Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Vol 65 Issue 3
Retail
Revolution
Shopping with
the Georgians
Violent Women
Paul Lay
HistoryMatters
The Legacy
of 1815
Are we in danger of
neglecting the true
importance of one of
historys epochal years?
Jeremy Black
WATERLOO holds our attention, but
there were other episodes in British
military history that year which were
also important in framing the long
19th century.
The most obvious was the defeat
in January of Wellingtons brother-inlaw, Sir Edward Pakenham, outside
New Orleans, which underlined the
extent to which war between Britain
and the US would end in compromise.
Indeed, a peace had already been
negotiated at Ghent, although it had
not yet been ratified. As the campaigns
of 1812, 1813 and 1814 demonstrated,
Britain could hold Canada against US
invasion. Moreover, the Americans
were not strong enough at sea to
inflict fatal damage on the British
maritime blockade. Equally, British
attempts to co-operate with Native
Americans had little success and
British invasions of America struggled
to achieve lasting results.
One legacy of 1815 was, therefore,
a North America in which Britain
was going to have to accommodate a
rapidly expanding new state. The implications were realised mid-century,
when the US extended its rule to the
Pacific and overcame secession.
The year also delivered an effective
demonstration of British strength in
the western hemisphere. Overshadowed by Waterloo, the British capture
of the French colonies in the West
Indies indicated that Britains capacity
for power projection was unrivalled,
a situation that continued until the
HISTORYMATTERS
HISTORYMATTERS
School tools:
whale-bone
writing-tablet
and styluses
from the middle
Anglo-Saxon
period.
HISTORYMATTERS
Enduring
Liberty
Honest John:
Lilburne in an
engraving by
Richard Cooper,
late 18th century.
HISTORYMATTERS
LongmanHistory Today
Awards 2015
The Commonwealth War
Graves Commission and
a study of the BBC World
Service were among this
years winners.
THE Longman-History Today Trustees
Award for 2015 was given to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
(CWGC). From its beginnings in the
wake of the Great War, the CWGC
has maintained the simple dignity and
true equality of the 1.7 million graves
and memorials it tends, in 23,000 locations across 153 countries, visited by
around 1.6 million people a year. It has
employed some of the 20th centurys
greatest architects, such as Reginald
Blomfield, creator of the first great
memorial at Ypres, the Menin Gate,
and Edwin Lutyens, whose Thiepval
memorial on the Somme commemorates 72,000 dead. Among its early
advisers, when it was the Imperial
War Graves Commission, was Rudyard
Kipling, who knew the tragedy of war
all too well and whose magnificent
short story, The Gardener, remains so
evocative of such places. The CWGC
still employs 850 gardeners. In 1949,
its regrettable but necessary task
began again with the completion of
the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery.
After last years commemoration of the
outbreak of the First World War and
this years remembrance of the end
of the Second, it seemed an especially
appropriate and deserving recipient.
The CWGC performs three crucial
tasks: it remembers with eloquence
the events of the past; it acknowledges
the relationship of one generation to
another the debts owed, the continuing bonds, the similarities, the differences, the common humanity and it
demonstrates a serious commitment
to public history.
The Trustees Award was presented
to Victoria Wallace, director general
of the CWGC, by the editor of History
MonthsPast
MARCH
By Richard Cavendish
Franz Anton
Mesmer dies in
Germany
The German physician who inspired
the modern practice of hypnotism
came from a Roman Catholic family in
Swabia, near the Swiss border. They lived
at a place called Iznang on an arm of
Lake Constance and the father, Anton
Mesmer, was gamekeeper to the Bishop
of Constance. Born in 1734, the third of
their nine children was named Franz
Anton, but was usually known as Anton.
His Catholic education by monks and at
two Jesuit universities left him with no
zeal for the Church and in his twenties in
1759 he went to study first law and then
medicine at the University of Vienna.
By the time he wrote his doctoral
dissertation in the 1760s Mesmer was
deeply interested in the possible influence of the planets on disease. Drawing
on the work of a distinguished English
physician, Richard Mead, he suggested
that an invisible fluid in the human body
is influenced by the planets, just as the
moon affects the tides. He later invented
the term animal magnetism for this
phenomenon.
In 1768 Mesmer married a rich
widow, ten years older than himself,
Anna Maria von Posch. They lived in
style in Vienna on her money and he set
up in medical practice. He believed that
diseases were caused by blockages in
the bodys invisible fluid which could be
broken by putting a patient into a trance
state that would restore the fluids
normal healthy flow. He experimented
with using magnets, but dropped them
as he concluded that it was his own personal magnetism he was a dramatic
and commanding character that
brought about the desired result.
Mesmer had an appetite for publicity.
He gave lectures and demonstrations
and staged cures in a way that upset
more conventional Viennese doctors. In
1778 he left Vienna for Paris. Anna Maria
8 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
Hypnotic: Franz
Anton Mesmer in
a contemporary
engraving.
Hypatia of Alexandria
murdered
In the company of
men: Hypatia (or
possibly the artist)
in white robe, from
Raphaels The School
of Athens (1509-11).
O! the Fatal
Stamp: a response
to the Stamp
Act published in
the Pennsylvania
Journal, 1765.
SONS OF MARS
The
Rise
of the
Sons of
Mars
H
Statue of Mars, or
Pyrrhus, Capitoline
Museum, Rome, first
century ad.
IERO II, the ruling general of the Greek citystate of Syracuse, led a campaign in 265 bc north
towards a coastal Sicilian city, Messana, held by a
group of Campanian mercenaries known as the
Mamertines. The Campanians were part of a vast Oscan
tribal group originally from the Apennine mountains, who
had now settled in the southern Italian region of Campania. By the end of the fifth century bc the hill tribes had
invaded the nearby plains, displacing the Etruscan and
Greek inhabitants of the region, taking control of nearly
all of the land between Salerno and Cumae. As the decades
passed, the mountain dwellers gradually let go of their old
way of life and adopted the civic lifestyle of the people they
had conquered. The newly sedentary Campanians appealed
to the Romans for their help against their aggressive neighbours, the Samnites. In 343 bc Rome came to their aid and,
in turn, the Campanians became subjects of the Republic.
From then on the Campanians were considered civites sine
suffragio, meaning they had all of the privileges of Roman
citizens but without the right to vote in Rome.
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 11
SONS OF MARS
Locations of the
major battles
fought by the
Sons of Mars.
WHEN AGATHOCLES was 72, in 289 bc, the self-proclaimed king of Syracuse and Sicily was assassinated by
members of his own family, following arguments surrounding his succession. After his death, the large group of
Campanian mercenaries he had hired clashed with the Syracusan citizenry. To convince the Italian soldiers to leave, the
Syracusans offered them the conquered city of Messana,
which they quickly accepted. A year later, in 288 bc, the
citizens of Messana allowed the mercenaries to enter their
city only to regret their decision shortly after. Once inside,
the foreign troops slaughtered the men, enslaved the
women and seized the city. From then on, the mercenaries
called themselves the Mamertines, or the sons of Mamers,
the name for the war-god Mars in the Oscan language of the
Campanians.
Due to the near constant influx of Campanian mercenaries into Sicily for over a century, this was not the first
time that foreign soldiers had seized a city on the island.
For instance, Campanians took the western Sicilian city
of Entella in 404 bc. However, the degree to which the Mamertines devoted themselves to violence and warfare, as
they either intimidated their neighbours into giving them
tribute or took their possessions by force, quickly made
them notorious throughout the region. By the end of the
third century bc, the self-styled Sons of Mars had sacked
and pillaged as far as Gela and Camarina along the southern
coast of Sicily.
While the Sons of Mars were a terrible irritation,
many of the Greek city-states of Sicily still considered the
Carthaginian Empire as their main threat, especially the
people of Syracuse. Therefore, after a large Carthaginian
army had besieged the city once again, Syracuse and the
Hellenistic community of Sicily chose
a new champion to defend them: King
Pyrrhus of Epirus. At the time, the general
was fighting a war with the Romans on
behalf of a Greek city in southern Italy,
Tarentum. Even though he had achieved
two victories over the armies of the Republic, the loss of his soldiers had been so great
that the ambitious king decided to abandon
the Tarentines and heed the call of the Sicilian Greeks, believing that the Carthaginians would be an easier foe to overcome.
Pyrrhus arrived in Sicily in 278 bc and
began his conquest of the island. However,
only two years later, he had failed to accomplish this goal, as he could not capture the
formidable Carthaginian stronghold of
Lilybaeum. His failure was mostly due to
the fact that the Sicilian Greeks had turned
against him for his increasingly autocratic
conduct towards them. Throughout Pyrrhus Sicilian campaign, the Mamertines had been allied with the Carthaginians against the Hellenistic general. So, even though the
king of Epirus attacked and defeated the mercenaries, the
Sons of Mars managed to retain Messana and their independence. When the Greeks of Sicily had completely risen
against their denounced, prior saviour, many of them even
wanted the Carthaginians or the Mamertines to then save
them from Pyrrhus. The aspiring king of Sicily withdrew
from the island in the autumn of 276 bc and returned to
SONS OF MARS
Coin depicting head
of Agathocles, Tyrant
of Syracuse, struck
317 bc.
allies, the Republic took action. After the capture of Tarentum, Roman soldiers besieged Rhegium in 271 bc. A year
later, the Roman army broke through the citys defences
and the remaining 300 Campanians left alive were taken
captive. In the heart of the capital, the Roman Forum, the
treasonous soldiers were flogged and decapitated.
WITH THE THREAT OF Pyrrhus gone, the mercenaries returned to marauding. The Sons of Mars managed to conquer
a substantial portion of north-eastern Sicily, creating an
empire whose territory stretched from Mount Etna in the
south and as far west as Halaesa on the north coast. The
foreign pirates had now become too great a threat for Syracuse to ignore. After the next tyrant
took control of the city and reorganised the army to include a new native
militia force alongside the conventional contingent of mercenaries, a truce
was established with the Carthaginian
Empire to deal with the Mamertines.
Hiero II was one of the most loyal supporters of Pyrrhus
within Syracuse and managed to retain his high position in
the city even after the king had retreated from the island.
At first, his position in the city was limited for he was only
acknowledged as Strategus, the overall commander of the
army. It was only after the general confronted the Mamertines for the first time at the victorious battle of the River
Cyamosorus in 269 bc, that he was able to secure complete
control of Syracuse and, the following year, take the title of
Strategus Autocrator.
HE CARTHAGINIANS answered the call immediately and sent troops. Carthage was much more
content with Messana being occupied by themselves or the Mamertines than with it being controlled by Syracuse once again, so the decision was an easy
one. Carthaginian ships harboured at the Aeolian Islands
were so close to Messana that they were able to place a
garrison within the city before Hiero reached its defensive
Image of Pegasus,
struck in Carthage,
260 bc.
the region and the strength of its navy. With its powerful
fleet, Carthage had already conquered much of North
Africa, portions of Spain, mostly along the southern and
eastern coasts, as well as Sardinia and the smaller islands of
the region. Since the Romans had conquered the southern
part of the Italian peninsula, the Carthaginian occupation
of Messana meant that the imposing empire was then right
on their border with only a narrow stretch of sea separating
the two states across the straits. The Carthaginians only
needed to subdue Syracuse to control all of Sicily, giving
them the ideal base from which to launch an invasion of
southern Italy. Yet the armies of the Republic had proven
that Rome was not weak and vulnerable: quite the opposite.
The Romans had just extended their hegemony over the
entire Italian peninsula, so even though Carthage was
viewed as a threat it was one that the people of Rome
were confident of overcoming; victory would lead to vast
amounts of booty and plunder.
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 15
SONS OF MARS
Top: Punic
Demeter mask,
third-second
century, Muse
National de
Carthage, Tunisia.
Above: Roman
galley from the
First Punic War,
Jacques Grasset
de Saint-Sauveur,
c. 1825
Pyrrhus, King
of Epirus, faces
defeat at the
Battle of
Benevento,
19th-century
engraving.
for their pivotal role in the beginning of the great wars with
Carthage, the legend of the Mamertines lived on in Rome
and morphed over the centuries. By the Augustan age, in
the first century bc, Roman propaganda held that the Sons
of Mars had aided the citizens of Messana to receive land
as a reward, instead of taking the city by force. Ultimately,
popular folklore has failed to eradicate the behaviour of the
notorious mercenaries from the historical record and the
true nature of the Sons of Mars has prevailed.
Erich B. Anderson is an historian specialising in warfare of the ancient and
medieval world.
FURTHER READING
Nigel Bagnall, The Punic Wars 264-146 bc (Osprey, 2002).
M.I. Finley, Ancient Sicily (Chatto & Windus, 1979).
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (Cassell, 2000).
B.D. Hoyos, Unplanned Wars: The Origins of the First and
Second Punic Wars (Walter de Gruyter, 1998).
John Lazenby, The First Punic War (Stanford, 1996).
Christopher Smith, John Serrati (eds), Sicily from Aeneas
to Augustus (Edinburgh University Press, 2000).
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 17
SUFFRAGETTES
N THE EARLY HOURS of a mild November morning in 1913, a threeinch pipe was primed to explode later and destroy the multiple panels
and ornate metal work that made the Glass House one of the chief
attractions of Alexandra Park in Manchester. A smouldering mass of
twisted metal and broken glass was discovered and quickly attributed by
the popular press to the wave of suffragette outrages being committed
across the country by the militant branch of the womens rights movement. Kew Gardens had already suffered two attacks, on an orchid house
and pavilion, and the campaign of arson and intimidation conducted by
the militant wing of the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU)
and their supporters was reaching its height.
Although no one was ever convicted of the Alexandra Park attack,
its perpetrator is believed to have revealed herself in a later unpublished
autobiography. Dedicated to the Political, Economic, Religious and Sex
18 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
Freedom of Women, it was the work of Kitty Marion, music hall artist
and militant suffragette. Her anger at the treatment of women on the
stage, an industry where she was expected to trade sex in return for
leading roles and allow patrons of the music halls to assault her in cabs and
hotels without complaint, led her to become a bomber, an arsonist and
a public campaigner for the suffragette movement. Her autobiography
Police survey
Saunderton
Railway Station
after a suffragette
arson attack,
March 9th, 1913.
The
Weaker
Sex?
So why have historians failed to fully engage with the issue of suffragette violence? The work of the 1926 Suffragette Fellowship, which collected and recorded for posterity memories and artifacts from militant
suffragettes, was dominated by the argument of the broken pane. This
single phrase has come to define authentic militancy and, at the same
time, marginalise any act that falls outside this image. Acts of militancy
are thus reduced to the story of no more than a few broken windows,
while the historical focus shifts to the bodily violations forced on the
suffragettes, especially those imprisoned for political violence: denial
of political rights and, later, force feedings. The actions of women such
as Kitty Marion are largely forgotten.
While the majority of historians would baulk at describing any suffragette as a terrorist, most would accept that the actions of the militants
could be viewed as a form of political extremism. The press used the
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 19
SUFFRAGETTES
SUFFRAGETTES
combustible film reels. Earlier in the day, Mary Leigh had hurled a
hatchet towards Asquith, which narrowly missed him and instead cut
the Irish Nationalist MP John Redmond on the ear. Redmonds focus
on the campaign for Home Rule had led to his refusal to insert a clause
giving women the vote, assuring his status as a target.
THE YEAR 1912 saw an ever increasing escalation of violence among
militant suffragettes. Glasgow Art Gallery had its glass cases smashed;
bank and post office windows were smashed from Kew to Gateshead;
in September, 23 trunk telegraph wires were cut on the London Road
at Potters Bar and on November 28th simultaneous attacks on post
boxes occurred across the entire country. By the end of the year, 240
people had been sent to prison for militant suffragette activities. The
newspapers began to carry weekly round-ups of the attacks, with the
Gloucester Journal and the Liverpool Echo
running dedicated columns to report
Illustrated London News,
on the latest outrages. In early 1913 a
March 14th, 1914: details
of the cuts made by Mary
suffragette attacked the glass cabinets
Richardson to The Toilet of
in the Tower of Londons Jewel House,
Venus, or Rokeby Venus,
while in Dundee, four postmen were
by Velzquez, while on
severely injured by phosphorus chemidisplay in the National
Gallery, March 10th, 1914.
cals left in post boxes. In Dumbarton 20
telegraph wires were cut; Kew Gardens
orchid house was attacked and its tea
house burnt down. In Ilford, three
streets had their fire alarm wires broken
and in Saunderton the railway station
was destroyed, while placards entitled
Votes for Women and Burning For the
Vote were left in prominent positions.
Croxley Station near Watford also suffered a similar fate, although the attack
was initially not attributed to the militants until a suffragette newspaper was
delivered to the station master with the
scribbled inscription: Afraid copy left
got burnt. Kitty Marion was also continuing her own attacks, such as the one
which saw a train, left standing between
Hampton Wick and Teddington, almost
totally destroyed by fire in the early
hours of Saturday April 26th:
Kitty Marion on
stage as a German
maid, 1914.
The scheme had been well thought-out. On gaining an entrance the perpetrators had taken the bomb to the top of the spiral stairway under the
dome and carried a fuse thirty feet long down into the chronograph-room,
where it was fired by means of a lighted candle, the remains of which were
found. The quantity of gunpowder used must have been considerable, as
fragments of the earthen jar which held it were embedded in the wall and
woodwork, and the glass of two windows was blown out and carried
a considerable distance. A bag, some biscuits, and Suffragette literature
were left behind.
The following month, on June 4th, Emily Wilding Davison died after
falling under the hooves of the kings horse at the Epsom Derby. Her
death triggered responses from all sides of the suffragette movement,
but the most violent reaction came from Kitty Marion, who, along
with her companion Clara Givens, burned down the pavilion at Hurst
Park Racecourse after learning of this Supreme Sacrifice. It led to her
SUFFRAGETTES
Th Daily Mirror
reports on the
attempt by
suffragettes to
rush Parliament
on November
18th, 1910.
Far right: Mrs
Flora Drummond,
The General of
Mrs Pankhursts
Womens Army.
UCH WORDS demonstrate that the WSPU was publically pronouncing in favour of violence. Reading Christabel Pankhurst, it
is difficult to understand why it is that the powers of these words,
and their influence on readers, have been forgotten. Why has
their impact been diminished by time? If the speaker had been a male
protagonist, would historians have hesitated to describe the militants
as terrorists?
The use of imagery and rhetoric from the uniforms adopted by
the WSPU, to the language used to discuss militancy suggest that
the women fully recognised that their actions in pursuit of political
change were illegal, dangerous and life-threatening. This is certainly
evident with the formation in 1913 of what became known as Mrs
Pankhursts Army:
A meeting was held at Bow, London, last night, for the purposes of inaugurating the projected suffragette army, to be known as the Peoples Training
Corps. About 300 persons assembled, mostly young girls and women Miss
Emerson, in an address, said that their intention was to train the corps that
they could proceed in force to Downing Street, and there imprison Ministers
until they conceded womens suffrage. They had all heard of bloody Sidney
Street, but the bloody scenes that might be expected at Downing Street
would be worse.
The identification of the women as warriors or soldiers engaged in domestic warfare was not a new one. Since the early 1900s Mrs Flora
Drummond was known to both the press and the WSPU as the General
and on one occasion was seen riding on horseback ahead of a proces24 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
www.historytoday.com/
suffragettes
FURTHER READING
June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: a Biography (Routledge, 2002).
Elizabeth Crawford, The Womens Suffrage Movement: A Reference
Guide, 1866-1928 (Routledge, 2000).
C.J. Bearman, An Examination of Suffragette Violence, English
Historical Review (April 2005).
Antonia Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes (Michael Joseph, 1973).
InFocus
ROGER HUDSON
| JOHN AUBREY
A Diary Imagined
John Aubrey, best known for his concise and incisive pen portraits of his
17th-century contemporaries, left no diary of his own. Ruth Scurr set
herself the challenge of imagining one from the remnants of his life.
Sole surviving
portrait: John
Aubrey, 1666.
JOHN AUBREY (1626-97), the author of Brief Lives, a collection of short, informal biographies on luminaries such
as Shakespeare, John Dee and Francis Bacon, saw himself
more as collector than writer. He lived through times of
great turmoil: he was 22 when Charles I was executed; he
saw Oliver Cromwells rise to power as Lord Protector of the
Commonwealth of England and his son Richard Cromwells
brief succession; he experienced the Restoration of Charles
II, the short reign of James II and the Glorious Revolution
of 1688 that brought William of Orange and his wife Mary
(daughter of James II) to the throne. Aubrey died in 1697,
ten years before England and Scotland joined their parliaments to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
From an early age he saw his England slipping away
and committed himself to preserving for posterity what
remained of it, in stories, books, monuments and buildings.
In constructing
Aubreys diary
I have used as
many of his
own words as
possible
Scholar's sensibility
When I was searching for a biographical
form that would suit the remnants of
Aubreys life I realised that he would
disappear inside a conventional biography, crowded out
by his friends, acquaintances and their multitudinous
interests. Aubrey lived through fascinating times and has
long been valued for what can be seen through him; there
is no shortage of scholars who appreciate the use that can
be made of him. But the biographer has other purposes: to
get as close to her subject and his sensibility as possible; to
produce a portrait that captures at least something of what
that person was like. In the contemporaneous pencil portrait of Aubrey that survives he looks like an unremarkable
17th-century gentleman, his bland face square between the
curtains of a heavy wig. A portrait in words, one that does
him more justice, is what I determined to write. Inspired
by the vivid sense of self that emerges from the diaries of
Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn and Robert Hooke, I thought:
if only we had Aubreys diary, his modesty, self-effacement
and attention to others would not be such a problem. No
one gets crowded out of his or her own diary.
In constructing Aubreys diary I have used as many of his
own words as possible. It is a diary based on the historical
evidence; a diary that shows him living vividly, day by day,
month by month, year by year, but with necessary gaps
when nothing is known about where he was or what he
was doing. I have not invented scenes or relationships as a
novelist would, but nor have I followed the conventions of
traditional biography. When he is silent I do not speculate
about where he was or what he was doing or thinking.
When he speaks I have modernised his words and spellings
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
Shopping,
Spectacle &
the Senses
Georgian London offered an array of retail experiences
for women in pursuit of the ultimate in fashionable
clothing, every bit as sophisticated as those open to the
21st-century shopper, as Serena Dyer explains.
Clockwise from top left: pastel of a young woman by Francis Cotes, c.1760;
silk gown, 1740s, updated 1760s; detail of a mantua of embroidered silk; pair of
indoor shoes made with brocaded silk and leather, Spitalfields, c.1735; girl in a
grey satin dress, painting by Bartholomew Dandridge, c.1740s; Harding Howell
& Cos fabric shop, Pall Mall, London, from Ackermanns Repository, 1809.
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
Each of these different ways of shopping is characterised
by two types of experience: the sensory and the social. The
ability to discern quality and suitability through touch and
sight was essential for a good shopper whether shopping
for oneself or acting as a proxy as clothing was the second
largest expenditure in the 18th-century home, second only
to food. The experience of wearing clothing involves constant
sensory interaction with the fabrics, materials, shapes and
cut. Following the modern predominance of online retailing, the development of sensory-enabling technology for
the fashion industry is being researched and many clothing
websites now include video to convey the characteristics of,
for example, garment movement. This development reflects
an inherent need for consumers to experiment with touch,
light and movement as they shop. While static images, such
as the modern photograph or the 18th-century fashion plate
and ink sketch, can convey an inanimate representation of a
style, they lack the interactivity necessary to appreciate how
a garment fits and moves.
This morning a milliner was ordered to bring whatever she had to recommend, I believe, to our habitation, and Mr Thrale bid his wife and daughter
take what they wanted, and send him the account.
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 33
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
F A CUSTOMER was unable to visit the shop they wanted, an alternative to sending for tradespeople was shopping by proxy. This method
had long been established as a way of obtaining fashion news and
products when personal access was not possible. By commissioning
a friend or relative, elite and middling ranking women were able to
maintain access to fashionable, quality goods. Local retailers, though
numerous, tended to be aimed at a less cosmopolitan and sophisticated
clientele. When their services were called upon by elite women, the
selection they were able to offer was often poor in comparison with
their London rivals. The capital provided a hub for both imported and
domestically manufactured goods: high-quality fabric and expertly constructed clothing was only available from the skilled and trained urban
mantua-makers of London or larger fashionable resorts such as Bath.
The proxy shopping method entrusted friends and relatives with
the task of employing their skills of visual and tactile discrimination
on the consumers behalf. A reliable and skilled proxy shopper was a
valuable connection and formed a central part of social networks. Men
and women of varying degrees of wealth participated in this network,
drawing upon familial and business links.
The proxy shopping system was already well established in the late
17th century. In 1678 Ursula Venner, sister of the politician Edward
Clarke, wrote to him to commission her sister-in law to purchase a gown
for her: I desire my sister will doe ye kindness to by me a serviceable &
grave morning gown to be worn every day, wch I leave to her discretion.
This request contains specific directions, but is vague in regards to the
particulars and reveals a dichotomy between trust and the need to be
specific about the garment desired. Furthermore, while Venners choice
of gown which was explicitly intended to be practical and plain did
not necessarily need to be fashionable, she demonstrated a preference
for the superior products available in London shops.
lutestring a certain weight and finish of silk was specified, the choice
of colours was left to her sister. The directions regarding the night-gown
are also vague, simply requesting that the garment was fashionable.
The lack of specific direction in Lady Marys request indicates the trust
she had in her proxy shopper.
The role of the proxy shopper carried great responsibility. Mistakes
could be expensive and could cause disputes between friends. In 1724
Mary Delany wrote to Ann Granville sending some sprigs for working a
gown, which I will send you, though my fancy is not a good one. Delany
clearly felt the weight and burden of responsibility and was self-deprecating about her skills as a proxy shopper. In April 1739 Frances Egerton
replied to a friend who had commissioned her to act as her proxy. She
apologetically wrote that she could not stay in Town to receive your
commands about your Gown, but I have had a return of my old disorder
for which Im obliged to go to Bath ... we hope youll aprove [sic] of what
we have done.
SOMETIMES THE PROXY SHOPPER would transfer a portion of the responsibility of decision-making by sending fabric samples to the absent
consumer. In 1785 Lady Grantham requested some fabric samples from
Lady Robinson, who was in London for the season. No further order
was placed, implying either that none of the samples were suitable or
that they had only been requested by her in order to remain aware of
current trends and favoured colours and patterns.
While shopping by proxy had become well established, many women
chose to order directly from favoured shops. Trusted retailers were
provided with orders and requests via letter, enabling direct access to
metropolitan fashions by the provincial elite. The April 1834 edition
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 35
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
of the World of Fashion contained an advertisement for the fashionable
dressmaker and milliner Mrs Bell, in which she invited her provincial
clientele to order items from her directly:
Fashion plate of
ladies morning
dress, 1796.
Ladies residing in the country are respectfully solicited to favour her with
orders for any description of dress or corsets, which they may rely upon
having strictly fashionable, on the most reasonable terms and their tastes
and wishes attended to, precisely as if they were present in London to give
their orders.
In such cases, the clients lack of fashionable sociability had to be compensated for by trusting in the retailers knowledge and skill. Distanced
from the visual spectacle of fashionable London, the consumer was
susceptible to being misled by the retailer. Ann Charltons vindication
of her goods could have been motivated by sending older fashions which
would no longer sell in London. While this may not have been the case
with the handkerchief, the fact that Ann Charlton had no desire to have
the unwanted goods returned and that there was no system in place for
that to happen implies that these goods cannot have had much value.
In 1783 she wrote: Please do let me know the price of the watch chains
you keep, I should take it as a favour if it quite suits your Ladyship if you
could dispose of the other. Clearly the effort and expense of arranging
a return of unwanted items outweighed the potential possibility of
profit and resale.
The relationship between fashion retailer and shopper was a complex
one, involving both trust and commercial scheming. Shoppers would
browse, inspect and visually dissect both the goods and their peers in
order to train themselves as good shoppers and to maintain an awareness
of fashion. Across each of the methods of shopping for fashionable dress
that have been outlined here, the importance of careful sensory browsing and sociable interaction were maintained. Shopping was necessary
in order to obtain the material tools of fashionability, and versatility in
being able to shop was vital to how a woman presented herself to society.
Serena Dyer was an Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and is currently
completing her PhD at the University of Warwick.
FURTHER READING
Jennie Batchelor, Women and Material Culture, 1660-1830 (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007).
Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women,
Shopping and Business in the Eighteenth Century (Columbia UP, 1997).
Mark Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and
Touching in History (University of California Press, 2007).
| LABOUR'S ROOTS
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL said that the Labour Party
didnt do God but the truth is that until very
recently it did. The flood of obituaries that followed
Tony Benns death last year reminded us of Labours
religious roots. To those who understand this tradition,
it is no surprise that E.P. Thompson began his classic
Marxist history, The Making of the English Working
Class (1963), in a pre-industrial landscape of dissenting,
self-governing chapels and that miners union banners
are rich in religious allegory. It did come as a surprise
to some of Benns obituarists, however, that for over
30 years the leader of the Labour Left was a committed
Christian, while others barely registered the fact. As
Peter Wilby remarked in the Guardian of March 22nd,
2014, the driving force of Benns life was Christian
Socialism something few contemporaries, least of all
journalists, fully understood. On the eve of the most
important UK General Election in a generation, I want
to mark the significance of this great but neglected political tradition by reflecting upon one of the hundreds of
thousands of Christians who gave their lives to the Left.
A priest with a
secular vision:
Richard Ellis in
the 1960s.
The
Forgotten
World of
Christian
Socialism
| LABOUR'S ROOTS
Factory workers were familiar with slavery
in the Bible and made comparisons between
their own lives and the lives of African-Americans south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Old
Testament book of Exodus served as the foundation narrative for both parties. Until only a
generation ago, chapel was a natural feature of
working-class life in these islands.
Richard, more commonly Dick, Ellis was
born in industrial Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in
1921. His father had been saved from an unhappy
home by the Primitive Methodists who ran his
local Sunday school. His mothers great uncle,
Reverend Thomas Auty, went to prison in 1906
for refusing to pay the school rate. Her uncle,
Reverend Thomas Richard Auty, ministering in
the Staveley circuit in north Derbyshire, sold all
he possessed in 1926 in order to stand with the
miners during the General Strike.
Dick knew these men but there was no overwhelming sense of family obligation to follow
them. He left school at 14 to work in the mills.
At 19 he was called up and, like his father before
him, refused to serve. This was not the first time
his father or his church had shown him the way. In
1932 the Primitives had united with the Wesleyans
and United Methodists to form the Methodist
Church. Nineteenth-century Methodists of all
types had tended towards the Liberal Party. Christian activists of Dicks generation tended towards
Labour and, for the theologically inclined, groups
like Tawneys Socialist Christian League. Many activists
also took with them older church alignments towards
the peace party (the Primitive Methodist Conference
of 1914 had condemned arms manufacturers as direct
foes of the Gospel); towards teetotalism (Hugh Bourne,
founder of Primitive Methodism, had committed from
early days); and towards a form of Christian guild socialism, inspired in Dicks case by his ministers at Dewsbury
Zion, Hugh Davison and John Spoor, and by the memory
of how his fathers own tiny pen repair business had been
eaten up by the expansion of Woolworths in the 1920s.
Conscientious objectors
Eventually, Dick was installed with around 30 other conscientious objectors in Selby, North Yorkshire. Willing
to serve in the Merchant Navy but not willing to man the
deck guns, farming it had to be. He liked the work and he
and his comrades turned the hostel into a little university
of the pacifist Left. After the war Dick went to ministerial
training college in Richmond and, on ordination, married
Joan Boyes, also of Dewsbury.
For the next 40 years the Ellises served in the northeast of England, starting out in Bishop Auckland (where
daughter Catherine was born in 1950, Ruth in 1952), then
on to Stockton-on-Tees (1953-59), South Shields (195969), Roker, in Sunderland (1969-77), and Gateshead and
Jarrow (1977-85). Dicks ministry was part of the great
liberationist tradition and he never wavered in that, but
deep down he believed not in politics as such, but in what
38 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
In the north
country: Richard
Ellis, c.1980.
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
A Mutual Fascination
The people of Brighton offered a warm
welcome to the Indian soldiers sent
to convalesce at the Sussex resort in
the First World War. But the military
authorities found much to be nervous
about, writes Suzanne Bardgett.
E
A wounded Indian
soldier dictates his
letter home to a
scribe, Brighton,
c 1915.
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
Wounded Indian
troops are
prominent in a
recruiting rally
held in Brighton
in 1915.
Clockwise from
top left: photographic records
of Indian soldiers
convalescing at
Brightons Dome
and Kitchener
hospitals and of
the Kitcheners
X-ray room.
included now-forgotten diversions, such as rides in carriages drawn by goats. The two piers had booths with gaming
machines, including recently installed ones that allowed
the public to fire rifles at German soldiers. There were the
trappings of commerce: a monster soda bottle on the roof
of a house to advertise the drink was another singular
sight that we know the Indian soldiers found amusing. The
Indians noticed straightaway the warmth of the Brighton
people. In a letter from February 1915, a Mahratta medical
subordinate wrote:
The people are so very good & kind that they make no difference between black & white. Everyone seeks every opportunity
of becoming fast friends with us & of serving us in any way in
their power.
In the evening we always go for a walk. The people treat us
very well indeed. Men and women alike greet us with smiling
faces and take great pleasure in talking with us.
One thing that struck the Indians was that the English
they were meeting behaved altogether better than those
they had met back in India. Sub-Assistant Surgeon J. N.
Godbole wrote to his friend in Poona:
We do not hear the words damn and bloody at all frequently
as in India. But this only applies to those who have not seen
India. Those who have gnash their teeth at us, some laugh and
some make fun, but there are not many who do this. The people
here are charming. It is impossible to ask why they become so
bad on reaching India.
From the pages of the Herald we learn of a spontaneous
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 43
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
act by a young Brightonian. The Indian
soldiers were out on parade and quite a few
small boys had joined in:
One boy rather older than the rest marched
all the way by the side of a good-looking
young Indian in the rear. They could not
speak a word to each other, but the boy
marched along with all the mingled pride and
solicitude of the big brother. He had clearly
taken the Indian under his care. And the last
thing one saw before the great gates of the Pavilion closed upon the party was the boy and
the Indian shaking hands in farewell. India
and Britain will be closer than ever before.
Troops in a
charabanc in front
of the statue of
Queen Victoria on
Brightons Grand
Avenue, c.1915.
Civilians and
wounded Indian
soldiers pose for
the camera at
the Kitchener
Hospital, 1915.
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
Brightonians pass
Indian soldiers
at the gates of
the Kitchener
hospital, 1915.
A British soldier
photographed
with wounded
Indians at the
Dome hospital,
1915.
FURTHER READING
Gajendra Singh, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and
the Two World Wars (Bloomsbury, 2014).
E M Collingham, Imperial Bodies: the physical experience
of the Raj, c 1800-1947 (Polity, 2001).
David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War: soldiers
letters, 1914-1918 (MacMillan, 1999).
General Sir James Willcocks, With the Indians in France
(Constable, 1920).
MakingHistory
How much are actions especially extreme ones the result of impersonal historical forces and
how much are they dependent upon the impulses of individual actors, asks Mathew Lyons?
WALLADA
Portrait of
Wallada by the
contemporary
artist Jos Luis
Munoz at the
Sepharad House
Museum in
Crdobas Jewish
Quarter.
Islamic
poet of love
Eleventh-century Crdoba was at the heart of the
rich culture of Muslim Andalusia. Among its greatest
creative figures was Wallada, princess, patron and poet.
Leigh Cuen rediscovers one of the most influential
women writers in European history.
WALLADA
in Crdoba alone. Over the past decade Spanish writers
have published new novels, poetry, anthologies and essays
that celebrate Wallada. But Cabello says most professors
and writers still focus exclusively on her sexuality, treating
her like an aristocratic prostitute.
For almost a thousand years Andalusians and Arabicspeakers around the world told the tragic love story of
the Spanish poet-philosopher Ibn Zaydun and his muse,
Wallada, daughter of Muhammad III, one
of the last caliphs of Crdoba. The torrid
affair between Ibn Zaydun and Wallada
is as significant to Arabic literature as
Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet is to
the English canon. However, Crdobas
romance was not just a fairy tale. Cabello
wanted to meet the people behind these
myths: Ibn Zaydun was portrayed as a
great thinker, while Wallada was briefly
mentioned as this typical bad woman,
said Cabello. I wrote the biography to
rescue Wallada from the shadow of a
patriarchal literary tradition.
The greatest Moorish writers of the
day praised Walladas eloquence and provincial influence. There are whole books
of poetry written for her, yet less than
ten fragments of Walladas own writings
have survived: a few scant lines from her
letters to Ibn Zaydun and the trademark
verses she stitched into her clothes.
Below: the
Mosque-Cathedral
at Crdoba.
Bottom: the
garden of Alczar
de los Reyes
Cristianos in
Crdoba.
The interior
of the Great
Mosque at
Crdoba.
WALLADA
A Group of
Troubadours, an
illustration from
the Cantigas de
Santa Maria, made
under the
direction of
Alfonso X, the
Wise, 1221-84.
Hazms first poetry teachers, before his years of exile. Afterwards, it was the headstrong Princess Wallada who dared
to open her home in Crdoba to slaves and nobles alike. In
her home, Jews, Christians, Muslims, men and women, all
explored poetry together without distinction.
Wallada probably met the ambitious politician Ibn
Zaydun at her own salon. He was not yet a renowned poet,
but encounters with the articulate princess would soon
inspire his groundbreaking works. Wallada wrote to him:
Wait for darkness, then visit me, for I believe that night
is the best keeper of secrets. When the moon rose, they
wandered together into the garden and drank sweet wine.
According to Ibn Zaydun, they spent the night picking
52 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
Historians usually refer to Wallada as the brash Andalusian Sappho, citing sexuality as her most salient characteristic. The real Wallada refused to be defined by her gender.
She never married, did not wear a veil and rarely wrote
erotic literature. Rather, she used sensual wordplay to emphasise irony instead of literal sexuality. She used gender as
metaphor rather than a subject; her poetic narrator often
switches genders when the speaker changes roles. Most
criticism of Walladas writings reveals more about modern
stereotypes than about Wallada herself.
Top: facsimilie
of an ivory box
originally made for
Princess Wallada,
c.966 ad. Commissioned by The
Conjunto Arqueolgico Madinat
al-Zahra, produced
by Factum Arte,
2010. Above: a
scene of music and
courtship from
Les Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles, 1462.
WALLADA
Above: The
Meeting of Dante
and Beatrice,
illustration on
vellum, Italian,
13th century.
Right: Cervantes
The History of Don
Quixote, Blounte
edition, London,
1620.
IKE WALLADA, who wrote during a time of upheaval in Crdoba, al-Masri and her colleagues also write
on the crossroads between overlapping conflicts.
When I wrote about Wallada, I imagined she travelled through time and arrived today, said al-Masri. What
freedoms would she see? What would she notice? We still
have a silent war between men and women, each side is
trying to feel more important
and less vulnerable than the
other. Al-Masri is currently
working on a new book, an
anthology of poems about
love written by Syrians caught
between feuding armies,
which explores how people experience love in a time of revolution. According to al-Masri,
many of the writers are afraid
that publishing these poems
may endanger their lives:
Even in modern society, she
said, writing about love is
dangerous.
Muslim women are still
using poetry as a bridge
between cultural influences,
between the Islamic world and
the proverbial West. Thanks
to the work of modern women writers around the world,
Wallada is now recognised as an influential artist in her
own right, not only as a muse.
Today, an unassuming white gazebo is tucked in a back
corner of Crdobas historic Jewish Quarter. It shelters a
sculpture of two caressing hands reaching towards each
other. Their touch appears gentle and tender. These metal
hands sit on top of a marble rectangle, which is engraved
with a dedication in both Arabic and Spanish. This statue
was erected in honour of Ibn Zaydun and Princess Wallada,
Crdobas legendary lovers.
FURTHER READING
REVIEWS
Taylor Downing reviews the 2015 Longman-History Today Book Prize Winner
Claire Jowitt praises pirates Andrew Hussey jives with Johnny Hallyday
SIGNPOSTS
Historical Fiction
With characteristic pace and purpose, Jerome de Groot highlights some
recent historical fiction, en-route encountering Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Johannes Gutenberg, Simn Bolvar and the spirit of Marcel Proust.
AS I WRITE THIS I am waiting
to watch the first episode of the
BBCs adaptation of Wolf Hall.
The anticipation for the series is
high. It is another demonstration
of the importance of the Tudors
to the contemporary historical
imagination and of the influence
of the historical novel on popular
culture. The series seems set to
demonstrate the complex ways
that a novel can render the past.
56 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
Inventing Eleanor
REVIEWS
Malcolm Gaskills
Between Two
Worlds ... may
appeal most to
those who want
a rollicking
adventure story,
told with pace and
much detail
into an account of two men
in retreat in the 1640s from
the New England experiment,
Thomas Larkham, who returned
to become a New Model Army
chaplain, and Thomas Leckford,
who was appalled by the dark
and uncertain interpretations
of scripture he encountered at
New Haven. Remaking England
in the New World and the retention of Englishness were neverending exhausting endeavours, sighs Gaskill, at the start
of a chapter called Marching
Hopefully On. He accepts that in
the 1640s and 1650s rancour was
REVIEWS
dividing English people on two
Atlantic shores. By the 1660s,
it was perhaps inevitable that
one side of the Atlantic defined
itself against the other, with
the issue of the Quakers encapsulating divergent paths of
development, with witchcraft a
dominant Colonial obsession.
One of Gaskills difficulties is
binding together the complex
narrative histories of New
England, the Middle Colonies,
the Chesapeake and the West
Indies. He is well aware how
different from each other their
paths of development were
during the century. When
he travels from the 1670s
to the 1690s, Gaskills focus
moves away from the ocean
in between, to the colonists as
warriors, men seeking to grasp
and preserve their own destinies colony by colony. His hold
on overlapping narratives
remains impressive and confident. In fact the book may
appeal most to those who want
a rollicking adventure story,
told with pace and much detail.
Gaskill ends by suggesting
that the two countries drew
culturally and perhaps emotionally somewhat closer together,
before moving later in the 18th
century to war and a broken
relationship. He becomes
more argumentative, but his
final big statements do not so
much cohere as jar with each
other. For a reader wanting
to understand and probe the
issues of coming over and
then maybe going back, more
analytical works by historians
such as David Cressy and Susan
Hardman Moore will surely
provide greater satisfaction.
Gaskill reminds us on his
final page that the extraordinary courage of the Pilgrim
Fathers must never be ignored
or denigrated. Point taken:
some will just enjoy the way he
tells the story. But we are left
puzzling about what he can
have intended to do, in setting
out to explain how the English
who crossed the Atlantic Ocean
in the 17th century became
Americans.
Anthony Fletcher
REVIEWS
In These Times
Englishness
Building nations
and national
identities demands
history, so the
publication of these
books is timely
lands War and Margaret Thatchers patriotism. Englishness was
designed to unpick patriotism,
to understand it as constructed
and imposed. It was a radical
project aimed at rethinking
Englishness by presenting it as
complex and difficult.
Robert Tombs can not do
other than outline the complexities of English history. His
hefty tome provides a narrative of the English since their
dreamtime, when they can
be considered to have become
English 1,300 years ago. The
birth of the nation, he argues,
was in the Dark Ages before the
Norman Conquest, the English
were unleashed in the middle
ages, to be divided in the 16th
REVIEWS
and 17th centuries, making a
new world from the 1660s to
the start of the 19th century, or
The English century as he calls
it. The two world wars were a
new dark age, but he questions
Englands place in the postwar
world, probing whether it was
really an age of decline. To ask
is to doubt. Tombs considers the
end of Empire and other losses
of power but concludes that
Declinism has been our national
narrative for several generations, a chorus of lamentation
in a lucky country where life is
safer, longer and more comfortable than ever in history.
Tombs argues that English
history is devolving rather than
dissolving, able to live with its
past and develop its future, so
that Rita Ora, Dizzie Rascal,
Jessica Ennis and Rio Ferdinand
are as English as anyone else
today. It is a nation that can
live with its past, because, he
argues, it is not a dark history.
There is an element of comparison throughout the book and,
for Tombs, England compares
favourably with any against
whom he measures it. It has not
seen prolonged state collapse,
nor as vicious a civil war as
that in Syria, nor revolutionary
terror as in France, Russia, China
and Cambodia. That is not to
say that Tombs ignores Englands atrocities and catastrophes 12th-century anarchy,
17th-century civil wars, Peterloo,
Amritsar, Kenya, Cyprus, Bloody
Sunday are all here but he considers that We who have lived
in England since 1945 have been
among the luckiest people in
the existence of Homo sapiens,
rich, peaceful and healthy.
He accepts that the lot of the
whole Western world has been
comparable ... But, for that too,
the people of England over the
last 400 years can take a share
of the credit. Tombs has written
a history book to buttress
English patriotism, to renovate
the oldest nation in the world
for post-imperial and post-devolution times but its My country,
right or wrong patriotism itself
seems rather outdated.
Paul Ward
A Free-Spirited Woman
Diaries can be
a holy grail for
the historian ... a
singular viewpoint
that wriggles
through official
versions of the past,
colourful, often
irreverent and
joyfully quotable
of course this is not always,
indeed is not usually, the case.
Lay aside the great published
(edited and often expurgated)
diaries of Samuel Pepys, Virginia
Woolf, Harold Nicolson, Chips
Channon, Richard Crossman
and Tony Benn and often what
is left in local record offices is
collections of leather-bound
pocket diaries which, if the
handwriting is legible, reveal
that, It rained again, vicar
called.
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 61
REVIEWS
But that is not always the
case: there are deposits of
compelling diaries in many archives, some local I have found
treasures in Oxford, Glasgow,
Wandsworth, Birmingham,
Lambeth Palace. Others, such as
the Imperial War Museum, the
London Metropolitan Archives,
Mass-Observation Archive
housed at the University of
Sussex, are national.
The growth of interest in
so-called ordinary lives, in the
experiences of people without
power or position, has meant
that a number of such diaries
are being edited and packaged
to reach a wider audience. The
most notable relatively recent
success was the republication of
Nella Lasts wartime diaries,
Family Politics
A massive
comparative
exploration
of the fate of
families under five
interventionist,
non-liberal regimes
ordinary men and women retained
strategies in surviving the horror
that infringed their lives. Ginsborg
concludes with a glimmer of hope;
evidence can always be found of
fragile and innovative associationism, individual testimonies, [and]
micro-histories of resistance to the
dominant powers. Like the Earl of
Gloucester in Lear, families knew
that, in bleak times, men [and
women] must endure.
Richard Bosworth
REVIEWS
FILM
Massacre
Claude Lanzmann
himself calls Shoah
an allegory,
presumably of
mans inhumanity
to man
REVIEWS
to enjoy their city. Working-class
women experienced a moment
of emancipation; they would be
among the most visible defenders of the Commune. However,
Merrimans focus is less on this
experiment in democratic and
social government than on its
death. From early April Thiers
bombarded the city; on May
21st Versaillais troops crossed
an undefended part of the citys
western walls. During Bloody
The Americanization
of France
Hi Hitler!
REVIEWS
Rosenfeld identifies three
types of normalisation. The
relativisers want to diminish
the moralistic aura that endows
exceptionality, the taint of
particularly appalling actions.
Nationalist politicians are crude
relativisers; opportunist writers
are sophisticated ones. In Air War
and Literature (1999), W.G. Sebald
described the Allied bombing of
Germany with a Nazi term for
the mass execution of Jews: a
Vernichtungsaktion, an act of extermination. This relativises the
Holocaust by moral inversion.
Meanwhile, the universalisers, want to inflate that aura
of exceptionality as a license for
present ambitions, notably fighting the good war of humanitarian intervention. In her 1999 essay
To Suffer By Comparison, Samantha
Power, now the American ambassador to the UN, suggested
that Holocaust analogies had
helped stir the conscience of
American politicians during the
atrocities in the Balkans and
Rwanda, but not enough to do
much about it. Power argued
that Holocaustising might be
counter-productive and encourage passivity: compared with the
Holocaust, every humanitarian
crisis looks not so bad after all.
Rosenfelds third type,
the aestheticisers, are more
influential, because they are
entertainers. In the western
tradition, history has clear moral
underpinnings. To preserve the
historical record, events are narrated from a realistic perspective. When the past is shorn of
reality, it sheds that tradition and
its ethical demand on the living.
The aestheticisers do not always
intend to neutralise the past.
Often, as with Chaplin or Mel
Brooks, their aesthetic strategies
pursue deeper moral agendas.
Mostly, though, they just want to
laugh at cats that look like Hitler.
The shallows of the Internet
are unreal spaces, as, too, are
the deeper pools of counterfactual history. Both foster an
amoral urge to extract maximal
value from the past, rather than
the harder lessons of historical
responsibility. Counterfactuals,
Rosenfeld writes, replace facts
Infinitesimal
How a Dangerous
Mathematical Theory Shaped
the Modern World
Amir Alexander
Scientific American/Oneworld 352pp 20
CONTRIBUTORS
Richard Bosworths most
recent book is Italian Venice: A
History (Yale, 2014).
Elizabeth Chadwick is an
author of historical fiction. Her
recent novels include The Winter
Crown (Sphere, 2014).
Taylor Downing is co-author
of Cold War (Abacus, 2008) and
a judge of the Longman-History
Today Book Prize.
Jerome de Groots books
include The Historical Novel
(Routledge, 2010).
Lucy Delap is the author of
Knowing Their Place: Domestic
Service in Twentieth-Century
Britain (Oxford, 2011).
Clive Emsleys books include
Napoleon: Conquest, Reform,
Reorganisation (Routledge, 2013).
Anthony Fletcher is the author
of Life, Death, and Growing
Up on the Western Front (Yale
University Press, 2013).
Juliet Gardiners reflections
on British womens lives from
1945-1979 will be published by
William Collins in 2016.
Dominic Green is the author
of The Double Life of Dr. Lopez
(Century, 2003) and Armies of
God (Random House, 2008).
David Hopkins most recent
book is Voices of the People
in Nineteenth-Century France
(Cambridge, 2012).
Andrew Hussey is Director of
the Centre for Post-Colonial
Studies, University of London
in Paris.
Claire Jowitt is author of The
Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630:
English Literature and Seaborne
Crime (Ashgate, 2010).
Jeffrey Richards is Emeritus
Professor of Cultural History at
Lancaster University.
Paul Ward is Professor of
Modern British History at the
University of Huddersfield.
Benjamin Wardhaugh is
the author of Poor Robins
Prophecies: A Curious Almanac
and the Everyday Mathematics of
Georgian Britain (OUP, 2012).
Letters
Modern History
In How Recent is History (February 2015) Suzannah Lipscomb
touches upon an old debate:
when do events change from
being classified as current affairs
to become history, referring to
those uncomfortable bedfellows,
academia and the media.
On the media side of things,
Lipscomb makes a powerful
case with regard to an apparent
preference for the modern, with
its greater access to footage and
sources, a preference particularly
pronounced among those sitting
on awards panels. Moving to the
print and academic side of things,
Lipscomb notes that many
Modern History degrees seem to
end at the turn of the century, or
even before. She goes on to raise
the case of the well-received
works of the journalist Jack Fairweather on recent wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. She notes that
his books have been rejected for
review by leading history journals and she asks why this might
be. It is a fair point, given, as she
points out, that Fairweather uses
the same scholarly methodology
one would hope to find in a work
of history. Lipscomb ends with
a cri de Coeur from Fairweather,
asking why historians are writing
about Lawrence of Arabia when
there is urgent stitching to be
done in the tapestry of history
post-1945, or even 1997.
However, I would like to offer
an alternative perspective on the
back of a personal confession.
At roughly the same time as Lipscomb was embarking upon her
Modern History degree, I was at
a different university beginning
a degree in International Politics
and Strategic Studies. A large part
of what I learned involved the
same scholarly methodology one
would hope to find in a work of
history. One of the main courses
was titled International History
from 1945, the same year at
which, Lipscomb notes, her
66 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
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Mosleys Antisemitism
Daniel Tilles argument that Sir
Oswald Mosley was antiJewish all along is simplistic.
Far from obvious socially or
ideologically from 1918 to 1931,
this description arose only after
his economic proposals developed into fully fledged imperial
autarky, designed to supersede
the existing import-export
practices conducted by global
finance, while also providing an
alternative to Soviet revolution.
Douglas Jerrolds assertion
in his Georgian Adventure (1938)
that Mosley preached in the East
End not because he dislikes
Jews, but because Jews dislike
him is more than a superficial
quip, but a shrewd insight into
the pugnacity of a Leader,
who combined an irresistible
Churchillian Oversight
Why did Chris Wrigley not
include the three-volume
William Manchester/Paul Read
biography of Winston Churchill
in his Signposts (January 2015)?
The Last Lion (1988-2012) is a
readable and scholarly insight
into Churchills actions during
the Second World War and
contains riveting pen portraits
of those surrounding him, warts
and all. It far surpasses Boris
Johnsons recent hagiography,
which I am afraid I found unreadable.
Pippa Bly
Molesey, Surrey
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Januarys Prize Crossword
Common perceptions of the Viking Age consider its myths, sagas and
legends to be dominated by male protagonists, reflecting its warrior
culture. Yet, assessing the literature that survives from Scandinavia and
its outposts dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, Rosalind Kerven
finds a wealth of richly wrought female characters adopting a variety of
roles, from goddesses and giantesses to explorers and entrepreneurs.
Plus Months Past, Making History, Signposts, Reviews, In Focus, From the
Archive, Pastimes and much more.
PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EDITORS LETTER: 2 Images National Portrait Gallery, London; HISTORY MATTERS: 3 Bridgeman Images/
Bibliothque Nationale; 5 British Museum Images; 6 Alamy; 7 Photographs by Dean Nicholas. MONTHS PAST:
8 Getty Images; 9 top Alamy; 9 bottom Mary Evans Picture Library. THE RISE OF THE SONS OF MARS: 11
Jean-Pol Grandmont/Creative Commons; 12 Tim Aspden; 13 top Classical Numismatic Group, Inc./cngcoins.
com; 13 bottom Mary Evans Picture Library; 14 top and bottom Bridgeman Images; 14-15 Scala Archives; 16
top Carthage National Museum, Tunisia/Bridgeman Images; 16 bottom Bridgeman Images; 17 Mary Evans
Picture Library. THE WEAKER SEX? 18 Press Association Images; 19 National Portrait Gallery, London; 20 top
Museum of London; 20 bottom left Press Association Images; 20 bottom right Mirrorpix; 21 top Press
Association Images; 21 bottom and 22 top Mary Evans Picture Library; 22 bottom TopFoto; 23 top National
Portrait Gallery, London; 23 bottom by W.K Haselden, Daily Mirror 2nd July, 1909 courtesy the British Cartoon Archive
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THE SENSES: 30 top left and right V&A images; 30 bottom courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University;
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Evans Picture Library; 33 and 34 top courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University; 34 bottom left Mary
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Bridgeman Images. THE FORGOTTEN WORLD OR CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM: 37 and 38 Courtesy Private Family
Collection; 39 Corbis Images. A MUTUAL FASCINATION: 41 Imperial War Museum, London; 42 TopFoto; 43
Photos Alamy; 44 top and bottom Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove; 45 Imperial War Museum;
46 and 47 Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove. CHARLIE HEBDO AND THE JUDGEMENT OF HISTORY:
48 Alamy. ISLAMIC POET OF LOVE: 49 Portrait by Jos Luis Muo. Photograph by Leigh Cuen; 50 photographs
by Leigh Cuen; 51 Bridgeman Images; 52 Bridgeman Images; 53 top Factum Arte/Alicia Guirao; 53 bottom
Glasgow University Library/Bridgeman Images; 54 left and right Bridgeman Images; 55 Photograph by Leigh Cuen.
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Pastimes
Amusement & Enlightenment
The Quiz
1 Referring to one of the most
severe dust storms to strike the
US Dust Bowl, on which date did
Black Sunday occur?
ANSWERS
Prize Crossword
ACROSS
1/5 The ___, name given to a Spartan
victory over the Arcadians in 368 bc
(8,6)
9 King of the Picts, d.657 (8)
10 Skye village close to the Iron Age
broch Dun Beag (6)
12 French city, site of a serious
mutiny in August 1790 (5)
13 Cromwell, I charge thee, fling
away ambition: By that sin fell ___
Henry VIII, Act 3, Scene 2 (3,6)
14 Thomas ___ (1489-1556),
Archbishop of Canterbury (7)
16 Followers of Zeno of Citium (6)
18 Saul ___ (1915-2005), Canadaborn novelist and Nobel laureate (6)
20 George Mathews ___ (1842-93),
physicist and superintendent of the
Kew observatory (7)
23 Daniel ___ (1700-82), Swiss
mathematician (9)
25 Albrecht ___ (1471-1528),
Nuremberg-born artist (5)
26 Jean-Auguste-Dominique ___
(1780-1867), portrait painter (6)
27 The Great ___, 1940 satire by
Charlie Chaplin (8)
28 Name of a family central to the
Pendle witch trials of 1612 (6)
29 Roman governor of Britain in the
first century ad (8)
Guglielmo Marconi
John Jameson
(1740-1823)
Claude Debussy
(1862-1918)
Gabriele DAnnunzio
(1863-1938)
FromtheArchive
Virginia Nicholson acknowledges the debt she owes as a popular historian to academics such as
Roland Quinault, whose 2001 essay on Britain in the 1950s remains a rich source of information.