The Wars of the Roses and The Bloody Tower Plot

Civil War is one of the focus areas of the site. In this article, Myra-Lee discusses the intrigues behind the 1483 murder of the Princes in the Tower that led to the killing of Edward IV’s sons, an event that took place in an England that was in a period of civil war, The Wars of the Roses.

Edward IV

We’ve all heard the stories… King Richard III, a cruel, twisted, power-hungry maniac steals his nephews like some monster in the night, locks them up in the tower and kills them. Why? To secure the throne. Thanks to Shakespeare’s pioneering efforts, Richard’s reputation has faced six hundred years of slander. Modern historians would scoff at the thought of using Shakespeare as a historical reference, especially seeing as he wrote of the death of the Duke of Somerset at the hands of Richard when in reality the latter was only two years old. Yet some refuse to give up the claim that Richard, sensing glory, would kill his defenseless nephews for the crown. They fight tooth and nail to convict the long dead king. Others fight for Richard, claiming that his arch enemy, Henry Tudor, was responsible for their deaths.

Of course, the latter claim needs a huge leap of imagination as Henry was in Brittany at the time, had an almost non-existent claim to the throne, and had very little support and power in England. So how would he have done it? Well chances are he probably didn’t (unless he had some sort of teleporting power that history has forgotten to mention). As with all mysteries, there are other suspects, ranging from near royals to near paupers to everybody in between.

Henry Stafford, the second Duke of Buckingham, is one such suspect. Seeing his chance to inherit a throne, he murders the boys in the night (haven’t we heard this before?). In 1502, Sir James Tyrell, an ally of both Richard III and Henry VII (the world’s first double agent?), was arrested and executed. After his death a confession was found which claimed that he was responsible for the murder of the boys and was acting under orders from Richard (how convenient). It has to be noted that roughly the same time as this “confession”, there were two men alleging to be the princes. Both men had armies. Both men had to be fought off by Henry VII. And this is where the supporters of Richard III get excited… Could Henry VII have forged the confession because he knew that the boys were long dead and any pretender claiming to be one of the princes was just that, a pretender? Could he have known this because it was in fact he who killed them?

The other suspect

There are many suspects, even more theories, and a smorgasbord of unanswered questions surrounding the princes in the tower. For every question, there is a theory and for every theory there is a suspect, and for every suspect there are more questions. So in honor of this tradition, allow me to add my own suspect - Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Richard III

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that she snuck in like a monster in the night (maybe tripping over her skirts – those staircases in the tower are small) and killed the boys in cold blood, something that would have been quite a task seeing as they were probably bigger than her. I’m merely suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Lady Margaret was the puppet master in an attempt to get her son on the throne. It has long been known that Margaret dedicated her adult life to the pursuit of putting her only son, Henry Tudor, on the throne. Is it such a stretch of the imagination to assume that she would stop at nothing, not even murder, to get this done?

Allow me to explain. The princes were taken to the tower on April 29 1483 after the death of their father Edward IV (he died of pneumonia after a fishing trip). The boys stayed at the tower awaiting Edward V’s coronation; however, due to the political situation, that never came to pass and Richard III was crowned. Only a small group of Englishmen disputed this. One assumes that after many years of civil war, England would have rather had an accomplished warrior for a king and not a sickly 12-year-old boy. Despite what Shakespeare would have us believe, Richard was extremely popular and respected.

This all meant that England didn’t really bat an eyelid when Richard was crowned and the boys continued to live at the tower. They were frequently seen playing on the grass. This is until after July 1483. Suddenly the boys seemed to have disappeared. At this point, Henry’s supporters jumped up and said that Richard was responsible for their deaths. But why? He was already King; killing them would be like shutting the barn door after the horse had run away. Richard had no need to kill the boys - he wasn’t even in London at the time. Even the boys’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, didn’t think Richard had harmed them - she put herself and her daughters in his custody for protection. All of this ‘Richard-blaming’ is smoke and mirrors when you think that on July 20 1483, Lady Margaret and her followers staged a rescue mission for the boys. History tells us that it was unsuccessful and Lady Margaret then changed her strategy, instead meeting with Elizabeth Woodville to offer a marriage alliance between Margaret’s son and Elizabeth’s daughter.

The Princes in the Tower by Samuel Cousins

History and the truth

But what if History was lying? What if the “rescue” mission was actually a success and Lady Margaret never actually changed strategies but instead kept on the path of a most perfect plan?  Did old Maggie kill the boys in order that their elder sister, Elizabeth of York, was made heir to the throne, so allowing her son to marry Elizabeth and become King? Did Lady Margaret simply take out the competition? Sure, Richard III was king, but he had no heir meaning Elizabeth of York and her husband would have ruled whether Henry Tudor had won the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field or not. Is it such a stretch of the imagination to assume that Lady Margaret and her rescue mission had rescued nothing but the Tudor Dynasty? Also, take another one of the suspects on board – Henry Stafford, the second duke of Buckingham. Did you know that Henry’s uncle was married to Lady Margaret for two decades? Could Lady Margaret have used her family connections to have the boys killed? And what of the other suspect, James Tyrell? Was he just a pawn in this game too? Did Henry and his mother not like these pretenders and thought it best to do away with the rumors that the boys had survived?

Throughout medieval history women had the curse – and sometimes blessing – of going unnoticed. Could a smart woman with ambition and a serious agenda use that to her advantage? Did Margaret Beaufort move in the shadows to kill the boys, arrange her son’s marriage with the new heir, and have her son crowned King while everybody watched the men? Maybe, just maybe.

We will of course never know what happened to the boys. It is one mystery that history keeps for herself and watches as we sprout new theories and suspects. We have to resign ourselves to the fact that unless we build a teleporter, we will never know for sure. In the meantime, my money is on Maggie.

Do you agree? Who do you think killed the boys?

By M.L. King, a history enthusiast and part-time blogger.

The next article in the Wars of the Roses series is an introduction to the Wars of the Roses - available here.

If you enjoyed the article, JOIN US! Click here for a world of updates, plus free books!

Selected references

Who’s who in British History by Juliet Gardiner (Published by Collins and Brown Limited)

Tudor Queens – http://www.tudor-queens.co.uk/margaret-beaufort.html

Buckinghams Retinue – http://www.bucks-retinue.org.uk/content/views/302/330

Tudor History – http://tudorhistory.org/people/beaufort 

The Cold War – Quick reads

As people who follow the site will know, our main focus to-date on the site has been on the Cold War. That war’s intrigues made the second half of the 20th century.

From the Berlin Crisis to the Vietnam War, and the Korean War to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, that war defined nearly 50 years of world history and continues to impact our world.

We’ve previously released a few books on the early and middle years of that war, and one more will come later in the year.

Captured Communist flags during the Vietnam War, 1968

That book will focus on a particularly volatile period in the Cold War, the years from 1979 to the end of the Cold War. In our last book, you may have read that relations between the super-powers collapsed as the 1970s came to an end. A more assertive Soviet Union led to many in the US fearing that the Soviet Union planned to seriously challenge them for global hegemony once more. In the 1970s, the Soviets strongly supported various regimes in Africa, improved their missiles, and finally launched an offensive in Afghanistan on Christmas Day, 1979.

A worried US then underwent tumultuous change, and the outcome was that Ronald Reagan became President in 1981. Something akin to a paradigm shift then occurred in US-Soviet relations. Reagan’s administration massively increased defense spending, and with it, the world abounded in danger; however, a second paradigm shift then occurred as a very new and different Soviet leader emerged.

Ultimately it would be the actions of these two men that caused the Cold War to end.

While you wait..

You’ll have to wait a few months for the book, but while you wait for it, we’ve got some educational materials to share with you.

The first of these looks at the origins of the Cold War. It is widely held that the Cold War began in the mid-to-late 1940s – 1945 is generally the most popular choice. In our podcast series, we considered 1945 to be the start year; however this article looks back at the pre-1945 world and considers different times in which the Cold War could have started. As you will see, some think it started with the Communists gaining power in Russia during the 1917 Russian Revolution. After that revolution, many in the West, such as Winston Churchill, were keen to crush Communism as they feared its spread across Europe and the world.

Get the article.

The second of these materials considers the Cold War in its entirety by looking at the main events in three different periods. If you’ve listened to the podcasts or read one of our books, this is a great analytical took that recaps some of the main points and asks some key questions about the war’s events.

Get the article.

PS – you’ll have seen that the blog has been more active this week. And we plan to keep it that way! We’re always looking for new contributors, so if you’re interested get in touch. Or, click here to find out more.

George Levrier-Jones

The materials are supplied courtesy of our friends at www.explaininghistory.com.

You can find out more about the Cold War by going to our Cold War page – click here. 

The Italian invasion of Libya - Una Fatalia Storica

This article was previewed on the site for a time and the full article is now in the magazine. Click here for more information!

Meanwhile the next articles in this series are here: 

The Libyan Experiment and Italian Subjugation under Mussolini

Fourth Shore - The Italian Colonization of Libya

And here is the start of the Italian invasion of Libya article...

The Derna, a cargo ship, departed from Turkey in September 1911. Its cargo hold was filled with 20,000 rifles, 2 million rounds of ammunition, and machineguns. These arms were destined for the Ottoman-Libyan port of Tripoli, where they would be distributed amongst loyal Libyan tribesmen. On September 24, Italy caught wind of the ship’s journey and issued a warning to the Ottomans that “sending war materials to Tripoli was an obvious threat to the status quo” and endangered the Italian community in Libya. The ship started unloading its cargo at Tripoli harbor on September 26. Infuriated, the Italian government issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire on the 28th: let the regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica fall under Italian jurisdiction and military occupation or else war would be declared. The Ottomans gave a reasonable and conciliatory reply but Italy would have none of it. On September 29, Italy declared war on Ottoman Libya, a decision described by the Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti as fulfilling una fatalia storica – a historical destiny.

And remember, the follow-up articles are here: 

The Libyan Experiment and Italian Subjugation under Mussolini

Fourth Shore - The Italian Colonization of Libya

The Italian siege of Tobruk

The Renaissance of the Russian Orthodox Church

Two of the focus areas of our blog are 20th century history and Communism. In this article, Brian Schmied looks at the struggles that the Church faced in the Soviet Union in the Communist period, and argues that it has become a powerful force in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The Russian Orthodox Church is an integral part of Russian society, and a powerful political force. Not long ago, that would have been unthinkable. The Russian Orthodox Church has moved out from under the heel of brutal suppression and near extinction, to political dominance within the lifetime of most people reading this.

The Soviet Era Church

Communism, with its state atheism, had an official policy of religious tolerance that permitted the existence, but not the propagation of religion. Its rise resulted in the confiscation of the vast lands and property of the Orthodox Church. It was illegal to criticize atheism and to proselytize, and there were massive government led efforts to end religion[1] through education and persecution.

Destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, 1931

It did not help that the Orthodox Church opposed the rise of Communism, encouraging believers to fight against the new regime. When Lenin abolished religious education and the privileges and legal status of the Church, the Patriarch excommunicated the government, which led to mass executions of clergy. 

Almost 600 convents and monasteries were liquidated and the inhabitants executed in those first few years, and it only got worse with time. In 1929, the USSR outlawed all distribution of religious materials and proselytization. Special taxes implemented for the clergy raised their total taxes to over 100% of their income. Debtors were carted off to Siberia. Then Stalin came to power.

He purged the Russian clergy in 1938, executing an estimated[2] 100,000 of them on the spot, and arresting the rest. Just as it looked like religious expression may be fully stamped out, World War II broke out and brought it back. The Nazi invaders reopened churches in conquered Russian territory. Stalin, fearing that this might make the still largely religious Russian populace sympathetic to the Germans, ended his campaign of persecution and reopened the churches.

The number of churches recovered to over 20,000 within a decade, but, like the war, it did not last. In the late 1950’s Nikita Khrushchev, resumed the persecution. All of the previous laws were enforced again, and a few new ones added. By 1963, it was illegal to bring a child to a church service, and to administer the Eucharist to a child over the age of four.

Time wore down the conflict, however. The Russian Orthodox Church ended its feud with the state, endorsing its various accomplishments and integrating with the KGB[3] to ensure their survival. The Russian state granted reprieve, weakening restrictions, allowing theological schools to open and train clergy, and allowing people to privately fund churches and hire priests for their communities.

It wasn’t until the Gorbachev’s glasnost policy, however, that ownership of some Russian churches was returned to the institution.

The Post-Soviet Renaissance

The Russian Orthodox Church has bounced back. While Russians are not overly religious, with only about 15-20% practicing Orthodoxy[4], far more Russians identify with the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian nationalism has become tied to the religion, driving many conservatives, neo fascists and anti-foreign elements, into the arms of the Church.

The inauguration of Vladimir Putin in 2012

Perhaps because of his ties to the former KGB, Vladimir Putin has built a strong bond between the Orthodox Church and the Russian State. He has voiced support[5] of increasing the political influence of the Church, and the Church has voiced their support of him in turn. The Patriarch, rather than fearing execution, like his predecessors, now walks the halls[6] of the Kremlin in return for bringing the votes of the faithful.

The orthodox people of Russia no longer fear the desecration of their holy sites by their government, but rather call for support in protecting them. There are scientologists are facing possible legal action on behalf of the Orthodox Church against their worldwide expansion efforts[7]. Russians protesting these Scientology proselytization efforts claim[8], “…anyone who cares about the survival of Russia must join the body of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Mere decades ago the same statement would have brought the KGB to your door.

Already by 2006, Russia boasted an impressive 27,000 Orthodox parishes and over 700 monasteries. Religion is uncharacteristically popular with the youth[9], as it helps them establish a cultural identity and connects to the international Russian community. As of 2007, the Moscow Patriarchate has brought the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which split off when the Soviet Union cut Moscow off from the world, back into the fold[10].

Do you agree? Has the Church really become a major force in modern Russia? Let us know your thoughts below..

Brian Schmied loves to learn about the history of religion and politics. He has a B.A in political science, and enjoys writing because it pushes him to think analytically and objectively, and to learn new things.

If you enjoyed that article, and want to find out more about religion’s struggles in the Soviet Union, a great book is Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski, one of my favorite writers. Get the book - Amazon US | Amazon UK

References 

[1] Kowaleski, David. Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR. Russian Review, 1980. Vol. 39, No. 4. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/128810?uid=3739648&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102530492637

[2] Yakovlev, Alexander. Paul Hollander transl. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2004, Pg 165.

[3] Meek, James. Russian Patriarch ‘was KGB Spy’. Guardian News and Media Limited. 12 February 1999. http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1

[4]The World Factbook: Russia. Central Intelligence Agency, 10 July 2013. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html

[5] Grove, Thomas. Church should have more Control Russian Life: Putin. Thomson Reuters, 1 February, 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/01/us-russia-putin-church-idUSBRE91016F20130201

[6] Bennets, Marc. In Putin’s Russia, Little Separation Between Church and State. The Washington Times, LLC, 13 August 2012.http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/13/putin-russia-little-separation-church-state/?page=all

[7] Creating an New Era of Expansion. Church of Scientology International, 2013. http://www.scientology.org/david-miscavige/creating_a_new_era_of_expansion.html

[8] Robinson, Robert. Orthodox Rally in Moscow condemns Scientologists. 1 July 2013. http://worldcultwatch.org/orthodox-rally-in-moscow-condemns-scientologists/

[9] Orthodoxy in Russia Today. The Mendeleyev Journal, 30 March 2012. http://russianreport.wordpress.com/religion-in-russia/orthodoxy-in-russia-today/

[10] Kishkovsky, Leonid. After 80-plus Years, the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia Reconcil. The Orthodox Church News Magazine, 2007. Vol. 43. http://oca.org/holy-synod/statements/fr-kishkovsky/after-80-plus-years-the-moscow-patriarchate-and-the-russian-orthodox-church

The Taiwan Straits Crisis - A Hair’s Breadth from Annihilation

This article was previewed on the site for a time and the full article is now in the magazine. Click here for more information!

Meanwhile, you can see another of our articles on Cold War Taiwan here: 

Cold War Taiwan’s Electronic Industry

And here is the start of the article on the Taiwan Straits Crisis itself...

Sixty years have come and gone, but the sun has yet to set on the Taiwan Straits Crisis. Stranded on the rocky island of secrecy amid the storms of the Cold War (1947-1991), the mists of time should not be permitted to veil the lessons that must be learned.  In the U.S. during the early 1950s, Eisenhower was in office, China was engaged in a civil war, the Soviets were antsy, and the Air Force longed to hear the words ‘the pickle is hot’, indicating they were free to unload armaments. The only thing missing from the high-tension plot was a bevy of brilliant beauties unless, of course, you consider Madam Chiang Kai-shek and Hedy Lamar.

Remember - click here to find out more about the magazine! 

A Skyray plane in flight off Taiwan in 1958

Cuban Cold War Capital: Havana

The American made “staghound” tank occupies a place of honor on the campus of the University of Havana. Local yore says this tank was a Christmas gift from Eisenhower to Batista in 1957. The armored vehicle is one of the few remaining artifacts of the military relationship which the Cuban government had with the United States during the Cold War period.

Unlike Cuba’s later relationship with the Soviet Union, American security assistance did not transform Cuba’s capital city into a militaristic enclave. Instead, during the early period of the Cold War conflict, when the Americans provided military assistance and arms transfers to the Cuban government, the urban form and organization of Havana were transformed through the clash of two domestic forces, the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and the paramilitary urban underground opposing his regime.

During the early Cold War period, Havana’s loyalty to the US was taken for granted and the government was considered a staunch ally in the fight against communism.

Cuba’s trade relationship with the United States dominated the country’s economic system so much so that in 1959 almost 80 percent of the country’s commercial transactions were with the US. The capital city, Havana, was dominant, handling a majority of the country’s imports, with between 60 and 80 percent of the country’s incoming cargo passing through the port of Old Havana.

Still, it is important to note that while it may be argued that Cuba was a client of the United States, the country’s political system was not penetrated in the strict sense of the term.

In other words, while more than half of Cuba’s foreign trade was with the United States, military and aid receipts from the Americans were not more than half its budget. Actually, in some years, US military assistance was quite negligible.

Only after 1972, when Cuba joined the economic arm of the Soviet bloc, COMECON, was the country penetrated both economically and politically by a Cold War superpower.

So, although allied with the US in the 1950s and shaped by the Soviets in the 1960s, it was not until the 1970s — the mid years of the Cold War — that Havana could be called a Cold War City.

By then, Fidel Castro’s rise to power and the American response  had cemented a mutual enmity.

By Lisa Reynolds Wolfe. This article originally appeared on www.coldwarstudies.com, a site about Cold War politics and history that has a particular focus on Cuba.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe 

This article is the first in a regular series of syndicated articles from some of the most interesting history blogs that will appear on the site. 

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you want to see Cuba before the “capitalist invasion?”

Americans can now travel to Cuba legally. Let us show you how to take advantage of OFAC licensed people-to-people programs:

• meet the people of Cuba and come home with a deeper understanding of the island and its culture
• stroll through the UNESCO World Heritage site of Old Havana and explore the diversity of its architectural history
• visit artist venues and cultural projects celebrating Afro-Cuban music and dance.

All trips are fully licensed. 

For an itinerary and info, just send an e-mail to lisa@coldwarstudies.com. I’ll be happy to answer your questions and provide more information. 

The blog is changing.. We’re getting some of our favorite bloggers right here!

Is change good or bad?

Well, very often, when websites change people seem to think bad. Think of the complaints whenever the annual change to Facebook comes out. Or the complaints that occur while people get used to the interface of a news website after it changes.

But, we like change. And we like risk. So we’ve decided to change the blog.

Fortunately for us though, we have but a tiny, tiny fraction of the users that Facebook and the leading news websites have. So we expect a tiny, tiny fraction of the complaints.

In fact, we expect no complaints whatsoever as we’re not changing the look or feel of the website at all. But the change is major. You see, we’ve recently been in contact with a few of our favorite history blogs (and indeed, we continue to contact a few others) and over the coming months some great writers will be writing exclusively for us, while we’ll also be syndicating some of our favorite articles.

Sound good? But, I hear you ask, what will they be writing about?

As you may or may not remember, we posted an article a while back that set out the main topics that the blog will cover. Specifically these are:

• Colonialism
• Civil War
• 20th century history
• 19th century history
• Communism

In the short term, we’re likely to focus on events in the Cold War; however, do expect some posts on other areas within the remit of the above. Plus, there will be some extra special surprises from myself when I bend the rules on the topics above to breaking point.. I bet you can’t wait! The blog posts will also aim to talk about some lesser-known topics in history and provide a different type of insight to our podcasts and books.

As one might expect, the blog posts will be in a variety of different styles – some informative, some quite opinionated. And in between, I shall continue with my irreverent posts on the Cold War and the like..

“I like to write and know a lot about history. Can I write for you?”

The answer is yes, although there are some caveats. If you are interested in writing for us, look at our ‘write for us’ page – click here.

In the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy some great history blog posts.

Have you got any ideas for future blog articles? We’re building a list of articles that we’d like future pieces on and are always looking for suggestions to add to it!

We’ll speak again soon!

George Levrier-Jones

PS – the new podcast series on the American Revolution will be out in late August (or maybe sooner if we hurry up!).

Free book - until July 31st only!

Cold War History - Are we friends or enemies? – From the Vietnam War to Détente – Part 2: 1962-1979 (Required History)

Our new book is FREE INSTANTLY until July 31st. Grab your copy now while you still can!

Get the book on Amazon 

About the book

In an unstable world, how do you know who your friends and enemies are?

You don’t.

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

This introduction to the middle years of the Cold War tells the story of the great clash between the Communist Soviet Union and the capitalist USA. It considers events in an intriguing age for international relations. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were calls to avert the risk of another nuclear near-miss, and this did lead to an improvement in the super-power relationship; however, underneath this improvement, there remained great tension. To further complicate the situation, China and Europe both became increasingly powerful and assertive. In the world of the 1960s and 1970s, it was hard to know who to trust and who to fear.

Get the book on Amazon

The topics in the book include:

• The Vietnam War and its impact on the Cold War
• Decolonization and the opportunities that arose from it for the super-powers
• The growing power of Western Europe and a major change in Czechoslovakia
• The historic changes in the relationship between Mao Zedong’s China and the super-powers
• The super-powers as friends? Détente, Richard Nixon, and Leonid Brezhnev
• The major nuclear agreements and the arms race
• How serious tensions emerged once more

The approximately 90-page book is the perfect complement to the Cold War History audio series that is available as part of the ‘History in 28-minutes’ podcasts.

Get the book on Amazon 

George Levrier-Jones

The Super-Powers – Countries on heat

Super-powers stopped the enslavement of the planet and a return to a new Dark Age. They are no more or less important than that.

What a dramatic way to start the post. Let me explain.

The leaders of the super-powers at the Yalta Conference

When I say super-power, I’m not talking about the type of super-powers that Spiderman or Batman have. I’m talking about countries. And the two super-powers that saved the world were the USSR and the USA. Their combined might, aligned with the British Empire (the third super-power) and a few others, allowed the world to be saved from much darker forces by 1945.

Having spent much of 2012 reading about the Cold War, it’s strange for me to think that the USSR and USA were ever friends, let alone countries that actually coordinated their efforts to overcome the Axis Powers.  But, over the course of several conferences during the World War 2, the powers discussed strategy, even if the conferences saw the powers turn against each other as Allied victory seemed increasingly likely. There were some particularly cozy moments in the relationships between the super-powers though. For example, at one stage Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met in Moscow and made the ‘Percentages Agreement’, an agreement in which the relative influence of the powers was agreed. The two leaders agreed the percentage of influence they would have in several countries in Europe, Churchill write it down, and then Stalin ticked the agreement (this incident is mentioned in the Origins of the Cold War by Martin McCauley Amazon US | Amazon UK).

What is a super-power?

Super-powers are more powerful than Great Powers. In fact, they are countries so powerful that they have the ability to project influence and change events on a global scale. They are a new form of world power. New technology has transformed the ability of countries to exert political and economic force around the world and launch wars in far-flung corners of the globe. It allows them to move planes and destroyers and troops to wherever they want very quickly. And nuclear weapons have changed the game even more. Now powers can annihilate others in minutes with the press of a button.

In the way that I am using it, the term ‘super-power’ was coined about 70 years ago in the final years of World War 2 to refer to the British Empire, the USA, and the USSR. The British Empire soon collapsed and nobody called Britain a super-power after that time.

But, after the term was coined, there were debates on which countries in history can rightfully be called super-powers aside from the USA and USSR. The Roman Empire and Mongol Empire have been among those mentioned as super-powers, but the problem with saying that they were super-powers is that they did not have a truly global reach. Even if we exclude the ‘undiscovered’ Americas (and thus consider only the known world), we cannot really argue that either empire had a global reach. There are two countries that I think we could consider though...

A cartoon depicting the British threatening Emperor Tewodros II

Pax Britannica

The obvious one is Britain or the British Empire from the 19th Century. Britain had a vast land Empire that included colonies across all the continents of the world, and it could influence events more or less anywhere that it wanted with the support of its all-conquering navy. Now, rather than put forward a detailed argument on why I think that Britain was a super-power (that’s for another day!), I’m going to illustrate it with one example.

It was 1868. The British Empire was at its peak. And Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia (or Abyssinia) had insulted the British. He had imprisoned several British subjects, and then rebuffed attempts to try to get them released. Instead, he imprisoned the people that the British had sent to negotiate the others release. The British were not happy.

So Queen Victoria announced that the hostages would be rescued with force. And soon enough, Indian-based British forces were prepared and sent to Abyssinia. They landed and undertook a massive construction effort, including the building of a port. Under General Napier, the troops marched over hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain in order to battle Tewodros’s forces. They eventually got to his admittedly weak forces and trounced them in a battle. The hostages were released and the British left. On a sadder note, Tewodros II then committed suicide.

Hardly Britain’s finest hour, but it illustrates my point. That’s what a super-power can do.

But there is one other super-power contender...

To the East

A friend of mine works in an art gallery in Shanghai, China. She recently told me that Westerners that visit the gallery sometimes ask about the voyages that the Chinese undertook in the early 15th Century. At the time China was the world’s most powerful country and the country undertook voyages in which they (apparently) discovered the world. In the book 1421 by Gavin Menzies (Amazon US | Amazon UK), the author asserts that under Admiral Zheng He, China launched voyages in which it discovered the Americas and circumnavigated the world. And they did so some 70 years before Columbus made his discovery of the Americas. Menzies’s book has come in for strong criticism from various quarters (although it is still an interesting read), but what is undisputed is that around this time China sent massive fleets to the coasts of Africa as well as much of Asia.

Whether China discovered the Americas or not, my point is that China could have had a global reach if it wanted at the time. It would not have been able to move as quickly as the US can today or even the British in the 19th Century; however, the power and wealth of China combined with the size of the Chinese fleets in its accepted voyages indicates that China had the resources to reach and attack all countries in the known world if it wanted to.

And that, my friends, is a super-power.

Was China really a super-power? Or conversely, do you think that I have been too conservative in only classing a few countries as super-powers?

Let me know what you think. After all, history is here to be debated...

George Levrier-Jones

This post was written as part of a regular series of (sometimes) humorous introductions to topics in history as part of ‘117-second History’.

We discuss how the USA and USSR emerged as  super-powers, in our book, “Cold War History - To the brink of nuclear destruction - From World War 2 to the Cuban Missile Crisis - Part 1: 1945-1962 (Required History)” – available by clicking here.

The Great Powers – 117-second History

I thought that I would be refreshing my knowledge for this blog post. But, it would be much more than that. The Great Powers blog post took me back to the depths of organized civilization. I mused, “that’s history in a nut-shell – it goes very far back.”

That is a very obvious thing to think.

Personally, I’ve read about the great powers, most notably in Paul Kennedy’s classic, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Amazon US | Amazon UK), but what I didn’t realize were the sheer number of Great Powers over the centuries, especially in the pre-European age (by which I mean, the age before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas). Sure, I was aware of the Mongols and the great Ancient Empires, but there are so many powerful empires in history.

The history of the Great Powers is truly a history of the world. Even in a world as disconnected as that of 100AD. Of course, in 100AD it was hard for leaders to control territory as effectively as they do now, or to quickly send armies to far flung parts of the globe, but nonetheless there were Great Empires that controlled large parts of the densely populated parts of the earth.

There were great Ancient Empires in many parts of Asia, from Babylonia in the Middle East to China in the Far East, while there were also several great African Empires amongst others.

And then I remembered

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit to some of the lesser visited regions of the globe. And soon enough, it hit me. I remembered learning about some of these kingdoms. Take the Axumite Kingdom (or the Kingdom of Aksum). It consisted of parts of several modern-day countries in Africa and the Middle East, and came into being sometime around 100AD. I visited the town of Axum, in northern Ethiopia, the former capital. The main site that remains from the days of the Axumite Kingdom is a series of stelae in many fields within and around the town. While there I was told about Axum’s Ancient glories, but it was hard to recognize that this was the center of a truly Great Power. It was only when I started to read more about it that I understood its importance as a base between modern-day Egypt and India.

The same thing happened when I visited Georgia (the country, not the state!). While there I was told of it’s (albeit quite brief) glorious age, but again I found myself surprised on finding out about its regional influence during the Georgian Golden Age around the year 1200.

Not truly Great Powers, but..

A great power can be defined as a country that has significant extra-territorial influence, but there is a problem that I have when thinking about countries such as Georgia in the year 1200 as Great Powers. And this is in spite of being well-read in the European Great Powers over the past centuries.

The problem is the Cold War. I compare such powers to the USSR and USA, and think of how little influence they actually had outside of their own regions. But, that is why the USA and USSR were known as super-powers, not merely Great Powers.

There’s most certainly a lesson here. History stretches back a very long way and just because things are as they are now, it doesn’t mean they’ve always been that way. By which I mean, the word super-power was coined for a reason.

Anyway, the point of this blog post was to provide an introduction to the two powers in the Cold War as an introduction to some posts covering topics in the Cold War. I guess that I will have to do a post on the super-powers first now.

“Oh, why must history go so very far back?”, I just lamented.

Is there a Great Power that intrigues you?

If so, please tell us a little about it so that we can learn something from you!

George Levrier-Jones

This post was written as part of a regular series of (sometimes) humorous introductions to topics in history as part of ‘117-second History’.

We discuss how the USA and USSR emerged as Great Powers (or super-powers), in our book, “Cold War History - To the brink of nuclear destruction - From World War 2 to the Cuban Missile Crisis - Part 1: 1945-1962 (Required History)” - available by clicking here.