In Search of El Dorado - The fascinating life of Sir Walter Raleigh

Born to a Protestant family in Devon, England in 1552, Sir Walter Raleigh was not only a prolific writer, poet and courtier of the Virgin Queen, but also a commendable explorer. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in the year 1585 and recognized nation-wide for his numerous talents, Raleigh is now mockingly remembered as the man who laid his cloak across a muddy pool so that Her Majesty could cross it without getting her feet dirty! Prapti Panda explains all.

Sir Walter Raleigh and his son Walter. 1602.

Raleigh had to face extreme difficulties right from his childhood. When he was a boy, his family suffered greatly, trying to outrun the Roman Catholic Church that flourished under the rule of Mary I of England. In 1569, he joined troops in subduing civil uprisings in France but eventually returned to pursue his education as an undergraduate in the well-known Oriel College, Oxford. Many such events, such as his successful abortion of the Irish rebellion, followed that showed his ambition and skills that ultimately culminated in him gaining favor with the Virgin Queen.

THE FIRST HINT OF A LIFELONG CAREER

Sailing with his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert to America in 1578 turned out to be the first of many expeditions he would undertake. Therein, after two attempts, he managed to set up a British colony on Roanoke Island under the governance of John White. But after he sailed back to England and got delayed in returning, the colonists disappeared, and today their settlement is known popularly as the ‘Lost City of Roanoke Island’, but the people of America honored him by naming the state capital of North Carolina as Raleigh. Moreover, Raleigh County, West Virginia and Mount Raleigh in British Columbia are also named after him.

But all of this hard work and gallantness of his was thrown to the wind when Queen Elizabeth found out that he had secretly married one of her ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and imprisoned them both in the Tower of London. He regained his reputation by capturing the incredible treasure-laden ship Madre de Deus and presenting it to the Queen. Some historians believe that that was when his obsession with gold started.

THE LURE OF GOLD

In the year 1594, the first hint of the existence of a ‘City of Gold’ reached him. He read the accounts of several people including Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco Lopez and Francisco de Orellana that described the exploration of the Amazon basin and the Lower Orinoco.  By the time he decided to embark on a voyage to Guiana, he had become sure of the existence of El Dorado, the city that contained immeasurable wealth and which he dubbed Manoa. In his book, Discovery of Guiana, Raleigh recounts that it was the account of a Spaniard by the name of Juan Martinez, who was serving at the time as master of munitions to Diego Ordas, a Knight of the Order of Santiago, which provided the final proof that he needed.

Martinez, Raleigh believed, was the first European to ‘find’ El Dorado. The story was that Martinez, fearing execution due to mismanagement of some armaments that he was supposed to be in charge of, set out in a canoe down the Orinoco and was rescued by natives who took him to Manoa, the seat of their emperor. After several months of living there, Martinez was sent back to his land, laden heavily with gifts of gold which were eventually robbed off of him.

But Raleigh was not too dogmatic in his beliefs either. He reached out to various people connected with the story and was told with solid proof that left absolutely no room for doubts - in his mind at least. Then, he set sail to the New World in 1595 in search of Manoa. In reality, he had another, more significant objective - he wanted to weaken Spanish colonization of South America and build British influence there. If there was one thing that Raleigh had no qualms about stating, it was his contempt towards the Spanish. In the Discovery of Guiana, he never forgets to insert a jab or a wry comparison to his Spanish ‘friends’.

Although he gave exaggerated reports of the gold he found in Guiana when he went back to England, he was not successful in finding Manoa. Yet, silently, his belief in its existence was not shaken. In 1600, he was appointed governor of the Channel Island in Jersey and focused on improving defenses and administration.

Once again, Raleigh was struck by a bout of bad luck when Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. Her successor, King James I, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, was not quite ready to be favorably disposed towards him. In fact, King James was of a platonic nature, eager to amend relations with the Spanish. His first step was accusing Raleigh of treason and throwing him once more into the Tower of London - his only concession being that he was spared his life. During his imprisonment, Raleigh penned the popular Historie of the World.

A ray of hope appeared for Raleigh in 1616, when King James allowed him to travel a second time to Guiana in search of El Dorado in exchange for a massive fortune and strict orders to not attack the Spanish. But as ill luck would have it, one of his long-time friends and confidante Lawrence Keymis’ troops attacked a Spanish outpost on the banks of the Orinoco River, defying Raleigh’s orders and resulting in the untimely death of his son Walter.

On his return to England, again empty-handed, the Spanish Ambassador was angry, wanting King James to punish Raleigh for breaking the peace treaty. With no other way out, King James ordered Raleigh’s execution. So it was that on October 29, 1618, the world saw the last of a valiant man who traversed dangerous waters and explored uncharted lands, a man who was not afraid of going after what he believed in. Now he lies in a grave in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, London, known mainly as a name that history students remember. 

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The author: Prapti Panda has a deep interest in history - especially colonization and the Industrial Revolution. She spends her days researching and reading about the Royal Family and is a compulsive writer. Her first book, based on the European colonization of Latin America, will be out soon.

REFERENCES

The Discovery of Guiana, Walter Raleigh- 1595

BBC UK - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/raleigh_walter.shtml

WEB- https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/THE-DEATH-OF-RALEIGH-Elizabeth-I-The-Golden-Age

Was Spain Neutral or a Nazi Ally in World War Two?

Of the many officially neutral countries in World War Two, Spain was perhaps the country closest to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Here, Laura Kerr follows up on her article on Switzerland in World War Two, by considering whether General Franco’s Nationalist Spain was a friend of Hitler, or actually neutral between the Allies and Axis Powers.

Francisco Franco is the figure second from the right. Nazis Karl Wolff and Heinrich Himmler, and Spanish minister Ramon Serrano Suner also feature.

Non-belligerent - A nation or person that is not engaged in a war or conflict.

Neutral - An impartial or unbiased state or person.

Spain’s official stance of non-belligerence during World War Two is best taken with a pinch of salt. While its reasons to stay uninvolved appear legitimate, in reality Spain was arguably the most involved out of all “neutral countries”.

“Non-belligerent” normally refers to a state or country that does not get involved in a war, normally resulting in their neutrality. Spain’s reason for not officially getting involved was, of course, the Spanish Civil War.

This was a bloody civil war fought from 1936-1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. From an ideological perspective, the Spanish Civil War could be considered a precursor to World War Two and almost foreshadowed the end to the fragile equilibrium established in Europe.

On one side you had the Republic government. They were largely liberals and fought against the conservative Nationalist rebels. The Soviet Union provided the Republicans with significant military assistance, although France and Britain were more wary about supporting them. The Republic also received volunteer International Brigades from Western Europe and the U.S. More broadly, many in Europe saw the Spanish conflict as a threat to the peace that had settled in Europe and wanted to prevent the spread of the Nationalists’ fascist-linked ideology.

The Nationalists’ rebellion started off as a failed military coup but resulted in their leader, General Francisco Franco, becoming dictator of Spain. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany both provided military aid, not only to support the Nationalists but also as a military testing ground for new weapons they hoped to later use.

The rebels won in 1939 and General Franco was made Head of State. While General Franco leaned heavily ideologically to Nazi Germany and the Axis countries, he was careful to appease the Western allies for trading reasons.

Volunteers

The main way in which Spain entered World War Two was through volunteers. The side with which each man volunteered largely paralleled the side on which they had fought during the Spanish Civil War. Over 18,000 nationalist men volunteered to fight for the Axis Powers, on the condition they would be fighting on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union rather than against the Western Allies. By doing this, General Franco assisted and repaid Hitler while maintaining peace with Western Europe and the U.S.

Conversely, as a result of losing the civil war, many of the Republicans went into exile and fled to refugee camps in southern France. At the outbreak of the Second World War, they joined French forces to fight against the Axis Powers. It is estimated that over 60,000 Spaniards joined the French resistance alone. Just over 1,000 Spaniards (largely the communist leaders) fled to the Soviet Union and fought alongside the Red Army after the invasion in 1941.

Non-belligerence

Diplomacy is where the term ‘non-belligerency’ is distinguished from absolute neutrality. While volunteers technically assisted both the Allies and Axis during World War Two militaristically, General Franco also provided the Axis Powers with both economic assistance and useful intelligence. In 1940, Franco signed the Protocol of Hendaya, which provided for close cooperation among the governments of Spain, Italy and Germany.

Furthermore General Franco and Hitler engaged in numerous talks discussing the possibility of active involvement in the war and the issue of Gibraltar. This was an area of Spain in British control that Hitler was keen to seize. However General Franco repeatedly refused entry to German soldiers, arguing that the United Kingdom and its colonies still posed a major threat to Spain. In these discussions, General Franco often demanded too much in return for active entry into the war. Whether this was simply desperation considering Spain’s war-torn state, or a way of delaying irreversible actions, it resulted in a lack of official action. Among his other demands, General Franco asked for a large supply of grain to feed its population, which Germany could not provide. Pressure to invade Gibraltar was only relieved in 1941 when Hitler focused his attention on the Eastern front by invading the Soviet Union.  After a meeting on October 23, 1940 to discuss details about the alliance between Spain and Germany, Hitler was famously quoted telling Mussolini: "I prefer to have three or four of my own teeth pulled out than to speak to that man again!” This suggests that despite ideological similarities, the two leaders had a hard time making definite agreements.

Allied Trade Pressure

Like most countries during World War Two, Spain was struggling economically. People were starving and it relied heavily on trade and imports to support itself. The Allies worked hard to ensure Spain could not afford to actively enter the war and used trading blockades and economic incentives to enforce that.

Portugal and Spain had long had an alliance, therefore Portugal provided Spain with the much needed grain to ease its food shortages. However, to put pressure on Spain, America and Britain reduced Spain’s access to oil. All told, considering its economic and social depression after the Civil War, entering World War Two would have led to economic pressure which could have effectively brought the country to a halt.

Great Britain also followed a policy of "building a network of mutual interests and creating the conditions, thanks to which any breakup between the two countries would mean a key loss for Spanish trade and industry.” This largely dictated Spanish movements towards the Western Allies during the war.

As a result of tactical trade blockades and other agreements, over the war Spain was inescapably dependent on the United States and Great Britain.

A cowardly ending

Despite its seemingly favorable views towards the Axis Powers in the early years of the war, General Franco changed his tune as Hitler’s indestructible façade began to slip and victory for the Allies seemed inevitable. It was only when this happened that Spain reverted back from ‘non-belligerence’ to true neutrality and began to act that way.

However, this quick change of tact didn’t mean they could escape the consequences of favoring the Axis. As a result of their cooperation with Nazi Germany, not only militaristically but also economically, Spain was isolated by the major powers in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. Although Roosevelt had promised Spain would not suffer sanctions from the United Nations as a result of their alliance, the U.S. president died in April 1945, leaving Truman to take power, who was less forgiving of General Franco. That being said, with the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the US later saw conservative Spain as more of an ally against the rise of communism, rather than a threat.

In conclusion, while it is clear that Franco’s Spain did favor the Axis Powers of the war, it did not technically become involved in the war. Its conduct during World War Two combined flexibility on who her allies were with a desperation to survive. After such a damaging Civil War, Spain was not in the position to wholly side with either the Allies or Axis Powers. It begs the question, therefore, that if they had been a fit state, who would they have chosen? And does that make them any better?

Did you find this article interesting? If so, you can read about the Spanish Civil War in our book – find out more here.

George Washington & Spy Rings in the American Revolution

Today we have an excerpt from George Washington’s Secret Spy War: The Making of America’s First Spymaster by American Revolution historian, John A. Nagy (available here US) | (here UK).

This is the story of how America was really won. Using George Washington’s diary as the primary source, historian John A. Nagy uncovers the never-before-known history of how Washington was not just the first president but also America’s first spymaster. Nagy reveals how Washington first dabbled with espionage in the French and Indian War. Ultimately, it is this expertise that leads to the defeat of the British - they weren’t just outplayed, they were out spied: from double-crosses to doubly shady characters. Nagy unearths the surprising true stories behind numerous spy rings on both sides of the war.

Below we share an excerpt from the book.

Chapter 4: Pools of Blood

Washington was always concerned about spies. They were a constant problem except when the armies were on the move. He knew he could not stop all of them, so feeding them false information was his next best defense. With that in mind on December 12, 1776, he told Colonel John Cadwalader of the Philadelphia Associators of the Pennsylvania militia, “Keep a good look out for spies; endeavor to magnify your numbers as much as possible.” It was a ploy he would use over and over again in creating false troop information, inflating the size and giving the wrong location of his forces for spies to discover and take back to enemy headquarters.

Washington in December of 1776 was desperate to know what the British were doing. Spare no pains or expense to get intelligence of the enemy’s intentions, Washington told Cadwalader. He had also told General James Ewing, “Spare no pains nor cost to gain information of the enemy’s movements and designs. Whatever sums you pay to obtain this end I will cheerfully refund. “He also advised Brigadier General Philemon Dickinson to spare no pains or expense to obtain intelligence, and all promises he made or monies advanced would be acknowledged and paid. Three days later Washington was still desperate for information and again was encouraging Cadwalader to get intelligence of the enemy’s intentions.

Dickinson, who was at Yardley’s farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, advised Washington on the 21st of the information he was able to collect from two people who had come out of New Jersey on what was going on in New Brunswick, and from a person from Crosswicks regarding boats at Lewis’s Mill. A slave from Trenton told of boats being built a mile from town. Dickinson told Washington he was going to increase the amount he was offering to $15 or $20 for someone to go as a spy to Trenton and return. “People here are fearful of the inhabitants betraying them.” On the 24th he was able to secure someone to take the risks and he got him across the river into New Jersey. He was due back the next morning, at which time he was going to be provided with a horse to get to Washington.

On the morning of December 31, 1776, while at Crosswicks, one of Cadwalader’s spies, who was identified only as “a very intelligent young gentleman,” had just returned from the British camp at Princeton some sixteen miles distant. He identified the number and locations of British and Hessian forces in the town. He said “there were about five thousand men, consisting of Hessians and British troops—about the same number of each. . . . He conversed with some of the officers, and lodged last night with them.” As part of a disinformation campaign, Washington had previously instructed that the numbers of American troops were to be magnified. The spy complied with these instructions by saying that Washington had 16,000 men. However, they would not believe that Washington had more than 5,000 or 6,000. The spy reported, “They parade every morning an hour before day [break]—and some nights lie on their arms—An attack has been expected for several nights past—the men are much fatigued, and until last night [were] in want of provisions—when a very considerable number of wagons arrived with provisions from [New] Brunswick.” He provided a crucial piece of information: the enemy was not expecting an attack from the east, as there were “no sentries on the back or east side of the town” facing the water, thus leaving the town unguarded. The spy also provided enough detailed information for a map, which was made by Cadwalader, showing the enemy’s positions at Princeton.

Washington and the army re-crossed the ice-choked Delaware and returned to New Jersey on December 29. The artillery was unable to cross till the 31st due to the ice. When assembled at Trenton, Washington’s forces numbered 6,000 men and forty cannons. However, enlistments were expiring and soldiers would be going home. The army was going to evaporate before his eyes. Washington appealed to his men to stay in service for some promised bonus money. On December 31, Robert Morris in Philadelphia sent Washington the sum of 410 Spanish milled dollars, 2 English crowns, 10½ English shillings, and one half a French crown, amounting to 155 pounds, 9 shillings, 6 pence in Pennsylvania currency, or 124 pounds, 7 shillings, 8 pence lawful money, which is the value in gold and silver. Buoyed by the combination of victory at Trenton and money from Morris, most men stayed.

After Washington’s victory at Trenton, British General Cornwallis returned to New Jersey from New York City. He assembled a force of 8,000 at Princeton, leaving 1,200 at Princeton under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood of the 17th Regiment of Foot. On January 2, he took his remaining forces, which included twenty-eight cannons, and marched toward Trenton and Washington’s army. When he reached Maidenhead (now Lawrenceville), he detached Colonel Alexander Leslie of the 64th Regiment of Foot with 1,500 men. He ordered them to stay there until the next morning. As soon as Washington heard that Cornwallis was on his way to attack him, he detached men to skirmish with the approaching British forces in a delaying action. Due to the American resistance it was not until late in the day when the British army finally reached Trenton. It was the second time in eight days that the Americans would engage the enemy.

The Americans were encamped on the east side of a bridge across the Assunpink Creek. The British advanced in solid columns onto the bridge. The Americans fired in unison and the British fell back. The British regrouped and charged the bridge again. This time the Americans fired a cannon into the redcoats and they fell back once more. After regrouping they moved onto the bridge. This time the American cannons fired antipersonnel canister shot, which is like a shotgun blast of small pellets. The bridge was littered with the dead. A soldier described the scene: “The bridge looked red as blood, with their killed and wounded and their red coats.” The firing and the killing continued till sunset when Cornwallis called off the attack. He planned to take the bridge the next morning and then crush Washington and the Continental Army. Both sides were exhausted and the soldiers on both sides were ordered to rest.

It was brought to Washington’s attention that the British could cross the creek farther down at Philip’s Ford and turn his flank. He would have been caught between the British forces and the Delaware River. It would have been a repeat of the Battle of Long Island. This time he could not escape by crossing the Delaware, as he had crossed the East River before, as his vessels were farther upstream. He did not have the time for them to be brought to his rescue. Later the British quietly, under the cover of darkness, began moving 2,000 men in the woods into position to cross Philip’s Ford in the morning.

Washington had received Cadwalader’s spy’s intelligence on the enemy situation at Princeton. The unknown spy provided great detail of the British fortifications. This would be the rare occasion that Washington acted on a single spy’s intelligence, as there was no time to get corroborating intelligence. Because of the desperate situation, he could not stand pat. He had to do something or be destroyed.

He hurriedly called a council of war. It was decided to slip away during the night and surprise the British at Princeton. The Continental Army’s military and personal baggage was sent south to Burlington. The artillery was wrapped in heavy cloth to quiet the noise. Five hundred soldiers were left at Trenton with two cannons. Some were assigned to tend the campfires to keep them burning. Others were to make noise digging with picks and shovels to convince the British that the American army was going to make a stand and was reinforcing its position preparing for the British attack at Philip’s Ford. The soldiers who were left as a distraction were to sneak away during the night and catch up to the Continental Army before dawn. The army, as silently as possible, slipped away beginning at 2 a.m. while the British watched the light from the American camp- fires. For some of the men it would be their third night march in a row in the cold and extreme darkness. They were slowed by the task of getting the artillery over stumps in the frozen, rutted road. After crossing the new bridge, Washington split the army into two units just as when he approached Trenton a week earlier.

Unfortunately, just like a week earlier, they were arriving later than intended and lost the cover of darkness.

Thirty-four-year-old Rhode Islander General Nathanael Greene took the smaller column of soldiers and went west to take control of the main road from Princeton to Trenton. They were to keep the enemy at Princeton from escaping and block any reinforcements coming to the aid of those at Princeton. General John Sullivan of New Hampshire commanded the main body of the army of 5,000 men. They went to the right along the Saw Mill Road.

Cornwallis had ordered forty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood to bring the 17th and 55th British Regiments of Foot along with some artillery to Trenton to join his army in the morning. Mawhood marched out from Princeton at about five in the morning. While on the march he sighted the main American army under General Sullivan. He immediately sent a rider to warn the 40th Regiment of Foot in Princeton of the advancing Americans.

Mawhood decided to attack with 450 men the main American army. Brigadier General Hugh Mercer’s 1,500 men of Greene’s division made the first contact with Mawhood’s men in William Clark’s orchard. Lieutenant William John Hale of the 45th Regiment of Foot wrote that the American volley was “a heavy discharge, which brought down seven of my platoon at once, the rest being recruits, gave way.” He continues, “I rallied them with much difficulty, and brought them forward with bayonets.” The two sides matched volley for volley. Pools of blood glistened on the ice-covered field. Mawhood saw an opportunity and ordered a bayonet charge against the American riflemen, who did not have bayonets. Brigadier General Mercer’s horse was hit and down Mercer went as he ordered a retreat. His men safely retreated but Mercer fell into British hands. He fought with his sword and was bayoneted many times and would die several days later. His men retreated right into Colonel John Cadwalader’s Pennsylvania Associators as they were trying to deploy. Washington came on the field and rallied the men, riding on a white horse within seventy-five feet of the British line. He made a very easy target but somehow came through the battle without a scratch. More American units came onto the field, some with bayonets drawn.

The British fired a volley that went over the heads of the Americans. Washington with the army under control then ordered a platoon to fire as it marched forward. Washington was turning their flank and was about to attack the British rear as well as the front and flank. The circle was closing. The British decided their only course of action was either to fight and be cut to pieces or retreat through the only way still available. Mawhood sent the artillery back to Princeton in an effort to save them. The 55th Regiment of Foot took up position south of the town at a place called Frog Hollow. They were outnumbered 10 to 1. They did some delaying actions, falling back to new defensive positions. This bought the British some time to remove as much of their supplies and artillery out of Princeton as possible and take them to safety in New Brunswick. When the American army was within fifty or sixty feet of the British defenses and ready to charge, a British officer with a white handkerchief on the point of his sword asked for a truce in order to surrender. General Sullivan accepted his surrender.

Some of the British forces that were in the town took shelter in Nassau Hall, which was the main building for the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). Alexander Hamilton had some cannons brought to the front of Nassau Hall and fired at the building. When some Americans broke open the front door, the British waved a white flag through one of the windows and surrendered. The Americans had defeated the British regulars and were now in control of the town. As soon as Cornwallis realized the Americans had slipped away during the night, were now behind him, and he was in an unsupported position, he and his troops headed back to Princeton.

The British payroll chest of £70,000 lay just sixteen miles up the road in New Brunswick guarded by a skeleton force. It was a great prize but Washington’s men were exhausted. Some had not had any rest for two nights and a day. From the best intelligence Washington was able to get, the British were so alarmed at the possibility of an attack at New Brunswick that they immediately marched there without halting at Princeton. This al- lowed Washington to take his men unmolested another thirty miles past New Brunswick to the safety of an encampment in the Watchung Mountains in and around Morristown.

The increase in the morale of the public and the troops was meteoric. The mood went from the despair of expecting Philadelphia to fall to the British juggernaut, which had ridden rough- shod over New York and New Jersey, to euphoria over the two American victories. William Hooper, a Continental congress- man from North Carolina, best described the change in the public morale and the heady confidence in Washington and the Continental Army after the victories at the Battle of Trenton over the Hessians and the Battle of Princeton over the British.

Excerpted with permission from George Washington’s Secret Spy War: The Making of America’s First Spymaster by John A. Nagy. Published by St. Martin’s Press. Copyright 2016. Book available here US | here UK.

The Language of the Unheard - Martin Luther King and the Impact of Star Trek

Star Trek was one of the most important television programs of the 1960s. Here Christopher Benedict explores why through the many fascinating characters and plots. It was also a show that Martin Luther King, Junior enjoyed – and one that broke boundaries on race in one very important way.

Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner as Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk on Star Trek. Source: here.

Strange New Worlds

Martin Luther King, Junior was, still is, and always shall be remembered and revered for the myriad roles and responsibilities he assumed during a life which was as astonishing for its historical and cultural impact as it was appalling for the barbaric manner in which it was often disturbed and ultimately terminated.

Among his assumed or accepted capacities were preacher, teacher and practitioner of nonviolent resistance, writer, agitator, community organizer, civil rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner. And Trekkie?

Even Nichelle Nichols, who played the groundbreaking part of Lieutenant Uhura - Communications Officer aboard the USS Enterprise on the short-lived but beloved original series of Star Trek - could hardly believe it. She would learn of Dr. King’s affinity for Gene Roddenberry’s visionary science fiction program when she found herself at a professional and existential crossroads, acting eventually upon-and revitalized by-personal counsel originating from a most unexpected source. Her peace-keeping mission was no longer relegated simply to the distant and abstract galaxies of Uhura’s 23rd century “where no man has gone before”, but in the very real here and now of the turbulent 1960s where Ms. Nichols could and would have a more direct, forceful, and noble influence.

To Boldly Go

Star Trek was not an easy sell. Having signed a development deal with Desilu Productions (started by, and named for, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball) Gene Roddenberry submitted a proposal to executives at CBS for an episodic drama modeled after the popular western Wagon Train, transporting the consequent adventures from the American heartland to outer space. Though they were not necessarily contemptuous of science fiction as a genre with prime-time viewership potential, CBS did dismiss Star Trek as “too cerebral” in favor of the more sanitized and banal Lost in Space, a sort of interstellar Leave it to Beaver.

Roddenberry then pitched his concept to NBC which agreed to move forward after overhauling the show’s cast (Spock being the only character retained) due to the dismal reception of the pilot episode called The Cage. Unlike the creators of Lost in Space, Rodenberry was uninterested in formulaic, obtuse entertainment depicting a gentrified cast acting out pointless hijinks for the dubious benefit of injudicious audiences. Indeed, he was hell-bent on crafting an audaciously philosophical and tirelessly optimistic vision of the future which would be both brain-teasing and gut-checking, defiantly challenging racial prejudices, social constructs, and political xenophobia of the day.

“Gene was a man of ideas and ideals,” explains original cast member turned social media sensation George Takei. “Our human past may not have been all good, and neither had the history of his creation, Star Trek. But he had the boldness of spirit to go into a medium-television-famous for mediocrity and uplift it and succeed, against all odds, with idealism.”

To scratch the surface of what Takei describes as Roddenberry’s “world of infinite diversity in infinite combinations”, you need only examine a snapshot of the team gathered aboard the bridge of the Enterprise.

A Constellation of Rising Stars: Leonard Nimoy as Spock

Second in command and dogmatically contrary to the swashbuckling James Tiberius Kirk, whose heroics were almost always reactionary and emotion-driven, was Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock, the ship’s Science Officer. His mother an Earth woman and his father Sarek a green-blooded Vulcan, Spock is denigrated as a “half-breed” by an android version of Kirk in the episode What Are Little Girls Made Of? Spock inherited not only Sarek’s pointed ears and perennially arched eyebrows but the predominant Vulcan trait of thinking and acting strictly within the logical boundaries of mathematics and science.

The wrestling match between sensible reason and deliberate speculation which the partly-human Spock must occasionally participate in is reminiscent (as is his physical appearance in a vague fashion) of Abraham Lincoln who grappled with similar ideological conflicts in his speechwriting, policy making, and personal thinking. What later turns out to be a carbon-based copy of Lincoln beams aboard the Enterprise in the Savage Curtain episode (third to last of the original series) and encounters Lt. Uhura to whom he refers as “an enchanting Negress”. Uhura takes no offense, assuring a properly chagrined ‘Lincoln’ that “in our century, we’ve learned not to fear words.” The replicated Emancipator replies, “The foolishness of my century had me apologizing where no offense was given.”

Nichelle Nichols as Uhura

The visually striking and multi-talented Nichelle Nichols had modeled, danced in Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Club, traveled extensively as a singer in the ensembles of Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, and appeared variously onstage and onscreen. She was featured in Gene Roddenberry’s first series titled, appropriately for the soon-to-be Communications Officer of the Enterprise, The Lieutenant. Interestingly, because Uhura’s makeup swept her hair atop her head and accentuated Nichols’ naturally almond-shaped eyes, she was often mistaken for Asian by people viewing the program on black and white television sets.

George Takei as Sulu

The role of Helmsman Hikaru Sulu was filled by George Takei, who was very involved in several early plot lines alongside the show’s central triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (“Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor…”) played memorably by DeForest Kelley. Born Hosato Takei in Los Angeles to Japanese parents, he (at the age of four) and his family were rounded up along with more than 120,000 other Japanese Americans in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack and interred for five years in a perpetual state of “chaos and confusion” among “rows upon rows of black tar paper-covered Army barracks aligned in military parade precision”, first in Alabama’s Rohwer Relocation Center then Camp Tule Lake back in California.

Prior to navigating the Enterprise out of a succession of hazardous situations among the stars, one of Takei’s first film appearances was an uncredited role as the Japanese steerer who pulverizes Lt. John F. Kennedy’s torpedo boat in PT-109.

Walter Koenig as Chekov

Takei’s prolonged absence while filming The Green Berets opposite John Wayne was responsible for the increased screen time given to Walter Koenig, introduced as Ensign Pavel Chekov in Star Trek’s second season. His parents, Isadore and Sarah Koningsberg, were Russian Jews who fled Lithuania for Chicago and ultimately New York where Isadore, a former Communist, found himself subject to scrutiny beneath the red-tinted lens of Joseph McCarthy’s un-American activities microscope. Koenig compared the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1940s and 50s to “our version of the Spanish Inquisition or Robespierre’s Committee on Public Safety or the shadow councils of South American dictatorships.”

Roddenberry’s addition of a Russian to the cast was a further controversial brushstroke of brilliant multiplicity just as the successful missions of Sputnik and Vostok had given the Soviets the lead in the jingoistic space race, throwing further fuel onto the fire of the still-simmering Cold War. Beyond giving the prematurely balding actor a mop-topped toupee, drawing favorable comparisons among female Trekkers with Davey Jones of the Monkees, and requesting that Koenig over-enunciate an already cartoonish Russian accent (such as swapping W’s for V’s), Roddenberry’s public relations department concocted another puzzling fabrication.

The character of Chekov, according to a press release which was every bit a work of fiction as Star Trek itself, was created to satisfy the call for a Russian cast member proposed by the Soviet newspaper Pravda, a publication which pre-dated the October Revolution but had enjoyed its most immense readership under Lenin’s rule along with the Bolsheviks’ other propaganda sheet of choice Izvestia.       

James Doohan as Scotty

James Doohan confessed that he was Canadian with “some Scottish blood in me, but that’s three hundred years ago.” He recalled being asked by Gene Roddenberry during his audition to judge for himself“which of the eight different accents I’ve just done for him would best fit the role of the Chief Engineer. It had better be a Scotsman,” Doohan decided. “They’ve built all the great ships around the world. The Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, the Titanic…”

That last example notwithstanding, the Enterprise’s Transporter Engineer adopted the guise of Montgomery Scott, still associated today with the catchphrase “Beam me up, Scotty”. Like “Play it again, Sam”, it is one of those peculiar anomalies of the pop-culture lexicon for having never actually been spoken as quoted. Much to Doohan’s regret, the aforementioned Lincoln-related episode Savage Curtain would be the only opportunity for Scotty to don the traditional Scottish kilt.

MLK Rescues Uhura    

Star Trek did not become the mainstream cultural phenomenon that it remains today until after its 1969 cancelation and subsequent network syndication in the 70s. The series suffered, during its inaugural season, from lukewarm critical reaction and poor viewership ratings. It was also nearly altered drastically and for the worse by the potential departure of one of its major cast members.

Nichelle Nichols was routinely given a difficult time by certain security guards on the Paramount lot who pretended not to recognize the unmistakable actress with the intention of denying her access to the show’s soundstage. One afternoon, she was approached covertly by two mailroom employees who apologized for withholding the bulk of her voluminous fan correspondence - which rivaled that of either Leonard Nimoy or William Shatner - at the request of their supervisor who himself was acting on orders handed down from above.

Worse still, she was verbally accosted by a Desilu executive who told her in no uncertain terms following a first-season cast reduction that “If anyone was let go, it should have been you, not Grace Lee,” referring to Grace Lee Whitney who had played Captain Kirk’s personal assistant and hopeful love interest Yeoman Janice Rand until her role was deemed redundant. “Ten of you could never equal one blue-eyed blonde,” was his bigoted analysis.

These events proved the breaking point of the frustration already weighing heavily upon her at being little more than a prop on the ship’s bridge (with the notable exception of getting to sing in two early episodes), exhibiting her shapely legs in a red mini-dress and interminably intoning the line, “Hailing frequencies open, sir.” The last episode of the season having wrapped, Nichelle went to Gene Roddenberry’s office and tendered her resignation, effective immediately.

She attended an NAACP fundraiser the following evening where a fellow guest asked if she could take some time to meet with a big fan. Anticipating a short cordial chat followed by an autograph request or photo opportunity, Nichols was astounded to turn and stand face to face with Martin Luther King, Junior. “Yes, I am that fan,” King beamed, “and I wanted to tell you how important your role is.” He revealed to her that Star Trek was the only television show that he and Coretta allowed the children to stay up late and watch as a family and was completely taken aback by Nichele’s revelation that she was departing the program.

“You cannot and must not,” demanded King. “You have opened a door which must not be allowed to close. You have created a character of dignity and grace and beauty and intelligence. For the first time, people see us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people, as we should be. Remember, you are not important there in spite of your color. You are important there because of your color. This is what Gene Roddenberry has given us.”

Nichols returned to Roddenberry on Monday morning to relay Dr. King’s message and retract her resignation. “God bless that man,” Gene said while fighting back tears. “At least someone sees what I’m trying to achieve.”

The Kiss

Before the series wound down to its fateful and unfortunate third season conclusion, it would shock the world with a provocative episode titled Plato’s Stepchildren. It begins in a manner not dissimilar from The Squire of Gothos (wherein Uhura is identified by the French-obsessed alien presence Trelane as “a Nubian prize”) as a landing party consisting of the crew’s principal players is manipulated for the amusement of their nefarious hosts. Here, a Utopian society has been founded on the planet Platonia by its leader Parmen based on the teachings of the ancient Greeks, namely Plato and Socrates.

Lt. Uhura and Nurse Chapel (Roddenberry’s wife Majel) are involuntarily beamed down to Platonia for inclusion in a stage play-equal parts dramatic, romantic, and sadistic-along with Kirk and Spock, all in Greek costume and under the influence of Parmen’s psycho-kinetic control. After Spock and Nurse Chapel have already done so, Kirk and Uhura have no choice but to comply with Parmen’s wish to see them kiss. This is commonly and mistakenly referred to as television’s first inter-racial kiss but the truth of the matter is that the British soap opera Emergency Ward 10 beat Star Trek to the lip-smacking punch four years earlier.

Furthermore, the sequence, as aired, features the second alternate take shot at the insistence of Paramount executives where Shatner pulls a struggling Nichols toward him and their lips do not make direct contact. This measure was taken to placate southern network affiliates who threatened to black out the entire hour based solely on the presentation of ‘the kiss’.

“And even when we shot this compromised version of the scene, I can clearly recall the network suits standing on the set watching us intently,” remembers William Shatner, “making sure that before the two of us performed our simulated kiss, we fought against it intently, making it absolutely clear that in the case of Kirk and Uhura, this was an ‘against their will’ coupling. Completely devoid of any passion, romance, or sexuality.” Nichelle Nichols raged that “It was bullshit! Bullshit! It was simply and clearly racism standing in the door…in suits. Strange how a twenty-third century space opera could be so mired in antiquated hang-ups.”

Regardless, it was a mountain-moving moment in American television and one can only imagine that writer Meyer Dolinsky anticipated the furor this scene would arouse when he scripted the lines of dialogue beginning with Uhura saying, “I’m so frightened, Captain. I’m so very frightened.”

“That’s the way they want you to feel,” Kirk reassures her. “It makes them think that they’re alive.” Uhura then declares affirmatively and defiantly that “I’m thinking of all the times on the Enterprise when I was scared to death…and now they’re making me tremble. But I’m not afraid. I am not afraid.”

Down to Earth and Back to Space  

Many cast members happily accepted the challenge to “seek out new life and new civilizations” after they had shed their Starfleet insignia, tri-corders, communicators, and phasers (set to stun, of course).

Nichelle Nichols would use her sci-fi credibility to recruit engineers and astronauts for NASA, specifically appealing to females and minorities. Augmenting the encouragement she had received from Martin Luther King back in 1966, she would be further touched by the words of Whoopi Goldberg who would appear as Guinan on the last four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whoopi excitedly conveyed the story to Nichelle of how she had turned on the television as a child and seen Uhura featured prominently on the bridge of the Enterprise, screaming to her mother, “Come quick! Come quick! There’s a black lady on tv and she ain’t no maid.”  

Leonard Nimoy campaigned for the dovish Eugene McCarthy and worked on behalf of the ACLU, Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, and Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. One of the songs that appeared on Nimoy’s 1974 double-LP Outer Space/Inner Mind was a track entitled Abraham, Martin, and John, a musical tribute to Lincoln, King, John and Bobby Kennedy.

George Takei, an openly gay man with a decidedly wicked sense of humor, proudly uses his frequent appearances on the Howard Stern Show as well as his various social media platforms to advocate for LGBT rights and same-sex marriage legislation along with his husband Brad. The hit musical Allegiance, starring Takei and based on his experiences in the Japanese internment camps, opened at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and has played to great acclaim in several major cities with a recent run at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre.

Suffering terribly from a hellish combination of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and pulmonary disease, James Doohan was honored shortly before his 2005 death with a convention called Beam Me Up One Last Time, Scotty. The keynote speaker was Neil Armstrong who made a rare public appearance to express his gratitude for the inspiration that Star Trek had given him in his quest toward the moon. “I want a Chief Engineer like Montgomery Scott,” Armstrong mused on a hypothetical return to the stars, “because I know Scotty will get the job done and do it right. Even if I often hear him say, ‘But, Captain, I dinna have enough time!’ So, from one old engineer to another, thanks Scotty.” Doohan was cremated after passing away, his ashes successfully beamed up into near-earth orbit in 2012-after two previously failed attempts-aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.

Live Long and Prosper!

Did you find the article interesting? Let us know why below…

Sources

Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories by Nichelle Nichols (1994, Putnam)

To the Stars: Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu by George Takei (1994, Simon & Schuster)

Warped Factors: A Neurotic’s Guide to the Universe by Walter Koenig (1997, Taylor Publishing)

Beam Me Up, Scotty by James Doohan with Peter David (1996, Pocket Books)

Star Trek Memories by William Shatner with Chris Kreski (1993, Harper Collins) 

I Am Not Spock by Leonard Nimoy (1975, Celestial Arts)

The Trial of the Twentieth Century – And its relevance for tensions in modern America

The Scopes Trial was very possibly the most important of the twentieth century in the US – and has many considerations for today. Here, Edward J. Vinski returns and shares his reflections on Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter in present-day America in the context of the Scopes Trial. You can find out more on the Scopes Trial in Edward’s previous articles over three parts here, here and here.

The Anti-Evolution League at the Scopes Trial. Source: Mike Licht, available here.

I write this on July 10, 2016, ninety-one years to the day since the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial began. This court case has fascinated me for well over a decade.  I read every book and article I can find about it. I have seen several documentaries. I have watched the dramatization "Inherit the Wind" so often I can almost recite it verbatim. I have thought about it and written about it. I follow new attempts at removing the theory of evolution from the public school classrooms with great interest. Nevertheless, it is only today that I came to a momentous conclusion: We, all of us in the United States of America, may have been wrong about William Jennings Bryan.

Not from a scientific perspective, mind you, because Bryan was no scientist and he often showed his ignorance. He valued scientific achievement for its benefits to humankind, but he had very little understanding of scientific principles. In some instances, his ignorance was nothing short of laughable as in this section from his famous "Prince of Peace" address:

I was eating a piece of watermelon some months ago and was struck with its beauty. I took some of the seeds and dried them and weighed them, and found that it would require some five thousand seeds to weigh a pound; and then I applied mathematics to that forty-pound melon. One of these seeds, put into the ground, when warmed by the sun and moistened by the rain, takes off its coat and goes to work; it gathers from somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight, and forcing this raw material through a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon...[u]ntil you can explain a watermelon, do not be too sure that you can set limits to the power of the Almighty and say just what He would do or how He would do it. I cannot explain the watermelon, but I eat it and enjoy it (Bryan, 1909).

The argument appears to be, in essence, that science is faulty and God exists because William Jennings Bryan did not know where watermelons come from.

Bryan’s ignorance

Nowhere was his ignorance more evident than in the Scopes Trial itself. In an astonishing development, defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, called Bryan to the witness stand to answer questions about the Bible. Darrow, however, chose his questions carefully from biblical events that pressed up against the boundaries of science. Thus, Bryan stumbled badly when asked questions about such things as the age of the earth, the length of the days in the Genesis account of creation and how these stories contradicted accepted scientific facts. At best, he did nothing to help his cause. At worst, he played directly into the defense's hands.

Bryan was clearly wrong about evolutionary theory. How, then, have we misunderstood him?

Present events

You see, I am also writing this in the wake of a tense week for America. The shooting deaths of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota were followed a few days later by the shooting deaths of five police officers in Texas. Social media is currently undulating between prayers for the victims, sadness, outrage and anger. In addition, the all too familiar battle lines are once again drawn between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter.

The names of these movements, however, give a hint of something that Bryan foresaw over nine decades ago: Dehumanization. When we see only the dark skin and the blue uniform, we cannot help but lose sight of what inhabits both - an individual human being. One of Bryan’s greatest arguments for the banning of evolution had nothing to do with science per se. Rather, it was that while science clearly had produced the mechanical marvels of the twentieth century, it had produced no code of morality to keep these marvels in check. Bryan feared that the "survival of the fittest" interpretation of Darwin would lead to eugenics, sterilization, euthanasia and wars of aggression.

For evidence of this, we need look no farther than the textbook under scrutiny at the Scopes Trial, George William Hunter's "A Civic Biology". In a lengthy passage, Hunter describes precisely what Bryan feared most:

Hundreds of families [...] exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country (Hunter, 1914).

It is noteworthy that Hunter's book was published in 1914, the very year in which a Great War broke out that would eventually see some smaller, weaker nations swallowed up by larger, stronger ones.

War without a moral code?

Bryan worried that the proliferation of evolutionary theory without a proper moral balance would lead humanity to make judgments about those who are fit for life and procreation and those who are not. Those in positions of power could use evolutionary theory as a justification to eliminate those deemed parasitic, troublemakers, or just unpleasant. Had not such philosophies already affected the way we conduct our wars?  Science, Bryan wrote:

Has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plan-the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above (Scopes Trial Transcript).

No less an authority than the secular evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould seemed to think that Bryan was on to something, writing, "when [Bryan] said that Darwinism had been widely portrayed as a defense of war, domination, and domestic exploitation, he was right" (p. 163). Within a few years of the Trial, Adolf Hitler would show, just how right Bryan was.

Understanding others

We see this same Dehumanization in our day when we look at the tragedies of Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. Depending on which side we find ourselves supporting, we see either black skin or a blue uniform, but not the person inhabiting them. Even the reasonable-sounding All Lives Matter perspective, while certainly true in the broadest sense, dehumanizes as it removes all traces of personal identity from the equation and ignores the reality faced by individuals of color and of law enforcement on any given day. For all of our advancements as a society, we have never been able to understand the world clearly from the perspective of another. There are those who cannot see how the actions of a white police officer against a black person could possibly be viewed as racist. There are those, on the other hand, who cannot see how such actions could be anything but. I may be able to sympathize with someone else, celebrate with them in triumph and commiserate with them in sorrow, but I can never truly see how they operate in the world and how the world reacts to them. If I cannot do this among my most intimate of friends, how then, can I ever hope to do so with those I know only through the broadest of generalities, which, by their very definition, dehumanize even further? The "you" and "me" of intimacy become the "them" and "us" of separation. Rodney King, the subject of another period of racial tension a generation ago once asked, "can we all get along?" Until we are able to view the world from the perspective of others, to understand them as individual human beings bound up in a history that is both of their own making and also beyond their control, the answer to that question is likely to remain a sad and resounding "no".

William Jennings Bryan did not understand evolutionary theory. His grasp on the scientific method was sketchy at best. He understood people, however. This skill enabled him to become a three-time candidate for President of the United States and one of the most popular public speakers of the twentieth century. His performance at the Trial led to his being labeled a villain, a bully, a buffoon. Maybe his insight went further than we thought, however. Maybe he knew what we would do to each other given only the slightest provocation and with only the slightest scientific justification. Maybe, just maybe, he was more right than we knew.

What do you think of the article? Tell us below…

References

• Bryan, W.J. (1909). The Prince of Peace. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company.
• Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
• Hunter, G. W. (1914). A Civic Biology Presented in Problems. New York: American Book Company.
•  Scopes Trial Transcript, 1925

Cold War History - The Complete History – From World War 2 to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War to Reagan and Gorbachev – 1945-1991 (Required History)

Do you know why the world nearly destroyed itself in a catastrophic nuclear war?

Two words – ‘Cold War’.

Get the book on Amazon

The Cold War was international affairs for the second half of the 20th century. Nuclear weapons testing, civil wars in all corners of the globe and the race for economic dominance were all key spheres of the Cold War, although they were just a few elements of an intriguing global puzzle. More so than the great battles between Carthage and Rome in Ancient times or the Napoleonic Wars, the Cold War defined our world. But, there was one key difference between the Cold War and earlier major wars. Due to advances in technology and communications, the Cold War touched most countries on earth.

This introduction to the Cold War tells the story of the great clash between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist USA. It covers the period from 1945 to 1991 in one combined edition, neatly breaking the Cold War up into three parts.

Get the book on Amazon

The book starts by describing how two super-powers emerged out of the rubble of World War Two and includes the following:

·      How the Soviet Union and the USA quickly went from war-time allies to enemies

·      Events in East Asia - the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War

·      The most dangerous event of the early Cold War years, the Cuban Missile Crisis

·      The Vietnam War and its impact on the Cold War

·      The shocking power of nuclear weapons – and attempts to control them

·      Uprisings on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain

·      The super-powers as friends? Détente, Richard Nixon, and Leonid Brezhnev

·      The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

·      The rise of Ronald Reagan and his aggression in the early 1980s

·      How Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader

·      Glasnost, Perestroika, and how the Cold War ended

The approximately 250-page book is the perfect complement to the Cold War History audio series that is available as part of the ‘History in 28-minutes’ podcasts.

So come and join the past – get the book now!

Required History

The aim of the 'Required History' book series is to create approachable, succinct written introductions to some of the most interesting topics in history. They are designed for those:

·      That want to quickly learn about some of the world’s major historical events

·      Studying history. The books act as a perfect complement and overview to those undertaking high school and introductory college courses in history

·      Who enjoyed the audio podcasts and want to reinforce and further their knowledge

·      Learning English. The language and level of detail in the books are perfect for those in advanced English classes

All of the Required History books are designed to build on the audio podcasts available on the publisher’s website. They provide an extra layer of detail to the major historical events that the audio podcasts cover.

The End of Empire – Just how did Indonesia gain its independence from the Dutch?

Independence movements come in different shapes and sizes in different parts of the world. And while many of us are familiar with Vietnam’s anti-colonial history, that is less true of other countries in South-East Asia. Here, Miguel Miranda explains the anti-colonial movement and quest for independence in post-World War Two Indonesia.

Revolutionaries who wanted Indonesian independence. 1946. Source: Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures. Available here.

Southeast Asia used to be a chaotic map of internecine conflict. This was indeed the prevailing state of affairs when the Portuguese and Dutch arrived in the early 16th century. As the scholarly adventurer Antonio Galvao wrote of the Moluccas’ martial culture, “they are always waging war, they enjoy it. They live and support themselves by it.”

Maritime forays into the Orient, an uncharted expanse whose nations were completely unknown to Europeans, were inspired not by Marco Polo’s tall tales but the raw desire for commodities. Spices, cloves and nutmeg, in particular, were the prizes. The problem was exactly where the precious cloves were to be found—the Moluccas Islands in the Banda Sea.

Owing to competition from Portugal, the Dutch East India Company or the VOC established a firm toehold in Java instead. The sumptuous domain was where petty Sultans and pirates held sway. European arms and technology weren’t as superior as presumed in this setting because local armies had greater numbers and formidable warships. After all, the Portuguese adventurer Fernao Magalhaes and his men were slaughtered in the shores of Mactan. The VOC employed the alternative to force of arms, focusing their energies on cultivating alliances, patronizing local rulers, and building outposts for absorbing exports.

The Dutch influence

This changed when the Netherlands consolidated the Dutch East Indies after the brutal Java War ended in 1830. Appointed governors, tasked with running an export-driven economic policy, assumed control of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Papua and Borneo. The Dutch were stern and ruthless masters and every revolt, such as in Aceh, was dealt with by force.

The very idea of Indonesian nationalism took hold in the early 20th century. It even followed a pattern many anti-colonial movements went through, where a so-called intelligentsia educated in Europe began to aspire for political freedom. This ferment produced two seminal figures who would usher Indonesia’s birth: the coldly intellectual Mohammad Hatta, who was more Dutch in his outlook and conduct than Javanese, and Achmed Sukarno, whose own background as an engineer hardly prepared him for a career as professional rebel. Together they formed an interesting partnership, the ideologue and the man of action, and commanded a powerful vehicle for their ideas: the PNI, or Partai Nasional Indonesia.

Japan’s lightning assault on Southeast Asia in 1941 deposed the Dutch colonial government in Batavia, which is present day Jakarta. This brief interlude, complete with the harsh wages of occupation, did galvanize Java’s nationalists. Sukarno himself, long familiar with imprisonment meted by Dutch colonial authorities, was freed by the Japanese. In turn Sukarno didn’t hesitate to solicit aid from his country’s occupiers. His dalliance with Japan extended to the personal realm. A compulsive womanizer, Sukarno’s better half was a Japanese entertainer.

Independence?

Towards the end of 1945, with the Imperial Japanese Army having surrendered and ready for demobilization, the nationalists and their allies—hardened by years of guerilla warfare—were poised to reclaim Java. The PNI rallied and with Tokyo’s blessing Sukarno declared a republic on 17 August 1945.

But what followed instead was swift retribution from the Dutch. Cobbling a military from young recruits equipped with Allied Lend Lease and surplus, some 120,000 soldiers were shipped to the Indies to smother the new country. Their activities, which would include prison camps and wholesale slaughter, were officially labeled as “Police Actions.”

The historical record of Indonesia’s “national revolution” remains murky. The available facts form a bare outline lacking in color and drama. Its most critical battle, for example, is a farcical episode in the city of Surabaya where the British—not the Dutch—had to rout the local guerillas who had seized the metropolis to restore order.

Owing to the young republic’s tenacity, a typical stalemate soon prevailed between conventional European armies (the Dutch and the British) garrisoned in the large cities while the local rebels had free reign in the countryside. The fate of Madiun, in East Java, was interesting as it fell to hardcore communists who were then crushed not by the Dutch but the nascent republic’s own troops. In West Java a separate rising under the guise of Darul Islam sought to wage jihad and establish a grand theocracy lasted two decades.

Even the Japanese had a role in the conflict. With a substantial garrison stuck in Java, IJA officers willingly lent arms and equipment to the Indonesian resistance before departing for their homeland. This was done just as the British were relying on Japanese troops to help police the restive colony.

The rise of a new leader

Sukarno’s revolution wasn’t an exceptional one. Other eruptions were tearing apart Europe’s aging dominion on foreign territories. The British in Palestine. The French in Vietnam and Algeria. The Belgians in their precious Congo. World War Two may have saved Western civilization, but it ignited small fires among the people suffering under colonialism’s yoke.

Indonesia’s war for independence never had its own Dien Bien Phu where local grit and daring prevailed over European hubris. This didn’t make it any less bloody. It killed more than 100,000 Indonesians and cost the Netherlands several thousand troops along with at least a thousand dead British and Indian soldiers. Rather than Sukarno and the PNI victorious beyond doubt, it was the United Nations who eventually recognized and then restored Indonesia’s independence on 27 December 1949. The Dutch acquiesced owing to their battered economy and withdrew their forces. Rather than usher peace, however, Indonesia’s emergence allowed a dictator in the making to craft grand schemes.

Despite an early fixation on parliamentary democracy in the 1950s, Sukarno eventually steered the PNI toward “guided democracy,” which was really just shorthand for lifelong dictatorship. With a powerful army at his disposal a headlong push to annex Borneo ignited a confrontation with the British in what became the Konfrontasi. Provocations aimed at Singapore and separate invasions of Sulawesi and West Papua enhanced Jakarta’s reputation as a contentious neighbor.

As he leaned closer to Peking and Moscow, Sukarno dreamed of establishing a super state across Southeast Asia. This compelled Washington, DC’s long campaign to unseat him, beginning with a botched covert invasion in 1958 and a full-blown coup d’etat in 1965 that ushered the Suharto era and the horrific purge of Indonesia’s communists.

The only recourse that checked Indonesia’s belligerence was when five ministers, from Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Bangkok, convened in the Thai capital on 8 August 1967 and agreed—on paper—to establish an informal union. The idea came from Indonesia’s Adam Malik, who would go on to serve a brilliant diplomatic career. 50 years later and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN is thriving, albeit still uncomfortable with the challenges posed by what the First World considers “development.”

Indonesia paid dearly for its independence and suffered under two corrupt dictators. Having achieved true democracy it’s exciting to think about whether Indonesia is destined to emerge a peerless regional giant. Could Sukarno’s fever dream become real?

Did you find this article of interest? If so, tell the world. Tweet about it, like it, or share it by clicking on one of the buttons below.

References

http://www.christopherhalemedia.org/2013/05/the-battle-of-surabaya/

http://countrystudies.us/indonesia/16.htm

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/west-papua-forgotten-war-unwanted-people

http://dannyreviews.com/h/Indonesian_Revolution.html

http://www.iisg.nl/collections/hatta/intro.php

http://indonesia-dutchcolonialheritage.nl/

http://www.indonesia-investments.com/culture/politics/soekarno-old-order/item179

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/explore-the-collection/timeline-dutch-history/1820-1950-indonesia-and-decolonisation

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/unreleased-indonesian-national-revolution-pics

http://www.lowensteyn.com/indonesia/

http://www.nusantara.com/heritage/surabaya.html

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Indo58.html

http://www.san.beck.org/20-11-Indonesia1800-1950.html

http://users.skynet.be/network.indonesia/ni4001c10.htm

The Bizarre Dancing Plague of Strasbourg – Just how did it happen?

In the early 16th century a bizarre dancing plague arrived in the city of Strasbourg in modern-day France. The dancing mystified many people at the time, and they had various explanations for it. But do modern-day historians know how it happened? Mike Jones explains all…

A depiction of a dancing plague in Molenbeek (modern-day Belgium) by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

Several decades after the infamous Black Death had wreaked havoc all over Europe, the continent was plagued, once more, by a deadly epidemic. On June 24, 1374, Aachen, Germany was struck with a bizarre phenomenon that involved dozens of people suddenly starting to break into uncontrollable dance routines. Days passed and the consecutive days of uninterrupted dancing started taking their toll – the people affected were dropping like flies from exhaustion.

The disease became known as the “dancing mania,” a mysterious phenomenon that rampaged through European countries between the 14th and 17th centuries. Even today, scholars and historians are still puzzled by the epidemic, and there has yet to be a consensus among experts regarding a possible explanation. One thing is for sure – most people wouldn’t have paid so much attention to the dancing mania if it weren’t for one particular episode that took place in Strasbourg.

 

The Strasbourg Outbreak

In July 1518, the dancing mania settled in Strasbourg, in that time an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire. The hysteria started with a woman named Frau Troffea, who left her house and started twisting and twirling in the middle of the street. Not long after, dozens of other people joined her and, eventually, there were a little over 400 people all uncontrollably dancing.

Although this may bewilder most of us today, the people of early modern era Strasbourg deemed the phenomenon as nothing more than a mere, albeit a peculiar, form of entertainment.  Professional dancers joined the ones affected by the disease, and there was even a stage set up and a band hired to accompany their hectic movements. When question marks began to arise, the rest of the people had no choice but to consider the erratic behavior a result of fever.

The prolonged intense physical activity concluded with hundreds of people collapsing due to strokes, heart attacks, exhaustion, or dehydration. Since the outbreak in July, the dancers continued dying until those remaining were forcibly removed from the streets and taken to a shrine to pray for their recovery in September.

A Medical Enigma

Many theories have been suggested by experts, some of who have tried to tie the event to a scientific explanation. One of the most common theories blames the dancing mania on mass hysteria, a phenomenon that wasn’t uncommon during the era.

Some records were discovered that speak of an episode that took place in the late-15th century Spanish Netherlands, which involved several people displaying ‘devilish’ behavior that made many people believe they were possessed. They would run around the streets like dogs, climb trees and imitate birds, or even pretend to be cats by scratching at trunks.

This, along with the fact that disease and famine were violently gnawing Europe during the time, led researchers to believe that it might have been a stress-induced disease with neurological origins. It didn’t help that, at the time, people believed it to be the result of a curse casted by St. Vitus. With this in mind, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to consider it some form of medieval Nocebo effect that caused people to subconsciously dance solely because they believed that the curse was real.

Going by the laws of mass hysteria and moral panic, all it took was one person with a damaged psyche to ‘do the twist’ in order to increase the numbers of people affected by the dancing mania.

Of course, there are many other theories, some of which consider the possibility that amateur forced dancers were part of a religious cult and their worship routine involved these endless dance sessions. All it took was a couple of people to kick off the movement in order to get others to join in, purely because of the desire to be included in this alleged public activity.

Why it’s A Big Deal

Several centuries have passed since the last recorded episode of the dancing plague, so most of us look back at them as a series of slightly surreal moments in history. Outbursts of mass hysteria are considerably less likely to occur today, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.

In 1962, a disease swept all across Tanzania and caused several schoolgirls to suddenly break into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Similarly to how the dancing plague branched to other people, the laughter infected other people from the school and, eventually, from the village. Many of those affected also had trouble with loss of consciousness and respiratory issues induced by the seemingly endless series of giggles. A whole year and a half was necessary to completely put an end to the rampant laughter plague.

There aren’t too many events that modern day historians are still in the dark about, but the Dancing Plague of Strasbourg is certainly one of them. The big mystery comes from the fact that it is difficult to tell whether it was a medical, social, or psychological phenomena. Perhaps it was a confluence of all three at once, which is why this is one of the plagues that sparked the interest of experts from a variety of fields aside from medicine.

Can such an event ever happen again? The lack of a proper answer to this question is what makes the dancing mania so frightening.

What do you think caused the Dancing Plague of Strasbourg? Let us know below…

References

• http://www.access2knowledge.org/history-politics/weirdest-plague-in-history/
• https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-22/edition-7/dancing-plagues-and-mass-hysteria
• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-nocebo-effect-5451823/?no-ist
• http://study.com/academy/lesson/mass-hysteria-moral-panic-definitions-causes-examples.html 

Tales of Piracy – How Six Pirates were Captured and Killed

April 26, 1717, started out as a typical day in the life of the band of pirates led by Sam Bellamy aboard their ship the Whydah Galley. Like most pirates of their day, they expected to spend it hunting down ships to plunder. They might even arrive at a safe port where they could trade some of their stolen loot for cash, then spend time in a tavern or brothel to blow their money on rum and women. Unfortunately for them, fate had something entirely different in mind.

Laura Nelson tells us about this pirate tale.

Piracy has a long tradition. Here is a fight after British sailors boarded an Algerian pirate ship. Painting from the nineteenth century.

How It All Began

Bellamy had been in command of the Whydah since March. He had started out as a treasure hunter in Florida, diving for sunken Spanish treasure. He acquired a couple of periaguas (canoes) and plundered a few ships, then hooked up with Benjamin Hornigold, who provided him an opportunity to learn the craft of high seas piracy. When the crew rebelled because Hornigold wouldn’t attack English ships, Bellamy was elected captain, and his career took off. By the time the Whydah and the majority of her crew were lost on a shipwreck off Cape Cod in April of 1717, he had plundered about 50 ships and collected tens of thousands of dollars in treasure and coins.

The pirates sailed northward along the eastern seaboard of the American colonies that day reportedly headed for Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Some accounts say that Bellamy wanted to reconnect with his lover, Maria Hallet. Others say he was headed towards a tavern he knew of in the area where he could trade some of their goods for cash and other necessities. Around 4 to 6 in the morning, between Nantucket Shoals and St Georges banks, they crossed paths with a ship called the Mary Anne. Ordering the captain of the pink to strike her colors, Bellamy sent seven members of his crew over to her in a boat to take charge of her as a prize ship.[i]

The Day of the Wreck

Of the seven men sent aboard the Mary Anne, Hendrik Quintor, Peter Cornelius Hoof, John Shuan, John Brown, Thomas South, Thomas Baker and Simon Van Vorst, Baker came aboard with his sword drawn, while only South and Shuan came aboard unarmed. The armaments of choice were muskets, pistols, and cutlasses. The captain of the Mary Anne, Crumpstey, was ordered to go aboard the Whydah with his ship’s papers and five members of his crew. Once on board the Whydah the crew of the Mary Anne were promptly held as prisoners. A perusal of her papers revealed that she was carrying a cargo of 7,000 gallons of Madeira wine.

Back aboard the Mary Anne, the prize crew quickly discovered that a heavy cable was blocking access to the hold. Letting it go for the time being, they plundered the crew quarters, taking clothes and some bottles of wine that they found in the Captain’s cabin. Hearing of the discovery, some of the crew of the Whydah rowed over to get a couple of the bottles to take back and share amongst their crewmates.

While this was going on, some of the prize crew finally managed to move the cable blocking the hold and they were able to get at the barrels of Madeira. Van Vorst told two of the crewmen of the Mary Anne, Thomas FitzGyrald and Alexander Mackconachy, “That if he would not find liquor he would break his neck.”[ii] The pirates began to indulge.

Ordered by Bellamy to follow the Whydah, the pirates forced the crew of the Mary Anne to alternate taking turns at the wheel with them. Things were going fine until about 4 in the afternoon, when fog began to cover the sea. Bellamy then gave new orders to steer to the North, and put a light on the stern of the Whydah for the prize crew to follow. They also kept company with a sloop called the Fisher which was out of Virginia and that Bellamy had captured that same day.

But the prize crew had been partaking of the captured wine since morning, and began to fall behind. When Bellamy ordered them to keep up, Brown swore “That he would carry sail till she carried her masts away.”[iii] Baker told the remaining crewmen of the Mary Anne that they had a commission from King George, upon which Van Vorst answered, “We will stretch it to the Worlds end.”[iv]

Throughout the day the prize crew from the Whydah took charge of the Mary Anne, ordering her remaining crewmembers to do such chores as reefing the topsail. But, when they began to realize how leaky the Mary Anne was, everyone took turns manning the pumps.

About ten o’clock in the evening, the thick fog became a thunderstorm. “An Arctic storm from Canada was driving into the warm air that had swept up the coast from the Caribbean. The last gasp of a frigid New England winter, the cold front was about to combine with the warm front in one of the worst storms ever to hit the Cape.”[v] “According to eyewitness reports, gusts topped 70 miles [113 kilometers] an hour and the seas rose to 30 feet [9 meters].”[vi] They had long since lost sight of the Whydah. No one on board the Mary Anne could see adequately, and thus they failed to discover how close they were to the shore until they were amongst the breakers. By then it was too late, and the Mary Anne ran ashore. Upon realizing their plight, one of the prize crew cried out, saying “For God’s sake let us go down into the hold and die together!”[vii]

Everyone stayed in the Mary Anne’s hold for the rest of the night, at one point one of the prize crew asking FitzGyrald to read from the Common-Prayer Book, which he did for about an hour. When the ship ran onto shore, Baker went out and cut down the fore and mizzen masts in an effort to keep the ship from further peril.

The Next Morning

When they woke in the morning they found that one side of the ship had beached on dry ground and they could walk out onto what proved to be a small island. Shuan and Quintor broke into a crewman’s chest and took out some sweetmeats and other items to eat, washing it all down with more wine. Brown declared himself to be the captain and the other members of the prize crew to be his men. There was talk amongst them of trying to reach Rhode Island, at that time a haven for pirates.

Around ten o-clock that morning local residents John Cole and William Smith passed by and saw the men’s plight. They rowed over to the little island in a canoe and took them over to the mainland. While resting at Cole’s house, Mackconachy found the courage to speak up and reveal that these men were pirates and members of Bellamy’s company. Now they had no choice but to flee. They made a fateful decision to stop and refresh themselves at a tavern in Eastham, Massachusetts. There they were apprehended by Justice Doan. They spent the night in Barnstable Gaol in Eastham. The next day they were put on horseback and taken to Boston to await their trial.

During their journey to Boston the pirates were joined by two of their crewmates from the Whydah, Thomas Davis and John Julian. From Davis and Julian they learned that the Whydah had been lost in the storm after they lost track of her the night before and that they were the only two survivors. The men must have been despondent over the loss of their friends and their treasure.

Imprisoned

From the end of April until October the pirates were confined in Boston’s hot, foul jail. It is during this period of time that John Julian disappears from official records. Depending on what source you read, he either died in jail, escaped, or was sold into slavery. Some believe he may have been the Julian the Indian who is mentioned in a 1733 paragraph in The Weekly Rehearsal, a Boston newspaper, describing a slave who killed a bounty hunter while trying to escape who is going to be executed the next day.

To break the monotony of their confinement, the pirates were ministered to by the Reverend Cotton Mather, of Salem witch trial fame. The pirates from the Mary Anne were one of at least three groups of pirates he would minister to during his lifetime.[viii] Mather considered it a personal mission to persuade such men to repent. At one point he felt so good about the work he was doing with one of them that he noted in his diary, “Obtain a reprieve and, if it may be, a pardon for one [of the] Pyrates, who is not only more penitent, but also more innocent than the rest.”[ix] Unfortunately, inquiries into historical records in Boston failed to unearth any evidence that Mather ever took any official steps towards obtaining an actual pardon, nor for which of the pirates he was referring to.

Unknown to the pirates, while they languished in prison, Blackbeard was making plans to come to Boston to attempt a rescue. He set out from the West Indies, (or never left the harbor, depending on which source you read), but had not gotten very far when he learned that the authorities in Boston had ordered a blockade of the harbor with a man-of-war and several other ships. After the six pirates were hanged, he took out his vengeance on several ships from Boston, burning them to the waterline, cargo and all, including a ship called the Protestant Caesar, in the Bay of Honduras.

Something else the pirates didn’t know about was that on September 5, 1717, King George I issued a royal proclamation for the suppression of piracy that included a pardon. The pardon read, in part:

…we do hereby promise, and declare, that in Case any of the said Pyrates, shall, on or before the Fifth Day of September, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighteen, surrender him or themselves, to one of our Principal Secretaries of State in Great Britain or Ireland, or to any Governor or Deputy Governor of any of our Plantations beyond the Seas, every such Pirate and Pirates so surrendering him, or themselves, as foresaid, shall have our gracious Pardon…[x]

This date is important because there is some debate as to when exactly the authorities in Boston became aware of the pardon’s existence. There is some speculation that they knew the arrival of the pardon was imminent and thus hastened the trial and execution. On December 9, 1717, the Boston News-Letter published the proclamation.

Pre-Trial Interrogation

Each of the pirates was interrogated before the trial. Unfortunately the name or position of the person or persons who conducted the interviews is not mentioned, and the men’s answers are written in paragraph form, rather than in the question and answer format we’re used to seeing in modern court transcripts.

John Brown of Jamaica spoke at length about how he was originally a captive of Louis Labous’ ship. After four months he requested to transfer to Bellamy’s ship in hopes of escaping more easily.[xi] Brown tells of the movement of the pirates during the past year, including some of the places they visited and ships they plundered. He also told of how there were 50 forced men and that the pirates kept a watchful eye over them. The forced men’s names were entered onto the watch bill (duty roster) and they had to perform ship’s duties the same as the pirates.

Thomas Baker, from Flushing, Holland, said that he was never sworn as the rest of the men were, and that married men were sent away rather than being forced. When he pleaded with Bellamy to be released, Bellamy threatened to maroon him “if he would not be easy.”[xii] The pirates had about 20,000 to 30,000 pounds aboard, which he said the Quarter Master declared any man could have some if he wanted. Baker described how the pirates flew a black flag with a Death’s Head and crossed bones on it when they attacked ships.

Thomas Davis of Wales said he was by trade a Shipwright and was also originally a captive of Labous. Davis gives the number of forced men as being one hundred and thirty.

Peter Cornelius Hoof of Sweden said that about three weeks after he was taken captive there was a disagreement amongst the pirates about what ships of what nations to attack. As a result of the disagreement, Benjamin Hornigold and a few of his loyal men departed the company. Hoof stated that “the Money taken in the Whido, which was reported to Amount to 20,000 to 30,000 Pounds, was counted over in the Cabin, and put up in bags, Fifty Pounds to every Man’s share, there being 180 Men on Board… Their Money was kept in Chests between Decks without any guard, but none was to take any without the Quarter Master’s leave.”[xiii]

John Shuan of Nantes, France, said that he was taken captive by Bellamy while coming from Jamaica. Shuan said he also was never sworn.

Simon Van Vorst of New York was another man who was originally held captive by Labous and later transferred to Bellamy. Bellamy told him he couldn’t leave the company until they had more volunteers or he would maroon him.

Hendrick Quintor of Amsterdam was originally a captive of Labous. He said that he and the other six men who were sent on board the Mary Anne were forced men.

Thomas South of Boston said that the pirates forced the unmarried men from his ship to stay on board Bellamy’s vessel. The pirates brought arms to him and threatened him when he wouldn’t take any. He told a member of the Mary Anne’s crew that he would run away from the pirates if the opportunity arose.

Preparing for the Trial

Finally on October 18, 1717, the pirates were brought to the State House in Boston for trial. On this first day the indictments “for Crimes of Piracy, Robbery & Felony committed on the high Seas”[xiv] against the pirates were read and included several articles: First, that the pirates “without lawful Cause or Warrant, in Hostle manner with Force & Arms, Piratically & Feloniously did Surprize, Assault, Invade, and Enter… the Mary Anne of Dublin…” Second, they did “Piratically & Feloniously seize and imprison Andrew Crumpstey, Master thereof….” Third, they did “Piratically & Feloniously Imbezil, Spoil and Rob the cargoe of said vessel….” And fourth, they “were powered and subdued the said Master and his Crew, and made themselves Masters of the said Vessel… di then and there Piratically & Feloniously Steer and Direct their course after the above-named Piratical Ship, the Whido, intending to joyn and accompany the same, and thereby, to enable themselves better to pursue and accomplish their Execreble designs to oppress the Innocent, and cover the Seas with Depredations and Robberies.”[xv]

After the indictments were read, Van Vorst requested, and the pirates were granted, council, a move that was not generally common in trials at that time. Robert Auchmuty argued that the court did not have jurisdiction because the commission of the late Queen Anne had ended with her death. The court countered that the proclamations of King George were sufficient jurisdiction. He also asked that Thomas Davis, the Whydah’s carpenter, be brought in to give evidence on the pirate’s behalf. The motion was rejected because Davis was also in prison for the same offense and was waiting to be tried separately. When his motion to have Davis called as a witness for the pirates was denied, Auchmuty resigned and left the court.

The pirates all held up their hands and pleaded not guilty except Shuan, who managed to make known to the court that he didn’t understand the proceedings because he didn’t speak English. The court then swore in Mr. Peter Lucy to translate for Shuan at which point Shuan also pleaded not guilty. The prisoners were provided copies of the indictment along with the names of the King’s witnesses and sent back to Gaol until the court convened again.

The Trial Begins

The court reconvened on October 22, 1717. The pirates, of unknown education and level of literacy and only one attorney, faced a powerhouse court consisting of:

                  His Excellency Samuel Shute, Esq., Governour, Vice Admiral & President;

                  The Honourable William Dummer, Esq., Lieutenant Governour;

The Honourable Elisha Hutchinson, Penn Townsend, Andrew Belcher, John Cushing, Nathaniel Norden, John Wheelwright, Benjamin Lynde, Thomas Hutchinson, and Thomas Fitch, Esqrs., of His Majesty’s Council for this Province;

                  John Meinzies Esq., Judge of the Vice Admiralty;

Capt. Thomas Smart Commander of His Majesty’s Ship of War the Squirrel, and John Jekyll Esq., Collector of the Plantation Duties.[xvi]

An interesting part of reading the trial transcript is that the prosecutor and witnesses have statements of one or more paragraphs, while the pirates’ statements are only a sentence or two, an inaccuracy in transcribing the actual trial proceedings that would be shocking today.

Then the Advocate General gave a long speech addressing the crimes of the pirates. His speech is written out over three pages in small letters. One of his first arguments is that since most governments have declared pirates to be enemies of mankind, “therefore he can claim the Protection of no Prince, the privilege of no Country, the benefits of no Law.”[xvii] He describes how piracy is a more heinous crime than many because since it is conducted on the high seas, its victims often have no chance for rescue or escape, and are left helpless after the crime.

Then the witnesses were called. Thomas FitzGyrald, late mate of the Mary Anne, testified that when Baker came on board he approached Captain Crumpstey with his sword drawn and ordered him to board the Whydah with his papers and five of his hands. That action left himself, Alexander Mackonachy, and James Dunavan behind on the Mary Anne.

FitzGyrald said that he was told by Van Vorst that if they didn’t find liquor he would break his neck.

He said Baker bragged that they had a commission from King George, and Van Vorst then declared that they would “stretch it to the World’s End.”[xviii]

He then told of how at one point in the evening Baker threatened to shoot Mackonachy through the head because he had steered to windward of their course, and that shooting him was no more to him than shooting a dog.

Other witnesses were brought in to testify that they had been held by either Bellamy or Labous at one point, and that while they were imprisoned Brown was very active among them and that Shuan had declared to all that “he was now a pirate” willingly climbed and unrigged the main top-mast in response to an order by the pirates.[xix]

When the witnesses were done, the pirates were given an opportunity to speak for themselves. Each one reiterated that they were forced men under threat of death or marooning. Van Vorst added that the Mate of the Mary Anne revealed that he was inclined to be a pirate himself, so he declined to reveal to him that he actually wanted to try and escape. [xx]

Baker declared that he tried once to escape at Spanish Town, but Bellamy “sent the Governour word that they would burn & destroy the Town, if the said Baker, and those who concealed themselves with him were not delivered up. And afterwards he would have made his escape at Crab Island, but was hindered by four of Capt. Bellamy’s Company.”[xxi]

The Verdict

Ultimately, the court found it not credible that Bellamy and Labous would force men into piracy. All of them were found guilty except Thomas South. South fell on his knees and thanked the court. He was allowed to leave.

Then the court told the pirates that they would be taken to be hanged by the neck until dead. On November 15, 1717, the remaining six pirates were escorted to Charlestown Ferry for the hanging.

Mather walks with the Pirates

The afternoon of the execution, as the pirates were led from the jail through town to a canoe at the harbor, they were accompanied by Rev. Mather. Mather took time to speak with each of them as they walked. It must be noted that Mather wrote down from memory what he spoke to each of them about and their responses after the fact. Each man repented, but that of course did not save them from the hangman’s noose.

Van Vorst reiterated that they were all forced men, and that his biggest regret was “my Undutifulness unto my Parents; And my Profanation of the Sabbath.”[xxii]

Hoof declared that “my Death this Afternoon is nothing ‘tis nothing; ‘Tis the wrath of a terrible GOD after Death abiding on me, which is all that I am afraid of.”[xxiii]

Quintor told Mather “’Tis a Dark Time with me.”[xxiv]

When they reached the site of their execution, they heard a prayer given by the Minister of the city. Then they led onto the scaffold, at which point Baker and Hoof were said to appear to be “very distinguishingly Penitent.”[xxv] Brown, however, was said to have broken out in a fury, using language he had become accustomed to in the company of the pirates. He then read some prayers from a book he had been carrying, and gave a short speech advising sailors to “beware of all wicked Living, such as his own had been; especially to beware of falling into the hands of the Pirates: But if they did, and were forced to join with them, then, to have a care whom they Kept, and whom they let go and what Countries they come into.”[xxvi]

The others said little except for Van Vorst, who along with Baker sang a Dutch psalm, and advised youngsters to “Lead a Life of Religion, and keep the Sabbath, and carry it well to their Parents.”[xxvii]

The Execution

In 1717 hangings were not like you see in Wild West movies where the noose is tied around the neck, a horse or wagon is kicked out from underneath the condemned, his neck snaps from the force of the drop and, in a couple of minutes, he is dead. Hanging at this time was done by a method called the short drop. The noose was around the neck, but the body was only dropped a short distance, not enough to break the neck. What killed the person was the slow movement of the noose against the larynx, causing a prolonged, torturous death by slow asphyxiation. The entire process takes about fifteen to twenty minutes, during which time the body naturally convulses as the person chokes and gags while struggling for breath.

Hangings in this day were a public event, attended by hordes of people, who jeered and taunted the victims. Even children were brought along to watch the victims choke to death.

No death certificate exists for any of the pirates. As a deterrent to piracy, pirates’ bodies would be covered in tar and then caged in iron gibbets that were hanged from a scaffold in full view of the harbor. The tar was supposed to slow down the deterioration of the body. They would then be left there to rot, sometimes for years as a warning to sailors not to take up the profession of piracy.

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[i] Pirate lingo for a ship that the pirates captured with the intention of plundering it for whatever goods (and sometimes even members of the crew) might be aboard and be of value or use to them.

[ii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 304.

[iii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 303.

[iv] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 304.

[v] “Technically known as an occluded front, the warm and moist tropical is driven for miles upward where it cools and falls at a very high speed, producing high winds, heavy rain, and severe lightning.”  Clifford, Barry with Paul Perry. Expedition Whydah: The Story of the World’s First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her, Cliff Street Books, 1999, p 262.

[vi] Donovan, Webster. “Pirates of the Whydah,” National Geographic Magazine (May 1999).

[vii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 304.

[viii] Vallar, Cindy. “Cotton Mather: Preacher to the Pirates,” in the online magazine Pirates and Privateers, October/November 2008 and January/February 2009. www.cindyvallar.com/mather.html. Other pirates he administered to included John Quelch in 1704 and William Fly in 1726.

[ix] Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Harcourt, 2007, p 227.

[x] Lee, Robert E. Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times. John F Blair, publisher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 2006, p 243.

[xi] Louis Labous, or Olivier Levasseur, was a French pirate who sailed in consort with Bellamy from about mid-1716 until about January of 1717.

[xii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 318.

[xiii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 318 – 319.

[xiv] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p 296 – 297.

[xv] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p 296 – 297.

[xvi] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p 299.

[xvii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 300.

[xviii] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 303.

[xix] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 305.

[xx] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 306.

[xxi] “The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 306.

[xxii] Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p. 135.

[xxiii] Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p. 139.

[xxiv] Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p. 140.

[xxv] Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p 143.

[xxvi] Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p 143.

[xxvii] Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p 144.

Bibliography

Clifford, Barry with Paul Perry Expedition Whydah: The Story of the World’s First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her, Cliff Street Books, 1999.

Donovan, Webster. “Pirates of the Whydah,” National Geographic Magazine (May 1999).

Lee, Robert E. Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times. John F Blair, publisher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 2006.

Mather, Cotton. “Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering and Chatto, 2007, 4:129-144.

“The Trials of Eight Persons Indited[sic] For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H. Baer, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, 2:289 – 319.

Vallar, Cindy. “Cotton Mather: Preacher to the Pirates,” in the online magazine Pirates and Privateers, October/November 2008 and January/February 2009.

Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Harcourt, 2007.

The fascinating tale of the European King who never visited his Long Island mansion

Rich and powerful people are prone to buying properties in the world’s most attractive places, whether that be the south of France, London or the Hamptons. Here, Christopher Benedict looks at one such property hot spot. He tells the fascinating story of King Zog I of Albania and how he purchased a mansion that he never visited in Long Island.

King Zog I of Albania.

The Gold Coast

The handful of hamlets and villages which comprise the Hamptons are collectively associated with Long Island’s go-to getaway spot, second home, or den of iniquity for contemporary celebrities. An all-inclusive VIP playground with a guest list reading like a who’s who of the well to do and the ne’er do wells. Faces familiar from movie screens and television sets, concert stages and the rear flaps of dustjackets. Personalities whose images with accompanying tales of achievement and debauchery alike are routinely spread throughout the pages of Vogue and Variety, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Time.

The Hamptons are a relatively recent phenomenon and not at all relevant to the not too distant past when Long Island’s North Shore was the place to be and be seen (or not be seen, depending upon one’s desire for privacy and seclusion) for those who could afford such ostentatious status symbols as the mansions and sprawling estates built on what came to be known as the Gold Coast between just before the birth of the 20th century with its financial windfall created by the Industrial Revolution and the sobering death knell for the inebriated obliviousness of the Jazz Age (which turned blissfully blind eyes away from the horrific aftershocks of the First World War and flaunted their ill-gotten alcoholic party favors in the absurd face of the Volstead Act) sounded by Black Tuesday and the Great Depression.

Among the original occupants of these opulent, custom-built dwellings were luminous names such as William Vanderbilt, Alfred DuPont, J.P. Morgan, the Guggenheims, Lewis Tiffany, Frank Woolworth, William Robertson Coe, Otto Hermann Kahn, Henry Clay Frick, and John S. Phillips. Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay served as Theodore Roosevelt’s permanent domicile and ‘Summer White House’ while president. Oscar Hammerstein, W.C. Fields, Ring Lardner, Eugene O’Neill, Groucho and Chico Marx, not to mention their father and mother Sam and Minnie, all maintained addresses up and down the Long Island Sound for varying lengths of time and frequent visitors like Charlie Chaplin, Ethel Barrymore, Dorothy Parker, Herbert Bayard Swope, and Winston Churchill, to name but a few, came and went as they pleased. 

The Gold Coast is most famous for its fictional depiction in The Great Gatsby, authored of course by short-term Great Neck denizen F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived with Zelda on Long Island from October 1922 through April 1924 and based the novel’s East Egg and West Egg on Port Washington’s Sands Point and Kings Point of the Great Neck peninsula respectively. Lands’ End, the manor many consider to have been Fitzgerald’s inspiration behind Daisy Buchanan’s home in Gatsby, was demolished in 2011, the property sold off for a five-unit sub-division. In fact, it is estimated that fewer than 400 of the approximately 1,200 mansions constructed from the 1890s to the 1930s remain standing, with some functioning today as national landmarks, historic sites, state parks, public gardens, and museums.

It is the dilapidated ruins of a massive structure once known as Knollwood in the Incorporated Village of Muttontown, however, and one of its intended residents in particular that concern us now.

Bloody Inauguration

Ahmet Zogu was born to a family of feudal landowners in their Burjaget Castle on October 8, 1859 in the Muslim province of Mati which had established an independence of sorts from its Christian neighbors eight years prior. Albania remained, at the time, under the thumb of the Ottoman Empire and young Ahmet was sent off to begin his studies in Constantinople, an academic endeavor which lasted for all of three years. Indeed, Zogu would live out his entire existence as a functional illiterate. His friend and future foreign diplomat Chartin Sarachi alleged in his unpublished memoirs that “Zog never learned Albanian grammar and…is unable to write a line in the Albanian language. He can write in the old Turkish alphabet, but indeed that very poorly.” Sarachi contends that Zogu had only ever read two or three books, and each of them biographies of Napoleon. Which itself speaks volumes.  

Unlettered though he was, Ahmet would not allow this minor nuisance to thwart his ambition and patriotic fanaticism. At the age of sixteen, Zogu succeeded his deceased father as the Mati Governor and would add his signature to the Albanian Declaration of Independence in 1912. After having volunteered for service in the Great War on the side of Austria-Hungary, Ahmet would return home to a country fallen to disorder amidst a revolving parliamentary door of provisional figureheads, all of which Zogu served in some capacity or other.

From out of this chaos Ahmet ultimately emerged as Prime Minister and initiated several progressive if controversial measures such as converting expansive graveyards into public parks, liberating Muslim women from religious and social restrictions, outlawing polygamy, and drawing a firm line between religion and state. Shortly after being shot at by a student representing a radical group of young Albanian intellectuals who plainly saw tyranny dressed as democracy (one of a supposed 55 assassination attempts, as Albanian legend tells it), Zogu was forced into Yugoslavian exile in early 1924. Backed by a group of paid mercenaries 5,000 strong, he fought his way back across the Albanian border and reached the capital of Tirana on December 24 following two weeks of intense battle and much spilled blood. Ahmet almost immediately proclaimed himself President and made his designation official by virtue of a perfunctory election thrown together the following January. Thus did Zogu become not only Albania’s inaugural President but also the first Muslim sovereign of a European nation.

Chartin Sarachi remarked in his unfinished autobiography that Zogu “liked flattery and expected godlike veneration.” Those who failed to comply with these lofty wishes or in any way opposed his autonomy met with lengthy prison sentences or more decidedly grisly fates, prompting the European press to refer to Zog as “Ivan the Terrible of the Balkans.”

The Bizarre King

In the wake of his expulsion for criticizing “the fanatical, cross-bred, cringing, corrupt, face-grinding Beys and Moslems”, Albanian newspaper correspondent J. Swire wrote of Zogu in 1933 that “the alarming thing is that this very able man, the ruler of a very able people, is still so insecurely seated on a rickety throne.” Swire went on to suggest, “His death alone would be enough to provoke the break-up of the army, an explosion among the clans, intervention by land and sea and, possibly, a major war.” The root cause of this diagnosis lay in the fact that the country’s financial situation was not only devoid of equity but wildly lacking in accountability.

Zogu treated the extremely finite resources within Albania’s Treasury Department as a bottomless cookie jar from which he helped himself annually to more than twice his self-allotted £35,000 salary. He cut quite the ostentatious figure in an all-white ensemble of military tunic, feathered Cossack cap, gloves, pants, and patent leather shoes and his paramour Francy, a Viennese cabaret dancer with whom Ahmet became acquainted in Belgrade during his pre-presidential banishment, wore gowns produced by the finest Parisian dressmakers complimented by scores of jewels which, as Chartin Sarachi surmised, would have won the envy of Cleopatra.  

When this malfeasance threatened to unravel into a national economic crisis, Zogu first sought relief from Russia’s ambassador in Vienna who refused to take the matter to Moscow much less any further than the consulate itself. With no Communist assistance forthcoming from the Soviet front, Ahmet turned his attention to Fascist Rome which proved much more receptive to Zogu’s entreaties. Having knowingly bought into the lie with ulterior motives already in mind, Benito Mussolini personally approved a £200,000 loan to help stave off what he was informed to be an imminent revolution. There was more than a scarce element of truth behind Zogu’s ruse, surrounded as he was not only by a discontented general population but by sycophants, illiterates, and traitors which Ahmet proudly yet contemptuously referred to as “my circus.”

The creation of an Albanian National Bank, established and kept solvent by international handouts and headquartered in Rome, was a laughable attempt at legitimacy and necessitated the signing of a formal alliance with Italy in 1927. What followed was the coronation of Zog I, King of the Albanians, in what could only have been an eerie procession. The monarch rode in an open-top automobile flanked by armed cavalry, traveling into Tirana past houses all adorned with Italian-made Albanian flags, inside of which the occupants were ordered to remain. The purpose of this was to keep the streets clear, eliminating any risk of assassination.

The Puppet Defies Its Master

If Zog was initially thought of as an easy mark who would exist contentedly and be manipulated effortlessly beneath the boot of Italy, Il Duce had another guess coming, particularly when the Balkan King brazenly rejected four of the seven demands included in a 1933 ultimatum drafted by Mussolini. The disputed points of contention called for “the dismissal of all Albanian high officials not of Italian origin, the removal of English officers commanding the police and their replacement by Italians, the reopening of Catholic schools recently closed by the government, and the replacement of the French school at Kortcha by an Italian school.”     

Zog ran further afoul of Mussolini by subsequently entering into a commercial agreement with Yugoslavia as well as initiating diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. However, growing financial instability and a resulting small-scale rebellion in the city of Fier in 1935 would force Zog to relent to Mussolini’s ultimatum in order to guarantee the continual flow of money into Albania from Rome. Zog additionally sought to curry favor with his benefactor by publicly protesting the sanctions imposed upon Italy by the League of Nations as a penalty for its annexation of Ethiopia.  

Ironically, it would be another annexation order issued by Mussolini - in 1939 against Albania - which would finally cause the two vainglorious dictators to come to loggerheads. Zog’s denial of Italy as Albania’s military protectorate would be his final act of defiance. Mussolini’s vengeful response arrived in the form of a naval bombardment from the Adriatic Sea which cleared the way for a boots-on-the-ground invasion over the Easter weekend. While the Albanian crown transferred to the head of Italy’s Vittorio Emanuel III, Zog escaped to Greece with his beautiful Hungarian bride Geraldine Apponyi and their infant son, Crown Prince Leka. From there, they re-routed to London where the royal family took sanctuary within the luxurious confines of the Ritz Hotel.

Knollwood

The famed Manhattan architectural firm of Hiss and Weeks drafted plans for the immense 60-room stone mansion which was constructed sometime between 1906 and 1920 as the centerpiece of Westbrook Farms, a 260-acre estate in Nassau County on Long Island intended for Charles Hudson who amassed his fortune through dealings on Wall Street as well as in the burgeoning steel industry.   

With the purpose of utilizing Knollwood as a by-proxy Albanian kingdom, the exiled Zog purchased the estate in 1951 for a reported amount of $102,800, which today would equate to slightly less than a million dollars. Pillagers and vandals, fueled by speculation that Zog had completed the transaction by means of rubies and diamonds and already had hidden for him within the mansion by low-level Albanian functionaries his money and multitudinous treasures, looted and destroyed beyond repair the vacant premises.

Never having laid eyes or set foot upon the property, Zog sold it four years later and the Town of Oyster Bay declared the unsafe structure condemned and had it all but leveled to the ground in 1959. Accessible - albeit difficult to find - from hiking trails winding through the present-day Muttontown Preserve, the ruins of Knollwood are still today a popular destination for scavengers and curiosity-seekers who may not even necessarily be privy to the story of the obscure Albanian king who very nearly lived there.

And, so, what of Zog? Rather than Long Island, he and his family relocated to Paris where he died in 1961 and was buried in the Thiais Cemetery. In 2012, the Albanian government - including Zog’s grandson Leka, a political advisor to President Bujar Nashani - commemorated the centennial of the nation’s independence from the Ottoman Empire by having Ahmet Zogu exhumed and repatriated to Tirana.

Committed to a specially built mausoleum, Zog’s remains have fortunately received far more reverential treatment than those of the Gold Coast’s ransacked and bulldozed mansion. 

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Sources

King Zog of the Albanians: The Inside Story by Chartin Sarachi (Unfinished and Unpublished Manuscript, 1940)

King Zog’s Albania by J. Swire (Liveright, 1937)

Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and After by R.J. Crampton (Routledge, 1997)

In Albania, Mussolini’s Interference (Sunday Times of Perth, Australia-August 27, 1933)

Invasion of Albania by C. Peter Chen (World War II Database)

King Zog I of Albania by Richard Cavendish (History Today, 2014)

Bizarre King Zog’s Remains Repatriated to Albania by Robert Myles (Digital Journal-November 12, 2012)

Stumbling on the Abandoned Ruins of King Zog’s Long Island Estate by Nick Carr (Scouting New York-March 4, 2013)