to the political, social and moral health of the homeland, as well as leaving deep scars on the newly decolonised state. Secondly, any pattern of violence achieves more potency when it is official policy, whether of the state or of the rebel force. As such, even token resistance to torture or sectarian killing can have enormous effects in reducing their occurrence. Thirdly, the deeper the level of colonisation goes, and the lower the level of freedom extended to the colonised underclass, the greater the level of violence involved in the revolution, particularly as directed against the dominant settler class. Finally, the shadows of counter-revolutionary warfare can be a powerful catalyst for sectarian violence. When a militant counter-revolutionary settler group blatantly exists, the level of bloodshed will be high. However, killings can occur in any situation in which the parameters of war are blurred, the state and its enemies are engaging in irregular warfare, and there exists a perceived foreign class that can be combined into an enemy to target.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ciccarello-Maher, George, “Jumpstarting the Decolonial Engine: Symbolic Violence from Fanon to Chavez”, Theory & Event 13, no.1 (2010) 39

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p.27-75. Fanon’s ideology is difficult to parse in a few words, but outlines the theory that decolonial violence is often a function of the colonised individual breaking from the nonexistence in which they have been placed, into a place of existence from which they can remake themselves and their nation.

Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, Translated by Constance Farrington, Paris, 1961, (This Edition, London, 2001) Gallagher, Nancy, “Learning Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence”, Middle East Report , No. 225 (Winter, 2002), pp. 44-49 Hart, Peter, The IRA at War 1916 - 1923, Oxford, 2003 Kissane, Bill, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, Oxford, 2007 Le Sueur, James D. Uncivil War, Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria, Philadelphia, 2001 Leeson, D.M., The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920-1921, Oxford, 2011 Murphy, Gerald, The Year of Disappearances, Political Killings in Cork, 1921 1922, Dublin, 2010 National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Argentina) http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain 002.htm O’Connor, Frank, Guests of the Nation, Dublin, 1931 (This Edition 1987) Ryan, Meda, Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter, Cork, 2003 Smith, Andrea, “Place Replaced: Colonial Nostalgia and Pied-Noir Pilgrimages to Malta”, in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Aug., 2003), pp. 329-364 Todorov, Tzvetan, and Denner, Arthur, “Torture in the Algerian War”, in South Central Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, On Torture (Spring, 2007), pp. 18-26 Zack, Lizbeth, “Who Fought the Algerian War? Political Identity and Conflict in French-Ruled Algeria”, in International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall, 2002), pp. 55-97

How Sensitive to the Actual Dangers of Nuclear Weapons was Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove? Vincent Sheridan JUNIOR SOPHISTER SINGLE HONOURS HISTORY

‘RECKON YOU WOULDN'T EVEN BE HUMAN BEIN'S IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE SOME PRETTY STRONG PERSONAL FEELIN'S ABOUT NUCLEAR COMBAT.’ – MAJOR T. J. ‘KING’ KONG Consistently recognised for its intricate plot, quick satire, memorable characters and biting political commentary, Dr. Strangelove is widely considered Stanley Kubrick’s magnum opus. However, upon its initial release, it was subject to damning criticism. While some praised it as ‘outrageously brilliant satire’1212a great many others found its delivery crass and tasteless, with The New York Times’ Conrad Knickerbocker and Bosley Crowther (two names which, ironically, would fit quite well among the film’s cast of characters) describing it as ‘bitter, perverse, sadistic, and sick,’2213and ‘beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across,’3214respectively. This paradoxical knife edge between “genius” and “abhorrent” which critics grappled with can be seen as a microcosm for Strangelove itself, and, indeed, for the majority of Kubrick’s oeuvre. When creating a satirical version of a catastrophic nuclear war, it would be impossible not to offend anyone. Therefore, the question that arises should not be whether Strangelove is insensitive or not - the real issue is whether or not it portrays a message that is representative of the threat of nuclear annihilation. Although “Doomsday Machines” and Stetson wearing Air Force pilots seem like sci-fi clichés and stereotypical caricatures, both had realworld analogues. On the other-hand, the film’s many moments of farce and its overt sexual overtones act to belittle the tragedy of nuclear warfare. In the end, the piece creates a surprisingly believable account of accidental nuclear war.

‘Cinema: Detonating Comedy’, Time, 31 January 1964, p. 16

‘Humor with a Mortal Sting’, The New York Times Book Review, 27 September 1964, p. 22

‘Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’, The New York Times, 31 January 1964, p. 11

‘DETERRENCE IS THE ART OF PRODUCING IN THE MIND OF THE ENEMY THE FEAR TO ATTACK’ – DR. STRANGELOVE The driving force behind Strangelove’s plot is the notorious “Doomsday Machine”. Alluded to in the film’s introduction, the device was designed as the ultimate weapon – and therefore the ultimate deterrent. Capable of destroying all life on Earth, the “Doomsday Machine” was a cluster of hydrogen bombs encased in shells of ‘Cobalt Thorium G’, a radioactive substance with a half-life of 93 years, and buried in Siberia. Triggered automatically in the event of a nuclear war, the device was also designed without a fail-safe – any attempt to abort would result in detonation. Terrified of a potential ‘doomsday gap,’ the Soviet Union was prompted to pursue such a device when an article appearing in The New York Times claimed that the US were in the process of making one, a ploy which truth was a plant by the film’s eponymous character and undertaken without President Muffley’s knowledge. Thus, the dues ex machina of Strangelove was the result of a misunderstanding. The idea that the majority of life on Earth could be wiped out by such an omnipotent device may very well come across as ridiculous, if not impossible, but the reality is proves otherwise. As early as 1950, nuclear physicist, Leó Szilárd, mused on the notion of a cobalt encased weapon.4215Furthermore, in 1942, his colleague Edward Teller discussed developing a bomb with an explosive yield powerful enough to destroy the earth.5216However, the nuclear scientists were not the only ones guilty of fantasising about such destruction. While Szilard admittedly speculated on the cobalt bomb as a means of highlighting the sheer insanity of the nuclear arms race, military strategist Herman Kahn seriously considered the development of his own “Doomsday Machine.”6217Similarly, there is evidence that the USSR did develop some form of automated retaliatory system,7218and the Soviet testing of the monstrously large, 50-megaton “Tsar Bomba” in October 1961, was still fresh in the minds of many politicians and military personnel – especially after the revelation that the weapon initially carried double the nuclear yield. Many in the US government and military were swept up in the anti-communist hysteria of the 4

Spencer R. Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear (Kindle edition, Cambridge, Mass.; London, 2012), p. 125

Gerard DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life, (Kindle edition, London, 2004), p. 249

Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J., 1960)

Paul Boyer, Fallout (Columbus, OH, 1998), p. 102

Cold War and were convinced that if the Soviets were capable of building a bomb which could obliterate Belgium or Denmark, what would stop them from developing a device that could wipe out all human life?8219 Common sense would be the answer. Teller very aptly remarked that a doomsday device was ‘the product of the imagination of high-minded people who want to use this spectre to frighten us into a heaven of peace.’9220Despite the appeal of a “Doomsday Machine” in regards to deterrence, the danger of creating one far outweighed any theoretical advantages of possession. Moreover, the tactical use of such a weapon is inherently counterintuitive – your enemy attacks in a first-strike, and your knee-jerk reaction is to eradicate not only what remains of your own country, but the rest of the planet to boot. Even some of those working on the “Tsar Bomba” developed it in the hope that it would demonstrate how ridiculous the arms race had become.10221Thus the sometimes farcical nature of Strangelove when discussing the potential end of all human life is arguably very fitting. ‘I'M NOT SAYING WE WOULDN'T GET OUR HAIR MUSSED! BUT I DO SAY NO MORE THAN TEN TO TWENTY MILLION KILLED, TOPS.’ – GENERAL ‘BUCK’ TURGIDSON One of the main complaints from those who found the premise of the film tasteless was the manic nature of its characters. Many were shocked that men who supposedly held the future of America in the balance were depicted as raving, war-mongering lunatics. Military commanders were shown to be McCarthyistic jingoists and psychopathic conspiracy theorists. Likewise, the film’s titular character, President Muffley’s scientific advisor, was portrayed as a perpetually smiling, single black glove wearing, wheelchair-bound former Nazi suffering from an extreme and near-suicidal case of “alien hand syndrome”. A bizarre bastardisation of Kahn, Teller and the rocket-scientist Wernher von Braun, Strangelove displays the tenacity and ruthlessness of those pushing the military-industrial complex, the ‘super-salesmen who would say anything, invent any threat’ to sell weapon systems.11222 8

DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life, pp. 382-384

Weart, The Rise of a Nuclear Fear, p. 125

10 11

DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life, p. 391 Ibid., p. 327

Moreover, commanders like Brigadier General Jack Ripper and General ‘Buck’ Turgidson really did exist throughout successive Cold War governments, as they were considered the only men willing to place any concept of morality far behind their military duty. The cigar-crunching General Curtis LeMay was the real world manifestation of Turgidson & Ripper. Described as ‘more machine than man,’12223LeMay was never above speaking his mind to those in higher authority, especially in regards to nuclear weapons. To quote Kennedy: ‘If you have to go, you want LeMay in the lead bomber. But you never want LeMay deciding whether or not you have to go.’13224Like Turgidson, LeMay had to be reminded that it was not the policy of the US to launch a first-strike with nuclear weapons, however, unlike his fictional likeness, LeMay did not concede, asserting that ‘it’s not a national policy, but it’s my policy.’14225Similarly, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay told Kennedy that the blockade tactic appeared weak, laughing telling the President that such a tactic would put him in a ‘pretty bad fix’ – a lack of respect that not even Turgidson would dare. Likewise, General Thomas S. Power, Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), was also a proponent of an aggressive and devastating pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and, like Turgidson & Ripper, was constantly on the lookout for devious Soviet tricks, once claiming that monastery towers, grain silos and a Crimean War memorial were all, in fact, disguised missile sites.15226On one occasion, Power infamously proclaimed that ‘at the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!’16227Similarly, Herman Kahn’s cold insistence that only two million would die with a purely countermilitary strike against the USSR echoed Turgidson’s happy estimate that only ten to twenty million losses would occur in the event of total nuclear war following an American first strike.17228

Weart, The Rise of a Nuclear Fear, p. 145

Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York, 2013), p. 239

Boyer, Fallout, p. 100

DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life, p. 387 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, (Stanford, CA, 1983), p. 246

Ibid., p. 222

However, perhaps the most surprising revelation about the real version of Ripper was the one which was by far the most ludicrous. At the opening of the film, Ripper, acting on the conviction that fluoridation of water is a Communist plot to weaken the sexual prowess of Americans, calls for an immediate firststrike bombing campaign on the Soviet Union, thus starting the Strangelove’s narrative. If the notion that one Brigadier General could go over the head of the entire military chain of command, including the President, and start a nuclear war was not outrageous enough, to do so for a belief that fluoridation of water was a communist plot at toppling the American way of life was, for many, downright preposterous – but there were many across the US who believed just that. The John Birch Society, for example, was a radical, right-wing, anticommunist organisation which not only opposed the fluoridation of water, but also believed that Communists were in control of the administration of President Eisenhower.18229 The idea that such unstable men could be in positions of near limitless power was something so horrifying that it left a commentator describing the film as ‘malefic and sick.’19230And that was precisely the point. Although the characters of Turgidson, Ripper, Strangelove, et al, were undeniably caricatures, their actions and the actions of their real life counterparts were sometimes strikingly similar. The allusions were so close to reality, in fact, that Kubrick, tongue firmly in check, was forced to preface the film with a warning assuring the audience that ‘none of the characters portrayed in the film are meant to represent any real persons living or dead.’20231With men in the Pentagon itching to press the “Big Red Button,” and thousands of men such as the Stetson wearing Air Force pilot, Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong (himself based upon a real-life Stetson toting pilot, Alvin “Tex” Johnson),21232more than willing to follow orders unflinchingly,22233Kubrick highlighted the sheer absurdity of the nuclear scare, and the high possibility that everything could go very wrong, very easily.

Toy, Jr. and Eckard V., ‘The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Pacific Northwest’, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 105/2 (Summer, 2004), p. 262

‘Movie Review’

Boyer, Fallout, p. 100

Sam Howe Verhovek, Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World (New York, 2010), p. 33 22

Schlosser, Command and Control, p. 20

‘DO YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE THE PHONE NUMBER ON YOU, DIMITRI?...I SEE, JUST ASK FOR “OMSK INFORMATION”…’ – PRESIDENT MERKIN MUFFLEY Finally, the most shocking aspect of Strangelove was the looming threat it alluded to inside the US system of nuclear defence. While the Air Force insisted that there were safeguards in place to prevent the occurrences of the film from ever happening,23234the numerous near-nuclear accidents and close-calls of the Cold War beg otherwise. While it is understandable that when coordinating an operation as expansive as the United States military defence plan, accidents could very well happen, be they from human or technical error. However, even with the SAC near faultless record (nearly fifty thousand hours of flying time, without a single accident, during the Cuban Missile Crisis),24235there was still the possibility of someone doing, to quote President Muffley, ‘a silly thing’, resulting in total nuclear war. Incidents such as the two month loss of hydrogen bomb near Palomares, Spain,25236or an early-warning detection site mistaking the moon as a massive Soviet attack26237could very well have come from an early draft of Strangelove. When dealing with weapons of such destruction, accidents can’t afford to happen. The result of human or mechanical error is so disastrous that what Turgidson described as ‘a single slip-up’, could quite literally mean the difference between life and death. In this regard, Strangelove may be insensitive and somewhat demeaning to the consequences of such a slip-up, but it is necessary insensitivity – there’s no point in sugar-coating nuclear war. ‘MR. PRESIDENT, WE MUST NOT ALLOW A MINESHAFT GAP!’ – GENERAL BUCK TURGIDSON In conclusion, while Strangelove is at many times inane and irreverent, the majority of the film and the underlying context of the stupidity of nuclear proliferation did pose a very plausible scenario which could result in catastrophe – it needed to be satirical to emphasize the utter madness of MAD. 23

Boyer, Fallout, p. 100

Schlosser, Command and Control, p. 309

Ibid., pp 326-329

Ibid., pp 363-364

Unfortunately, however, the timing of its release undermined its message somewhat. By 1964, the fear of nuclear weapons was on the decline. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis two years previous, and the subsequent Test Ban Treaty, the sense of dread that had permeated American life was slowly starting to dissipate. In 1959, 64% of Americans saw nuclear war as the nation’s priority – by 1964, this figure had dropped to a mere 16%.27238Both powers peeked over the brink of destruction in Cuba, and were so horrified they ended up cowering in each other’s arms.28239As Vera Lynn croons the lyrics ‘We’ll meet again/Don’t know where/Don’t know when!’ over the films final scene, it’s not too hard to imagine Muffley and Kisov, or Kennedy and Khrushchev, singing softly to each other over the Pentagon-Kremlin hot line.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary: ‘Cinema: Detonating Comedy’, Time, 31 January 1964 ‘Humor with a Mortal Sting’, The New York Times Book Review, 27 September 1964 ‘Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’, The New York Times, 31 January 1964 Secondary: Boyer, Paul, By the Bomb’s Early Light, (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994) Boyer, Paul, Fallout, (Columbus, OH, 1998) DeGroot, Gerard, The Bomb: A Life, (Kindle edition, London, 2004) Howe Verhovek, Sam, Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World, (New York, 2010) Kahn, Herman, On Thermonuclear War, (Princeton, N.J., 1960) Kaplan, Fred, The Wizards of Armageddon, (Stanford, CA, 1983) Schlosser, Eric, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, (New York, 2013) 27

Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, p. 355

Schlosser, Command and Control, p. 307

Toy, Jr., Eckard V., ‘The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Pacific Northwest’, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 15/2 (Summer, 2004) Weart, Spencer R., The Rise of Nuclear Fear, (Kindle edition, Cambridge, Mass.; London, 2012)

Demystifying Meaning in Modern Art Gertrude Kilgore SENIOR FRESHMAN TSM HISTORY OF ART & ARCHITECTURE AND ANCIENT HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY

Abstraction as a concept poses difficult problems of delineation. People’s mindsets towards art have been engrained with the practice of searching for something physical and tangible to observe in painting. Abstract works disable the viewer’s ability to search for something identifiable within the work, perplexing people both in attempts at interpretation and classification. By definition, all forms of paint on a canvas lie within the realm of abstract, as they are merely depictions of their subject, not the actual objects themselves. Upon accepting this idea, abstraction arose as a characterisation of any work of art that abandons attempts to represent a subject as it appears in reality.1240Within this definition of abstraction lies a gradation of levels, and those variances create discrepancies in categorising works as abstract. For the purposes of addressing and explaining the meaning behind “pure” abstraction, this essay assumes the definition of an abstract work as one that does not enable any representation that offers the illusion of a perceived reality.2241 Debates over the meaning of abstract act persist amongst both critics and museumgoers. The idea of art for art’s sake is often criticised for ignoring the societal context of both the artists and their works.3242Yet, the viewer’s relationship with a work of abstract art evokes a highly subjective and personal experience with connections to their experiences with society. All abstract artists strategically select and manipulate traditional artistic devices best suited to craft a profound significance that circumvents the limitations of the “tyranny of appearance.”4243Abstract works create said meaning by drawing on the

Nelson Goodman, "Abstraction" in Grove Art Online – Oxford Art Online (Oxford, 2013). Nov. 2013. 2

Accessed 6

Mel Gooding, Movements in Modern Art: Abstract Art (London, 2001), p. 10

Paul Wood, ‘The Idea of an Abstract Art” in Steve Edwards and Paul Wood (eds.), Art of the Avant‐ Gardes. (New Haven and London, 2004), pp. 229-272. 4

Mel Gooding, Movements in Modern Art: Abstract Art, p. 8

intangible objects, ideas, or subjects of the human experience rather than depicting the physical objects that can be viewed optically. Abstract works possess a deeper spiritual meaning more personalised to the soul of the individual viewing the work. The pioneers of abstraction lived and worked during both World War I and World War II, and the feelings preceding and following war had a considerable impact on art’s shifting focus toward purely internal and emotional painting. The refinement of subjects, colours, and techniques resulting in abstraction serve as the method of delving in to deeper meaning without the distraction of association weakening its weight through a language less adept at describing the intangible. Within the definition of abstraction two main types of approaches arise with an ambiguous third category – the romantic and organic works exemplified in Kandinsky, classical and geometric methodologies of Mondrian, and Abstract Expressionists’ firmly independent developments.5244These three movements represent an arc in the development of the language of abstraction in Modernist art: the foundations of pure abstraction with Kandinsky, de Stijl refinement of his idea with the rejection of any illusion of space in painting, and the Abstract Expressionists’ experimentation and redefinition of methods of abstraction beyond the confines of pure geometric forms. Wassily Kandinsky is widely considered the pioneer of pure abstraction, specifically in its non-geometric form. A Russian-born artist who primarily worked in Munich, Kandinsky became a highly influential art theorist as well as artist with his interest in eliminating representational elements from painting and Fauvist treatment of contrasting colour.6245His work First Abstract Watercolour (1912) is the first painting to explicitly use the word “abstract” in its title. An evolution through his works leading up to this painting depicts a struggle to wrap his mind around fully abandoning the world that one can see. Many of Kandinsky’s early works fully utilized abstracted forms, but are deeply rooted in narrative contexts. The development of his art mirrors the Theosophists’ idea of humans’ evolution from physical to spiritual levels of existence to which he seems to have been certainly drawn. His works focus on loose forms and colour as a means of exhibiting the spiritual in art. He often 5

Harold Osborne, The Oxford Companion to Art (Oxford, 1970), p. 3

Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists (London, 1981), p. 379

tends to look to music when forming the fundamentals of depicting the intangible side of art because of its inability to be characterised in a pictorial or written definition. The majority of the titles of his works utilise musical terminology (Composition 8, 1923) or are purely descriptive of the most basic physical elements of the works (Blue Painting, 1924, and Several Circles, 1926) so as to not distract from the actual scenes depicted on the canvases. Kandinsky’s paintings contain vibrant colours strategically selected on the basis of the “psychological power” they hold deep within the viewer’s soul.7246He felt that colour played a key role in arousing the spiritual in art as “a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul.”8247Kandinsky’s works create meaning rooted in nature and other art forms by focusing on the nonmaterialistic aspects of life. The compositions of most of his abstract works lead the eye in circles around the work or outwards from the centre. His works allow an almost ethereal depth of the picture plane, going against the sculptural illusory depth of his predecessors. His frequent use of watercolour and similar aesthetics in his paintings further build upon this sense of diving into the uncertain world of spirituality. This otherworldliness caused by the composition, colours, depth, and actual forms shift the viewer’s brain into a pensive frame of mind searching for spiritual meaning over mindlessly viewing a material object. Despite his predominant focus on free, flowing forms, he adopts some of the more geometric lines and forms with the emergence of the de Stijl movement. Between 1917 and 1931, Dutch Neoplasticism left a prominent impact on the development of abstraction with the de Stijl movement. Their manifesto highlights a concentration on universality, purity, machinery and aspiration, objectivity, geometrical abstraction, and external life’s relationship to the internal. With his formalisation of grid-like constructed elements, the work of Piet Mondrian exemplifies the fundamental ideals set about in abstraction with the de Stijl movement.9248He focuses on right angles, straight lines, flattened, geometric forms, and primary colours in his art. Inspired by Cubism, Mondrian and the de Stijl movement, he aimed to continue the development of cubist 7

Wassily Kandinsky, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.), Art in Theory, 1900-2000 (Oxford, 2003), p. 88 8

Ibid. Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, p. 532

“faceting” to completely geometric and flattened pure forms.10249Works of the de Stijl movement completely restrict all pictorial depth with only the overlap of lines as indications of a very shallow pictorial space. This prohibits any ideas of a physical object inhabiting the space of his pictures, forcing a reflection on the spiritual and intangible aspects of the objects and scenes in life. The geometric stoicism and austerity within these works of Mondrian use the external life to reveal the internal. Mondrian’s works fiercely rebel against materialism, looking towards the common lines and primary colours that all objects share. Works of Neo-Plasticism, especially Mondrian’s, ambitiously look toward the future with motivation from the new industrial and machine technologies. The influences of industrialism and the organisation that gave way to such innovations reveals itself in the interest in the grid pattern, mathematics, and logical composition. Piet Mondrian’s ideals concentrate on the refining of objects down to their most essential elements to create the simplest, completely abstract pictorial units for depicting his subjects.11250This paring down of objects and ideas creates a purer meaning to the different aspects of the human condition, omitting the unnecessary to demonstrate the fundamental similarities and differences. Similarly to Kandinsky, Mondrian also looked to music and the Theosophists as inspiration for a deeper understanding of the spiritual world. Aiming for the same deliberate generalisation as Kandinsky’s titles, many of Mondrian’s works possess vague titles with references to musical terms, such as Composition C (No. III) With Red, Yellow, and Blue (1935) and No. VI/Composition No. II (1920). The purification of forms and use of geometric shapes with only primary colours eliminates materialism and hierarchy within the object or scene’s type, searching for universality within the individual. Mondrian abandons the constrictions of window-like frames in favour of canvases that interact with the space that they inhabit, incorporating the pure ideas in the pictures with their more complicated counterparts in reality.12251Similarly, the themes depicted in his paintings look to use abstract versions of external life as a means for internal reflection on the culture that they create and created them.

Paul Wood, ‘The Idea of an Abstract Art”, 229-272.

Ibid.

In stark, chaotic contrast to the Mondrian grid, the broad category of Abstract Expressionist works shifted back towards the more organic forms of Kandinsky’s expressionism whilst creating their own fiercely individual methods of extracting the spiritual from the human condition. Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956), an American artist whose most iconic works were created primarily during the post-war era, combines influences from Native American art, Mexican muralists, and select European Modernist artists with his experiences in such an emotionally charged time to further develop abstract techniques.13252His drip technique works created between 1947 and 1950 use an all-over composition of fluid lines with staccato splatters to create a rhythm and emotional involvement with the works. Pollock described his “direct” style of painting as an effective method “to express [his] feelings rather than illustrate them.”14253In this phase of his painting, he completely abandons any roots in the material world with absolutely no hints at even distilling physical elements of an object. His unique composition and technique opens up the works to a new level of depiction, creating a language that excels above any other mode of stimulating meaning already in existence. The ease with which the viewer can read the techniques Pollock used to put paint on the canvas frees his works from the confines of geometric forms advocated by Mondrian before him. A rhythm and character created by the sporadic splatters, spots, and lines transcend imitative art to something purely emotional because Pollock tried to showcase how “the painting has a life of its own.”15254Art becomes individualised through this focus on brushstrokes on a canvas, making a work that only allows optical space as opposed to physical space. His works seem to be as connected to the impulses and sensations felt in the process of creating as those felt while viewing the finished product. One: Number 31 (1950) and Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950), as with many of Pollock’s works, combine the feelings evoked by his technique with a large scale canvas to create a formidable physical presence that draws the viewer into an intense experience when encountering the work in person. Its 13

Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, pp. 616 – 617

Jackson Pollock, “My home is in Springs…” in Nancy Jachec, Jackson Pollock: Works, Writings and Interviews (Barcelona, 2011), p. 128

Pollock, “My Painting” from Possibilities I in Nancy Jachec, Jackson Pollock: Works, Writings and Interviews (Barcelona, 2011), p. 127

composition and balance of colours do not allow a point of entry for the eye, forcing the viewer to absorb the whole work as one large screen. The illusory depth produced by the unmeshed layering of paint develops a space exclusively for optical perusal, forcing the individual to meditate on their emotional reaction to the work through its denial of pictorial capacity.16255To create works such as this one he splattered paint onto an unstretched canvas on the ground, moving around the canvas to activate all of the space. Pollock described the development of abstraction and his drip technique as arising “from a need” to accompany the modern artist’s “new ways of expressing the world about him.”17256This lack of contact between the brush and canvas allows for the act of creating his works to be readable and explicit, hiding nothing yet revealing maximum emotion. Abstract works depict only what they are: literally just paint on a canvas. The lack of recognizable objects allows for this form of literalism despite the vague sense of space within the painting. These works strip down painting to its barest essentials to differentiate themselves from other art forms. The actual painting is the object, not the objects depicted in it. Abstract art reacts firmly against the imitative illusionism that encompassed all art before it. The simplified forms serve as a screen upon which one can project individualised spiritual commentary of society without the distractions of pictorial figures. The full impact of such an emotional and intimate response to some pigments smeared on a canvas cannot be adequately described in words. Such shortcomings of words and illusionism sparked artists’ movement towards abstraction in an attempt to better capture the essence of the human experience. Abstraction’s meaning is best explained through experiencing its intensity for oneself in person in front of a work in a museum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alley, Ronald, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists (London, 1981) Gooding, Mel, Movements in Modern Art: Abstract Art (London, 2001)

Paul Wood, ‘The Idea of an Abstract Art”, p. 124. Pollock, “Interview with Jackson Pollock” in Nancy Jachec, Jackson Pollock: Works, Writings and Interviews (Barcelona, 2011), p. 138

Goodman, Nelson, "Abstraction" in Grove Art Online Online (Oxford, 2013), Accessed from web on 6 Nov. 2013.

– Oxford

Art

Kandinsky, Wassily, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.) Art in Theory, 1900 – 2000 (Oxford, 2003) Osborne, Harold, The Oxford Companion to Art (Oxford, 1970) Jachec, Nancy, Jackson Pollock: Works, Writings and Interviews (Barcelona, 2011) Wood, Paul, ‘The Idea of an Abstract Art” in Steve Edwards and Paul Wood (eds.), Art of the Avant‐Gardes (New Haven and London, 2004)

ÂŠ Histories and Humanities Journal 2014