Spain in the New World: The Four Viceroyalties

By the latter half of the 17th century, the rule of Spain in the New World was reaching 200 years. Times were changing, both in the New World and in Europe, and the leaders of Spain knew it. Their problem was what to do about it. Spain had never had a coherent policy in its imperial rule. Since 1492, Spain was seemingly constantly at war, with an endless series of crises thrown into the mix. Solutions had to be found for the here and now, the future would take care of itself.

In this major series of articles Erick Reddington continues his look at the independence of Spanish America by looking at the four viceroyalties in the region: New Spain, New Granada, Peru, and La Plata.

A soldado de cuera, a group of soldiers who served in the frontiers of New Spain in the colonial period.

The mid- to late- seventeenth century has been, for decades, labeled “The Age of Absolutism.” This “Absolutism” has always implied the unquestioned and unconditional rule by one man: the king. This absolutism meant that the king was what modern people would think of as some 1930s style dictator who had complete control of his country and people.

This view is a product of post-revolutionary scholarship to justify the revolutions against the old order. Even more than a cursory glance at the governing structures of the 17th century will show the truth. Decades and centuries of traditions, bureaucratic structures, compromises, and privileges granted to localities and nobility made the governments of this time function a far cry from absolutist. Spain was no different. The Spanish Empire in America certainly did not function this way.

The primary reason the Spanish Empire could not function in this fashion was simple: distance. From Seville, the primary Spanish trading port to Vera Cruz, the main port in New Spain, was almost 5,700 nautical miles. Sailing 5 knots, it would take about 48 days from port to port. This does not include accounting for bad weather, stopping for supplies, or quarantines. It would be impossible to handle immediate situations with a twelve-week round-trip communication time.

Since immediate communication was impossible, in 1524, Charles V created the Council of the Indies. With the Bourbon Reforms, in 1714 this was superseded by a single Secretary of the Navy and the Indies. In the 1760s, this department was broken up and the Indies received its own portfolio. Neither a single minister nor a council based in Madrid could control the whole of Spanish America in an effective way. Universal rules for the entirety of the empire would not work. Stretching from the Arctic (in theory) to Tierra del Fuego, this territory encompasses a dizzying array of peoples, climates, and conditions. Madrid could never account for all circumstances and conditions. This led to the creation and increase in power of the viceroys.

The concept of a viceroy, or a person acting in the name of, and with the powers of, the king was not new. Its use in the formal administrative system of the empire was natural. When more and more territory was falling under Spanish control in the early 16th century, it was realized very early on that there was just too much territory to govern easily from Madrid. Spain could not just let the newly conquered territory go, however. There was simply too much wealth available to just walk away. The territory had to be governed, and this led to the first of the viceroyalties to be created: New Spain.

New Spain

New Spain was established early, created in 1535. Home of the original source of wealth from the New World, the fabulous wealth of the conquered Aztecs, New Spain grew into the most important of the viceroyalties for Spain. This was not simply intended to be an appendage of the mother country, however. This was the Kingdom of New Spain with King Charles on the throne. Since he could not be in two places at once, the viceroy would simply execute the kings powers in his absence. This system proved satisfactory in New Spain and would be replicated throughout Spanish America.

New Spain was enormous. Encompassing all the islands in the Caribbean under Spanish control, most of Central America, Florida, Mexico, the United States west of the Mississippi River, and the Oregon Country up to the 54th parallel, this territory was vital to Spain. From the agricultural wealth of the Cuban sugar plantations to the silver mines of Mexico, the wealth of New Spain made it the most important colony. Its capital, Mexico City, was the most important city in Spanish America. Built upon the ruins of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, it was the most populous and richest city in the Spanish Empire. To be the governor of New Spain and take up residence in the viceregal capital was to reach the top of the colonial administration.

Even in this, the most important colony, the colony was sparsely under control. The Caribbean islands were under tight control due to the economic potential, but in the north and south of the colony, little had changed from pre-Columbian times. The north was full of tribes, many of whom could go decades without seeing any Spanish administrators. The most European contact these natives could have would be explorers on the coast or Catholic missionaries looking to convert them. This is how many of the famous missions, such as San Juan Capistrano and the Alamo, arose. For Spain, trading and converting these natives was the extent of their ambition.

In the south of the viceroyalty, many of the native tribes lived as they had for thousands of years. Like the north, in the interior trading and conversion were the primary goals of administration. On the coasts, however, the situation was different. Due to the tropical climate of the area, sugar production was possible, and therefore a plantation economy predominated. Because of the economic importance of the area, there were significant fortifications built and port defenses took priority. This led to disruptions of native life as well as a more militarized society than existed in the north of the colony or in the interior.

The most controversial part of New Spain, from a Spanish point of view was Louisiana. Originally founded as a French colony, Louisiana had great unrealized economic potential. Most importantly for Spain was that control of Louisiana, and its great port at the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans, would provide a territorial link to the colony of Florida, which Spain had claims to. In 1763, at the failure of the Seven Years’ War, France had ceded this territory to Spain, which was incorporated into New Spain. It was used as a base for the Spanish to strike at the British during the American Revolution. After that war, Britain ceded Florida back to Spain. Later, in 1800, during the Napoleonic Wars, Spain ceded Louisiana back to France under the agreement that France would not cede the territory to another country. Only three years later, France sold the territory to the United States. For New Spain, the border of Louisiana was ill-defined. The resulting border tensions with the US would carry on after independence. In the years prior to the outbreak of the Latin American Revolutions, New Spain had been led by a series of very able Viceroys. Men like Carlos de Croix and Antonio de Bucareli y Ursúa were energetic in carrying out the Bourbon Reforms. A series of roads (called El Camino Real) to improve communication and travel were built. Military reforms were carried out to better defend the vast territory from British predation. The Jesuits were expelled to increase greater governmental control and weaken the hierarchy of the church. The colony even had its own squadrons of ships to control the coasts and significantly reduce the endemic piracy of the Caribbean.

New Granada

South of New Spain was the Kingdom of New Granada. Originally carved out from parts of Peru and New Spain, New Granada covered the northern part of South America and Panama. Of the four viceroyalties, this one was the least developed politically and economically. This was not entirely due to poor administration on the part of the Spanish. Two geographic features dominated the territory: mountains and jungle. The northern reaches of the Andes mountains made communication difficult. Road construction was extremely treacherous due to the broken terrain. In the valleys, jungles made the territory difficult to traverse. There were also tropical diseases and dangerous animals. The mountains and jungles, with little to no roads, made the logistics of any expedition into the interior mind-boggling.

Further exasperating attempts to expand were the natives of New Granada. With logistics so poor, it was extremely difficult to mount any type of expedition with sufficient force necessary to dislodge the natives from vast swaths of the territory. Of course, the natives did not want to be dislodged. Of these tribes, the most formidable were the Wayuu. Unlike many other South American tribes, the Wayuu were very happy to adopt European weapons and horses. In 1769, the Guajira Rebellion broke out in what is now the border area between Venezuela and Colombia. An estimated 20,000 warriors would attack and destroy any Spanish settlements they could take. Spain’s enemies, Britain and the Netherlands, were more than happy to supply the Wayuu with the guns and horses they were looking for. Although the rebellion would peter out over the ensuing months, it was a sign of the lack of control Spain had over the territory.

Due to the nightmarish terrain of the territory, the importance of the Captain-Generalcy division of the colony was more pronounced than in other viceroyalties. Foremost among these was the Captain-Generalcy of Venezuela. Originally founded centuries before as the attempted colony of Klein Venedig, Venezuela, unlike the rest of New Granada, had been under the jurisdiction of New Spain, not Peru. There was a sense of separateness for Venezuelans. This was further exasperated by the differing economy prevailing there. Cocoa and tobacco were the primary agricultural products of Venezuela. This differed from other colonies focused on either mining or sugar production. Also, due to the types of products grown in Venezuela, it saw a larger number of African slaves imported into the colony than the other parts of New Granada. This led to a different racial demographic and subsequently, racial attitudes were different there.

The internal divisions and cultural differences of the people of New Granada would lead to many problems during the revolutionary period. Although there were many times in which the colony came together to defeat external threats, such as major attacks during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, there was little politically or culturally to tie the kingdom together.

Peru

In the eyes of Spaniards, Peru rivalled New Spain in value to the mother country. The Kingdom of Peru was originally built on the ashes of the Inca Empire, just as New Spain was on the Aztecs. Peru gave Spain access to the Pacific Ocean along with New Spain. New Spain had a diverse economy with trade, agriculture, and mining all contributing to the wealth of the colony. Peru’s fabulous wealth was based primarily on mining. The Potosí mine is still today the largest source of silver on Earth. The wealth of Peru had been feeding the Spanish government for hundreds of years.

The Inca inheritance helped the Spanish in many ways. The terrain of Peru was much like New Granada, mountainous and full of jungle. However, the Inca were dedicated road builders who emphasized communication and speed of travel, especially for armies. This network of roads served Spain well in tapping the vast wealth of the country. The land was also more heavily populated with Natives than many other areas. Tribes such as the Quechua and Aymara served as trading partners, a source of converts, and erstwhile enemies. Due to the distances involved, it was deemed inefficient to bring in African slaves on a large scale to work the mines. Therefore, these tribes also served as a labor pool. Working and living in conditions no better than slavery, the great wealth of Peru was obtained off the backs of these natives.

Resentments amongst the natives would eventually grow into the Tupac Amaru Rebellion. A Quechua leader who styled himself Tupac Amaru II (after the last King of the Inca, Tupac Amaru), led tens of thousands of natives in a rising against the viceregal authorities. Curiously, Tupac Amaru told his followers he was acting in the name of the Spanish king against the corrupt colonial authorities. Although this rebellion would last only a short time, it would scar the colony, and lead to many leaders, such as Viceroy Ambrosio O’Higgins, to call for a more cooperative policy with the natives.

Originally, the Kingdom of Peru consisted of all the Spanish lands in South America, except for Venezuela. With the Bourbon Reforms, many of these territories had been shorn off. On the eve of the Wars of Independence, Peru was down to modern day Peru and Chile. Despite this, Peru was still considered one of the most important parts of the empire. Lima, the capital, was considered by its denizens the most important Spanish city in the Americas (Mexico City would disagree, of course).

Residing in Lima, like in Mexico City, were a series of Viceroys who provided bold leadership and innovative reforms. Ambrosio O’Higgins encourage trade and manufacturing. Infrastructure was improved, especially transport over the Andes. José de Armendárez encouraged greater silver production and attempted to crack down on corruption. The last Viceroy before the revolutions, Jose de Abascal y Sousa promoted internal reform, particularly bureaucratic and educational reform. The army was also reformed to make it more efficient and combat ready.

The Spanish focus on Peru and its importance, as well as the care that the crown showered on the colony, would lead to what was probably the most royalist colony in the Americas. Support for the king and the empire was probably higher in Peru than any other colony. It would consistently be a thorn in the side of the revolutionaries.

La Plata

The Viceroyalty of the Río de La Plata was, unlike the others, not an official kingdom. It began life as a viceroyalty. Due to the distances and communication difficulties involved, in retrospect, having the La Plata River basin under the control of Lima was absurd. Further, due to the inability to control an area so distant from the capital, corruption and smuggling were endemic. The area at the mouth of the Plata River was seen by many administrators in Spain as a cesspool that needed a firm hand and nothing more. As the Bourbon Reforms were meant to be based in rationality, the only rational thing to do would be to divide the administration. In 1776, the new viceroyalty was proclaimed with its capital at Buenos Aires. A large portion of Peru was spun off to the new La Plata to make a more Atlantic oriented unit, leaving Peru a Pacific viceroyalty.

The problem with expectations is that they are self-fulfilling. As La Plata was seen as a colonial backwater that was full of crime and corruption, only the worst colonial administrators wanted to go there. Despite the Potosí mine being designated in La Plata, revenues from the new colony were poor. The Spanish never fully realized the potential of the La Plata River basin. Others, however, did.

During the early Napoleonic Wars, when Spain was allied to France, British leaders believed that the La Plata would make a fine addition to their empire. Naval blockades would choke off the seaborne commerce of the area. Raids on the region would make life difficult for the inhabitants. In 1807, the British would occupy Buenos Aires. The reaction from the criollos was immediate. Without measurable support from Spain, the regions leaders were able to defeat and force the British force to surrender, further emboldening the leaders of the colony and embittering them against a Spanish administration that just did not seem to care.

Another competitor was Portugal. The colossus of the Portuguese colony of Brazil would loom over the La Plata region. The Portuguese leaders in Rio de Janeiro were desirous of gaining a foothold at the mouth of the La Plata River to access the interior. Due to the geography of Brazil, accessing the interior of the colony was difficult over land. The Portuguese had eyes on the city of Montevideo. As Portugal was a British ally and Spain was a French ally, it was obvious that there would be fighting in the La Plata River valley.

Despite the known interest of other nations, Spain did little to invest in defense. As there were many problems elsewhere, and the low expectations of the colony in Madrid, the government in Madrid could do little and did less. The economy was underdeveloped despite the incredible agricultural potential of the area. Manioc, yerba mate, and livestock provided some income to the viceregal government. Shipping, when not cut off by the British Navy also contributed a large amount to the economy. La Plata was all potential and little realization under Spanish rule.

Pre-Revolutionary Situation

The strengthening of the American colonies economically and militarily was vital with the onset of the Napoleonic Wars. As colonies cut off by thousands of miles of ocean, the British were sure to target them, especially the wealthy Caribbean possessions. Spain could not afford to lose New Spain, and therefore used the viceregal military establishment to both keep the colony in line and keep the British out. Peru could not be easily targeted by the British due to its location on the Pacific coast. New Granada and La Plata were too underrated to warrant much investment. Although Spanish troops could not be spared to defend the colonies, officers from Spain could be sent to the Americas to help build and train armies. These men were expected to be loyal to the mother country and as Peninsulares, they would have every personal interest to maintain the colonial status quo.

Although troops could not be pulled out of the colony, money could. The Napoleonic Wars were incredibly expensive and Spain, which did not have the most efficient of administrations even after the Bourbon Reforms, needed every bit of money it could get its hands on. This only further emphasized that the colonies were there for extraction of wealth and little more. With the ideas of the enlightenment penetrating the colonies, the examples of the American and French Revolutions fresh in their minds, and a mother country distracted by the largest series of wars in Europe in 150 years, the people of Spanish America looked at their situation and questioned whether continued loyalty was worth it. All that was required was a spark.

What do you think of the four viceroyalties? Let us know below.

Now, read about Francisco Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan president who brought his country to military catastrophe in the War of the Triple Alliance here.

Top Secret World War 2: Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and their Submarine Trade Missions

As allies, Japan and Nazi Germany collaborated together at times during World War 2. One such time was with the Yanagi missions, a series of fascinating submarine voyages undertaken by Imperial Japan to exchange technology, valuable materials and skills with Nazi Germany. These missions make us think – what might have been accomplished had this seemingly hollow ‘marriage of convenience’ placed greater strategic emphasis on collaboration?

Felix Debieux considers this question.

The Japanese I-8 submarine in 1939. It was to take part in the Yanagi missions in 1943.

What if – an alliance of missed opportunity?

When we talk about history, it is hard not to think about the what-ifs, the what-might-have-beens and the what-could-have-beens. Such counterfactual thinking can be traced back to the very beginning of Western historiography, when Thucydides and Livy wondered how differently their own societies might have turned out, “if the Persians had defeated the Greeks or if Alexander the Great had waged war against Rome”. More recently, an anthology published in 1931 included an essay by Winston Churchill titled, ‘If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg’. It imagined an alternative outcome to the American Civil War in which the Confederacy triumphed over the Union. Having read history to a postgraduate level, my impression of the counterfactual approach was pretty much the same as most professional historians. At best it was a harmless bit of fun, at worst it was dodgy, unacademic terrain completely unworthy of serious scholarship. In the somewhat less diplomatic words of Marxist Historian E. P. Thompson: “Geschichtswissenschlopff, unhistorical shit”.

Shit it may be, but that has not halted the imagination of authors who have spawned an entire genre of speculative fiction. One example which succeeded in grabbing my attention is Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan overcame the Allies to win the Second World War. Having at last finished watching Amazon’s onscreen adaptation of the story, I was left wondering how the alliance between the two Axis powers functioned in reality. Was it always the antagonistic and frosty partnership portrayed in The Man in the High Castle? You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that despite the vast geographical distances, there are in fact examples of cooperation between the two powers which do not feature prominently in our conventional retelling of the war. One such case is the Yanagi missions, a series of fascinating submarine voyages undertaken by Imperial Japan to exchange technology, valuable materials and skills with Nazi Germany. These missions make us think – what might have been accomplished had this seemingly hollow ‘marriage of convenience’ placed greater strategic emphasis on collaboration? Let’s start by taking a look at the early days of the missions.

Early strategic compatibility

Following Japan’s surprise offensive on Pearl Harbour and Germany’s declaration of war on the United States, the Axis Tripartite Agreement of September 1940 was amended to provide for an exchange of strategic materials and manufactured goods between Germany, Italy and Japan. At the outset, these voyages were made by surface ships and were dubbed Yanagi (Willow) missions by Japan. As the Axis began to lose its foothold in the naval war, submarines naturally came to be seen as a safer transport option.

As early as March 1942, German naval high command – hoping to alleviate pressure on its Kriegsmarine – requested that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) launch offensive operations against Allied ships in the Indian Ocean. In April that year, the Japanese agreed to send forces to the east coast of Africa to reinforce their German allies. Shortly afterward, the IJN’s 8th Submarine Squadron was withdrawn from its mission in the Marshall Islands and dispatched to Penang, Malaya.

Commander Shinobu Endo’s I-30 was among the first submarines assigned to the 8th Squadron. On 22nd April, I-30 departed Penang and just a week later assisted in the detachment’s successful attack on British shipping in Diego Suarez, Madagascar. In addition to losing a tanker, the British HMS Ramillies was heavily damaged. Following the skirmish, I-30 set off from Madagascar and was ordered on the very first submarine Yanagi mission.

The first submarine Yanagi mission

On 2nd August, four months after it had departed Penang, Endo’s I-30 entered the Bay of Biscay. Off the coast of Cape Ortegal, Spain, he was met by eight Luftwaffe bombers that provided air cover. Three days later, he was joined by a flotilla of minesweepers and escorted to Lorient — then the largest of five German U-boat bases on the French coast.

This was a historic achievement. Indeed, I-30 was the very first Japanese submarine to arrive in Europe. To mark the occasion, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine; Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the U-boat force; and Captain Tadao Yokoi, Japanese naval attaché to Berlin, waited to greet Endo and the crew of I-30. Music greeted them at the Lorient station and Endo was presented with a bouquet of flowers. Meanwhile, the Japanese cargo was unloaded:

• 3,300 pounds of mica.

• 1,452 pounds of shellac.

• Engineering drawings of the Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo.

The Germans were also keen to offer the Japanese their technological expertise. For example, the Kriegsmarine examined I-30 and concluded that its noise levels were unreasonably high - high enough to be detected by enemy ships or aircraft. The Germans generously fitted I-30 with some improvements, notably a Metox Biscay Cross passive radar detector and new anti-aircraft guns. Footage was also shot during I-30’s floatplane test flights, and stories were released detailing a Japanese naval air corps operating from French bases.

While all of this was going on, Endo travelled to Berlin where Hitler presented him with the Iron Cross. The visit came to an end on 22nd August, when I-30 slipped out of the sub pen and began its journey home. Its cargo included a complete Würzburg air defence ground radar with blueprints and examples of German torpedoes, bombs and fire control systems. Most valuable of all to the mission, the submarine also carried industrial diamonds valued at one million yen and fifty top-secret Enigma coding machines.

A month later, I-30 rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean. Early on the morning of 8th October, the sub arrived back at Penang. Rear Admiral Zenshiro Hoshina, chief of the IJN’s logistics section, waited patiently to receive ten of Endo’s Enigmas. Two days later, I-30 slipped its moorings yet again and headed south for Singapore.

The following morning, I-30 made its way into the port. Indicative of the importance of the mission was the presence of Vice Admiral Denshichi Okawachi of the First Southern Expeditionary Fleet, who was on hand to greet Endo and his senior officers. Understandably desperate to return home after thousands of miles of submarine travel, that very afternoon Endo set sail for Japan. It was perhaps the height of bad luck when, just an agonising three miles from its final destination, that I-30 struck a mine. While the submarine was lost, miraculously Endo and the majority of his crew were rescued. Divers were immediately dispatched to recover I-30‘s cargo, but they found that the Würzburg radar had been destroyed in the explosion and its technical drawings rendered useless by saltwater. In addition, the remaining Enigma machines were lost, an embarrassment that was hidden from the Germans for four months.

Despite the somewhat ignominious conclusion of the mission, officials on both sides of the alliance were clearly excited by what had been learned and the potential of future exchanges. But with so many surface ships sunk by the Allies, how could the mission be scaled up? The Germans had the answer. On 31st March 1943, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, Hiroshi Oshima, cabled Tokyo a recommendation from their allies that large, older U-boats should be converted to carry war materials between Europe and the Far East. Unfortunately for Japan, Oshima’s cable was decoded by the Allies.

The missions continue

On 1st June 1943, I-8 departed Kure, Japan, with I-10 and submarine tender Hie Maru. Commander Shinji Uchino had just been given his orders to proceed to Lorient. Their cargo:

• Two Type 95 oxygen-propelled torpedoes.

• Technical drawings of an automatic trim system.

• A new naval reconnaissance plane.

Nine days later, the mission arrived in Singapore and added to their cargo quinine, tin and raw rubber. On 21st July, nearly two months after departing Japan, I-8 crossed into the Atlantic. The only greeting to welcome the crew this time were terrible storms that pounded the submarine for ten days.

Eventually, the by now very weary Japanese crew received their first contact from the Germans. A sign of the Axis’s changing naval fortunes, a German radio signal alerted I-8 to air patrols searching from the skies above. These patrols forced a change of plan, and - after waiting for five days - I-8 received a second message from their allies: forget Lorient, make for Brest.

Once they crossed the equator, it was not until 20th August that the Japanese rendezvoused with Captain Albrecht Achilles and his U-161 submarine. The next day, I-8 took aboard a German Lieutenant and two radiomen. As with the previous submarine mission, the Germans were keen to make improvements and wasted no time installing a more sophisticated radar detector on I-8’s bridge. Eleven days later, the Japanese finally arrived at Brest – a whole three months after their initial departure from Kure. A German news agency announced that even the Japanese were now operating in the Atlantic!

More bountiful than I-8’s outbound shipment was the cargo it departed from Brest with on 5th October 1943. Indeed, the submarine set sail with:

• Machine guns.

• Bombsights.

• A Daimler-Benz torpedo boat engine.

• Naval chronometers.

• Radars.

• Sonar equipment.

• Electric torpedoes.

• Penicillin.

This time, the Yanagi mission included not just technological but also human resources. Welcomed aboard I-8 were Rear Admiral Yokoi and Captain Sukeyoshi Hosoya, naval attaché to Berlin and to France respectively. Also aboard were three German naval officers, an army officer and four radar and hydrophone technicians. We can only wonder how the dynamics of the Japanese crew were affected by the arrival of their German comrades.

It did not take too long for I-8 to run into trouble. After crossing back over the equator, a position report was transmitted to the Germans but – unfortunately for the mission – the report was intercepted by the Allies. The very next day I-8 was targeted by antisubmarine aircraft, but it succeeded in pulling off a crash-dive escape.

By 13th November 1943, I-8 passed Cape Town. That same day, I-34 – which was travelling to France on a Yanagi mission of its own – earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first IJN submarine sunk by the British. This served as a powerful reminder of the danger posed to the Yanagi missions, and so I-8 was ordered to head straight for Singapore where it arrived on 5th December.

At Singapore, I-8 anchored near to Commander Takakazu Kinashi’s I-29. I-29 had just arrived from Japan and was about to embark on its own long journey. During an encounter between the two submarine commanders, Uchino warned Kinashi of the Allied air patrols and praised the German Metox radar detector that he had received from U-161 back in August. The technological benefits of the Yanagi missions had already started to prove themselves. On 21st December 1943, I-8 arrived back in Japan having finally completed its 30,000 mile, seven-month long journey. Uchino travelled to Tokyo and presented his report to Admiral Osami Nagano, chief of the naval general staff, and navy minister Admiral Shigetaro Shimada.

Experienced hands

Although Commander Takakazu Kinashi was a distinguished submarine captain, he had not yet had the opportunity to participate in any previous Yanagi missions. Earlier in the war he had become Japan’s submarine hero, credited with the sinking of U.S. Navy carrier Wasp in September 1942, and with damaging the battleship North Carolina and the destroyer O’Brien, which eventually sank. His assignment to the Yanagi missions again underscores their strategic importance (at least to the Japanese).

On 5th April 1943, I-29 left Penang carrying an eleven-ton cargo. This consisted of:

• One Type 89 torpedo.

• Two Type 2 aerial torpedoes.

• Two tons of gold bars for the Japanese embassy in Berlin.

• Schematics of a Type A midget submarine and of carrier Akagi, which the Germans wanted to study as they constructed their own carrier Graf Zeppelin.

Twenty days later, I-29 arrived at a predesignated point 450 miles off the coast of Madagascar where it met Captain Werner Musenberg and U-180. The German sub had left Kiel on 9th February carrying blueprints for a Type IXC/40 U-boat, a sample of a German hollow charge, a quinine sample for future Japanese shipments, gun barrels and ammunition, three cases of sonar decoys, and documents and mail for the German embassy in Tokyo. Of strategic significance to the war in Asia, the U-boat also carried an important passenger: former Oxford University student Subhas Chandra Bose, the head of the anti-British Indian National Army of Liberation. The two submarines met on 26th April.

The next day, Bose and his group transferred from U-180 to I-29 and two Japanese officers switched in the other direction. The eleven tons of cargo followed shortly after. Once the exchanges were completed, I-29 turned eastward and U-180 turned back towards France. This experience was valuable to Kinashi when he, himself, finally set off for France in December 1943. In addition to his crew, he carried rubber, tungsten, tin, zinc, quinine, opium and coffee. He also had sixteen IJN officers, specialists and engineers on board. By 8th January 1944, the submarine had left Madagascar.

In early February, Kinashi received a signal from Germany to rendezvous with a U-boat that would upgrade I-29 with superior radar technology. On the 12th, he met U-518 southwest of the Azores. The Japanese submarine took aboard three technicians who installed a new FuMB 7 Naxos detector. Kinashi did not have to wait long to put his new equipment into action. While running along the surface off Cape Finisterre, Spain an RAF patrol plane equipped with a searchlight suddenly illuminated the water around I-29. Reacting with the decisiveness and speed gained through long experience, Kinashi crash-dived the submarine and escaped unscathed. Five days later, I-29 entered the Bay of Biscay, but Kinashi had arrived ahead of his escort and had to spend the night at the bottom of the sea. The next day, German forces escorted the Japanese submarine toward Lorient. Unbeknownst to Kinashi, however, he and his crew were not safe yet.

I-29’s schedule had been earlier decoded by the Allies. British aircraft were dispatched with the aim of sinking the submarine and its German escorts. They found the Yanagi mission off Cape Peas, Spain, but did not succeed in damaging I-29. Later that same day, the submarine and its escorts were attacked by more than ten Allied aircraft but, fortunately for Kinashi and his crew, all the bombs missed.

Cross-cultural encounters and Axis potential

After the two near misses, I-29 arrived at Lorient on 11th March and anchored safely next to Lieutenant Commander Max Wintermeyer’s U-190. Lorient was home to two U-boat flotillas, and the large number of veteran submariners set the scene for some lively cross-cultural encounters. On one occasion, German officers entertained the Japanese crew at a nearby bar. The bar’s rafters were inscribed with signatures of U-boat officers. Eager to get in on the act, I-29‘s Lieutenant Hiroshi Taguchi, Lieutenant Hideo Otani and several other officers added their own signatures to the rafters. After a 30,000 mile trip it must have felt good to make it to dry land and leave a mark of success!

The Japanese were treated to further German hospitality. Indeed, the entire crew were hosted at Château de Trévarez before a special train carried them onto Paris. While his crew enjoyed the sights, Kinashi travelled to Berlin and was decorated with the Iron Cross by the Führer himself. Ever the diligent workers, their German hosts busied themselves with the upgrades to I-29’s outdated anti-aircraft guns. They also loaded aboard:

• A HWK 509A-1 rocket motor.

• A Jumo 004B axial-flow turbojet.

• Drawings of the Isotta-Fraschini torpedo boat engine.

• Blueprints for jetfighters and rocket launch accelerators.

• Plans for glider bomb and radar equipment.

• A V-1 buzz bomb fuselage.

• Acoustic mines.

• Bauxite ore.

• Mercury-radium amalgam.

• Twenty more Enigma coding machines.

Hinting at the more frightening potential of greater Axis strategic collaboration, there is some evidence suggesting that I-29 carried a quantity of U-235 uranium oxide, one of the components needed to assemble an atomic bomb. Loaded with its vital military cargo, I-29 departed Lorient on 16th April.

On 14th July, I-29 passed through the Straits of Malacca and arrived at Singapore. Its passengers disembarked with their sensitive documents and proceeded by air to Japan. Most of the military cargo, however, remained aboard. Initially worried about the sub’s location, Allied code-breakers breathed a collective sigh of relief when they learned of I-29’s arrival in Singapore. Relief, however, quickly turned to alarm when an intercepted message between Berlin and Tokyo revealed the true value of the submarine’s cargo. Now alert to the terrifying potential of I-29’s mission, the Allies worked tirelessly to stop the submarine from reaching Japan.

The Allies were lucky when, on 20th July, Kinashi transmitted his proposed route for the last leg of the trip. The U.S. Navy deciphered the message, and the sub was sunk by torpedoes launched from the USS Sawfish. While the loss of the aircraft engines slowed the Japanese jet program, their blueprints, flown to Tokyo, arrived safely. They were used immediately to develop the Nakajima Kikka (orange blossom) and the Mitsubishi J8MI Shusui (sword stroke) – both based on German designs.

The sinking of I-52

Japan’s hope for further technological marvels now rested on Commander Kameo Uno and I-52, which had left Kure on 10th March 1944 (while I-29 was busy dodging Allied attacks near Brest). In its hold, Uno’s submarine carried strategic metals including molybdenum, tungsten, 146 bars of gold, as well as opium and caffeine. I-52 also carried fourteen passengers including engineers and technicians with ambitions of studying German weaponry. To avoid Allied spotter planes, Uno travelled submerged during the day and only surfaced at night.

After passing the Cape of Good Hope and entering the South Atlantic, on 15th May Uno sent his first message to Germany. By this time the British and Americans had broken the military codes of both Axis powers. Allied intelligence intercepted and deciphered Uno’s reports to Tokyo and Berlin, including his daily noon position reports. When I-52 entered the South Atlantic, the code-breakers quickly relayed its predicted route to a U.S. antisubmarine task force.

On 16th June, I-52 sent a coded transmission, giving its position away off the West African coast. The U.S carrier Bogue, equipped with fourteen aircraft, was ordered to track and destroy the sub. After arriving in the area where the Japanese were supposed to meet a German U-boat, the Americans began around-the-clock efforts to search for the Axis submarines. Although the skies were filled with American aircraft, Uno somehow managed to rendezvoused with Kurt Lange’s U-530 about 850 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands.

The Japanese commander welcomed a Lieutenant Schäfer on board to help navigate the last leg of his journey. Schäfer was accompanied by two petty officers who carried with them an improved radar. Bizarrely, the equipment fell into the sea during the exchange, but a dutiful Japanese crewman jumped in and managed to retrieve it. About two hours after meeting I-52, U-530 submerged and headed for Trinidad, leaving the three German officers aboard the Japanese sub. Again, we can only wonder how the two crews interacted with one another.

The day after his rendezvous with U-530, Uno, confident that he could take advantage of a stormy and moonless night to cloak his location, travelled along the surface in order to reach sooner the sanctuary of a German-occupied port. That evening, Allied forces picked up I-52 on their radar. Flares illuminated the area around the submarine and two 354-pound bombs were dropped, just missing I-52’s starboard side. Although Uno crash-dived and avoided the attack, his location was now compromised.

This game of submarine whack-a-mole could not go on forever. Sonobuoys, which detect underwater sounds, were deployed across a square mile of ocean. These were followed up with homing torpedoes which locked onto I-52’s propeller noises. After a long wait, the Allies heard a loud explosion. Another sonobuoy-torpedo combination later and the Allies got their desired outcome; a large oil slick at the site of the attack was spotted. Nearby, a ton of raw rubber bales bobbed along the surface of the water.

Meanwhile at Lorient, a German ship stood by ready to escort I-52, and diplomats scheduled to return to Japan waited anxiously for their ride home. With them at the dock were tons of secret documents, drawings and strategic cargo, which included acoustic torpedoes, fighter plane engines, radars, vacuum tubes, ball bearings, bombsights, chemicals, alloy steel, optical glass and one-thousand pounds of uranium oxide. The Germans also intended to improve I-52 with a snorkel. By 30th August, the Kriegsmarine finally presumed I-52 sunk.

The end of the Yanagi missions – a strategic oversight?

The question must be asked, why did the Yanagi missions stop? What happening to the initial excitement for military, scientific and strategic cooperation? The answer is a fairly simple one.

With the Americans closing in on the Home Islands and the final showdown of the Pacific war rapidly approaching, the IJN was compelled to devote every available resource to the defence of the Japanese mainland. After the failure of I-52‘s mission, it was no longer practical to send limited submarines on long, perilous journeys to Europe.

Reflecting back, what should we take away from the Yanagi missions? Although the missions are not remembered as much more than peculiar footnotes in the larger story of the Second World War, the threat of an exchange of nuclear materials and state-of-the-art technology was no doubt deemed important by the Allies – important enough for them to invest precious resources in locating, tracking and sinking the submarines before they could make their deliveries. The missions are scarcely known today, but at the time the threat they posed was clear.

The true importance of the Yanagi missions, however, lies in what I believe they represent. While we tend to think of their partnership as an uneasy ‘alliance of convenience’, the missions help us to imagine what Japan and Germany might have been able to achieve had they placed greater emphasis on joined-up, strategic coordination. Indeed, they represent a failure by the two Axis powers to think of the war beyond their own local, expansionist ambitions. Given the nuclear potential of the missions, we are perhaps fortunate that the Axis did not develop their partnership much beyond these largely overlooked submarine convoys.

What do you think of the Yanagi missions? Let us know below.

Now read Felix’s article on how Henry Ford tried to end World War One through diplomacy here.

Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanagi_missions#:~:text=The%20Yanagi%20missions%20were%20a%20series%20of%20submarine,with%20Japan%20%27s%20Axis%20partners%2C%20principally%20Nazi%20Germany.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/japanese-and-germans.html

https://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-yanagi-missions-japans-underwater-convoys.htm

https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-033/h-033-1.html

https://www.booktopia.com.au/nazi-germany-and-imperial-japan-johanna-menzel-meskill/book/9781412846196.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_4yaH6Y_hQ

Read more – on counterfactual history

https://camdenhistorynotes.com/2020/02/02/what-if-counterfactual-history/

Gavriel, R., 2002, ‘Why Do We Ask ‘What If?’ Reflections on the Function of Alternate History’, History and Theory, vol. 41, no. 4

Sustein, CR., ‘What If Counterfactuals Never Existed?’, The New Republic, 21 September 2014, accessed 27 February 2019, <https://newrepublic.com/article/119357/altered-pasts-reviewed-cass-r-sunstein&gt;

Pain’s Port Arthur: Pyrotechnic Re-enactments of the Russo-Japanese War in the English speaking world (1904-6)

In the early twentieth century, an age before cinema, audiences still wanted thrills. And following the Russo-Japanese War, there were a number of explosive re-enactments in America and the broader English-speaking world of that war. Doctor Robert Brown explains.

A drawing of a Japanese attack during the Battle of Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War.

In a 10 May 2022 article for the Guardian newspaper, ‘I almost got hit’ Ukrainian journalists recounted their stories of how the Russia-Ukraine war turned their personal and professional lives upside-down. Before the war, many such as Kristina Berdynskykh were civilian writers and reporters.  However as the invasion began, these journalists found themselves on the front line of the biggest story in the world, and ‘they became war correspondents overnight’.  They have done heroic and life threatening work, for which the Pulitzer prize board has already awarded them with a special citation.

One night in September 1905 a plucky local reporter for the Minneapolis Journal also took on the role of a war correspondent overnight. He bore witness to the most important siege of the Russo-Japanese war (1904-5), the bombardment of Russian held Port Arthur (Dalian) after a Japanese surprise attack.  Furnished with a long army overcoat and cap, he was instructed to make his way up the Port Arthur battlefront.

After years of bitter contention between the Empires of Russia and Japan over control of the Liaodong Peninsula, Manchuria, Russia occupied the Peninsula and constructed Port Arthur naval base in 1897.  This proved intolerable for Japan, and on 8-9 February 1904 they finally struck, as Admiral Togo launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet anchored there. The engagement and ensuing siege quickly gained international status as a gruelling cauldron of modern battle.  The spectacle of large naval battles and massive artillery duels became a focal point for media attention, commemoration, and later theatrical re-enactment.(1)

Japanese victory in the Battle of 203 metre hill, overlooking the city harbour, proved a turning point.  From here artillery spotters directed a devastatingly accurate bombardment of the bottled up Russian fleet.  Russia’s Pacific fleet was destroyed or interned, while the Japanese Army systematically mined and captured key Russian forts.  The situation hopeless, Port Arthur finally surrendered.

Such was the hellish ferocity of the bombardment the reporter witnessed that night, that even after escaping unscathed, he, ‘dreamed all night of crashing shot and bursting shell, of sinking warships and whole cities in flames.’ The horror of such a spectacle stayed with him, and even a ‘pencil falling on the floor…and the slamming of a door’ would send him into a post-traumatic ‘hysteria’ of palpitations.(2)

A Carnival of Fire

However something was amiss.  The buildings and warships were somehow made of canvas and wood rather than steel and stone, and the heavy ordnance, was a mixture of dynamite and nitro-glycerine. Those discharging explosives were not Russo-Japanese artillerymen and naval gunners, but some thirty pyro-technists co-ordinated by director Emil Capretz. Finally this was not at Dalian, but located deep in the heart of the American Mid-West at the Minneapolis State Fair in September 1905.  Russia had surrendered Port Arthur in January 1905, and six months later the spectacle of the carnage was being eulogised to baying crowds.

In fact this was ‘Pain’s Port Arthur’, a centrepiece production of James Pain junior and his son Henry J. Pain. The Pain’s Port Arthur spectacles were specifically ‘modelled’ or ‘al fresco’ painted canvas panoramas simulating the Manchurian battle zone, set up outdoors in large pleasure gardens, sports fields or exhibition grounds.  These outdoor panoramas were modelled much like a movie set with large props of wood and plaster, and offered the historical-narrative backdrop against which the massive fireworks displays took place for a viewing public.(3)

The Empire of Pain

The Pain’s in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century oversaw a sprawling continent spanning fireworks empire, the Royal Alexandra Palace Fireworks Company (shortened to Alexandra Palace Fireworks Company in the United States). Their American base of production was at the Greenfield, L. I. fireworks factory, New York. In addition to using their own 10,000 seat purpose built arena at Manhattan Beach, from 1904-6 the show visited Nashville, Chattanooga, St. Louis, Detroit, and Buffalo (New York).(4) On top of this, in addition to re-enactments in London and Manchester, UK, James Pain Junior presided over an ambitious tour of the ‘Port Arthur’ spectacle throughout Australia and New Zealand, stopping off at all the state capitals of Australia in addition to smaller venues.  In 1904-5 director Mr. T. Gaunt, operating under the Pain franchise, was still touring this war spectacle around New Zealand to enthusiastic audiences, warm reviews, and aggressive newspaper advertising.

Before 1904 the Pain Company already had a fine tradition for battles and sieges.  Although biblical themed glories and disasters such as Last Days of Pompeii were roaringly popular, Manhattan Beach audiences were fed a rich diet of nineteenth and twentieth century conflicts, and particularly sieges.  The Siege of Vicksburg in the American Civil War, the Siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War, and even the burning of Moscow by Napoleon in 1812 among others proved consistently popular. The American bombardment of Tripoli against the Barbary Pirates was specifically more popular with American audiences.(5)

This activity points to a massive public appetite for simulated mock warfare in the pre-cinema era.  To historian’s frustration, the ephemerality of these spectacles obscures their importance in the historical record.  Firework panoramas and scenery were designed to be destroyed or thrown away.  Poor record keeping in the Victorian and Edwardian entertainment business means that often all that survives are the newspaper advertisements and the odd precious event program.

Madison Square Carnage

For all the decades of frenzied advertising and glowing reviews across the English speaking world, in reality Pain’s as a global fireworks empire had been living on borrowed time. At around 10pm on the night of the 4 November 1902, at the celebrations of the election of William Randolph Hearst as New York congressman, a gigantic fireworks explosion had ripped through Madison Square, and decimated a nearby crowd of people watching Pain’s performance.  An inquest was immediately set up, and ten of Pain’s employees were arrested.(6)

The ‘Madison Square Disaster’ killed fifteen and injured over a hundred, and left a trail of carnage, with blood and pieces of flesh littering the ground for a two block radius.(7)  The investigation initially blamed Mayor Low and the Board of Aldermen for approving an ordinance on 25 October, to allow the display of fireworks within the city of New York until the 10 November.(8) However three parties were claimed to be liable.  Hearst himself had through his agent arranged the firework display, and the Pain Fireworks Company employees had set off the explosion. In the end the City of New York, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, had to pay out over half a million dollars in damages.(9) In August 1904, again one of Pain’s workers died in an explosion in the combustible chemicals mixing shed at the Manhattan Beach grounds.(10)

After the disaster Henry Pain was showered with lawsuits.  The technical deadline to compensate the dead and injured was 1911, but by that point Henry’s assets had been devalued by the accident, and he had insufficient funds. Leaving the United States to avoid arrest he sold the company to Central Fireworks who had previously been a partner.  A holding company with several other firework manufacturers under their wing, they eventually sold Pain’s America to the Unexcelled Firework Company. Pain’s pyrotechnics largely came to a halt when the First World War was declared in 1914.(11) The Company does continue to operate to the present day as Pain’s Fireworks, based in Salisbury, England.

Conclusion

Much as with the Russia-Ukraine war, the Russo-Japanese war elicited a flurry of sympathisers, sceptics and charlatans across the western world and other bystander nations interpreting and tracking the conflict for their own commercial or geopolitical ends.  Commercial interests in particular drove the Russo-Japanese war to loom large in the Western imagination. Edwardians were raised on a diet of escalating great power rivalry exacerbated by the British Harmsworth newspaper company’s campaign to propagate Germanophobia among the British public. Hysterical future war fiction such as William Le Queux’s million-copy selling The Invasion of 1910 (1906) imagined a German attack on London and H.G Wells’ The War in the Air (1908) explored frightening new weapons technologies. In this cultural atmosphere the spectacle of all out mechanised war in Manchuria shifted tickets and memorabilia like nothing except the major cricket or football fixtures. The war was narrated and even objectified by creative and savvy entrepreneurs throughout the English speaking world even as the conflict was progressing.

Through the Pain family’s bombastic firework re-enactments of the siege of Port Arthur, the article explored a snapshot of pre-cinema culture which sought to provide audiences with unsubtle yet fascinating simulacrum and mock warfare. In 2022, Japan supported Ukraine and joined in imposing sanctions on Russia. Entangled with the ongoing Russo-Japanese dispute over possession of the Kuril Islands, tensions have been turned up into downright antagonism once again. A Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, Hideki Uyama, even compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the occupation of the islands. At the very least then diplomatic fireworks between the two powers are back on the playbill.

What do you think of the pyrotechnic re-enactments? Let us know below.

Now read Robert’s article on the Liverpool City Council investigation of the Chinese community here.

References

1 R.M Connaughton, p.115

2 The Minneapolis Journal (Minneapolis, Minnesota) · Fri, Sep 8, 1905 · Page 20

3 Mimi Colligan, Canvas Documentaries, p.142

4 The Chattanooga News (Tennessee) 16 May, 1905, St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Missouri) 3 November, 1904, The Yale Expositor (Michigan), 1 September, 1905, Nashville Banner (Tennessee) 22 May, 1905, Buffalo Morning Express and Illustrated Buffalo Express (New York) 11 July, 1905

5 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 28 August 1904

6 The Brooklyn Daily, 5 November 1902

7 The Brooklyn Daily, 5 November 1902

8 Ibid

9 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2 December 1902

10 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 24 August, 1904

11 Ralph Hyde, Dictionary of Panoramists of the English-Speaking World (2015, unpublished, but donated to the The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum)

Experiencing Europe’s Dark History Through Travel

There are many sites where you can see the darker side of human history in Europe. Here, Jennifer Dawson considers some such sites - and why it is important for them to detail terrible events sensitively.

Grbavica, a neighbourhood in Sarajevo, in March 1996.

Through organizations like the EU, Europe has managed to keep conflicts to an absolute minimum since the end of World oWar 2. However, life wasn’t always as pleasant. Both world wars created unprecedented levels of fatalities, and the entire history of the continent, spanning back as far as written history exists, is one of almost non-stop conflict. As a result, there is a huge amount of dark history to be experienced in Europe, and due to the desire and ability of many nations to preserve and present that history, it can be explored in an ethical and in-depth manner.

Auschwitz, Poland

World War 2 is the bloodiest conflict in history. Not only did many individuals lose their lives in military fighting, but the total war nature of the conflict meant that tens of millions of civilians died, too. Many of these civilians were murdered in genocides and other ideological killings. The relative recency of the conflict has made it relatively straightforward to preserve historical sites, and that makes it easier to explore them via tourism. Furthermore, whereas some dark tourism - where places of historic relevance are explored through tourism - can be unethical, many of the most important WW2 monuments have been maintained sensitively. A notable example of this is at the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial, near Oświęcim, Poland. Tourists are provided with a guided tour of the entire work camp, Auschwitz, and Birkenau. It is a shocking but educational experience.

Siege of Sarajevo

Sarajevo is a city that has seen a long history of conflict, yet has endured to become one of the most beautiful places in Europe. Arguably the place where east-meets-west, it’s a melting pot of Islam, Christianity, and many ethnicities and nationalities. It was also the namesake of the Siege of Sarajevo, which at 1,425 days, was one of the longest modern sieges. According to a study published on Taylor & Francis Online, the battle sites and memories of the war, and the dark period it encompassed that involved ethnic cleansing, have been sensitively maintained to provide a thought-provoking experience.

Pripyat, Ukraine

No conversation on dark tourism can be complete without a nod to Pripyat - not least because there still remains some level of danger. Pripyat is the town attached to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the reactor of which experienced an accident which caused major repercussions within the then USSR and internationally. While Ukraine is currently off-limits due to the ongoing conflict there, in times of peace, Pripyat has a burgeoning tourist industry with rigorous safeguards against the still-radioactive environment there. It’s a place to experience the darker side of human engineering, and a cautionary tale in the current age of rapid, ceaseless innovation.

Experiencing the world through dark tourism is a great way to take an alternative view of the world and its history. It enables you to get in close with history. However, it does need to be accomplished sensitively - but, to date, that’s just what most sites have done.

Life of a West End Seamstress in 19th Century London

The concern with workplace health and safety and workers' rights has been discussed for decades. Throughout British history, there have been many attempts by workers, to create unofficial trade unions to improve their working situation. During the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), the question of whether our working environments are safe, necessary and improve an individual’s productivity has been asked. The pandemic saw many people begin the transition into the work from home (WFH) structure as many offices and buildings could not cater to social distancing measures, efficient ventilation or isolate the spread of disease. Of course, many were unable to transition to a WFH strategy and had to continue to travel to their place of work. Organisations were faced with the challenge of managing the spread of disease, protecting workers from illness, and work productivity.

Health and safety in the workplace is not a new phenomenon brought about by the pandemic but one that is rooted in British history. Workers endured gruelling labour and toil with poor living and working conditions, with a lack of government reform to protect workers and their families from injury or even death. It was not until the Health and Safety at Work act of 1974 that was introduced to protect workers and their rights. Although throughout the nineteenth century, there was a gradual progression towards improving the working lives of many Victorians, for example, the Factory Act in 1833. This article explores how the living and working conditions of seamstresses in nineteenth-century west end London became pushed into public discussion and Parliament's reluctance to pass reforms to ease the lives of seamstresses.

Amy Chandler explains.

Seamstresses in 19th century France.

The distressed seamstress

The industrial revolution took place between 1760 – 1840 and transformed the UK in many ways from the increased number of factories, trade, pollution, and a decline in living conditions. The industrial revolution also increased the chances of developing new illnesses from poor living conditions and lack of sanitation policies. London expanded rapidly and offered a new life for people in the city to find opportunities and employment, however the reality was bleak. Many found it hard to find work and earn enough money to stay in accommodation. Options were bleak, and many women resorted to prostitution or ended up in workhouses; some women were forced into prostitution to earn money on top of their daily employment. During the Victorian period, sewing was seen as a feminine quality and a skill taken up by women of all classes. The occupation of a seamstress was taken up mostly by working-class women and some upper-class women who were unable to become governesses, to support themselves and their families.

The image of the distressed seamstress became a cause celebre, which meant a controversial figure that attracted public attention and interest. The image of the distressed seamstress frequented art and literature in the nineteenth century with Thomas Hood’s famous poem Songs of the shirt 1843, depicting the plight of seamstresses as “fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red. A woman sat in unwomanly rags, plying her needle and thread”.(1) Hood’s poem continues throughout twelve stanzas revealing the plight of the living and working conditions of the life of a seamstress. Other literary figures attempted to shed light on the lives and hardships of the seamstress, such as Richard Redgrave. Hood’s poem inspired Redgrave to illustrate the figure of the seamstress as a pitiful and lonely figure with no escape to a better life or improved living and working conditions.

The death of seamstress Mary Walkley

In 1863 the course of how seamstresses were viewed changed forever after the death of a seamstress named Mary Walkley, “a workwoman in the employment of Madame Elise, described as Court Dressmaker, of 170, Regent Street”.(2) Women worked all day and night to complete orders, especially during London’s busy social season between April to June, when young women, often called debutantes, would attend social events in hopes of securing a marriage with a wealthy suitor.(3) After investigation, Walkley’s death was caused by “long hours of work and insufficient ventilation” and urgent calls for government officials to “establish by law regulation that might prevent the occurrence of such evils as this case brought to life”.(4)

Walkley's death in 1863 highlights the poor living and working conditions for seamstresses and is an example of what conditions women endured to survive in Victorian London. This particular case caused public outcry and awareness of the shocking conditions in the sweat industry, and there was no parliamentary legislation to change the situation, but public awareness and concern became apparent. Walkley’s case had a public inquest where Dr Lankester assessed the working and living environments. Lankester concluded the overcrowding and lack of ventilation for the number of workers in the space “open[s] up the whole question of the interior conditions of the workshops, workrooms, and sleeping rooms of the metropolitan workpeople”.(5) This situation also raised many questions regarding the “number of hours that persons may be employed in sedentary occupations in ill-ventilated rooms”.(6) Lankester’s report suggested the urgent need for parliamentary legislation to enforce sufficient ventilation and regulation of working hours, as “establishments like those of Madame Elise” were not uncommon throughout London.(7)

The death of Walkley and worker's rights for seamstresses were debated in great depth in the Houses of Commons, for example, Mr Dawson raised the humanitarian concern regarding their work. Dawson asked Parliament to consider if government officials “would give their support to a Bill for defining and limiting the hours of labor, and regulating and inspecting workrooms, alike in the interests of humanity as for the sake of sanitary precaution?”.(8) The debate of Thursday, 25 June 1863 also questioned: “why these establishments should not be placed under proper regulations” such as hours, registration and inspection that were mandatory law for places of employment such as factories, mines, and bakehouses.(9) This case never caused a change in legislation despite public outcry and dress shop owners who desired Parliamentary legislation to reform and recognise the hardship that many endured. Owners of dressmaker shops, like Madame Elise, did have some authority to make changes for their workers, but these were down to personal discretion. Many owners could not afford to regulate working hours as they could lose business to their competitors.

The working class had limited options in terms of choice of occupations due to socio-economic factors. Many workers ended up in the workhouse or following a life of prostitution to survive. Therefore, for working conditions to improve, the authority for change was in the hands of a handful of individuals who were hesitant to pass reforms. Despite there being no official legislation passed, the case of Walkley and the public debates surrounding her death did cause a shift in the public perception of seamstresses. Parliamentary transcripts are evidence of government officials' awareness of the significant difference in workers' rights, such as in factories. Parliament passed reforms to improve the health and safety of workers in factories, such as the Factory Acts of 1833, 1847 and 1850.

After Walkley’s death hit the press, there were questions from the public asking whether Madame Elise, as the owner, should be punished for her ill treatment of workers that contributed to Walkley’s death. This case highlighted a moral dilemma for many employers, as demonstrated by Parliament questions. Sir George Grey emphasised that “masters and mistresses, who are liable to provide for their apprentices food, clothing, and lodging, and have wilfully omitted to do so, are subject, upon conviction, in cases where there has been danger to life or permanent injury to health, to very severe punishment.”(10) Grey shifts the blame from the employee onto the employer for their negligence and ill-treatment of their workers.”(11)

Furthermore, the press reported the general public’s disgust of the working and living conditions.(12) One publication stated that the blame for Walkley’s death was Madame Elise and her debtors, such as duchesses and countesses, where workers were “overworked and poisoned” in Madame Elise’s establishment.(13) The report suggested that these debtors were “often answerable for moral privation and misery” by their “heedlessness and carelessness [… had] often been the cause of many weary hours night work to these poor girls”.(14) The blame was focused directly on the employers and the upper-class customers who placed the social season above public health. Arguably, the upper classes should have gained a conscience and concern for the establishments that they frequented. Madame Elise was unpunished for her negligence, but this situation questioned how workers were badly treated and unprotected by legislation that could ensure workers were protected from injury and death in a place of employment.

Calls for change

Public awareness of the seamstress industry continued to surge in 1906 with The Sweated Industries Exhibition organised by the Daily News. The exhibition aimed to “highlight ‘the evils of sweating’ ” and the public response and attendance were “unprecedented”.(15) The exhibition attempted to create awareness about the poor working and living conditions of seamstresses, whether they worked in a dressmaker’s shop or at home. This exhibition took place over forty years after the Walkley case and illustrates how slow progress for workers' rights, health and safety and reforms were during the nineteenth century. Much Parliamentary legislation and employment rights we are familiar with today took decades to reach the standard that protects workers from exploitation. Therefore, it took over forty years after the Walkley case for the plight of seamstresses to be taken seriously by Parliament and the general public with legislation achieved in 1909 with the establishment of the Trade Board Act that “introduced a legally enforceable minimum wage”.(16)

The Trade Board Act (later renamed the Wages Council in 1945) aimed to regulate the wages for workers in sweated industries such as seamstresses. Board members were representatives of the workers, such as trade unionists, representatives of the employers and government-appointed members. The council had an equal number of representatives from workers and employers and the government-appointed members were fewer.(17) The board proposed the minimum living wage and regularly adjusted the wage based on the state of trade and the cost of living.(18) However, there were ways for employers to avoid having to pay minimum wages through persuading the board that a worker was incapable of performing their expected work through gaining permits for workers with physical or psychological disabilities.(19) During a debate of the Trades Board Act 1909, the extent to which sweated industries suffered was revealed to Parliament. The debate highlighted that workers endured “excessive hours of labour and insanitary state of houses” and that “the earnings of the lowest classes of workers are barely sufficient to sustain existence”, resulting in “ceaseless toil, hard and often unhealthy” work.(20) The legislation proposed in this debate attempted to change working conditions and emphasise that the current wages were insufficient to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Despite this evidence exposing the exploitation of seamstresses, Parliament still were reluctant to pass bills that would even marginally improve the life of seamstresses.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the life of a seamstress was slow to change, and legislation was well overdue, in comparison, to progressive change in working conditions for other occupations such as factories. The seamstress was integral to London’s social season and everyday life but was neglected by Parliamentary reform. The image of the distressed seamstress was not confined to the shadows in Victorian London but dragged into the public sphere where the general public attempted to change working and living conditions. In contemporary society, we have an ever-growing issue with the rise of fast fashion that exploits their workers in order to manufacture at a fast pace to ‘cash-in’ on popular catwalk trends.(21) In the same way that London’s social season exploited seamstresses to produce dresses to wear once and never again. Dress shop owners like Madame Elise used the social season as a way to ‘cash in’ on the hysteria of London’s social events and high demand for custom made gowns. The exploitation and high demand of popular trends mirrors the similar problems experienced in the Victorian era. Today, public awareness and the development of social consciousness have caused a shift in products becoming sustainable and ethically sourced to reduce the exploitation of workers overseas.

What do you think of the article? Let us know below.

Now read Amy’s article on the Great Stench in 19th century London here.

Bibliography

Crumbie, A. ‘What is fast fashion and why is it a problem?’, Ethical Consumer, 5 Oct 2021 < https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/what-fast-fashion-why-it-problem >.

Fleming, R. S. ‘ “Coming out” During the Early Victorian Era: about debutantes’, 9 May 2012, Kate Tattersall Adventures < http://www.katetattersall.com/coming-out-during-the-early-victorian-era-debutantes/ >.

Harris, B. ‘Gender Matters’, The Victorian Web, 10 Dec 2014 <https://victorianweb.org/gender/ugoretz1.html >.

HC Deb 23 June 1863, vol 171, cols 1316.

HC Deb 25 June 1863, vol 171, cols 1433.

HC Deb 25 June 1863, vol 171, cols 1434.

HC Deb 28 April 1909, vol 4, cols 343.

Hood, T. ‘Song of the shirt’, The Victorian Web, 16 December 1843 <https://victorianweb.org/authors/hood/shirt.html > .

Matthews, M. ‘Death at the Needle: The Tragedy of Victorian Seamstress Mary Walkley’, Mimi Matthews, 20 Sept 2016 <https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/09/20/death-at-the-needle-the-tragedy-of-victorian-seamstress-mary-walkley/ >.

Sun. The Case of Mary Anne Walkley. The British Newspaper Archive (26 June 1863).

Warwick Library, ‘The Sweated Industries Exhibition, 1906’, Modern Records Centre, 15 Feb 2022 <https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/tradeboard/1906/>.

Warwick Library, ‘What were trade boards?’, Modern Records Centre, 15 Feb 2022 < https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/tradeboard/boards/ >.

Yorkshire Gazette, ‘The London Seamstress’, The British Newspaper Archive (27 June 1863).

Bibliography

1 T, Hood, ‘Song of the shirt’, The Victorian Web, 16 December 1843 <https://victorianweb.org/authors/hood/shirt.html > [accessed 26 April 2022].

2 HC Deb 23 June 1863, vol 171, cols 1316.

3 R. S, Fleming, ‘ “Coming out” During the Early Victorian Era: about debutantes’, 9 May 2012, Kate Tattersall Adventures < http://www.katetattersall.com/coming-out-during-the-early-victorian-era-debutantes/ > [accessed 2 May 2022].

4 Sun. The Case of Mary Anne Walkley. The British Newspaper Archive (26 June 1863).

5 Sun. The Case of Mary Anne Walkley. The British Newspaper Archive (26 June 1863).

6 Sun. The Case of Mary Anne Walkley. The British Newspaper Archive (26 June 1863).

7 Sun. The Case of Mary Anne Walkley. The British Newspaper Archive (26 June 1863).

8 HC Deb 25 June 1863, vol 171, cols 1433.

9 Ibid.

10 HC Deb 25 June 1863, vol 171, cols 1434.

11 Ibid

12 Yorkshire Gazette, ‘The London Seamstress’, The British Newspaper Archive (27 June 1863).

13 Ibid

14 Ibid

15 Warwick Library, ‘The Sweated Industries Exhibition, 1906’, Modern Records Centre, 15 Feb 2022 < https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/tradeboard/1906/>[ accessed 25 April 2022].

16 Ibid.

17 Warwick Library, ‘What were trade boards?’, Modern Records Centre, 15 Feb 2022 < https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/tradeboard/boards/ >[accessed 2 May 2022].

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 HC Deb 28 April 1909, vol 4, cols 343.

21 A, Crumbie. ‘What is fast fashion and why is it a problem?’, Ethical Consumer, 5 Oct 2021 < https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/what-fast-fashion-why-it-problem >[accessed 3 May 2021].

The Rule of Spain in the New World

By the latter half of the 17th century, the rule of Spain in the New World was reaching 200 years. Times were changing, both in the New World and in Europe, and the leaders of Spain knew it. Their problem was what to do about it. Spain had never had a coherent policy in its imperial rule. Since 1492, Spain was seemingly constantly at war, with an endless series of crises thrown into the mix. Solutions had to be found for the here and now, the future would take care of itself.

In this major series of articles Erick Reddington starts his look at the independence of Spanish America by considering how Spain ruled its vast American territories.

King Felipe V of Spain in the 1720s.

Spain was both blessed and cursed by its enormous New World Empire. Stretching (theoretically) from nearly the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, this was a land mass over 6,000 miles long. Contained within were millions of people, natives, slaves, and colonists. Wealth unimagined in 1491 was under the control of the Spanish. Every year, the West Indies Fleet, also called the Treasure Fleet, would cross the Atlantic and bring gold, silver, and raw materials to Spain. So much gold had crossed the Atlantic that it had caused runaway inflation several times. The Potosi mine in modern day Bolivia produced more silver than any other mine in history. Sugar and tobacco were grown throughout the Spanish Caribbean Basin. These consumer products were then exported for fabulous profits. Wool was grown and shipped to Catalonia for finishing in textile mills there.

These blessings show the problem with the Spanish view of their empire. Despite the incredible wealth and large population base, the empire was seen by Spanish authorities in Madrid as a cow to be milked, not as a flower to cultivate and help blossom. The empire existed to provide the government with mineral wealth and raw materials to fuel strength and power projection for Spain’s many foreign wars and domestic crises. There was little thought given to investing the vast amounts of New World wealth into improving Spanish infrastructure or national wealth. There was even less thought given to improving the empire except where it would lead to immediate increases in wealth extracted. All trade had to flow to Spain. Trade with any other country by the empire directly was forbidden. So many slaves needed to be imported because it was deemed cheaper to work them to death and buy new ones rather than care for them as human beings. Disease was so rampant amongst everyone in the empire that life seemed cheap and transitory; therefore, it was important to get what one could now, and tomorrow could take care of itself.

From Hapsburg to Bourbon

In 1700, the last Hapsburg king of Spain, Charles II, died. He willed his crown to the French Prince Phillippe of Anjou, who became King Filipe V. When Filipe went to Spain, he brought with him several advisors whom, he hoped, would help him make the Spanish Empire more efficient. What they found was appalling. The Spanish government was run by a series of nearly ad hoc committees, rather than government ministries, which was common throughout Western Europe. Tax collection was inefficient and corrupt. Overall corruption was so rampant that it was an expected supplement to meager and irregular salaries. Piracy was rampant. The colonial military was corrupt, untrained, poorly supplied, and totally incapable of all but the most basic of military needs. The French who had followed Filipe V to Spain knew the imperial structure was bad, but they had no idea how bad it really was. Things had to change. Spain’s empire was a giant with feet of clay.

Filipe V was prevented from making many major changes due to the War of Spanish Succession and the need to secure his right to the throne. Once the war was done, he and his successors would embark on a series of reforms lasting several decades with the intent of strengthening the empire before it was too late. Later called the Bourbon reforms, this was a drive to improve infrastructure, agriculture, commerce, and shipping in Spain itself and in the empire. The inefficiencies of the past were to be left behind, and the French mercantilist economic principles of Jean-Baptiste Colbert would strengthen Spain and bring back her glory.

Mercantilism Now!

Mercantilism as an economic theory was all the rage in the 18th century. The idea that national wealth could best be preserved through having a positive balance of foreign trade seemed obvious at the time. Imports were to be discouraged through high tariffs and domestic manufacturing. Exports were encouraged by the state to increase the flow of foreign wealth into the country. Domestic industry was to be encouraged through state subsidies and direct intervention in the economy by the state. Thus, the whole nation would be wealthy. This is an oversimplification, but for our purposes, this is the gist of what these economists wanted.

The wealth of the nation, or economic prosperity in modern parlance, was not the goal of mercantilism, at least for the Bourbon Reformers. National wealth was only a means to an end. Strengthening the state and providing the economic basis for the projection of power, both politically and economically, was the end goal. The reformers of the Bourbon dynasty saw that the Spanish Empire had all the elements needed for massive economic prosperity and national strength. There was little coherence in policy and strategy. Their brand of economic philosophy would change that in their view. It was the rational thing to do.

Rationalizing Government

The rational thing to do. Rationalism was all the rage in France in the 18th century. From society and the structure of the state to individuals and human relationships, everything in life could be reordered based upon the principles of rational thought. This movement was part of the enlightenment. Although many of the enlightenment tenets regarding freedom and secularism did not reach Spain along with the Reformers, many of the ideas of rationalism were imported from France. This is partially why the Reformers were so appalled at the inefficiencies of the Spanish imperial structure. The belief that people respond to logical, rational principles meant that the vast wealth of Spanish America could be harnessed if the right ideas were implemented. The first step was a rationalization of the law.

Law in the Spanish Empire was a dizzying layer upon layer of laws passed by the Cortés, royal decrees, decrees of the Council of the Indies, and local decisions made by administrators over the centuries. Jean de Orry, an advisor brought by Filipe V from France, focused on streamlining the tax collection system to reduce corruption and increase revenues flowing into the treasury. The position of Intendant was created on the French model. Intendants were appointed for every province to have a direct representative of royal power. Cardinal Alberoni, Orry’s successor neutered the Council of the Indies to eliminate a rival power source and reduce that body’s corruption. Within Spain itself, the ancient internal divisions amongst Castile, Aragon, and other sub-regions were eliminated, thereby spreading a financial burden which previously had only fallen on Castile.

One area of primary importance was rationalizing trade. As good mercantilists, increasing the amount of legal trade was of the utmost importance. This meant, of course, eliminating illegal trade. Since regulating hundreds or thousands of small firms was difficult, granting large-scale, sweeping monopolies not only would help streamline regulation, but it would also give the powerful monopoly holders an enormous incentive help the government stamp out illegal trade and endemic piracy. These monopolies would, in time, grow into large corrupt organizations themselves, which would fuel a large amount of colonial dissatisfaction, but this would be in the future.

Military reform was also on the Reformer’s agenda. This would be one of their biggest failures. The military establishments in the colonies were embarrassments. Even in Europe, military service attracted only the most desperate. Few were willing to accept poor pay, brutal discipline, and the prospect of death unless there was no other choice. In the empire, where the lowest classes were tied to the land through slavery or the hacienda system, and other classes had economic opportunities, the talent pool to recruit from was shallow at best. Spanish-born officers sent to the Americas, called Peninsulares, were hostile and dismissive to those born in the New World. The Criollos, those of Spanish descent in the Americas resented the hostility of their social betters. Since Peninsulares made up the highest ranks of the military while Criollos were the junior officers, this was a mix for disaster. This racial tension led to another problem.

Racial Caste System

In Spanish America, race was a much different concept than it is in the 21st century. Within the empire, there was a mix of peoples. Native Americans were the original inhabitants. Thousands of tribes spread over thousands of miles each with their own language and culture. Their numbers were reduced dramatically by the introduction of European diseases after first contact. Population was further reduced by the heavy-handed attempts at enslavement. Throughout the empire, there were constant battles with the natives, with small scale raids common. Tribes from the outskirts of New Spain such as the Pueblo to the Araucanians in the southern Andes provided a source of trade and converts as well as allies against other tribes. Relations with the tribes was complex and difficult at the best of times.

With the failure of attempts to mass enslave the Native Americans, another labor source needed to be found. Sugar, the primary agricultural source of wealth, and mining are very labor intensive. There were not enough colonists to do the work, so the Spanish as well as the other colonial nations, began importing Africans to work the plantations and the mines. Slaves were captured along the coast of Africa from what were called factories or purchased from African tribes willing to work with the colonial powers. After being processed, they were packed aboard ship and sent to the New World in appalling conditions along what was later termed the Middle Passage. Since the cost of slaves was so low, it was in many cases cheaper to import more slaves than provide care to those already purchased. This exploitation of an entire people would have consequences up to the present day. Fears of slave rebellion would influence Spanish law and military policy. The monopoly on the slave trade, the asiento, was a major source of resentment by those who lived in Spanish America and was also a diplomatic chip the Spanish used in influencing foreign policy decisions. No one asked the slaves what their opinion was of the asiento.

Spanish attitudes toward racial mixing were not strict. Since most of the colonists who came to the New World were male, there was a shortage marriage partners for these men. Since nature will always find a way, very quickly a new racial group arose, called mestizos. Mestizos were multi-racial people descended from a mix of Spanish, Native American, and/or African parentage. Existing in a place above Natives and slaves, the Mestizos occupied a strange place in colonial society. They were free people in the legal sense of the term, but they faced a great deal of racial discrimination due to their mixed parentage.

Above the Mestizos were the Criollos. These were people who saw themselves as “pure” Spanish but were born in the Americas. Over time, these people came to accept many of the tenets of the enlightenment and believed that they should have the same rights and privileges as Spanish-born Peninsulares. Although legal restrictions on Criollos were few, the growing resentments of this class caused these few restrictions to be blown up into some of the major issues that would lead to the later revolutions.

At the top of the heap were the Peninsulares. They were Spanish-born and therefore saw themselves as the natural leaders of Spanish America. Usually they were wealthy landowners, military officers, or government officials. Many had no intention of making the New World their permanent home. They were in the Americas to make their mark or build their fortune, then retire back in Spain. The haughty attitudes and entitled place in society caused resentment among all the other classes.

Effects of the Reforms

The Bourbon Reforms were a mixed bag. The mainstream view that the reforms were a direct cause of the later revolutions. The reforms while good intentioned, had the effect of preventing the development of the colonies economically and politically for the benefit of Spain proper. The resentment the reforms engendered, together with the racial resentments against the Peninsulares, led to revolution. This ignores the other social and political events happening in Spanish America and the world as a whole.

By the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution had taken the principles of the Enlightenment and attempted to put them into action. Rhetoric about the freedom of peoples and the rights of man exploded out of France and arrived on the shores of the Spanish Empire. The American Revolution provided inspiration to many in the New World. It also stoked fears in the Spanish colonial authorities that the events of Saratoga and Yorktown could be repeated.

New ideas, wars, revolutions, and economic changes would all combine to make the Spanish colonial situation a volcano ready to explode. To understand fully why, it is important to look at the individual colonies. Next time, as a prelude to the Wars of Independence, we will take a tour of Spanish America and the four Viceroyalties that governed the empire. Each one had their own unique conditions, peoples, cultures, and reasons for discontent.

What do you think of Spanish America? Let us know below.

Now, read about Francisco Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan president who brought his country to military catastrophe in the War of the Triple Alliance here.

The Modern Greek State: 1914–1922 – Greeks Divided

On March 25, 2021, the Modern Greek State celebrated the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence, which ultimately led to its establishment. It is thus an excellent opportunity to reconsider some of the main events of Greek history over these 200 years and how they shaped the character of modern Greece.

This series of articles on the history of modern Greece started when the country was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence. There was not much to celebrate one hundred years earlier though, when the first centenary was completed. Indeed, in 1922 Greece suffered probably the worst catastrophe of its modern history. Its origin can be traced back to after the triumph of the Balkan Wars. Thomas Papageorgiou explains.

You can read part 1 on ‘a bad start’ 1827-1862 here, part 2 on ‘bankruptcy and defeat’ 1863-1897 here, and part 3 on ‘glory days’ 1898-1913 here.

King Constantine I of Greece in the early 1920s.

I After the Balkan War was over

Defeat is an orphan, whereas victory is claimed by many fathers. King Constantine and his entourage of officers at the general staff, blamed by the Military League for the defeat at the Greco-Turkish of 1897, (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2021) saw their redemption at the triumph of the Balkan Wars. Their approach though was that of complete denial of any credit to the prime minister Venizelos. The latter and his environment, similarly, but more moderately, exalted their contribution against the deficiencies of the pro-royals. (Malesis, 2017)

This was a rather petty quarrel and a bad sign for the future in view of the effort required to integrate the recently acquired territories. Significant minorities (the census of April 1913 shows that in Thessaloniki, for example, out of the 157,000 inhabitants, 39,956 were Greeks, 61,439 Jews, 45,867 Muslims, 6,263 Bulgarians and 4,364 Europeans and other ethnicities) (Papadakis (Papadis), 2017) constituted a potential problem that could be solved neither easily nor quickly. Furthermore, efficient exploitation of the new lands required the build of infrastructure in areas recently devastated by war. The fiscal sufficiency though was slim. By 1913, expenses for military operations amounted to 411,485, 000 drachmas in addition to 280,000,000 of collateral costs. The nation’s public dept had risen by 755,000,000 drachmas. These were dizzying figures considering the state of the Greek finances at the time (GDP before the war is estimated at 735,000,000 drachmas).

The prevailing expectations in Western Europe about the future of the Greek State, after its victorious military campaigns, allowed for the takeout of a 500,000,000 francs loan in February 1914, under favorable terms, to settle the pending depts. Nevertheless, the budget of the same year amassed a deficit of 170,000,000 drachmas, while immediate needs to be covered (not included in the budget) were estimated at over 300,000,000 drachmas. Thus, even before the outbreak of the First World War, issuance of the whole 500,000,000-franc loan proved impossible. The government turned to the National Bank and internal borrowing to supplement the required funds.

In any case, the needs could not be met with continuous borrowing. Payments of salaries and pensions were not being made on time and this gave room to the opposition to criticize the government. Even basic military needs, like the supply of food to the army, were only possible thanks to the advances from the National Bank. (Kostis, 2018)

II The First World War (WWI)

Thus, the outbreak of WWI found Greece facing significant challenges. These suggested that staying neutral was probably the most preferable option. At the beginning of the war, this was also the preference of the Central Powers and the Entente. Both were wooing Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire to join their ranks and taking up their foe during the Balkan Wars could hinder their efforts. King Constantine favored neutrality also for strategic reasons (exposure to a possible naval blockade by the British Empire in case of an alliance with Germany). (Rizas, 2019)

On the other hand, Greece was bound by an alliance with Serbia (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2022) which was under attack from Austria-Hungary since July 1914. Furthermore, when the Ottomans and Bulgarians signed treaties of alliance with Germany in September 1914 and September 1915 respectively, (Glenny, 2012) Venizelos, convinced that the British Empire would prevail, saw an opportunity for further territorial gains, if Greece joined the Entente.

The defeat of Germany, though, was by no means a certainty, especially during the early stages of the war. By the end of 1917 Soviet Russia concluded an armistice with the Central Powers followed by the Treaty of Brest – Litovsk with favorable terms for the latter. It was the late entry of the USA into WWI that tilted the scale in favor of the Entente. (Efthimiou)

Thus, steering the country within this complicated framework of international relations by carefully considering Greece’s fiscal and military capacity as well as its political (diplomatic) options required the setting of clear goals and a close collaboration between the prime minister and the head of state and the army. Venizelos and Constantine did exactly the opposite.

At first, Venizelos suggested that the Greek army should undertake the landing at the Dardanelles in February 1915, in return for territorial gains in Asia Minor promised by the Entente. The king seemed fascinated by the idea (considering a possible capture of Constantinople, where his synonymous emperor Constantine died, when the city was taken by Turkey in 1453), but the pro-royal chief of staff Metaxas considered the campaign too risky, leaving the northern border exposed to a Bulgarian attack and resigned his post. Venizelos then proposed the limitation of the Greek participation to only one division raising the king’s doubts about the success of the undertaking. Finally, Constantine refused to give his approval and Venizelos resigned. (Mavrogordatos, 2015)

The prime minister’s Liberal Party, though, won again in the elections of May 1915. The opposition, gathered around the king, refused to interpret the result as a vote for the participation to WWI proposing that it only showed the people’s trust to Venizelos. The king’s refusal to complement led Venizelos to resign again in September and abstain from the new elections of December 1915. (Malesis, 2017)

Meanwhile Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and the attack on Serbia was imminent. To implement the Greco-Serbian alliance treaty Venizelos, in the brief period before his resignation, invited the Entente to send troops to aid the Serbians through the port of Thessaloniki. The revocation of the invitation by the pro-royals and Greece’s protest could not prevent the landing of French troops in October 1915. (Mavrogordatos, 2015)

The presence of the allied forces in Thessaloniki allowed for the formation there of the National Defense Committee by Venizelos’ supporters aiming to confront the Bulgarian threat and align foreign policy with that of the Entente. When the Bulgarians took the Greek fortress of Ruper in May 1916 and later advanced in Eastern Macedonia by August, the government in Athens did not react in the name of a questionable neutrality as foreign armies were now clearly violating national sovereignty. This caused the armed reaction of the National Defense Committee on the 17th of August and when the city of Kavala was lost to the Bulgarians on the 29th, Venizelos, although hesitant at first, decided to lead the revolt. (Malesis, 2017)

Thus, Venizelos was now leading yet another revolt and the country was split in two with one government in Athens in charge of the ‘Old Greece’ and another one in Thessaloniki in charge of the ‘New Greece’ (territories acquired after 1912 except Epirus). (Mavrogordatos, 2015) The military presence of the Entente helped Venizelos to reunite the country though. On November 18, a detachment of 3,000 allied troops landed in Piraeus and advanced to Athens, but they were repelled by forces loyal to Constantine. After that, the royalists turned against Venizelos’ supporters in Athens killing dozens of them, arresting others and committing all kinds of atrocities. On the 26th, the allied fleet implemented a strict naval blockade of the ‘Old Greece’ causing food shortages and other catastrophic consequences for the population. Eventually, the king was forced to leave the country in June 1917 leaving his son Alexander at his place but did not resign. (Malesis, 2017) Venizelos returned to Athens and ‘resurrected’ the parliament elected in May 1915 (thus described as ‘Lazarist’). It was time for his supporters to retaliate against the opposition. Venizelos might have united the country again territorially, but the Greeks were now divided to Venizelists and Anti-Venizelists.

The prime minister’s harsh measures included the exile of this opponents (his former adjutant Metaxas and the leader of the Anti-Venizelists Gounaris, for example, were sent to Corsica) and the cleansing of the public sector, including that of justice and the church, as well as the army from the opposition supporters. Nevertheless, during the last phase of WWI Greece managed to field 10 divisions, that is about 180,000 men, that performed well in the Macedonian front, where they constituted about 1/3 of the total allied forces. To compensate for the late entrance in the war and in order to have the best possible treatment during the peace negotiations in Paris, Venizelos also sent the 1st Army Corps (23,000 men) to fight against the Communists in Ukraine in January 1919. (Malesis, 2017). The campaign was unsuccessful for the allies and they withdrew in April of the same year. The Greek communities in the Crimean suffered the retaliation of the Bolsheviks and many of their members were forced to seek refuge in Greece. Nevertheless, for Greece, the worst was yet to come.

III The Asia Minor Campaign

The story of the Greek expansion to western Asia Minor goes back to 1914. It was offered by the Entente in exchange for Greek concessions to Bulgaria of some of the territorial gains of 1912-1913 so that the latter would join the allies. These amounted to about 5,000 square kilometers including the port city of Kavala affecting 35,000 Greeks living in the area. In return, Greece was claiming a territory of about 125,000 square kilometers with the city of Smyrna at its center and a significant minority of 810,000 Greeks. (Stamatopoulos, 2020) By the end of the war, though, no concessions were necessary as Bulgaria was on the side of the defeated.

Such offers, backed by mostly secret treaties, in order to lure one country or the other to their side, was a standard tool used by both camps during WWI. In April 1915, for example, southwestern Asia Minor was also promised to Italy with the treaty of London. (Stamatopoulos, 2020) The overall situation in the Middle East was further complicated by the antagonism between Great Britain and France as the Sykes – Picot agreement was challenged by the Young Turks of Mustapha Kemal, who was not willing to comply to any agreements of the defeated Ottoman Empire he deemed as harmful for the interests of the Turkish nation. To make things worse, President Wilson, representing the late entrant USA at the peace negotiations of Paris, was not aware of this covert diplomacy and was thus indifferent to any claims over peoples unless those peoples wanted them. (Churchill, 2021)     

Nevertheless, Italy proceeded with the occupation of Antalya in southern Asia Minor. The claims and ambitions of the Italians to lay hands upon the Ottoman Empire resulted to a complete breach between them and President Wilson. This led to a temporary withdrawal of Italy from the peace conference in Paris. When reports reached the conference that the Italians were going to proceed further with the occupation of Smyrna, combined with stories of Turkish maltreatment of the Greek population, it was proposed that the Greeks should be allowed to occupy Smyrna at once for the purpose of protecting their compatriots there. (Churchill, 2021) Although Venizelos was earlier warned by the chief of the British General Staff Sir Henry Wilson that he could not rely on any military or financial aid for the undertaking and that this would result in a long war with Turkey  and a rapid depletion of Greece’s financial and human resources, he decided to take the offer. (Richter, 2020)

At the time of the Greek landing in Smyrna, on May 15, 1919, the Ottoman Empire was under the spell of defeat in WWI. It was surrendering arms and munitions. But as soon as Greece, the enemy of generations, landed its troops, Turkey arose and the leader of the Young Turks, Mustapha Kemal, was furnished with the powers of a Warrior Prince. (Churchill, 2021) Not unfairly. Whereas the Greeks had the sea on their backs and Smyrna was not protected by any natural defensible border, Kemal could exploit the strategic depth of Anatolia, where he could safely withdraw, after every strike. (Mavrogordatos, 2015) Furthermore, Italy was clearly hostile to the Greek presence in Asia Minor and France also opted for collaboration with Kemal in exchange for peace in Syria, now under the French Mandate. (Wikipedia, 2022)   

Thus, Greece was alone when the treaty of Sevres was signed in August 1920. The treaty ceded Thrace to Greece, which was also to possess the Gallipoli Peninsula, most of the Aegean islands, and to administer Smyrna and its hinterland until a plebiscite could be held there. The British prime minister Lloyd George favoured the Greeks, but the imposition of the treaty on the Turks was entirely up to the Greek army, now showing signs of strain under the influence of protracted financial, military and political uncertainties. (Churchill, 2021)

The situation was difficult, and Sir Henry Wilson again describes Venizelos as hopeless and desperate during this period. ‘The old boy is done’, he remarked. (Llewellyn Smith, 1999) In the internal front the national schism continued to fuel despicable acts of hate. Two days after the signing of the Treaty of Sevres, Venizelos himself narrowly escaped an attempt against his life by two royalist soldiers in a Paris railway station on his way home. His decision to call general elections in November 1920 allowing also for the return and participation of the exiled opposition is still a point of controversy. Venizelos’ opponents claim that he was looking for a way to abdicate his responsibility for the outcome of the Asia Minor Campaign. If this was the case, he was successful, because he lost and now it was the royalists that had to find a solution.

Winston Churchill, who was later to experience himself a surprising electoral defeat after the triumph of WWII (Gilbert, 1991), gives a different account though. On October 2, 1920, Prince Alexander (at this point king of Greece) was bitten by a monkey during a walk in the royal garden. The wound festered and after three weeks Alexander died. It was decided to offer the throne to Prince Paul of Greece. The latter was living with his exiled father in Switzerland and, as Churchill puts it, was inspired to reply that he could only accept after the Greek people had at an election definitely decided against his father. This forced a General Election.

Venizelos, with the Treaty of Sevres that expanded the triumph of the Balkan Wars, felt confident. He was willing that the issue should be put crudely to the electorate: Were they for the restoration of Constantine or not? But he did not make sufficient allowances for the strain to which Greece had been put; for the resentments which the allied blockade to make Greece enter WWI had planted; for the many discontents which arise under prolonged war conditions; for the oppressive conduct of many of his agents, when during his continuous absence for the peace negotiations the Greek people lacked his personal inspiration and felt the heavy hand of his subordinates; for the complete absorption of his opponents to party politics and for their intense desire for office and revenge. Eventually, he lost. (Churchill, 2021)

The only sane policy arising from Venizelos’ defeat would have been to reduce promptly and ruthlessly the Greek commitments in Asia Minor, negotiating also for the safety and well-being of the Greek minority there. The pro-royal officer Ioannis Metaxas made suggestions along these lines. (Stamatopoulos, 2020) After all, the return of Constantine further dissolved all Allied loyalties to Greece as the king was a bugbear for them second only to the Kaiser himself. Nevertheless, the new regime, under prime minister Gounaris, was determined to show Greece how little Venizelos had had to do with its successes that far. They would strike Mustapha Kemal at the heart of his dominion. They would have the army march to Ankara. (Churchill, 2021)

What about the army then? Winston Churchill again gives a vivid description of the Greek army during the campaign to Ankara (which partly applies for the Greek people as well). He writes: ‘Imagine an army of two hundred thousand men, the product of a small state mobilized or at war for ten years, stranded in the centre of Asia Minor with a divided nation behind them; with party dissensions in every rank; far from home, and bereft of effectual political guidance; conscious that they were abandoned by the great Powers of Europe and by the United States; with scant food and decaying equipment; without tea, without sugar, without cigarettes, and without hope or even a plan of despair; while before them and around them and behind them preyed and prowled a sturdy, relentless and even more confident foe’. And he continues ‘over the Greek Army in Asia Minor there stole an ever-growing sense of isolation; of lines of communication in jeopardy, of a crumbling base, of a divided homeland, and of an indifferent world’. (Churchill, 2021) Nevertheless, the Greek army remained in martial posture for upwards of three years in Asia Minor. But, after the triumphs of the Balkan Wars and WWI, eventually it was defeated. On September 16, 1922 the last Greek Soldiers left Asia Minor. The Hellenism of Asia Minor followed them to escape the Young Turks’ atrocities.

IV Conclusions

Carl von Clausewitz in his classic On War defines the ‘Culminating Point of the Attack’ as that at which the forces remaining are just sufficient to maintain a defensive, and to wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns, there is a reaction; the violence of such a reaction is commonly much greater than the force of the blow. Everything then depends on discovering the culminating point by the fine tact of judgment. (Clausewitz, 1997) His fellow Prussian Otto von Bismarck did exactly that, when, after fighting against the Danes, then the Austrians and finally the French to achieve the unification of Germany in 1871, he stayed put in spite of expectations to storm the rest of Europe. (Steinberg, 2011) A more recent example is Menahem Begin, who, instead of provoking a civil war during Israel’s War for Independence, decided to take the blows of David Ben-Gurion without responding and remained in political exile for thirty years until he became prime minister in the end of the 1970s. (Gordis, 2016)

Obviously, the Greeks did not posses such qualities. As we have seen, civil wars were common during their War of Independence (and more came after that), and now political party quarrels that led to the national schism brought Greece beyond its culminating point of attack, deep in Asia Minor, after ten years of mobilization and war starting in 1912 with the Balkan Wars.

Who was responsible in the present case? Churchill criticized the United States, Britain and France for requesting the presence of the Greek Army in Anatolia, where it had been the foundation of allied policy against Turkey for three years only to fall victim to inter-Allied intrigues at the end. The way for the dissolution of all Allied loyalties to Greece was paved by the Greek people’s choice, at the moment of their greatest hopes and fears to deprive themselves of Venizelos, the commanding personality who had created the situation Greece found itself into and who alone might have carried it to success. (Churchill, 2021)

Several Greek commentators take the same stance (Mavrogordatos, 2015) although there are cases of harsh criticism against Venizelos and his policies and more favourable for the king (Kakouri, 2017). Others blame both Venizelos for his disregard of hard facts (e.g., Greek minority of only 20% of the total population in the disputed area, lack of natural defences etc.) that led to the disaster and the king for not opposing the advance to Ankara - even though he was convinced that the whole undertaking of the Asia Minor campaign would be fatal for Greece. (Stamatopoulos, 2020)

Indeed, in the period discussed here both Venizelos and the king (personally and as head of the anti-venizelists) offered bad service to their country. We have seen in previous parts of this short history of modern Greece that division, violence and civil war characterized its early years. Parliamentarism helped relax the tensions, but now the two rivals were resorting to the old methods again. Not only did they allow/cultivate violence for the (also physical) extermination of the opposition, not only did they allow/pursue foreign intervention for the support of their cause, but they did it with a ‘messianic’ attitude of infallibility that resulted in a complete disregard for the consequences on Greece and its people. This legacy, as we will see, tormented Greece in the following years. In contrast, in the short period of two years (1912-13) that Venizelos and Constantine managed to work together Greece triumphed.      

What do you think of the period 1914-22 in the Modern Greek State? Let us know below.

References

Churchill, W. S. (2021). The world crisis, Volume IV, The aftermath 1918-1928. London : Bloomsbury.

Clausewitz, C. (1997). On War. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Efthimiou, M. (n.d.). Global History IV: The Man Against Himself - Part B. Center of Open Online Courses (www.mathesis.cup.gr). Crete University Press, Heraklion (in Greek).

Gilbert, M. (1991). Churchill, A life. London: Heinemann.

Glenny, M. (2012). The Balkans 1804-2012, Nationalism, War and the Great Powers. New York: Penguin Books.

Gordis, D. (2016). Israel, A concise history of a nation reborn. New York: Collins Publishers.

Kakouri, A. (2017). The two beta. Athens: Kapon.

Kostis, K. (2018). History’s Spoiled Children, The Formation of the Modern Greek State. London: Hurst & Company.

Llewellyn Smith, M. (1999). Ionian vision, Greece in Asia Minor 1919 - 1922. Michigan: The Univeristy of Michigan Press.

Malesis, D. (2017). Defeat - Triumph - Catastrophe, The army in the Greek State from 1898 to 1922. Athens: EPICENTER (in Greek).

Mavrogordatos, G. (2015). 1915 The National Schism. Athens: Patakis (in Greek).

Papadakis (Papadis), N. E. (2017). Eleftherios Venizelos. Chania - Athens: National Research Foundation ''Eleftherios Venizelos'' - Estia Bookstore (in Greek).

Papageorgiou, T. P. (2021, September 5). History is Now Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/9/5/the-modern-greek-state-18631897-bankruptcy-amp-defeat#.YVH7FX1RVPY

Papageorgiou, T. P. (2022, January 20). History is Now Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2022/1/20/the-modern-greek-state-18981913-glory-days#.YhPK6JaxW3A

Richter, H. A. (2020). The Greco-Turkish war 1919 - 1922, From the dream of the ''Great Idea'' to the Asia Minor disaster. Athens: Govostis Publications (in Greek, also available in English by Harrassowitz Pub. - 2016).

Rizas, S. (2019). Venizelism and antivezinelism at the beginning of the national schism 1915-1922 . Athens: Psichogios publications S.A. (in Greek).

Stamatopoulos, K. M. (2020). 1922 How we got to the catastrophe. Athens: Kapon Editions (in Greek).

Steinberg, J. (2011). Bismarck, A life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wikipedia. (2022). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

Wikipedia. (2022). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Syria_and_Lebanon

Ancient Civilizations: Continuity Between the Indus & Indo-Gangetic Civilizations

The Indus (Harappan) civilization flourished in the 3rd millennium BCE, while the Indo-Gangetic (Vedic) civilization prospered in 800 BCE. Archaeologists highlight a gap of a few centuries to one millennium between the former’s collapse and the latter’s rise. In this article, Apeksha Srivastava highlights some differences and several more potential points of contact between the Indus and Indo-Gangetic civilizations.

Granary and Great Hall on Mound F in Harappa. Source: Muhammad Bin Naveed, available here.

Did this gap between the two civilisations contribute to a discontinuity between them?

Indeed, there seem to be some differences between them. For instance, iron became more important in the Vedic civilization, while the Harappan society was of the bronze age. Some practices that seemed absent in the Indus civilization developed in the Indo-Gangetic civilization. These include warfare, better organization of language, readable scripts, the emergence of religions and great literature, development of a caste system (not too rigid in the beginning), more widespread bureaucracy and administration, the emergence of new art forms, thoughts and belief systems, and rulers gaining more prominence. However, the visibility of this discontinuity to us might also be due to a possible lack of evidence.

Not So Different

The Indus civilization does not seem to be completely isolated from the Indo-Gangetic civilization, as believed by people until about three decades ago. There seem to be several crucial contact points between the Harappan and Vedic cultures. According to renowned scholar Jim Shaffer, “At present, the archaeological record indicates no cultural discontinuities separating PGW [Painted Grey Ware culture; corresponds to the middle and late Vedic period] from the indigenous protohistoric [Harappan] culture.” Bioanthropologists such as Pratap C. Dutta, S.R. Walimbe, and B.E. Hemphill have compared Indus Age skeletons with those from different epochs and demonstrated “a genetic continuum between the Harappans and the present‐day people of the region.”

The following paragraphs underline some possible contacts between the Harappan and Indo-Gangetic civilizations.

The Continuity in Architecture

The Indus civilization is renowned for its town planning, civic administration, water management, and sanitation. Several towns of the Gangetic civilization appear to share these characteristics, such as the general orientation, internal grid plan, enclosing fortifications as an authority symbol, garbage bins lining the main streets, and pillared halls, to name a few. The typical Harappan house plan with a central courtyard having rooms on its sides has survived in rural parts of northwest India to the present day. Apsidal (semi-circular) temples found at several Vedic civilization sites find their predecessor from the Indus civilization, most probably used for fire rituals.

Archaeologists also found the Harappan circular wells with trapezoid bricks in the Vedic period. This shape prevents inward collapse in case of strong subsoil pressure. Floors laid by mixing terracotta with charcoal at Kalibangan (Rajasthan) of the Indus civilization was a composition used in nearby villages even after 4,500 years.

Alikeness in Sacred Proportions

Harappan town planning utilized auspicious proportions. These ratios seem to be the same as in classical Hindu architecture literature. For instance, the ratio of 5:4 in Dholavira’s outer fortifications also applies to the overall dimensions of the port-town of Lothal (near Ahmedabad), Harappa’s granary (stored surplus food grains), a large house in Mohenjo-Daro’s lower city, a significant Vedic altar, and the king’s palace, Ashoka’s columns and Delhi’s Iron Pillar.

Similarity in Ornaments & Auspiciousness

Bangles, anklets, nose-pins, and ear studs documented at several Indus civilization sites, remain an integral part of ornaments worn by the Indian women of today. The married Hindu women applying vermilion at the parting of their hair seem to have Harappan origins (figurines found at Nausharo). However, not enough evidence exists to prove that it had the same auspiciousness as the later period. The traditional techniques of working with metals like gold and bronze, making bangles, and carving ivory in today’s India also derive their roots from the Harappan times.

Parallelism in the ‘Religion’ Aspect

The swastika is a classical Indian symbol with possible Indus civilization origins. However, there is not enough evidence of whether Harappans considered it with the same sacredness as the Gangetic civilization. There are many similarities between the animal motifs depicted on the Indus seals and those on early historical era silver punch-marked coins.

The linga and the trishula (trident), worship of a mother-goddess, animal sacrifice, and the sacred peepal tree (sacred fig) seem to be present in both cultures. Both civilizations also seem to have similarities in their gods having multiple faces, ornamental arches, and yogic postures. Some of their figurines seem to join their hands in a similar fashion, signifying “namaste.”

Other Traces of Equivalency

The traditional bronze casters still use the lost wax method used for making the famous ‘Dancing Girl’ bronze figurine in the Harappan period. Ox-carts have mostly survived in shape and size, with very few changes. Some plowing techniques have also continued till the present times. We still use objects like the frying pans and cooking pots found in Indus cities. Children of the Harappan, Vedic, and even the present times play with rattles, whistles, and spinning tops.

Such instances highlight that although there were changes in people’s lifestyles with time, the urban collapse of the Indus civilization did not cause a complete discontinuity. The “dark age” pictured previously to exist in the 2nd millennium BCE between the retreating Indus civilization and the arising Gangetic civilization has filled up such that there seems to be more continuity between the two. It is highly possible that some late Harappans were responsible directly or indirectly for the beginning of the Indo-Gangetic civilization.

“Our civilization cannot survive materially unless it is redeemed spiritually.” - Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States.

What do you think of the links between the Indus & Indo-Gangetic civilizations?

Now read Apeksha’s article on feminine national personifications here.

References

1. Danino, M. The Harappan legacy. (April 2012). BBC Knowledge, 56-57.

2. Schug, G. R., & Walimbe, S. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. John Wiley & Sons.

3. https://www.britannica.com/place/India/Developments-in-the-Ganges-basin

4. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/how-climate-change-forced-migration-of-indus-valley-people-towards-ganga-basin-59423

Apeksha Srivastava completed her Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. She is currently an aspiring writer and a Ph.D. candidate at this institute. This article is based on an assignment she submitted for the course, Perspectives on Indian Civilization.

Perils, Panics and Pandemics: The Liverpool City Council investigation of Chinese Communities in 1906-07

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020, something troubling started happening to Britain’s Chinese community. Some people started blaming people of East Asian appearance of spreading the virus. In that context, Doctor Robert Brown looks at a panic in 1906-07, involving ugly, unsubstantiated allegations against the British Chinese community in Liverpool.

A Chinese woman and child in the 1920s UK. Source: Harry B. Parkinson, available here.

In February 2020, the shriller voices in Britain amongst a suspicious and poorly informed public began blaming any Chinese Britons or people of East Asian appearance they could find for the spread of the virus.(1)  The community became a focal point for a moral panic that pathologized them as a biological threat to the body politic.  Jenny Wong, Director of the Manchester Chinese Centre recounted to the Manchester Evening News the numerous complaints she received about Chinese children excluded from interacting with other children because parents saw them as ‘virus carriers’.

Suspicious stereotyping towards Chinese communities in the UK and throughout the English speaking world is nothing new, although the tropes driving these stereotypes may mutate.   Around 113 years prior to the pandemic another Manchester based newspaper, the Sunday Chronicle, on December 2, 1906 had broken a hysterical scare story about the activities and vices of Chinese migrants in England’s North West, clustered around Liverpool. According to reports, these Chinese had been spotted dealing drugs and dragging young white girls into prostitution. The article examines the moral panic this generated.  Local outrage against the Chinese was whipped up to the point where Liverpool City Council felt compelled to intervene by conducting a detailed investigation of Chinese activities in Liverpool.  Their findings paint a fascinating picture of official confusion and paranoia about the perceived degenerative physical and moral impact of interracial contact between European and Chinese bodies.

Eugenics, Elections and the Chinese Question in Edwardian Britain

By 1906, suspicions toward Chinese immigration in Britain and the ‘White men’s countries’ of the empire were at an all time high.  Trade Unions and politicians in Australia and South Africa had already laid the groundwork for controversies in Britain.  In attempts to protect their ‘white’ workers from labor competition, they successfully pushed the narrative that Chinese immigrants were fundamentally not compatible with European communities.  In 1905 this came to a head in Transvaal colony, South Africa, where anger about the British government’s importation of Chinese mine workers drove the progressive criminalization of Chinese activities. The feedback from this hit Britain hard in the 1906 General Election. The Liberal Party won a thumping landslide against the incumbent Conservative and Liberal Unionists, partly by claiming the Tories had given ‘South Africa for the Chinese’, and partly by promising to stop the importation of Chinese labor in Britain from escalating.(2)

This political unrest unfolded against an anxious hum of background noise in the popular science and the eugenics movements regarding a perceived biological ‘degeneration’ of the British population. The Departmental Committee on Physical Degeneration (1904) noted that a shocking proportion of working class recruits for the Second South African war had to be rejected as physically unfit to serve.(3)  According to some eugenicists, such as the Liverpudlian physician Robert Reid Rentoul, the physical decline of Britain’s population was caused by interracial marriage, and could be solved by segregating or excluding non-whites from the country. In Race Culture; or, Race Suicide? (1906), Rentoul claimed that, ‘terrible monstrosities’ were ‘produced by inter-marriage of…the white man with the Chinese’ and that naturalisation of foreigners was ridiculous since Africans were dangerous ‘perverts’ and ‘nymphomaniacs’.  While his arguments against racial equality probably did not reach the ears or breakfast tables of the working classes of the North West, his intellectualisation of anti-Chinese prejudice certainly reflected anxious stereotypes about immigrants expressed on street level.(4)

Sensationalist publications about Chinese communities in Britain had certainly not helped.  If anything, articles such as Hermann Scheffauer’s The Chinese in England (1911), for Harmsworth’s London Magazine had helped flesh out constructions of Britain’s Chinatowns as opaque dens of evil and subversion connected in a global web with larger Chinese enclaves in Melbourne and San Francisco. Even worse, The Yellow Danger (1898) by West Indian author Matthew Phipps Shiel was a highly popular and xenophobic ‘yellow peril’ science fiction novel depicting a Chinese invasion of Europe led by the ‘yellow Napoleon’ Dr. Yen How. Littered with ‘germ’ metaphors equating hordes of Chinese shock troops with an infectious plague, the British ironically beat back the invasion by using biological warfare. Chinese prisoners injected with a deadly disease were used to infect and cripple their own armies. These anti-immigrant, ‘germ-phobic’ tropes reflected the nastier anxieties toward the Chinese in Edwardian Britain.

Liverpool City Council’s Investigation

In response to one such article ‘Chinese vice in England’ in the Sunday Chronicle, a special meeting of Liverpool City Council was called on December 12, 1906.(5)  The ‘sensational character’ of the accusations against Chinese workers in Liverpool had stirred up public outrage that could only be assuaged by the ‘closest investigation’.(6)  The Chronicle claimed Chinese owners of laundries and lodging houses were engaged in the organized seduction and corruption of teenage white girls. This stirred a local belief that a sinister and inscrutable ‘oriental’ menace was in their midst, and the City Council clearly took this seriously enough to form a commission comprised of clergymen, local newspaper editors and two doctors to gather evidence and write a report.(7)  Published on July 26, 1907, the report on ‘Chinese Settlements in Liverpool’ included a section on the ‘morality of the Chinese’.  It began by refuting a local rumor that the Chinese on Liverpool’s Pitt Street ‘were in the habit of giving sweets impregnated with opium to children’.

Far greater concern was expressed in the investigation of Chinese ‘relations with white women’.  On the one hand, it was noted that several white British women had married Chinese men, and that, ‘the women themselves stated that they were happy and contented and extremely well treated’.(8) On a darker note however, was the reportedly widespread corruption of English girls from ‘respectable’ backgrounds who became ‘acquainted’ with Chinese men, mercilessly groomed to ‘drift into what can hardly be described as otherwise than prostitution’.(9)  In three cases it was claimed, ‘the girls taken advantage of were under 16 years of age at the time’.  Although there was no record of complaints being made, and insufficient evidence for such cases to be brought to trial, the commission was adamant that the, ‘evidence of seduction of girls by Chinamen is conclusive…the Chinese appear to much prefer having intercourse with young girls, more especially those of undue precocity’.(10)  This exposed a prominent anxiety of Edwardian society that young white women in their associations with ‘men of colour’ were the ‘unwitting revolutionaries’ in a biological sense, for the overthrow of Britain’s white ‘race culture’.(11)

Recommendations of the Report

The report recommended that the Liverpool Watch Committee be warned of the ‘Chinese danger’ so that law enforcement could be vigilant in future.  The report was similarly alarmed about the possibility of ‘miscegenation’, the increase in ‘mixed race’ children arising from the Chinese control of brothels. However no formal evidence of Chinese men running brothels in Liverpool could be substantiated despite the allegations that all laundries acted as fronts for the sex trade.(12) In a letter to the undersecretary of state at the Home Office on December 8, 1906 entitled ‘Chinamen in Liverpool’, the Liverpool Head Constable had tasked his officers with taking a census of the Chinese residing in Liverpool who ‘seemed to be in regular employment’.  The figures listed, ‘15 Englishwomen married to Chinamen, 4 English women cohabiting with Chinamen, and 2 English women employed in Chinese laundries’. A ‘half-caste’ (mixed heritage) Chinese-English woman also ran a brothel with her Chinese husband, and was arrested for this in July 1904.  In the Head Constable’s opinion there was:

At present a great outcry on the subject, mostly due to a lying article in the Manchester Sunday Chronicle, but there is no doubt a strong feeling of objection to the idea of the ‘half-caste’ population which is resulting from the marriage of the Englishwoman to the Chinaman, but I cannot help thinking that what is really at the bottom of most of it is the competition of the Chinese with the laundries and boarding house keepers.(13)

As in the Transvaal, in Liverpool there was an official awareness that commercial interests were partly at play in pushing racialized anti-Chinese talking points and feeding the insecurities of the working classes to stifle business competition. This foreshadowed a far bigger panic in the 1919 race riots against Chinese and other non-white shipping workers in Britain.

Conclusion

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was talk of a second Cold War between China and the West. We will see this narrative grow and mutate in global media discourse over the coming years.  However the debacles of 1906-7 and 2020 also teach us that international anxieties can have more localized consequences. They potentially catalyse regional panics about Chinese communities and Chinese influence that can lead to ugly rumours and uglier results.  It also tells us that germ-phobia, stereotypes surrounding ethnic groups and anxieties about immigration have become entangled in Britain to create a toxic atmosphere in which false information and hatred flourishes. In the modern world citizens have frequently treated the nation-state like a body vulnerable to infection. Developing scientific solutions and vaccines to cope with the covid pandemic has been a painful learning curve, and so too will de-toxifying and disentangling the language linking borders, pathogens, and the contemporary Chinese question.

What do you think of the events surrounding the panic and subsequent report in 1906-07 in Liverpool?

References

1 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/09/chinese-in-uk-report-shocking-levels-of-racism-after-coronavirus-outbreak

2 See Appendix I.

3 Geoffrey Russell Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: a Study in British Politics and Political Thought 1899–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971), Geoffrey Russell Searle, Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900–14 (Leyden: Noordoff InternationalPublishing, 1976).

4 Robert Reid Rentoul, Race Culture; or, Race Suicide? : (a plea for the unborn), (London, Walter Scott, 1906), p.3-5.

5 Sunday Chronicle, 2nd December 1906, ‘Chinese vice in England’.

6 City of Liverpool, Report of the Commission appointed by the City Council to enquire into Chinese Settlements in Liverpool, 26 June, 1907, HO 139147/15

7 Sascha Auerbach, Race, law, and “The Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain, (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009), p.50

8 City of Liverpool, Report of the Commission appointed by the City Council to enquire into Chinese Settlements in Liverpool, 26 June, 1907, HO 139147/15

9 Ibid, p.7

10 Ibid, p.6

11 Henry Reynolds, Nowhere People, (Penguin, 2005), P.35

12 City of Liverpool, Report of the Commission appointed by the City Council to enquire into Chinese Settlements in Liverpool, 26 June, 1907, HO 139147/15, p.7

13 HO 45/11843, Part 2

The Mormon Battalion’s Movement to Western America - Part 3: Mexican-American War

The story of the Mormon Battalion remains an enduring legend. Recruited by the U.S. government from among those heading to Utah to gather with Brigham Young, this group of some 500 men plus women and children undertook a trek across the American Southwest during the Mexican-American War. The battalion is usually consigned to a footnote in the story, but it is a story which looms large in the settlement of California. In that context, the legend of the battalion and how it has found a truly revered place in the history of the Mormon faithful is significant. In part 3, Marvin McCrary looks at how the battalion fought in the war and how it reached San Diego.

You can read part 1 on the origins of the Mormon Battalion here, and part 2 on the battalion’s movement across the western US here.

Philip St. George Cooke.

When John Charles Frémont was tasked with leading expeditions to the west in 1842, his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, became intensely interested in the details of his travels. Jessie became his recorder, making notes as he described his experiences. Eventually, she wrote and edited the reports into best-selling stories. The stories captured the national imagination as Frémont’s dashing heroism was met with great enthusiasm. The account of the Great Basin was so vivid, that it has been alleged that Brigham Young was convinced that he had found the land long-envisioned by the Saints after reading about it.

The Saints suffered from disease, hunger, and cold while at Winter Quarters in the waning months of 1846, but the unfriendly circumstances merely served to strengthen their resolve. Throughout the spring, the Saints conferred with traders, mountain men, and travelers who were familiar with the Far West. It was decided that a forward expedition would be organized to go to the Great Basin and determine the best place in which to settle. Brigham Young deliberated over the matter, and received inspiration in regards to how the Saints should organize themselves for the journey. The company would be divided into small groups, each with an assigned leader, with special attention given to the poor, the widowed, and to those families which were bereft of a father. Famous frontiersmen such as Jim Bridger and “Black” Moses Harris, who were among those whom church leaders had consulted, noted that the trials the Saints had previously faced would prepare them for greater difficulties which lay ahead.

Exhaustion

In September of 1846, the men of the battalion were facing exhaustion on the long march to Santa Fe. For 3 days, the battalion marched in the unrelenting heat without any water at all, and when water was available, it was often brackish and unsanitary. Complicating the situation were the frequent threats and abuse inflicted upon them by Lieutenant Smith and Dr. Sanderson. The Santa Fe Trail was proving to be perilous, filled with wolves, hostile natives, and the occasional downpour. General Stephen Watts Kearney had met with no resistance from the Mexican forces on his march to Santa Fe, and he ultimately occupied it on August 18, 1846. Kearney had sent word to the Mormon Battalion, asking them to take a faster, more direct route, although it would prove to be more difficult. Despite the  harsh and unyielding conditions in which they found themselves, the men continued their march towards Santa Fe. Eventually, the circumstances would prove too much for some, and Smith ordered a group of fifteen sick families he believed could not make the trek to remain at Pueblo in Colorado. There was already a group of Mormons at Pueblo who had chosen to settle there, hoping to wait out the winter under the leadership of John Brown, who had led a group from the South to the Mountain West. Having to leave family behind was hard on those who would have to endure separation, Smith informed the men that Kearney had ordered that the battalion would be discharged unless they reached Santa Fe in a timely manner.

On October 9th, the weary soldiers were met with salutations of cannon and gunfire as they entered the town. Smith ordered that those who were too feeble would enter the town three days later. The tribute had been organized by General Alexander Doniphan who had assisted the Mormons at a crucial time when they were suffering persecutions eight years earlier in Missouri. The battalion was probably relieved when Lieutenant Smith and Dr. Sanderson departed their company at Santa Fe. It would be Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, another graduate of the military academy,  who would become their new commander. Unfortunately, Cooke was not too much of a departure from Smith, as he was also disappointed at having to lead a group of inexperienced volunteers. In one of his surviving journal entries, Cooke observes that there were too many families, women, and the number of supplies available was meager. General Kearney had already departed the town for California before the arrival of the battalion, with Cooke being given orders by the general to forge a wagon trail from Santa Fe to California. The rigorous pace wore heavily on battalion members, and in November another group of weak and tired soldiers turned back for Pueblo. While Cooke grew increasingly doubtful about the battalion’s capabilities, historian Dwight L. Clarke writes that it was felt that the Mormons still had a hidden, greater potential that had yet to be seen.

After his departure from Santa Fe, half of Kearney's army fought their way through the Mexican province of Chihuahua, and marched three thousand miles to link up with Zachary Taylor's army at Monterrey. Taylor was already beginning to enjoy rising popularity, and had earned his nickname of “Old Rough and Ready” for his significant victories over larger forces. On September 16, 1846, at the Battle of Monterrey, Taylor overcame a substantial Mexican force and declared an armistice, much to President James K. Polk’s consternation. Polk, a Democrat, was growing increasingly anxious about Taylor’s popularity amongst the Whigs. Taylor would go to engage General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's fifteen-thousand-man army at Buena Vista on February 22, 1847. When the smoke finally cleared, Taylor's five thousand men had dealt Santa Anna's army a crushing blow. When news of Taylor's victory reached the capital, his popularity soared even higher, and the Whigs began to publicly discuss his name as a possible candidate for the presidency.

Great Basin

In the meantime, things did not get easier for the pioneer company which had decided to set out for the Great Basin. The passes had become increasingly treacherous, and Brigham Young became sick with mountain fever. When the group of long-suffering pioneers arrived at the Salt Lake River Valley in July of 1847, Young asked to have his carriage turned so he could see the whole of the valley. Young rose from his sickbed and deemed that they were in the right place, according to Wilford Woodruff, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Upon Brigham Young’s return to Winter Quarters in the fall of 1847 from his expedition to the Great Basin, he found the remaining Saints had built a thriving settlement. However, Young anticipated the need to abandon it, as the lease on the tribal land would expire in a few months. The Saints then began moving east across the river, and back into Iowa, eventually naming their new headquarters Kanesville in honor of Thomas L. Kane. The emigration of the Saints to the Utah Territory would continue over the course of the next several years.

When the battalion finally arrived at San Diego on 24 January, 1847, the men recorded their joy at sighting the Pacific Ocean, knowing their travail would finally be at an end. The original plan had been for the Battalion to follow Kearney’s route as closely as possible, however Kearney later advised Cooke that it would behoove them to make their way along a southern route. The battalion had covered nearly 2,000 miles, making the march one of the longest in United States military history. The men had walked so much their shoes were worn out.  They had been forced to resort to burlap, pieces of wagon covers, and animal hides to wrap around their feet for protection from the rocks and cold.  The sun was hot in the day and cold at night through the desert, difficult for people with little to no covering. It was described that at times, the ground was so soft and deep that when they lay down to sleep, half of their bodies sank into the cold mud.

Despite having been tasked with the capture the city of Tucson, and being asked to protect Pauma natives in Temecula, the battalion did not see conflict, exactly as Bringham Young had said. The worst incident came when a herd of wild bulls charged the soldiers while they stopped for water at the San Pedro River in the Rio Grande Valley. Aside from a few injuries and loss of some mules, the soldiers walked away intact.

California

The war in California having effectively ended by the time of their arrival, the battalion soldiers were assigned to garrison duty in San Diego, San Luis Rey, and Los Angeles. The town residents were initially against the idea because of the false information which they had heard about them. The men of the battalion built houses and dug wells, using the knowledge about irrigation they had acquired. Previously, the people had to travel a long way for water from a well only 1 foot in depth. The new wells were 30 feet deep and were lined with bricks to keep them in place. When the time came for the Battalion to move on, the town people went to the Army and asked for more "Mormonitos" to come help them.  Most of the soldiers would reach Utah Territory–where Brigham Young and the main body of the Saints had settled–in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Historian Leonard L. Richards estimates that roughly 80 stayed and worked at Sutter’s Mill.  Sutter found the Mormons to be amongst the best laborers, although more expensive than the natives whom he had rented from Maidu tribal leaders. In 1848, gold was discovered by Sutter’s foreman, John W. Marshall. Henry Bigler, a veteran of the battalion, was at Sutter’s Mill at the time and recorded the date of the gold discovery in his journal. There had been a great deal of exaggeration surrounding gold discovery previously, and thus the excitement was met with an understandable degree of skepticism, even amongst the workers themselves. The Mormons tested the minerals, even biting it to check if it was real.  Word reached outgoing President Polk who endorsed the discovery, and thus the Gold Rush would begin in earnest.

The Mexican-American War served as a proving ground for issues which would later come to the fore during the Civil War. Slavery remained an enduring specter which would prove difficult to exorcise, especially as those on both sides of the debate become further entrenched in their views. Zachary Taylor would win the election in 1848, becoming the second of two Whigs (the first being William Henry Harrison) to become president. Unfortunately, just like his predecessor, Taylor died during his term. Brigham Young would become the second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1847, and served until 1877. It would be under his steady leadership that the Mormons are to be credited as one of the single most important agencies in the settlement of the American West. The march of the Mormon Battalion serves as a vital page to the historical expansion of the United States. They opened roads of great value to the nation, and made influential friends for the Saints. Their determined self-sacrifice demonstrated an unsurpassed loyalty to their country, their people, and their faith.

Let us know what you think of Mormon Battalion below.

Now read about when Mormon founder Joseph Smith met the president here.

Author’s Note: I would like to dedicate this article series to Sterling and Judy Hill, dear friends who continue to embody the pioneer spirit. My sources have been  journal entries written by those who traveled with the battalion, but I am also thankful to friends who graciously shared their family histories with me. The utilization of secondary sources was meant to provide a greater context to the events surrounding the march of the battalion. It should be stated that this was not meant to be an exhaustive study of the Mormon Battalion, and it is more than conventionally necessary to apologize for any shortcomings. It is hoped, however, that this will serve as inspiration for future study.

Sources

Arrington, Leonard J. Brigham Young: American Moses. New York: Knopf, 1985.

Clarke, Dwight L. Stephen Watts Kearny: Soldier of the West. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.

Cowan, Richard, and William E. Homer. California Saints. Utah: Bookcraft Publishing, 1996.

Richards, Leonard L. The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Vintage, 2008.

Ricketts, Norma Baldwin. The Mormon Battalion. Utah: Utah State University, 1996.