Winchester History Journal | Issue 1 | Short Half 2020

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Winchester History Journal

Features

Short-Half 2020

5 The Slow Death of Byzantium

Issue 1

Dmitriy Kravets (OW, D)

From the Editors: 12 The End of the Long-Haired Kings

Welcome to the inaugural Toby Bowes-Lyon (K) edition of the Winchester History Journal, a magazine written, compiled and edited by 18 The Troubles – A Reappraisal boys, comprising lengthy historical essays and opinion Jonty Nottingham (I) pieces on fascinating topics. In this first edition, our articles cover a wide range of periods 22 Dreaming of a Roman Italy: Fascist Propaganda in 1930s Italy and approaches to history – with Cosimo Asvisio (OW, K) pieces on everything from the chaos of Medieval Europe to the bloody streets of late 20th 26 Why did France lose the War of Algerian Independence?

Century Northern Ireland.

Jonty Nottingham, Sebastian Ellis and Jerome Wilton

James Hunter (K)

30 George Washington and the Native American Problem

Sebastian Ellis (D) 33 Vere Herbert Smith Junior History Prize

Bob Guan (K)

Front Cover: Italian School, circa 1600

View of Constantinople

3 This month 3 Older or Younger?

3 Interestingly 4 From Winchester 36 The Long View: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict 37 Crossword

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This month in history 25 years ago, The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, formally putting an end to the Bosnian War. 50 years ago, Elvis Presley posed for a famous photograph with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office.

75 years ago, ratification of the United Nations Charter was completed by all original member states.

100 years ago, The Government of Ireland Act, or the Fourth Home Rule Bill, was passed, partitioning Ireland.

Left: Coronavirus testing in the 11th century Older or Younger?

Are the following objects older or younger than Queen Elizabeth II? LEDs Chocolate Chip Cookies LASERs Etch-a-sketches Frisbees Colour TV Ford Mustangs Slinkys Dinosaurs Ferns Dark matter blak

Interestingly The name of ‘Lavender Meads’ comes from the Latin 'lavare' – to wash. The patch of land was originally the washingplace, or lavendarium, of St Swithun's Priory.

The Kiplingcotes Derby is a horse race which has taken place every year since 1519. The rules state that if the race is not run one year, then it must never be run again. In 2020, the race was cancelled, but a horse was led around the track so that the tradition could continue.

Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with the invention of the telephone, thought they should be answered: 'ahoy, ahoy'.

In 1932, during the Great Depression, Brazil couldn't afford to send their Olympic team to Los Angeles, so they sent the team with a ship full of coffee beans to sell on the way, in order to finance the trip.

Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character, used fingerprinting 11 years before the police.

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From Winchester Douglas Page (Coll.)

On the north wall of Chapel, between the 3rd and 4th buttresses, is an arched course, or layer of stone. There are no relevant documents or artefacts which relate to this course, so trying to ascertain its purpose presents a great challenge.

The course cannot have been used as door.

Not only is its shape, size and character incorrect, but its position would render it useless as an entrance to Chapel. There are, however, numerous suggestions as to what it was used for. Some say that it is a strainerarch, to strengthen a weak point in the wall and although possible, this seems unlikely to be the case. Another theory is that the stones were re-used in the building of the wall, a practice which was common at the time and was most certainly employed in the re-building of Chapel Tower by Butterworth. This is another likely suggestion. The most popular and probable theory, however, is that it was an opening used in the construction of Chapel. It might even have been used to remove rubble from the building site. This final suggestion is the most likely because if the others were true,

then it seems likely that many documents relating to the course would exist within the College archives.

We can see other stone courses around Winchester College, which were used for similar purposes to the ones discussed above. On the south wall of the Cloisters are traces of two archways, with another by the north-west corner. The course in the centre of the south wall, visible from the inside, cannot have been used as a doorway or for any other reason than a strainer-arch - a support in the wall - unless it was used as a washing-place, which is another viable theory. In 1431, part of the Cloister gave way and had to be rebuilt. This might be the reason for one of the remaining arches, although both of the remaining features could have been used as archways or doorways in the past. Sadly, we might never know the true purposes of these peculiarities.

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Around the year 1395, Patriarch Antonius IV of Constantinople penned a letter to Basil I, the grand duke of Muscovy, urging him to maintain the liturgical commemoration of the Roman emperor as the universal ruler of Christendom. ‘It is not possible for Christians to have a church and not to have an empire’ wrote the patriarch, for ‘the emperor is the ruler of the Romans – to wit, all Christians’. Furthermore, continued Antonius, the Roman emperor was ‘the natural king’ of the world (oikoumene), unlike ‘those others in the world of Christian men who assume for themselves the name of emperor’ which is ‘unnatural and illegal, the result rather of tyranny and force [than of nature]’– a reference to the Western emperors. In this relatively short letter is encapsulated the full mentality of the Byzantines, and the origins of those problems which ultimately led to the demise of that millennial state; for at the end of the fourteenth century, their Empire was reduced to a handful of possessions on the Aegean coast, a few towns in Thrace, and the undermaintained, depopulated city of Constantinople, which itself was only partially under imperial control. The might and glory which had once made Byzantium the envy of the world was long gone, and since about 1371 the emperor was merely one of the many tributary vassals of the ascending Ottoman state. Nevertheless, the imperial rhetoric continued and only amplified in the final centuries of its existence. This fundamental contradiction in the very fabric of the late Eastern Roman state lies at the heart of its eventual demise.

The rise of the Ottomans can be seen as the basic background to the decline of Byzantium; yet rather than partaking in some epic clash of civilisations and emerging victorious, the Ottomans rather occupied the vacuum created by the decay of the Empire. It is thus in the internal conditions of the Empire that the answer to the above question must be sought. One can identify three fundamental processes which combined eventually to topple the Empire. These are: the enduring consequences of the Fourth Crusade; the socio-religious transformations within the upper classes which alienated them from their subjects; and the almost incessant civil wars that ravaged Byzantium in the 14th century. Together, they offer a broad

explanation as to the causes of Byzantium’s decline and fall.

The Siege of Constantinople in 1204, by Palma il Giovane

The state that re-emerged in 1261, after its sack and occupation by crusaders in 1204, was riddled with problems: a worsening economy; an unstable and incurable relationship with the West; a fractured and religiously polarized society; and an incoherent ideology which led the state into irredeemable decline. Re-emerging as a transcontinental state rather than just a European or an Asian one, Byzantium had to provide for potential risks from several directions, something that the restored Empire simply could not afford. As both Nicol and Harris note, the recapture of Constantinople in 1261 deteriorated the economic position of Byzantium; Italian sea-merchants were not to be dislodged, with the Venetians having their own quarter or embolo in the city and the Genoese having possession of Galata, the suburb across the Golden Horn. Within these areas the Emperor had practically no jurisdictional authority, and all ports of Constantinople were effectively colonies of Venice and Genoa. Runciman points out that the Italian capture of the carrying trade did not destroy but rather enhanced the importance of the markets in Constantinople, but all the profit bypassed the imperial court; the Genoese had forced the Emperor to grant them exemption from the Kommerkion customs duty, and so all goods entering or leaving the Golden Horn now brought the Empire no profit. In this way the lucrative commerce, the crux which had hitherto maintained the wealth of Byzantium even it its darkest hours, 6

was hijacked by the Italian maritime city-states, leaving the Empire destitute, without revenue, and with no hope of recovering its former prominence.

An idea of what happened to the revenues of Constantinople is given by the statement of Gregoras, who wrote about the middle of the 14th century that, while the annual custom revenues of Constantinople had shrunk to about 30,000 nomismata, those of the Genoese colony of Galata went up to about 200,000 nomismata, all of which would have gone to the imperial coffers prior to 1204. Thus, by recapturing Constantinople in 1261 the political result was that Byzantium merely opened a second front from which it might be threatened. The shock of 1204 left the Byzantine government paranoid about the potential danger from the Balkans and the West that it began to neglect the Eastern frontier.

Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople, Eugène Delacroix

The sack of Constantinople by Frankish and Venetian crusaders in 1204 not only destroyed the empire, shattering it into several small and squabbling successor states, but also drove an impassable wedge between the ordinary folk of Byzantium and the western, Catholic Franks. It soon became apparent after the reconquest of 1261 that Byzantium remained dependent on the Latin West, not only through trade, but also by way of potential aid. The healing of the Great Schism appeared to all Emperors after Michael VIII to be the key to securing safety from any potential repeat of 1204, and a source of military assistance against rivals in the Balkans and beyond. The three major

attempts at reunion (at the Second Council of Lyons of 1274, John V’s personal conversion to Catholicism in 1371, and finally at the Council of Florence in 1439) and their consequences follow a near identical pattern and shine a light on the deteriorating relationship between the Emperor and his people. All three ‘reunions’ were technically successful, in the sense that all convoked representatives of their respective Churches signed the papal bull of reunion, yet these successes never lasted longer than several months as almost immediately on their return the Orthodox clerics renounced their compliance with the union, largely under pressure from the indignant Byzantine populace and monks. Nevertheless, the sack was not a spontaneous event but a culmination of the growing antagonism between the worlds of Byzantium and Catholicism. For centuries leading up to the fourth crusade cultural, linguistic, and liturgical differences bred mistrust and antagonism between the Eastern and Western Churches until the final rupture of communion in 1054, and by the 13th century the ecclesiastical division reflected on the cultural differences and in fact, on the absolute misconception of both the Romans and the Westerners about each other. When calling for crusades the papacy, and the rulers who took up the cross against the infidel, had a starry-eyed vision of a great society called Christendom, while to the Byzantines that great society was the Roman Empire, centred in Constantinople. Thus, in the eyes of the Byzantines, ‘the Latins’ were hardly Christian, for they were not members of the holy oikumene, that is to say they were not subjects of the Roman Emperor. This sense of exclusivity among the Byzantines was only amplified by their inborn superiority complex of heirs to a civilization older and finer than any in Western Europe, and which certainly did not make them disposed to be tolerant to foreigners who mocked their traditions and exploited their markets. Niketas Choniates, writing about the year 1205, summed up the feelings of the Byzantines thus:

Between us and the Latins is set the widest gulf. We are poles apart. We have not a single thought in common. They are stiff-necked, with a proud 7

affection of an upright carriage, and love to sneer at the smoothness and modesty of our manners.

We have to consider that the purpose of the History was largely to portray the crusaders as agents of divine wrath against the sinfulness of the Emperors.

Undoubtedly, Choniates’ negative perception of the westerners was deeply affected by the hindsight of the sack of Constantinople in 1204, yet even so, the terms used by him suggest that there was a more profound disdain for the Western Europeans; he makes no distinction between the Normans and the Venetians, the French and the Germans, who are all known to him collectively as the ‘Latins’, a derogatory term in Byzantium. This ancient distrust and enmity paired with a new-found fear thrust Byzantium into the next stage of deterioration and decline. Seeing the West as the most probable source of future danger for the Empire, all diplomatic efforts were aimed at appeasing the representatives of the Catholic world, yet all attempts at reunion served only to divide further the Imperial court from its people and would contribute to the fatal civil wars in the 14th century that would exhaust the Empire.

The debate of the rights and wrongs of union with the Church of Rome divided Byzantine society, as many ordinary Byzantines preferred Muslim rule to union with Rome, since they knew they would be able to maintain Orthodoxy under the Sultan. The vast majority of Byzantines, even in their darkest twilight, firmly believed that the preservation of their Empire depended on them holding fast to their faith, the greatest betrayal of which was union with the heretic Catholics. As wrote one antiunionist, ‘those who unrepentantly take communion with the Italians defile their souls no less than those who commune with heretics and will suffer the same punishments on the day of judgement’. The situation was greatly exacerbated by being increasingly seen as a matter of class. In the late 13th century we have one Patriarch of Constantinople write, ‘What can one say when women and children still in nursery, when men whose knowledge is limited to farming or manual labour, all cry criminal to anyone who so much as whispers about the union of the churches?’. It is difficult not to detect a

fair share of snobbery in the remark, and although it is unlikely that class in itself determined one’s stance towards question of union, it is certainly true that the majority of those who favoured the union, such as John Beccus, Isidore of Kiev, Gemistus Pletho, Basilios Bessarion, and Demetrius Kydones, were representatives of a social group that could afford to be cosmopolitan; they all would have had free access to the literature of Western Europe and did not conceal their admiration for the culture of the Renaissance. The lay and clerical masses, however, could not consent to the adherence to what they regarded as heretical teachings, and to most Byzantines the threat of Islam did not instil the same fear as the threat of the Franks; in fact, Islam was commonly regarded as merely one of the several heresies of Christianity and was considered as potentially less harmful to the true faith than Catholicism. This additional chasm in Byzantine society paved the road to the eruption of civil strife in the 14th century.

The major effect of religious discussion on Byzantine society can be explained by the fact that to an average Byzantine material considerations were secondary, for in an autocratic monarchy under which he lived religion was almost the only form of politics available to him, on which account even the lowest orders of society operated with a heightened sense of theological awareness. To have the representative of God on Earth openly renounce his Orthodoxy in a state where ‘the Emperor has all the prerogatives of a priest except the right of administering the sacraments’, was sacrilege of the highest order verging on the apocalyptic, through which the holiest office in the land was discredited. Johnathan Harris, however, emphasises the more pragmatic motivations behind the general reluctance to accept the union; the Byzantines, he writes, ‘were responding not so much to the claims of religion or country but the realities of international politics […] and the need to secure their future and that of their families.’ That may well have been true; yet the Byzantine willingness to accommodate themselves to the Turks, a people with whom they interacted on a daily basis and exchanged words and customs with, stemmed precisely from that familiarity and a 8

justified assuredness that life would carry on in much the same way whether under the Emperor or the Sultan. They had no illusions about the ‘Western’ alternative; it would be a relapse to Frankokratia, forced conversions to Catholicism, and a disruption of their ancient Roman ways. Thus, Harris has misplaced the distinction between the religious and the ‘worldly’ motivations, as to a Byzantine they were one and the same. All attempts at reunion were shattered by the adamant antagonism of the masses towards ‘the Latins’ who were regarded as the very antithesis of the Byzantine world, and because of its pretence at having the true, apostolic Church – an even worse suggestion than mere disbelief in the divinity of Christ.

Throughout the second half of the 14th century, when the Ottoman Turks were growing in mastery over the European lands of Byzantium, many came to realise that the effect of the new regime on the lives of individuals was minimal and certainly more benevolent than that of the various Latin states of the Balkan peninsula. This attitude was summed up in the proverbial saying, often attributed to Grand Admiral Loukas Notaras: ‘Better a Turkish turban than a Latin mitre’. In this sense at least, most Byzantines were complacent about the erosion of their state by the Turkish advance and were reluctant to fight the (probably) futile fight for the sake of prolonging their agonised existence under the shadow of the West.

The civil war that coincided with the rebellion in Thessalonica of 1342-50, a second one in twenty years, delivered a fatal blow to the eroding state.

Byzantium had barely recovered from another internal conflict of 1321-28, when the final civil war, that between John Kantakouzenos and Alexios Apokavkos, brought social and religious developments discussed above into the open.

Before the 14th century it was a distinctive feature of Byzantine society that there was no clearly defined nobility as in Western Europe; in the words of Angeliki Laiou, ‘there were no official prerogatives, no official rights and derogations, no privileges legally guaranteed to a specific class and passed from one generation to the next’. This was true even for the imperial family itself, since the prime prerequisite to the throne was not birth, but

worthiness. The drive of Byzantium into exile led to the rise of regional aristocratic foci of power, which were assembled after the recapture of Constantinople in 1261. These families thus acquired more lands in Thrace and Macedonia, increasing social stratification, and establishing a landowning political class. The result was that by the 1340s the salient characteristics of a Byzantine city were close contact between the members of the high aristocracy and the economically strong but politically weak merchants, as well as a large segment of the less economically stable, a condition which was further aggravated by the migration into cities from rural regions in the first half of the 14th century, when armies laid waste to fields and pastures, most notoriously by Catalan mercenaries in the years 1302-05. Thus, these transformed urban centres were particularly vulnerable to any internal instability of the empire. In the mid-14th century this instability came from the controversy of Hesychasm, revolving around the question of divine energies and their perceptibility during deep prayer, which quickly acquired a political and social dimension; Kantakouzenos endorsed the hesychastic movement and was in turn supported by the landed aristocracy, while Apokavkos condemned the movement and drew on the support of the urban poor, among whom a real hatred of the aristocracy had developed. Kantkakouzenos’ selfappointment as a rival emperor provoked an antiaristocratic reaction in the city of Thessaloniki; the families of the rich were murdered in the streets and their houses burned to the ground. The Zealots established a ‘commune’ in the city which paralleled similar developments in western Europe. Both Runciman and Gregory warn against seeing the rebellion in Thessaloniki as a class conflict as many of the leaders of the rebellion, such as Andreas Palaiologos, Alexios Metochites, and Michael Palaiologos, were representatives of the upper class, and certainly the motivations of the Zealots were more than merely class tension. Since most of the sources describing the Zealots are written by their opponents it is difficult to work out what they stood for; so, Nikephoros Gregoras condemned the rebel government as ‘ochlocracy’ and Demetrios Kydones described it as a ‘world turned upside down’.

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Kantakouzenos himself, in his History wrote that some chose to use the popular discontent for personal advancement, yet whatever the actual origins of the movement – religious, social, dynastic – there can be no doubt that it divided Byzantine society beyond recovery; as Kantakouzenos wrote, ‘the whole state was split into two’, and his remarks are echoed by Gregoras who wrote that ‘the whole Roman nation was divided’. Naturally, both Kantakouzenos and Gregoras would aim to portray their defeated enemies as worthless pretenders, yet there was universal agreement as to the social implications of the conflict; the damage done to Byzantium both as a state and as a society would last unamended until its fall a century later.

After Kantakouzenos’ victory Byzantium reaches a point of no return. The treasury was squandered, Turkish mercenaries devastated the land that had already been laid waste to almost continuously since 1305, and Byzantine society was divided on an unprecedented scale. The losses of the imperial treasury can be assessed by the private losses of Kantakouzenos himself: five thousand oxen, 2,5 thousand horses, 70 thousand sheep, and hundreds of camels and mules; in the imperial palace silver cutlery was replaced by clay and tin, the imperial crown jewels were replaced by painted marbles, and instead of gold – gilded leather. The only force that was capable of opposing the Ottomans in the Balkans perished with the death of Stephen Dušan of Serbia in 1355, and Emperor John V himself became an Ottoman vassal in 1373. It is possible that Constantinople would have finally fallen soon after that, had the attention of the Sultan not been distracted by the menace of Tamerlane in the east in 1402, and the Empire was given more time – time that was spent warring against the petty Italian barons of the Aegean, until the eventual fall of the City on 29 May 1453 came almost as a relief.

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of this depressing story of hopeless degeneration is the fact that many of the contemporary Byzantine intellectuals seem to have been wholly oblivious of the irredeemable decline of their state. The experience of the Fourth Crusade transformed the cultural and intellectual world of the Byzantines.

After 1204 Byzantium became an ideology, a myth

of former greatness. Constantine XI, the final Roman emperor was compared by his panegyrists to the great Constantine who had founded the eastern capital, and from this identity of names favourable inferences were drawn by men like Johannes Dokeianos as to the future prospects of the Empire.

Bessarion wrote in 1444 that once the emperor had carried out the necessary reforms for the Peloponnese he would be able to reconquer the European part of the Empire: next he would cross over to Asia at the head of his regenerated ‘Spartans’ and would restore their former greatness.

These Roman intellectuals were, as Ševčenko puts it, ‘so many ostriches hiding their heads in the sands of past imperial glories’.

The Fall of Constantinople, 1453

Throughout the critical periods of the 14th and 15th centuries, Western powers and the papacy were willing to provide assistance to the failing Byzantine state. In the sixty years prior to the final fall of the city European powers had mounted large campaigns against the Ottomans fighting them at Nicopolis in 1396 and at Varna in 1444, both ending in absolute disaster for the Catholics. By the time of the fall of Constantinople crusades had largely become a thing of the past. Although Pope Nicholas V, on hearing the news of the fall of Constantinople, issued a crusading bull, his call met with little response. His successor, Pius II came closer than any pope of that century to organising an expedition, but his vision of a traditional crusade relied on a political unity which was manifestly a thing of the past, and by the time of the Reformation crusading came under criticism by some of the greatest minds of the day.

The real problem was in the complete lack of coordination with the Western powers on the part of Byzantium; as has been mentioned above, the 10

ordinary people were more likely to oppose any intrusion of Catholic forces rather than those of the Ottomans. Thus, by the middle of the 14th century, the Western powers grew weary of crusading, encouraged by the writings of John of Segovia to lead peaceful negotiations with the Turks, just as the Byzantines grew ever more reluctant to accept their help, as that would immediately mean submission to the Pope.

Although it was the Ottoman Empire that later occupied the lands that had once been Byzantine, the Turks cannot be said to have been so much conquerors as successors. Of course, the Seljuks had been slowly eroding Byzantine frontiers since their victory at Manzikert in 1071, yet by the time they finally crossed to Europe and occupied Gallipoli in 1354 after an earthquake destroyed that town, Byzantium was already a walking corpse. In fact, practically all Ottoman expansion in Europe in the 14th century was not done at the expense of Byzantium, but rather its neighbouring principalities such as the various petty lordships of the Franks in Greece, Wallachia, and Serbia, overawed spectacularly at the battle of Kosovo in 1389, until

the city of Constantinople was completely surrounded. The Ottoman Sultan had no serious economic or political motivation to capture the depopulated and dilapidated Constantinople, with his primary motivation being in the symbolism of the final capture of the city and live up to his selfimposed title of Kaiser-i-Rum, ‘The Caesar of Rome’.

That much is confirmed by the fact that since about 1374 the Emperor had been a vassal of the Sultan, meaning that there was no political gain to be had from the capture of Constantinople. In 1453, the young Mehmet II was driven by a desire to establish his military credentials more than anything else.

That is not to say that the Ottoman military machine was lacking in any respect – on the contrary it was exceptional, but even a third-rate power could topple the crumbling Empire. For the above reasons, we can see that the primary reasons for the final fall of Byzantium were internal, with foreign powers, such as that of the Ottomans, merely taking advantage of that vulnerability. It might as well have been the Serbs, or the Franks, or the Hungarians. In the end, Constantinople fell because of Ottoman cannon. The victory, however, cannot be said to have been consequential.

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How important was the Merovingian approach to government in explaining the downfall of the dynasty?

Introducing the Merovingians The Merovingian dynasty, inaugurated upon the accession of Clovis in 481 or 482, emerged as the leading power in Western Europe in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West in 476. The Merovingians were, first of all, Franks, a branch of the West German people who had originally settled in the Roman Empire as foederati in the fourth century. These pagan barbarian invaders were transformed, however, into the constituents of a powerful dynasty largely through the backing of the Gallo-Roman Church, after their king, Clovis, was baptised into the Christian Church in c. 498. By identifying with Catholicism, the Franks thus became the Roman champions, with Clovis managing to defeat the heretical Burgundians and Visigoths, who were Arians, through the support of the Church. Clovis thus became master of Gaul by 507, establishing a dynasty whose empire would stretch from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, to include modern-day Belgium, western Germany and parts of Holland. The Merovingian kings, furthermore, were known for their formidable appearance, with long, golden hair; they acted more like military chieftains than heads of state within Merovingian society. Court officials known as mayors of the palace therefore rose in prominence, effectively ruling the Frankish kingdoms during the seventh and eighth centuries. Ultimately, Mayor Pepin II founded the Carolingian dynasty, thus beginning an expansion of power that would continue under his successors. This would culminate in 751 when Pepin III, the Short, ousted the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, and was crowned King of the Franks, marking the final collapse of the Merovingian dynasty.

An examination of the factors influencing this collapse, however, is particularly challenging from a historiographical point of view, as evidence, particularly in the seventh century, is noticeably lacking. In addition, the contemporary sources that are available, such as Annales Mettenses Priores and Liber Historiae Francorum, and even the records of Gregory of Tours and Fredegar, are often biased in nature. For clarity, by approach to government this article will look at the ways in which the kingdom of the Franks was governed, including how it was split up after a king died. As this article will illustrate, the

latter factor alone considerably weakened the power of the Merovingian kings, but other key factors also have to be considered to explain the dramatic downfall of the Merovingians.

How did the Merovingian approach to government contribute?

The Merovingians saw their kingdom as a property rather than a state. As such, when a Merovingian king died, the land would be divided equally amongst his sons. For example, when Clovis died in 511, his kingdom was shared out equally amongst his four sons, and, if each of them in turn had been survived by several sons, the kingdom would of course have been subdivided even further. As it was, the kingdom was divided into four once again upon the death of the last of Clovis’s surviving sons, Clothar I, from which time on there were four accepted major divisions of the Frankish state.

These were Austrasia, consisting of the ancient Frankish lands on either side of the Rhine, Neustria, or northern Gaul, Aquitaine, which was at times independent and at times attached to one of the other kingdoms, and, finally, a kingdom in the valleys of the Rhone and Saone which had formerly been ruled by Burgundy. Lothar I managed to reunite the whole kingdom by 558, but this effort was largely futile, as he was survived by four sons. The kingdom was hence once again broken into quarters and not united for a second time until 613. This system of inheritance weakened the dynasty considerably, as unity across the whole territory was very hard to achieve, and even when a king united the kingdom, his legacy could only continue if he had one son. Indeed, the only reason the kingdom did not atomise completely was because of the skill and ferocity with which the descendants of Clovis fought and assassinated each other, but this family feuding in itself severely weakened the dynasty, as, instead of strengthening family bonds, it shattered them.

Merovingian government has in fact been aptly described as ‘despotism tempered by assassination’, and this was clearly not a sustainable long-term practice. Even marriage was more a signal of war than an assurance of peace. The establishment of the smaller kingdoms further reinforced the political fragmentation resulting from the collapse of Roman administration. Plagued by internal conflicts, it was harder than ever for the Merovingian kings to withstand external threats, or indeed to check the power of officials such as mayors of the palace. The 13

collapse of the dynasty was thus a powder keg, waiting to ignite.

The Merovingian kings certainly took little interest in administration. They lost a great deal of influence to court officials known as mayors of the palace, as well as counts and dukes. and their ability to hold their kingdoms together increasingly depended on personal ties, and thus their ability to accumulate wealth. The kings certainly resembled military chieftains rather than heads of state, and thus administered their kingdom from their palace, or household, aided by the steward, mayor of the palace and the officers of the household. Even counts of the stables and domestics often also functioned as judges, generals or ambassadors within the royal household. Out of the different positions, however, the mayor of the palace was the most significant, and in some ways was a precursor to our modern-day notion of a ‘prime minster’. The mayors of the palace essentially acted as controllers of the royal estates. In this role, which included administrative jobs such as tax-collection, dispensing justice and enrolling the local military levies, the mayors of the palace were able to develop a significant power base, to the extent that they became the effective rulers of the Frankish kingdoms during the seventh and eighth centuries.

This was particularly helped by the fact that the Merovingian kings were often away leading military campaigns or roving among their various villas and country lodges, meaning that the role of court officials such as mayors of the palace became all the more important.

Kings also appointed dukes, who often commanded large armies or served as ambassadors, but soon became local administrators of the larger regions within the kingdom. There were also counts, who were appointed to control and administer larger urban areas. They performed similar roles to the mayors of the palace, but on a local scale, including enrolling and often commanding the military levies of the area. With the acquisition of land and offices such men increasingly enhanced their prestige and transformed themselves into powerful local aristocrats, who were increasingly able to share, and later dominate, the political spotlight with the Merovingian kings. For example, in Bavaria the family of Agilolfings became able to monopolise the office of duke, and thus became able, with their considerable local support, to act independently of the Merovingian kings, and, even occasionally, to declare war on them. Over time the tendency thus

developed for aristocratic interests to take precedent over royal concerns, even to the extent that in 582 Gundovald, the usurper king, promoted himself as King of Neustria at the expensive of infant King Clothar II. If the kings had been more personally involved in administration and had been able to limit the power of the aristocrats in government, such unstable times may not have been brought about. To keep the powerful nobles in line, therefore, Merovingian authority rested increasingly on the ability of the kings to accumulate wealth, with the kings distributing estates and treasures to ensure the support of local aristocrats. The kings therefore relied more closely on these personal ties than on more impersonal notions of authority and efficiency. This lack of bureaucracy ultimately proved a death sentence for the continued survival of the dynasty.

This approach to government was thus very unstable and unsustainable in the long-term, as it undermined the authority of the kings, and meant that their hold on power was not as secure as it could have been. For example, the counts may have held a court and maintained order, but were not paid officials of the state, meaning that their relationship was purely based on personal loyalty, and that they could easily become independent if weak or unpopular kings were unable to maintain this loyalty. The increasing power and influence of the aristocrats, at the expense of the Merovingian kings and because of their approach to government, hence led to the emergence of usurpers and rivals.

After all, it was Pepin II, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, who founded the Carolingian dynasty.

Specifically, how important was the lack of a central seat of administration?

The Merovingian kingdom also lacked a central seat of administration. The coherence of the kingdom was increasingly undermined by local interests, thereby creating a strong bond between nobles and the mayors of the palace. The seat of government was certainly not stationary, as the Merovingian kings liked to tour their kingdom, taking their whole household with them. Each king had their own favourite residence, for example at Reims, Orleans, Metz or Paris. This meant that the Merovingian kingdom had no equivalent of modern-day Whitehall or Washington, leading to local interests taking hold in many regions. Outlying regions could certainly not be effectively governed from a remote base in central Gaul. After Lothar II granted that 14

counts should be chosen from among the district they were to administer, moreover, the problem became worse, as the local men increasingly began to consider the interests of their own pagus (city), over those of the king. This led to clashes of local interest and wars which undermined the strength of the Merovingian dynasty further, as the kings were increasingly overshadowed by aristocrats, who often fought each other. This created a fatal level of instability within the kingdom.

In the various Frankish sub-kingdoms, neither the Frankish nor Roman aristocracy, nor the ecclesiastical hierarchy, was united in its policies or interests. In each case the bond between the ‘nobles’ of the region and the mayor of the palace was very strong, as it was based on common interest as well as sentiment. This therefore explains how the mayors of the palace were able to effectively keep the Merovingian kings in tutelage, owing to the support they received from the ‘nobles’, with Dagobert (629-39) being the last Merovingian to wield the real power of a king. His successors, meanwhile, were known as the ‘do-nothing kings’. The lack of a suitable administrative capital certainly aided the mayors of the palace in their rise in power, with the increasing importance of local interests risking fragmentation. Indeed, there were almost perpetual wars between the nobles of Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, with the nobles in each region allying themselves with the mayor of the palace. These wars hence increased the power and influence of the mayors of the palace at the expense of the king.

This would prove a recipe for disaster.

What other factors contributed?

The power of the Gallo-Roman Church There was no real connection between the Frankish monarchy and the placid Roman towns they governed, with the sole link being the powerful Catholic Bishops. Merovingian society was certainly two-tiered, with the ‘barbarian’ kings, ‘brutal and itinerant’ in nature, ruling over a world of unimportant civilians, artisans, merchants and general townspeople who provided their masters with a civilised environment, supplying them with luxuries and paying taxes. Society in Merovingian Gaul therefore existed simultaneously on two different planes, with the barbarian Franks at the high politics level but these more civilised GalloRomans below them. Therefore, although the Merovingian kings ruled their kingdom, they did not

really belong to it. As a result, there was no real glue holding the rulers and the ruled together. Ultimately, the sole link between the two societies was the Catholic Bishops, who hence became incredibly powerful. The Bishops themselves were 'Romans', usually members of the great senatorial families, who were elected by the 'people' of his church, whilst their appointment was merely confirmed by the king. As such, a bishop was virtually irremovable, as they were appointed for life. The increasing power of the bishops consequently lacked any sort of brakes.

Few, further, were brave enough to violate the Church’s right of sanctuary. Bishops generally had enormous pastoral power within their local area.

For example, a brave bishop like Gregory of Tours could not only defy his king in ecclesiastical affairs but could also very much influence him in secular matters. Other bishops addressed the Merovingians as ‘Catholic kings’, and the rise of power of the Merovingian dynasty was indeed largely down to the support of the Gallo-Roman Church. The Merovingians, from the start, were thus too dependent on the Church, with bishops becoming important local leaders and considerable landowners. After the disappearance of the Roman army, furthermore, the church was the largest institution in Merovingian Gaul, with its influence transcending the boundaries of kingdoms. The most powerful ecclesiastics persuaded the Merovingian kings to grant them jurisdiction over the clergy, an example of how powerful Churchmen could successfully appeal to the king. This overall situation thus debased the overall grip of the kings on their kingdom, as the Gallo-Roman people they ruled had no reason to want the dynasty to be preserved, and the bishops also chipped away at their overall power and authority.

Commendation and vassalage The institutions of commendation and vassalage within Merovingian society further weakened the authority of the kings, a situation compounded by the lack of a Merovingian legal code. The act of commendation can be defined as a formal contact by which both lord and vassal accepted a set of definite obligations, with the lord most commonly promising to ‘aid and sustain’ his vassal in areas such as clothing, food and basic necessities, whilst the vassal promised to serve his lord and obey his command all his life. This system clearly worked so that no vassal would accept as a lord a man who 15

could not forward his interests, whilst no lord would accept a vassal who could not do him any service. For example, a Frank with a moderatelysized property might consider the most valuable protection he could get to be that of a richer neighbour, and he would therefore become his vassal, while a bishop of lower standing might be prepared to have vassals who were of only moderate standing. Any individual, however, would have been delighted to commend himself to the mayor of the palace, meaning that he, in turn, could afford to turn down all but the most valuable of offers. The mayors of the palace could thus take as vassals men who were powerful in their own right, with many vassals of their own. As a result, they themselves could considerably expand their influence and power, to rival that of the king. This system therefore very much weakened the authority of the Merovingian kings, as it was expected that a man would serve his lord more willingly than his king.

Not only did this reduce the power of the kings, but these systems would also increasingly allow lords to have their own private armies. This, unsurprisingly, represented an evil omen.

than Neustria, Aquitaine or Burgundy, as it contained much forest land and waste.

Consequently, it was perfectly possible for an energetic mayor of the palace to ‘open up’ a significant quantity of new land, by organising a regular programme of forest-clearance and village construction, as well as by attracting peasantcultivators from other parts of the kingdom.

Austrasia, during the seventh and eighth centuries could thus be described as the ‘new land’ of the Frankish kingdom, a place where fortunes could made in a similar way to the American Mid-West in the nineteenth century. This meant in turn that while other parts of the kingdom were becoming poorer, due to the decline in Mediterranean commerce, Austrasia was actually becoming ever more prosperous. As a result, the power of the mayor of the palace of Austrasia increased, meaning he could afford to have a much larger number of vassals. This set of events helps to explain the rise of the Carolingians, who were descended from the mayors of the palace of Austrasia.

How significant was the Merovingian approach to government in light of the other factors?

The lack of a legal code To the Merovingian kings, and Germanic peoples more broadly, law was simply the ancient custom of the tribe, unwritten and assumed always to have existed, handed down orally from generation to generation. As such, there was not a single Merovingian law, with every man being judged by his own laws. For example, a Burgundian would be judged by Burgundian laws, whereas a Roman would be judged by Roman laws and Franks by Frankish ones. In addition to making legal disputes very hard to solve, particularly in regard to mixed cases, the lack of an engrained legal code within Merovingian society also debased the power and influence of the kings, as they did not have their own laws to enforce, and they therefore lacked a key source of authority. The kingdom as a whole furthermore lacked a glue that could have held it together better. Without such a glue, it was bound to collapse.

The disproportionate prosperity of Austrasia There was an imbalance in the amount of land that made up each region in Merovingian Gaul. This meant that Austrasia consisted of the whole eastern half of the kingdom north of the Alps, and was, in the early Frankish period, less densely populated

On balance, the most decisive factor in the collapse of the Merovingian dynasty was indeed their approach to government. The way in which the kingdom was split up after a king died, as well as the role of officials such as mayors of the palace in conducting the administration of the kingdom, was particularly crucial. This being said, it is also important to note the difference between the rulers, namely the Merovingian Franks, and the ruled, namely the Gallo-Romans, as these two contrasting societies did not create an environment which was conducive to the long-term success of the dynasty.

After all, the Merovingians did not really belong to the southern part of Gaul, and the Gallo-Roman society that existed below them, and so this made it all the more difficult to control and govern it.

Without the tensions, family feuds and shifting balances of power caused by the approach to government, however, the collapse of the dynasty may not have been quite so final.

The approach to government certainly helped to fuel the rise in power and influence of the bishops, with the kings largely leaving the positive side of government to the charity of the Church, whilst simply ruling the land for what they could get out of it. This meant that a much more positive relationship existed between the bishops and the 16

local people they served, rather than between the people and the kings, who were always much more distant than the bishops and only affected the lives of the average Gallo-Roman through, for example, taxation. Whilst the kings might be involved in building town walls, they were also acting as judges, therefore, the bishops were also responsible for provision for the poor, the ransoming of prisonersof-war and the construction of hospitals. One can therefore very much link the Merovingian approach to government with the increase in the power of the Catholic Bishops, and thus the reduction in the authority and influence of the kings and the collapse of the dynasty.

One must also note that the institutions of commendation and vassalage would not have grown up so rapidly had the Merovingian government not already proved itself to be ‘unjust, unscrupulous and inefficient’. The reason why so many men were ‘seeking lords’ was thus that they required protection, in many cases, from the tyranny of counts. The normal working of the kings’ local government could therefore not offer the protection needed by such men, as its representative was the count himself, explaining in turn why so many people were so anxious, for example, to commend themselves to powerful figures, such as the mayors of the palace, who had, in many cases, influence in the king’s ‘palace’ and their own private army.

The lack of a Merovingian legal code also helps to explain the collapse of the dynasty, but even this is linked to the Merovingian approach to government, as if the Merovingian kings had wanted to have a more active role in governing their kingdoms they may have similarly motivated to put together their own legal code. In terms of the imbalance of land between the divisions of the kingdom, moreover, this may not have been such an issue if the Merovingian kings had not divided the kingdom equally between their sons when they died, as, if this had not occurred, the divisions in question may well not have existed in the first place. Indeed, the division of the Merovingian kingdom into Neustria, Austrasia, Burgundy and Aquitaine dates back to the death of Clothar I and his four sons each receiving a share of the land. Moreover, the way in which the Merovingians saw their kingdom as a property

rather than a state was crucial, as they thus thought of themselves more as ‘great proprietors who were protecting their interests and possessions’, rather than as heads of state or chief magistrates. This attitude thus links in once again to the lack of a Merovingian legal code, as Merovingian kings often saw justice as a commodity that could be purchased rather than the consequence of the uniform enforcement of a set of regulations. This therefore supports the view that the Merovingian approach to government was the deciding factor in the collapse of the dynasty, as a lack of legal code, debased the authority of the kings, and, furthermore, the granting of fiscal immunities, and immunities from, for example, tax, to the Church and to aristocrats, also helped these groups to rise in power and influence at the expense of the crown. Gregory of Tours himself perceived tax as the result of ‘unpardonable royal greed’, meaning taxation is thus another example of how approach to government influenced the other key factors behind the collapse of the dynasty. This negative relationship helps once again to illustrate how the bishops become so powerful, and why the difference between the two tiers of Merovingian society was potentially problematic.

By analysing the downfall of the Merovingian kingdom in this way, the Merovingian approach to government prominently emerges as the most influential factor, as, without it, the divisions, fault lines and power dynamics that made the dynasty collapse may not have existed. The other factors discussed are clearly also significant, but the approach to government destabilised the foundation of the power base of the kings to such an extent that the Carolingians would be able to effectively pull the Merovingian dynasty up by its roots. This represented a seismic shift in power which would reverberate around Western Europe.

Recommendations for further reading: The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751 (Ian Wood), A History of Medieval Europe (RHC Davis), The Franks (Edward James), New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume I, c.

500-c. 700 and Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3001475 (Brian Tierney).

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The Irish Question is one that has troubled every British monarch and Prime Minister for hundreds of years. Yet, the origins of this uniquely complicated question are deep-rooted, going back as far as the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, and the establishment of Protestant plantations in Ulster in the 17th Century. However, it was the momentous Act of Union in 1800 – uniting Ireland and Great Britain into the United Kingdom – that was to have severe impacts on the British Isles for over two centuries.

the intensity and long duration of the violence from both unionists and nationalists.

‘A dense population, in extreme distress,

inhabit an island where there is an Established Church, which is not their Church, and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom live in foreign capitals. Thus, you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question.'

Benjamin Disraeli on the Irish Question, 1844

Physical force Irish republicanism was quelled to a manageable level by British Crown Forces for over 100 years, with the republicans largely limited to the moral force work of the Irish Repealers and Home Rule Campaign. However, the Easter Rising of 1916, during which the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s attempt at forming a new Irish Republic was brutally suppressed by the British Army, signalled the start of a century of intense sectarian violence.

Many hoped that the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, the proclamation of the Irish Free State, and the subsequent defeat of the anti-Treaty IRA in the Irish Civil War would finally bring peace to the troubled island. However, it was not to be, with physical force Irish republicanism rumbling on through the IRAs Sabotage, Northern and Border Campaigns until the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969. Yet whilst a more general consensus exists on the causes of much of the early 20th Century Irish violence, the Troubles still serve as a flashpoint for debate amongst historians, with fervent believers in many different theories that explain the origins and continuation of the violence. Through the exploration of traditional historiographical theory surrounding Northern Ireland, it is possible to suggest a modern interpretation that better explains

The Easter Rising, 1916

Nationalist Theory Nationalist theory on Northern Ireland can be traced back hundreds of years, but defined literature began appearing in the immediate aftermath of the 1921 partition of Ireland. At the very core of this interpretation is the belief that all the people of Ireland, both southern Catholics and Protestant Ulstermen, belong together in one united nation and under one flag. The adherents of this theory see Britain, and by extension Westminster, as the source of all the problems of Ireland – with the differences between unionists and republicans exacerbated by the meddling of British politicians. Nationalists would argue that these differences would have been solved had it not been for the influence of Britain.

Despite this being the theory parroted by a generation of republican paramilitary and political spokesmen, it is based on fundamentally flawed principles. Southern Catholics and northern Protestants have never, and will never, be part of the same community. This approach is naïve in underestimating the sheer intensity of intransigent unionism in Protestant communities both during the Troubles and today. In 1976 93% of northern Protestants supported the Union, with only 4% prepared to accept a united Ireland. Even the latest poll from early 2020, which asked both Catholics and Protestants, showed 65% support for the union.

Indeed, this theory is in many ways self-refuting, as Irish Republicans have consistently proven that they do not believe in their own dogma. Their violent sectarian attacks during the Troubles showed that they never considered Protestant Ulstermen as part of a potentially unified Irish nation.

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Unionist Theory While unionist interpretations have often been less clearly defined when compared to those of the nationalists, there is an overarching central concept.

Protestant Ulstermen do not see Ireland as one nation, but two, with inter-community differences in culture and religion forming that division. They believe that it was not British interference that fuelled conflict over the Irish Question, but the persistent demand of Irish republicans that the six counties should re-unify with the twenty-six.

However, this theory is just as flawed as any other.

It assumes a unified front of Northern Irish unionism, but this is simply not the case. Northern Ireland was, and to a large extent still is, a fractured country, and more modern unionist interpretations would argue that the conflict stems not from the fact that the north is unionist and the south nationalist, but that one is heterogeneous and the other homogeneous. Proponents of this see the fierce protection of the small northern Catholic minority by republican paramilitaries as key to the origins of the violence.

bourgeoisie on their own. Connolly saw this working-class division as having been achieved through differential discrimination and the exploitation of sectarian fears. Yet once again this theory fails to address the fundamental and inalienable differences between the Catholic and Protestant communities, and significantly overestimates both the extent of modern antiCatholic discrimination, and the exploitation of both communities.

Official IRA patrol, Belfast, 1972

A Unionist Postcard, 1912

Another Marxist interpretation, originating in the mid-1970s, instead focused on ‘Two Nations Theory’. This suggests that divergent economic progress produced two different Irish nations - that of the Protestant north and the Catholic south.

They argued that it was not the Protestant bourgeoisie who divided the proletariat, but the southern Catholics, stirring up their northern Catholic brothers into a violent rejection of Irish partition. However, the most valid Marxist analyses stress the importance of intra-class divisions, and whilst emphasizing the importance of economics, they do not underestimate the impact of religion, nationality, and politics.

Marxist Theory

A modern approach

Marxist interpretations of the source of the Troubles split into various theories of varying validity and relevance. The most traditional Marxist view of Ireland, with its origin in the writing of Irish Republican Socialist James Connolly, sees the conflict as a consequence of the actions of both the Irish and British bourgeoisie. The theory sees the natural division between proletariat and bourgeoisie as having been purposefully blurred by the capitalist classes, splitting the proletariat along sectarian lines.

The Protestant workers sided with their bosses, leaving the Catholic workers to fight against the

As has been shown, none of the three main threads of theory can fully explain the true complexities of the Troubles. Nationalists consistently underestimate the intransigence of Unionist support, whilst Unionists underestimate the unity of their own community. Marxists see the conflict as purely about class and economics, but its threedecade intractability would suggest otherwise.

Much of the theoretical literature on the topic was written long before the ink was dry on the Good Friday Agreement, and with the benefit of hindsight 20

and the ceasing of the majority of the violence, a more complete interpretation can be established.

The key to establishing a more complete understanding of the conflict lies in the combination of many different ideas. Whilst it is accepted that the violence of the early 20th Century was a direct result of centuries of British mishandling, sectarian discrimination, and an institutional failure to understand the Republican psyche, the Troubles were different. Modern interpretations accept that the civil rights campaigns of the late 1960s, culminating in the Battle of the Bogside, were motivated by historical factors – with A.T.Q Stewart arguing that when the Northern Irish state lost the ability to safeguard its population in 1969, they turned to memories of the past.

siege mentality has arisen because whilst the Catholics are a minority in the north, the Protestants are a minority in the country as a whole, and a minority who have often felt at risk of being governed by Catholic Irishmen.

Belfast Peace Wall separating the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankhill Road

British Army Patrol, Belfast, 1969

However, the violence proceeded to be sustained not by the presence of external Crown Forces, but by internal factors from within the six counties.

Whilst inter-community tension in Northern Ireland was a vital contributory factor, with centuries of self-segregation, deep mistrust, and endogamy in Catholic and Protestant areas, intra-community differences perhaps hold another part of the answer.

The Protestant Ulstermen of Northern Ireland have always struggled to find an identity, being neither Irish nor really British, with the ‘Double Minority’ model leading them to act as if under siege. This

However, although these may explain the root causes of the violence, they do not explain its sheer viciousness and intensity. Many would point to religion and ideological republicanism and unionism. Yet the nexus between religion and paramilitarism is tenuous at best. Indeed, it is arguable that even the IRA’s idea of a united Ireland became, as Eamon Collins puts it, a ‘meaningless abstraction’, especially as their leadership moved towards constitutional republicanism in the 1980s.

The intensity of the sectarian violence is not to be explained by logic, but by irrationality. This violence was only sustained because it became in both sides’ interests to maintain sectarian polarisation in order to justify the continuation of their armed struggle.

Their violence became little more than a large-scale power-play, with hawkish fanatics becoming detached from any political strategy, giving political legitimacy to neighbourhood disputes.

Bibliography and further reading        

Interpreting Northern Ireland, J. Whyte The Narrow Ground, A.T.Q Stewart A Short History of Ireland, J. Gibney Killing Rage, E. Collins God and the Gun, M. Dillon The Dirty War, M. Dillon Bandit Country, T. Harnden The Lost Revolution, B. Hanley & S. Millar 21

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why State functionaries understood that “the Fascist instruction of the population” was key to safeguarding the regime: with Mussolini’s regime becoming more interested and indeed more able in dominating Italian lives, propaganda showed itself to be vital as Fascism entered its second decade.

The Fascist slogan ‘Noi sognamo l’Italia Romana’ (‘We dream of a Roman Italy’) on a house-wall in Lavenone (BS) in Lombardy, Northern Italy.

Throughout Fascist Italy’s pre-war era, the methods used by the state to remain in place changed with time from a political to a cultural domination of Italy through campaigns of propaganda. The initial period, 1922-9, saw Mussolini imposing his view of Fascism on Party and State, using his leadership to strike political deals with Italian elites, not so much building consent but rather creating alliances to increase his personal security. In the 1930s, Mussolini had greater political freedom, and was able to widen the Fascist ‘totalitarian experiment’ to engulf more aspects of Italians’ lives: propaganda and indoctrination safeguarded the regime in this second decade. The objective now became one of control; Emilio Gentile, in one of his many studies of the cultural element of Fascist Italy, calls it an attempt “to establish monopolist control over all forms of political power”. Patriotic celebration became omnipresent, the expansion of ‘welfare’ organisations meant workers (having successfully remained outside the regime’s active influence up to that point) had leisure-time and education controlled by Fascist groups, and a Mussolinian cult came to the forefront of domestic affairs. Political propaganda was the central method by which the Fascist regime strengthened its position of power in the 1930s.

As early as the late 1920s the foundations were laid for a totalitarianism based around a Mussolinian cult that would prove most important in maintaining power in the 1930s. To again quote Gentile, he notes this success in filling an ideological void, rightly attributing Fascist appeal to “the aspiration of the ‘1914 [wartime] generation’ to give a secularreligious foundation to politics”. It is no mystery

The Mutilated Victory of Versailles made Italians vulnerable to political propaganda, and the Fascist Party capitalised on this by creating a State cult.

Combined with Italy’s poverty, the disappointment born in 1918-9 caused disparate parts of society to desire a quasi-holy political elite (and Gentile is again correct, noticing how “Fascism linked to the sacralisation of the idea of the nation ample use of rituals and symbols”, reminding the God-fearing Italian of Sunday Church) that could appeal to conservatives and progressives alike. “Humanity”, the Fascist Marinetti wrote even before the 1922 March on Rome, “is in need today of a new religion to synthesise and organise all superstitions”, and that is what Fascism provided. For instance, in the ventennio the cult of the flag became an almost-daily event in cities, and the Fascist press likened those opposed to it to “cowards” who had no “human respect for … the spiritual heritage of the Nation”.

Seemingly patriotic ceremonies became visual representations of Fascism’s political mysticism, solidifying its position.

Benito Mussolini presents a particularly young Balilla member with a medal.

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In 1925-6, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro and Balilla were instituted, alongside the Istituto Cinematografico Luce. These augmented Fascism’s hold over those not ‘bought’ by mere parliamentary intriguing (the lower classes, women, children). Jan Nelis, studying the birth of ‘Fascist identity’, sees these institutions as having shaped public life “in order to create a community feeling, a feeling of belonging”, but this seems too hopeful a view. The OND and ONB spread propaganda through organised holidays, activities, and sport, and their objective was to rally support for the regime, not to create a national community. Even by 1937, workers declared that they “had no faith in the Fascist syndicalist organisation” but remained enthralled by the State’s harnessing of technology and symbolism.

While political compromise often failed to garner new support for Fascism, indoctrination appeared as the cornerstone of Fascist maintenance of power in the regime’s second pre-war decade.

The 1930s saw the use of propaganda to sway parts of the population that had hitherto remained detached from Fascism, such as workers, and to reinforce its standing with first-hour supporters, such as discontented students. It is important to understand the context in which Fascism attempted to create a nationwide following through the use of mass media, welfare, and symbolism. Richard Bosworth is right to say that the “medium of the radio was … yoked to Fascism”; Italy was considerably behind countries such as Britain, the United States, or even Germany in terms of radios and monitors (and overall technology) available to the population (the Italian radio company, EIAR, was only founded in 1927). Such media became available only once the Fascists held power, presenting the regime as a modernising force.

Similarly, the youth, keen to experience new technologies, sat through hours of propaganda as a result. The regional film libraries instituted around 1932 disseminated propaganda designed to fight the “moral and political apathy, no longer tolerable in Fascist times”: the films were censored through “a scrupulous exam … to remove non-educational scenes and inconvenient political hints”. Yet, children of former Socialist or Demo-Christian voters, who one would expect to have remained ardent opposers, voluntarily funded Fascist propaganda movies, because of film’s fascinating novelty. “Because of the spontaneous offer of 70 lire

by the students of this Regio Liceo,” an excited school-principal wrote in 1933, “I have already renewed … our subscription to the Regional Film Library for 1933-34”. In the second half of the twenty years of Fascist rule, propaganda proved central to maintaining Fascist power, because it addressed Italians’ wants and needs. Gentile exaggerates in seeing Fascism as having “transformed the crowd into a liturgical mass participating joyously … in the regime’s rituals”, but these rituals did feed into something Italians wanted: State paternalism, tradition, and strong-man rule.

The consensus that the regime desired was not characterised by wholehearted support, but quiet acceptance, which was enough to keep the regime in place. Welfare organisations attempted a rapprochement between Fascism and the lower ranks of society. Groups such as the Dopolavoro, Balilla, or ONMI (an institution for maternity and infancy) strove for all classes to work together in the supposed national interest. The working-class remained trapped in its position because of education policy (Victoria De Grazia also notices this, coming to the conclusion that “instruction … was highly specialized, so much so that it prevented employees from easily seeking out new positions”), but apart from two moments of protest (1927-8 and 1930-1), workers remained ‘silent’. De Grazia is again right; the regime was “satisfied with silence [instead of jubilant support]”. The aforementioned leisure-time opportunities convinced many working families that Fascism could offer them some ‘good’.

Children especially were eager about what modernity offered, and experiencing study-holidays meant encountering Fascist indoctrination: “summer schools …are to be taken over by the Opera Nazionale Balilla”, a branch of the Party with “physical, moral, intellectual, patriotic and religious education … at heart”. The regime catered to what Italians wanted while also providing State propaganda, thus strengthening its own power.

Yet, constructing tacit acquiescence amongst Italy’s working-class was insufficient; Romanità-propaganda earned Fascism wider support. The 1930s saw Church and State at odds, with the Pope denouncing Fascism’s “pagan worship of the state”.

Partially in response to this, the regime began to associate their rule with Ancient Rome, searching 24

for an ideological connection with societal elements that remained concerned with tradition and heritage.

The National Institute of Roman Studies instituted a Latin Prose Literary Trophy (1935), which Education Minister Bottai called “a contribution to the rebirth of the cult of Rome”. Through this, and initiatives such as the building of the Foro Italico (1932) and the bi-millenary celebration of Augustus’ birth (1938), Fascism settled into the context of Italian history. This rendered Mussolini-as-leader special, connecting the intimate and the national in Italian life: as Jan Nelis says, “il Duce created a personal, but at the same time public and ‘political,’ discourse on antiquity.” Romanità made Fascism seem worthy of the nation’s legacy and aided the birth of a Mussolinian cult. In 1940, with war on the horizon, propaganda had solidified its position as defender of the regime’s power. In that year’s ‘Exhibit of the Italian Race’, schools sent to Rome examples of technological advancement upholding Fascist ideals, giving ultimate demonstration of how successfully Fascism funnelled patriotism to strengthen itself.

The Foro Italico (built 1932) in Rome; the allusions to Classicism and to Rome’s legacy are clear from the statues and the abundant use of columns.

A Duce propaganda-cult developed from Romanità campaigns, satiating the nationwide craving for a religious factor in politics and further safeguarding Mussolini’s power. Bosworth writes that lives could be conducted under Fascism similarly to before: [Italians] sought successfully to conduct the rest of their lives as though the contemporary political events and opinions were only inconsistently relevant.

This seems to be true for the first half of the ventennio, when Mussolini was busy forging alliances, and the Party was determining what political line to follow. After this, the national-unity campaigns launched in the late 1920s and the amplification of national ceremonies meant that by the 1930s people

could not avoid coming into daily contact with the regime: only successful propaganda could now maintain Mussolini’s position. Various slogan-filled posters centred around the Duce’s figure started to populate Italian streets and piazze. This cult was magnified by the State’s actions. The 1932 Fascist Revolution Exhibition reminded of the regime’s supposed ‘holiness’; the 1935 Ethiopian invasion helped the regime stay true to Italy’s imperial legacy; the 1933 Atlantic crossing by the Rex in record time gave an image of Mussolini as having crafted a technologically competitive Italy. Moreover, the youth seemed desperate to “make themselves more worthy of the Duce’s … faith”, highlighting the power of this cult in fostering consent. By becoming the nation’s focal point through systematic indoctrination, Mussolini preserved the power he had gained in 1922.

Welfare organisations, Romanità, and the Duce-cult represent the three different ways in which the Fascist regime safeguarded itself in the 1930s. The propaganda of the Opere at work educating schoolchildren and giving their working parents leisure-time opportunities was party-controlled, spreading the regime’s message; the 1930s were a time when all facets of life were overwhelmed by indoctrination. Whether subtle propaganda concealed by leisure-time initiatives, or the image of quasi-religious rule drenched in patriotism, this is what secured Mussolini’s regime’s position of power in the 1930s. While in the previous decade this function had been performed by political manoeuvring on many levels, political propaganda proved central in holding the regime in place in its second decade.

Further Reading: -

Bosworth, R.J.B., ‘Everyday Mussolinism: Friends, Family, Locality and Violence in Fascist Italy’, Contemporary European History, 14.1 (Feb. 2005), 23-43

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Gentile, Emilio, ‘Fascism in power: the totalitarian experiment’, in Liberal and Fascist Italy, 1900-1945, ed. by A. Lyttelton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

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The Algerian War of Independence (1954 to 1962) was one of the most divisive and complicated wars of modern times. The conflict was one of the key moments in the decolonisation of Africa, overshadowed by the Cold War and exacerbated by complex internal rivalries. To this day the war is a taboo topic in France, which lost 25,000 soldiers whilst withdrawing from its last major colony in ignominy. Only in 1999 did France admit a war had happened. Only in 2018 did France apologise for its use of torture during the war. France’s policies of widespread torture and ruthless suppression of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) demonstrated to the world the hypocrisy of a seemingly egalitarian France, whose motto of: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité rang hollow. France alienated both its allies and neutral countries in a desperate attempt to preserve the last bastion of the French Empire. The war was so divisive that the Fourth French Republic collapsed under the strain, almost sparking a civil war at home. Ultimately France lost Algeria due to political, social, and military factors - with the struggle for independence in her most prized colony ending with a war of attrition that ended France’s 132-year colonial rule.

The French pursuit of a policy of brutal suppression alienated the Algerian population, whilst the policy of torture discredited France back home and on the international stage. During the Battle of Algiers of 1957, in which the FLN attempted to bring Algiers to a standstill by organising a strike, the French ruthlessly tortured and summarily executed suspected terrorists. In his 2000 book, Service Spéciaux, Major Paul Aussarasses admitted for the first time that the French routinely killed and tortured prisoners. France used the legal loophole that there was ‘no war happening’ to justify the illegal practices they pursued. This policy alienated the Algerian population as well as demonstrating France’s deep hypocrisy with regards to the ‘rights of man.’ Furthermore, in an attempt to halt the strike in Algiers, French troops broke into boarded up stores to force shopkeepers to work, as well as sweeping the sprawling Casbah to find suspected FLN members. However, no side had a monopoly on savagery as the FLN resorted to indiscriminate tactics such as café bombings and hit-and-run attacks. The events of the Battle of Algiers were widely publicised in the 1966 film: ‘The Battle of Algiers’, which was banned in France until 1971.

Although the Battle of Algiers was undoubtedly a French strategic victory, it was a moral victory for the FLN. The French had showed to the European settlers that they were unable to stop terror attacks from the FLN. Although there were some proFrench Algerians known as ‘Harkis,’ most of the population were either neutral or pro-FLN. The use of torture by the French army simply resulted in a dramatic increase in support for the FLN amongst the Algerian population. Moreover, in France protestors took to the streets to protest about France’s methods of dealing with the FLN and about the war itself. Many of the younger generation were aggrieved by the compulsory military service and conscription that was taking place at the time, with 57% of the army made up of young conscripts.

The public outcry was demonstrated in an opinion poll. Before the Battle of Algiers only 37% of those polled approved of the government’s handling of the war. However, in the aftermath of the battle, the number had dropped to 25%. Overall, the alienation of the French and Algerian populations as well as the growing public outcry led to gradually decreasing support for French actions. The French’s ruthless handling of the war and the growing disapproval eventually led to France’s withdrawal in 1962.

The Battle of Algiers

France faced all round criticism from the international community for its methods during the war. Even its most stalwart ally, the USA, who was also intent on containing the left-leaning FLN, started to abstain from votes in the UN about Algeria. The FLN, however, was keen to gain international support against the ‘imperialist’ France.

Recently de-colonised countries gave the FLN their full support as it gained important allies in men like 27

Mao, Khrushchev and the Pan-Arabist of Egypt, Gamal Nasser. This support allowed the FLN to gain international legitimacy as well as weapons and equipment to fight the French. The crescendo of FLN strength meant that by 1962 France faced wholehearted criticism for the war. Even the UK and the USA were gradually becoming impartial as they wanted to have a good relationship with Algeria after the inevitable French withdrawal. The FLN were politically astute in their recognition of the necessity of moral victories such as the Battle of Algiers. They recognised that they wouldn’t win a pitched battle and thus embarked on one of the most successful guerrilla war campaigns of the 20th century. Moreover, by 1958 even the President of France, René Coty, was seen by the Army as being too pro-Algerian Independence. During the Algerian crisis of 1958, French Army paratroopers rained down on Corsica, and The French Fourth Republic was over. In its place was the Fifth Republic led by President Charles de Gaulle, yet the political landscape was to change dramatically once again in 1961 as a splinter group of hardliners, the OAS (Organisation armée secrète) were formed in response to De Gaulle’s suggestion of peace. The OAS ’s motto was : ‘L’Algérie est française et le restera’. This translates to: ‘Algeria is French and will remain so’. The OAS represented the interests of the Pied-Noirs (European settlers in the region) and took part in several clashes against both the French military and the FLN. It engaged in a bombing campaign in Oran that killed 10-15 people daily as well as blowing up various town halls and Algiers library. The OAS even attempted to assassinate President Charles De Gaulle several times, bringing France once again to the brink of civil war. However, by April 1962, in the aftermath of the Battle of Bab El Oued the OAS went into decline - with over 3,000 members incarcerated.

Without a hard-line lobby group urging for the continuation of the war, it looked increasingly likely that France would withdraw as the stalemate of the war dragged on. Political factors including the rising international support the FLN received and the gradual decline of hard-line French imperialist pressure meant that by 1962, as the war was looking very bleak for France, withdrawing seemed to be the best option. Even Charles De Gaulle, who was installed in 1958 for his pro-French credentials was increasingly anti-war by 1962. With the desperate

outburst of the radical OAS having been crushed, there was limited political lobbying for the continuation of a bleak war of attrition. Overall, the gradually increasing support for the FLN in Algeria and abroad compounded with the decline in consensus for the war meant that by 1962 withdrawal seemed to be the only option. These political factors culminated in the French withdrawal of 1962.

Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion in Algeria

The military’s uncompromising attitude to the war culminated in a dragged-out war of attrition, ending finally in the French withdrawal. The French army was determined to win the Algerian War of Independence at any cost, which by 1962 had utterly drained France’s resolve to fight. The reasons behind this burning desire to keep Algeria French which sapped the morale of the French population were clear. By the time the crises in Algeria had blown into a full-scale war in 1956, France’s military had suffered several blows to its prestige. In 1954, the French army had surrendered to a Viet Minh force at the disastrous battle of Dien Bien Phu in which entrenched French forces had been routed by ill-equipped Viet Minh troops. Furthermore, France had participated in the short sighted 1956 SuezCrisis in which France and Britain had been forced to withdraw (the crisis was one of the reasons for Nasser’s later support of the FLN). France was gradually losing colonies and influence as these military disasters inflicted major damage to the reputation of the French army. Their senior leadership was therefore very keen to win a war and demonstrate that France was still relevant on the international stage. As a result, the French army used vast amounts of manpower and resources trying to win a brutal war of attrition. Strong nationalistic and militaristic sentiment led the army 28

to policies such as torture which discredited it in the eyes of both the French and Algerian population.

The major gains in support for the FLN came in response to the French army’s retaliatory measures against them in Algiers, whilst their moral victory gained it more recruits - as to fight in the city was more heroic than fighting in the countryside.

However, for the 57% of the army who were conscripts, many of whom were fighting in the countryside, life was exceptionally bleak. They were attempting to stem an immeasurable tide. The conscripts routinely had to search through villages not knowing who was FLN and who was not. In scenes reminiscent of American troops in Vietnam, the conscripts constantly had the threat of imminent death looming over them. Furthermore, to better control the Algerian population, the French military decided to re-settle 2,350,000 Algerians in camps, provoking public outcry. The French Army was not open to compromise and showed its true colours during the 1958 Algerian Crisis, when army paratroopers ousted the President in favour of Charles De Gaulle. The Army’s ruthless tactics during the war took away it’s support base and the use of torture gained international condemnation.

However, the French army’s determination to win the Algerian War of Independence at any cost, was eventually to be its undoing, as eight years of total war proved to be too strenuous for France to cope with.

France in a bad light, leading to all round condemnation from the French and Algerian populations as well as the international community.

France, the champion of the ‘rights of man,’ had pursued policies such as torture and brutal suppression which were the antithesis of its egalitarian principles. Moreover, France alienated its allies in a desperate attempt to preserve the last bastion of the French Empire. The war was so divisive at home that the Fourth French Republic collapsed under the strain. To this day the war is a taboo topic in France, in which the war is called: ‘La guerre sans nom,’ or ‘the war without a name.’ The conflict was a key moment in the decolonisation of Africa, overshadowed by the Cold War and exacerbated by conflicting terrorist groups including the OAS and the FLN. Ultimately France lost Algeria due to factors including the alienation of the people with brutal suppression, growing anti-war movements at home and the French military’s disastrous uncompromising approach to the war.

France’s last major colony had been lost, signalling the end of the French Empire. The FLN gave ideas to later groups such as the Viet Cong on how to defeat a larger and better equipped force. Overall, France lost the Algerian War of Independence due to political, social, and military factors. The Algerian war is to this day one of the most controversial and complex wars of the 20th century, still casting a shadow over France’s relationship with Algeria and its Muslim population.

A French soldier searches a villager in Algeria

The end of the tumultuous Algerian War of Independence came in 1962, when even Charles De Gaulle realised that it was hopeless to continue fighting against such an insurmountable tide.

Although the French had won numerous strategic victories, the moral high ground was controlled by the FLN. The abundant use of torture and ruthless counter-terrorism policies of the French showed

The Martyrs monument in Algiers is a stark reminder that Algeria has not forgotten about the conflict

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With the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the infant American republic found itself unexpectedly in possession of an empire east of the Mississippi. This was the first time the difficult question was posed of how a republic, based on consensus, could also be an empire, based on coercion. George Washington advised that the management of this new territory be a major priority of the Confederation Congress and a committee, chaired by Thomas Jefferson, was appointed to ‘prepare a plan for the temporary government of the western territory’. Jefferson and the committee produced the Ordinance of 1784, declaring that ‘The Territories so called shall be laid out and formed into States … having the same rights of Sovereignty, Freedom, and Independence’.

The expanding American empire would therefore not have colonies, and all white settlers who migrated over the Alleghenies would eventually be citizens, not subjects. Washington insisted on a revision to the Ordinance, rejecting Jefferson’s laissez-faire approach and proposing a more controlled migration. It is true that Washington was sceptical about Jefferson’s faith in the benevolent power of individual freedom and inherent wisdom of ‘the people’, but his concern in this instance was rather that a dispersed migration could fall victim to lurking European powers – Great Britain and Spain in particular. He warned: ‘The flanks and rear of the United States are possessed by other powers - & formidable ones too.’ His advice was accepted and resulted in the Ordinance of 1785; the edge of westward expansion was divided into townships of 36 square miles. These townships were sold for one dollar per acre and the new western boundary was divided up. So, by the mid-1780s, the United States had come to terms with its contradictory identities, forming what Joseph Ellis called ‘that rarest of creatures, an anti-imperial empire’.

Removal Obscuring the view of this bright outcome were the 100,000 Native Americans living in what was becoming the new American empire. When Washington assumed the presidency in 1789, he faced a policy of Indian removal which had been developing for 5 years. Removal had been the unspoken assumption of the settlers crossing the Alleghenies and most delegates to the Confederation Congress, with the only question being how it would happen. The ‘conquest theory’ was the first answer to this question, a legal justification for the confiscation of the Indians’ land based on the fact that they were a ‘conquered people’, having sided with the British in the war.

The theory was evident in the earlier treaties signed with Indian tribes, namely the treaty at Fort Stanwix signed in 1784 with the Iroquois Confederation and the Ohio tribes and the treaty at Hopewell of 1785 with the Cherokees.

The white settlers were content in the conviction that they were redeeming Jefferson’s promise for the ‘pursuit of happiness’, but the Indians, of course, had a different perspective. It was an alien notion to them that their land, which they regarded as a gift from the Great Spirit, could be owned by a mortal, let alone that somebody could claim some land upon which they had never hunted nor even walked because they carried a piece of parchment proclaiming the land was theirs. This method of removal was criticised not just by Cherokee chiefs, who pointed out that they were ‘neither Birds nor Fish’ and therefore could live neither in the air nor under water, but also by George Washington from the top of Mount Vernon. Perhaps in light of this criticism, removal took a new, more covert, character.

This new character can first be seen in the treaty negotiated at Fort Harmar in 1789. In this agreement, the Indians were compensated for their lost land. Participation in the sale was not optional, but the exchange of money added an element of consent to the procedure. The advantage of this approach was that it prevented conflict; it was assumed that demography would do the work as tribes were forced to move further west as the presence of ‘civilised peoples’ would mean a scarcity of game. The methods of removal were now becoming duplicitous and were cloaked in a veil of republican values.

George Washington Washington’s commitment to solving this problem was clear from the start. Despite being the first president, who would establish precedents for the operation of the executive branch of government, he delegated most questions of domestic policy to his cabinet during his first term so that he could focus on the Native American problem. In fact, his initial concern was more practical than moral. He wanted to prevent the conflict that he was sure would break out when the Indians realised that the treaties they had signed were worthless. However, his concern soon had a moral side, after it was called to his attention by Henry Knox, who had served alongside Washington during the war and was now secretary of war, that the treatment of the Indians was directly opposed to the revolutionary principles they had fought for.

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George Washington meeting with a native chief at Logstown in 1753

During the summer of 1789, Knox and Washington sought to identify a tribe with whom to sign a treaty which could become the model for all future dealings with Native Americans. After weeks of research, Knox recommended the Creek tribe.

The Creeks were the most powerful and populous tribe south of the Ohio River and the Creek chief, Alexander McGillivray, was powerful enough to ensure that his people upheld the terms of any treaty that they might sign. Furthermore, the Creek tribe was populous enough that they could treat it as a sovereign nation. This was vital as it meant that dealings with them constituted foreign policy, which is under the authority of the executive branch, and therefore only requires the ‘advice and consent’ of the Senate.

The debate in the Senate clarified the details of this new treaty. The borders of Creek country would be drawn to the satisfaction of its inhabitants and the federal government would guarantee those borders, whose sanctity white settlers could not violate. Washington and Knox imagined that several Native American homelands would be created in this fashion which would eventually be assimilated into the Union.

Washington and Knox set about courting McGillivray, which turned out to be challenging. He believed that the American republic was merely an experiment which would soon collapse, and that the Americans needed him more than he needed them.

A delegation was sent to confer with McGillivray in western Georgia, where he turned up with seven hundred Creek braves in order to impress the American negotiators. He found their tone condescending and promptly rode away with his entourage, murmuring scornfully about ‘American puppies’. A few months later, Washington sent another delegation instructed to take advantage of McGillivray’s renowned vanity; they offered him the rank of general in the American army, with an annual salary of $1,200, and promised that

Washington himself would host him at a peace conference in New York, the capital at the time. He accepted, and upon his arrival in New York in 1790 with 26 fully feathered, mounted Creek chiefs he was treated like European royalty. There was a parade past Federal Hall, where all the members of Congress came out to cheer while the Creek chiefs sang a song representative of brotherhood. The day concluded at City Tavern where Washington and McGillivray toasted a new era in Indian-American relations. During the following month McGillivray negotiated with Knox during the day and partied at night, consuming large amounts of alcohol, but reportedly amazing observers with his sober sociability.

The Treaty On August 13, the Treaty of New York was signed in Federal Hall, and Washington made a gift to McGillivray of beads and tobacco, then proceeded to lock arms in Indian style with all the Creek chiefs.

Their settlement promised the Creeks control over a vast tract of land, spanning what is now western Georgia, northern Florida, southern Tennessee and most of Alabama. The federal government pledged to prevent white settlers from invading and claiming this land. The hope was that this homeland model could be applied in future dealings with Native Americans.

Unfortunately, settlers soon poured across the Georgian frontier with the Creek land and Georgia, in the first of a series of many conflicts between the federal and state governments, refused to acknowledge the federal government’s jurisdiction over the matter. To compound Washington’s infuriated hopelessness at this, Knox estimated that it would take five thousand troops to effectively patrol the Creek borders; the American army at the time was less than half that size. Washington had failed completely, which he acknowledged, concluding that nothing ‘short of a Chinese wall … will restrain land jobbers and the encroachment of settlers upon Indian territory.’ The failure of Washington’s testament to the anti-imperial side of America’s identity haunted him for the rest of his life and centuries of brutal conflict between Native and white Americans ensued.

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Incense smoke rises into the temple, while the emperor kneels down and carefully inserts a lit slim rod into the soot at the base of bronze burner. His hands shiver nervously as he lowers it. This was not Daoguang’s first time paying respect to his ancestors, nor did he hope it would be his last, but something felt off this time. Days prior, he had captured several British and French Envoys and confined them in the board of punishments. He did not think the foreign powers would respond kindly if they found out. He quickly did his service and left with his servants even quicker; they were to hide in a different province until the threat was gone. Only a few weeks later, the combined Anglo-French forces burned the Old Summer Palace and took the very same bronze burner where it can be seen in the British Museum to this day.

Though objects can reveal many things about cultures and traditions by their composition, equally important is where they are found and where they are displayed. By comparing where they originated and where they end up, we can gain valuable insight on the relations between the regions of origin and destination.

Silver incense shovels were common tools used in Ancient Persia during the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Shovels like this have been found in tombs in Lydia and stone versions were even found in a palace at Persepolis, but this one was excavated from Altintepe in modern day Turkey. These shovels are long flat sheets of silver with small barriers going around their perimeter that increase in height going further towards the back of the shovel, resembling the beak of a duck. They also have two conjoined semicircle markings near the end. These tools were used most likely to rearrange the heated incense and glowing ambers that were placed inside tall incense burners, though they could have been used in religious ceremonies as well.

Most incense came from Arabia at that time. Given that and the fact that Zoroastrianism, Persia’s primary religion at that time, did not have an established tradition of using incense, the abundance of these shovels strengthens the suggestion of trade routes between Persia and Arabia, telling us about the connection between these different regions. However, what these shovels reveal to us is not just the traditions of Ancient Persia, but those of Near-Modern Persia as well.

Why is this Persian relic in the British Museum with others like it instead of being in Iran? This aspect of the relic does not just tell us about the Anglo-

Persian War, but it also tells us about the inability of Persia to re-acquire the artefact from the British, which, if we did not have records of Early-Modern Persia, would be the only thing that let us recognize their weakness compared to Britain.

Silver Incense Shovel, British Museum

The Aylesford Bucket Burial was unsurprisingly found in Aylesford, Kent in 1896, though the object was dated back to 75 BC. The object is a bucket made out of wood wrapped in a three banded bronze coating containing cremated human bones.

The handle pivots were made in the form of helmeted heads and the top band of bronze was covered in engraved patterns of animals as well as ocean waves. The supporting parts at the bottom of the Aylesford Bucket contain illustrations of nautilus shells.

The historical value of this burial is not just what the burial was but more importantly where and when the burial was. The first roman invasion of Britain occurred in 50BC. This object, predating the Roman invasion, might suggest that the roman invasion of Britain was not just to gain new territories but to take over areas with roman migrants. Seeing as this burial is quite elaborate and not a military burial, it implies the roman settlement of Britain was going on before the Roman invasion.

The Aylesford Bucket Burial

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The Bronze Incense Burner was commissioned by the Qianlong emperor who ruled between 1736 and 1795 and it was brought to the museum during that time frame. The Burner stands on three legs engraved with the face of Chinese Dragons. The belly of the burner is engraved with complex and detailed imagery of several long serpentine Chinese dragons leaping in the clouds. Above that is a bottleneck depicting dragons facing snout to snout with the year of production. On the sides of the burner there sits a pair of curved ears. The entire incense burner was most likely carved from one single block of bronze. The structure of this burner closely resembles that of Ancient Chinese sacrificial food vessels such as Ding, which is intentional as connecting the past with the future is a common technique in Chinese craft. The burner came from one of the imperial temples in China. This artefact tells us about Chinese culture but also has many implications on near-modern history. =

reluctance of post-colonial powers to return taken relics.

All three of these objects have value in their respective cultures. They are all somewhat ceremonial and they all contain the common theme of sacrifice. The key difference between these objects is how they ended up here. The silver incense shovel was brought back by the British in the Anglo-Persian war, whereas the Aylesford Bucket Burial only ended up in Britain because of Roman colonizing and settlement in south east England, and the Bronze Incense Burner came to the museum during the division of China by foreign powers. The incense shovel remaining in the museum shows the relative weakness of Persia at the time, the Bucket Burial shows the Roman conquest of Britain in a new light, and the Incense Burner show the scars of post-colonial China. All three of these relics uncover some aspect of history just by where they came from and where they ended up.

Examples of Chinese Incense Burners

Much like the incense shovel, the fact that this Chinese relic is not in China is important; relics like these are great examples of how not only objects but their relative context like where they were found or where they are displayed can tell us about history.

This relic does not just tell us about the Chinese craft tradition of linking the old and the new, it also gives insight on British colonialism in China during that time. This valuable Chinese imperial incense burner being present in the British Museum not only tells us about the scale of decay of the Qing Dynasty but also gives insight on the weakness of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom government post of Imperial China, as it was unable to reacquire these relics which lasts through the Sino-Japanese war to the Second Chinese Civil War. Finally, the fact that these relics are still in the British Museum shows the 35

The Long View: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Rafa Karapetyan (Coll.) looks at the historical background to the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a brutal and longstanding conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is further complicated by religious and geopolitical factors.

For any conflict to exist, at least one side must feel emotionally attached to the cause for which they are fighting. In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, both nations feel a responsibility to protect the people and history of the region. Armenia justifies its actions by looking back to the 3rd century BC, when Armenians first settled in the region. The population of Karabakh is now around 90% Armenian. Azerbaijan on the other hand has more recent history on its side, since it was given the region lawfully during the Soviet era. Ten of thousands of Azeris were killed and millions forcibly relocated by the Armenians in the 1990s.

Modern-day Azeris feel an obligation to control the region to respect those who have suffered in the past.

The war also has a religious dimension. Crossing the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, you leave a Christian country and enter an Islamic one. The border between two of the most popular religions has always shifted. For some Azeris, victory over Armenia would carry a religious significance; it would be a vindication of their faith. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh can thus be understood as part of long-running inter-religious tensions between Christians and Muslims.

No less significant, however, is the part played by more powerful countries, who have exploited the war to advance their own interests. Both Turkey and Russia have at different times sought to control Nagorno-Karabakh for reasons at once economic and political. During the Russian Civil War, for example, Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to improve their relationship with the Turks. Because Azerbaijan was a close ally of Turkey, as part of the Treaty of Kars in 1921, the Soviet Union passed the responsibility of controlling the Nagorno-Karabakh territory to the Azeri SSR. In this context, the region was caught up in a revolutionary civil war, the consequences of which were felt across Eurasia. More recently, the ever changing interests of Russia, Turkey, and the US has resulted in an impasse and prevented a settlement from being reached. To make matters more complicated, politicians’ emotive rhetoric has served only to harden Armenian and Azeri attitudes.

Meanwhile, with the powerful nations being driven by their own interests, local inhabitants have been denied a voice. For centuries, Nagorno Karabakh’s calls for political autonomy have fallen on deaf ears.

Why have tensions escalated in 2020? Armenia has been weak since the 2018 Velvet Revolution. There have been tensions between the new prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, and the ruling elite, whom he has accused of corruption. Furthermore, Pashinyan has tried to disentangle Armenia from Russian interests.

This inevitably upset Vladimir Putin, who has been increasingly critical of his Armenian counterpart.

Nevertheless, Armenia remains a Russian ally and is even home to a Russian military base. Recently, however, Mr Pashinyan’s high-profile decision not to join President Putin in the celebrations of Victory Day has put this relationship under even greater strain.

Backed by Turkey, the Azeris now want to reclaim lands they felt are owed to them. Others want to 36

provoke Russia into another war in retaliation for its involvement in Syrian war. For the Russians, this conflict usefully undermines Armenian attempts to move away from the Russian sphere of influence.

This explains why Putin has remained neutral, claiming both sides are his allies. This has prevent a peaceful resolution and in the end, Azerbaijan has been able to reclaim some territory.

This is a conflict that serves neither Armenian nor Azeri interests. Both countries are recovering from the devastating impact of Covid-19. Without Turkish support and Russian neutrality, it is extremely unlikely that Azerbaijan would have escalated tensions. This is a particularly futile war, which is inflicting suffering on the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh. And it is, ultimately, a direct consequence of politicians’ failure to find a peaceful solution to a longstanding historical conflict.

(Not so) Historical News Stories The Happy Soldier 1917

Financial Times of Athens 750 BC

Haig defends ‘strategy’

King Midas Loses Touch

Douglas Haig yesterday told journalists that he was confident his battle plans would be successful.

By our entire staff

Haig said that “I know the Germans are building more and more defensive positions and barbed wire lines, and have more machine guns, but I still think walking slowly at them in a line might put them off a bit”.

Meanwhile, officers expressed concern at learning that their battles were actually planned.

King Midas today shocked investors by admitting that when he touched things they no longer turned to gold.

His extraordinary run of investment success (surely luck with other people’s money) came to a dramatic end when King Neil Midas touched a heap of rubbish and it remained resolutely a heap of rubbish instead of transforming, in some alchemical miracle, into a pile of gold.

As one investor said, “Midas Equity Income was once a byword for easy money, but now it looks like we’re going to lose the lot. Purely through our own greed and desire to get money for nothing. It’s a disgrace!”

A spokesman for Athens District Council, who had unwisely invested the entire city’s wealth in the Phrygian Wealth Fund said, “we’re ruined, the market has collapsed and so has the Parthenon”.

Noble King Midas has apologised to investors saying “I’m sorry but I can’t let you withdraw any money until my touch returns” 37

Across 5. The Bard (11) 8. Birthplace of Columbus (5) 10. First Roman Emperor (8) 12. Marked the Northern Boundary of 'Britannia' (7) 15. Edward Teach (10) 16. Harriet ______ – American Abolitionist (6) 19. _______ Khan – Famous Mongolian (7) 20. Divine Wind/Japanese Suicide Bombers (8)

Down 1. Chapel's Ante-Chamber (6) 2. Under Siege for 872 Days during WW2 (10) 3. Thatcher's Maiden Name (7) 4. Inventor of the Electric Light (6,6) 6. "Victoria and _____" (5) 7. "Your Country Needs ___!" (3) 9. Lady of the Lamp (11) 11. Location of Napoleon's Second Exile (5,6) 13. Bill Gates and Paul _____ (5) 14. Month of 9/11 (9) 17. J.W._____ – Lincoln's Assassin (5) 18. "We choose to go to the Moon" location (4) 38

The Treasury: Winchester at War The exhibition ‘Winchester at War’ (Eccles Room, 6th–20th November) remembered World War I through works in the school’s collection. The display was curated by two top year art historians, Felix Beddow and Nicholas Rhodes, under the guidance of Mr Rattray. The displayed artworks and artefacts captured responses to the War: at a national level in the works of renown war artists—including Henry Tonks and his student, C. R. W. Nevinson—and at the College, in the art and architecture that commemorates the Wykehamists who lost their lives in service.

For Felix Beddow (B), the exhibition offered an alternative and timely way to reflect on the War: ‘The creation of another avenue with which War and the school's part in it can be considered, especially given the difficulties surrounding the traditional Remembrance Day service this year, has been hugely gratifying.’

The curators enlisted the help of others students to make the display an engaging, multisensory experience. Ben Salway created an audio track that combines music, speech, and atmospheric sounds, and Harry Chappell shot drone footage of the inscription that runs around the inner side of War Cloister. Written by Montague Rendall, Headmaster during the War and great advocate of art and art history at the College, the inscription commemorates the Wykehamists who died in War.

The highlights of the exhibition included objects from around the school that will be readily recognisable to most: Glyn Philpott’s portrait of Rendall in School, the Roll of Honour manuscript in Chapel, and drawings of Alfred Turner’s wheel-headed cross at the centre of War Cloister. Showing these in a new light, the exhibition offered an enriched understanding of the impact of WWI on the school’s community, and how its memory lives on in the fabric of the College we experience every day.

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New Books in Mob:Lib

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