Return to the Roots of Marathon Running

by Kathryn Hadley

Almost 2,500 years ago, in 490 BC, the Athenian herald Pheidippides (530BC-490BC) ran 26 miles, from the battlefield near the town of Marathon to Athens, to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon. He allegedly delivered his message and thereafter collapsed and died. Despite the debates surrounding the historical accuracy of the legend of Pheidippides, it has inspired countless athletes to take up the challenge. Last Sunday, over 33,000 runners sought to rival Pheidippides in the streets of London and participated in the London Marathon. The marathon became an Olympic event in the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. The first London Marathon was held on March 29th, 1981.

The idea of organising a marathon race as an Olympic event was first suggested by the French philologist Michel Bréal (1832-1915) and was immediately supported by the founder of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Coubertin, and by the Greeks. The first Olympic Marathon, in 1896, was won by the Greek water-carrier, Spyridon Louis, who ran the race in 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds. The marathon remained a male-only event until 1984, when the first women’s marathon was organised in the summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The event was won by the American athlete Joan Benoit in 2 hours 24 minutes and 52 seconds. The current world record for men was set at the Berlin Marathon in September 2008 by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who ran the race in 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds. Paula Radcliffe set the world record for women at the London Marathon in April 2003 in 2 hours 15 minutes and 25 seconds.

This year marked the 28th edition of the London Marathon founded by John Disley and Chris Brasher. In 1979, the two men ran the New York Marathon. Upon his return, Brasher described the event in article for The Observer entitled ‘The World’s Most Human Race’:

‘To believe this story you must believe that the human race can be one joyous
family, working together, laughing together, achieving the impossible. Last
Sunday, 11,532 men and women from 40 countries in the world, assisted by over a
million people, laughed, cheered and suffered during the greatest folk festival
the world has seen.’

He concluded the article by questioning:

'whether London could stage such a festival? We have the course, a magnificent
course … but do we have the heart and hospitality to welcome the world?’

Following the publication of the article, in early 1980, the editor of The Observer at the time, Donald Trelford, organised a lunch during which Disley and Brasher met with the relevant authorities who would be involved in organising the marathon in London, including the Greater London Council, the police, the City of London, the Amateur Athletics Association and the London Tourist Board. Although all parties seemed to support the idea, there were two main obstacles to holding a marathon in London. Which route would the race follow and how would it be possible to close off the necessary 26 miles of road without causing too much disruption? How would the race be funded?

Disley, first of all, drew a route which ran along the Thames and would only close down two bridges. The police allegedly approved of the route and the event gained the support of the Tourist Board, which encouraged the fact that the route passed by many of London’s historic sites, including Tower Bridge, the Docks, The Embankment, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Brasher thereafter drew up a budget for the first London marathon with an expenditure of £75,000 over and above any revenue expected from entry fees. The task of raising the necessary funds seemed an impossible feat. Shortly after, however, Gillette gave up their sponsorship of cricket’s Gillette Cup and agreed to become the first sponsor of the London Marathon signing a deal worth £75,000 a year for three years.

The first race was held five months later, on 29 March 1981. 20,000 people signed up to run the race. Only 7,747 entries were accepted, however, and there were 6,255 finishers. The event was hugely successful and the following year the race received over 90,000 applications. Over the past 27 years, from 1981 to 2008, a total of 711,260 runners have completed the London Marathon. John Disley remains chairman of the London Marathon Charitable Trust. Chris Brasher died in February 2003. Entries for the 2009 edition opened on Tuesday!

For further information on the Battle of Marathon and how it is still a byword for endurance, read our article Re-running Marathon

For further information on the Olympics, visit our History of Sport focus page.

Dish of a thousand flowers brought back to life

by Kathryn Hadley

Millefiori literally means ‘a thousand flowers’. This morning, a Roman millefiori dish, recently discovered in East London, was revealed to the public for the first time at the Museum of London Docklands. The dish is considerably rare and a true feat of craftsmanship and the find is unprecedented, not only in London, but in the Western Roman Empire. Further research is currently being carried out in order to establish whether or not similar bowls have been discovered in the Eastern Roman Empire.

The millefiori dish, which is made up of hundreds of indented glass petals in an intricate repeated pattern, was both a feat to manufacture and a feat to restore. Millefiore is a glass-working technique created from glass rods with multi coloured patterns that are only visible at the cut ends. The rods are cut and the sections are thereafter assembled to create a larger piece. In this particular case, the pattern consists of blue petals bordered with white. The blue petals were originally embedded in a bright red opaque glass matrix, which is still visible around the rim of each section of the rod. The dish was found held together by the soil around it. When it was lifted out of the soil it broke into little pieces, however, which it took Museum of London Archaeology conservator Liz Goodman three weeks to reassemble.

In her words:

‘Piecing together and conserving such a complete artefact offered a rare and
thrilling challenge. We occasionally get tiny fragments of millefiori, but the
opportunity to work on a whole artefact of this nature is extraordinary. The
dish is extremely fragile but the glasswork is intact and illuminates
beautifully nearly two millennia after being crafted.’

The dish was unearthed during excavations, led by L-P: Archaeology, of the Eastern cemetery of Roman London in Prescot Street, Aldgate. It was found alongside other glass and ceramic vessels in the grave of a Roman Londoner. Excavation work on this particular part of the cemetery began last April and lasted until September. The dish was discovered in September towards the end of the excavation work. In accordance with Roman law, the cemetery would have been located outside the city walls of Roman London. The cemetery is believed to have been in use from approximately 80AD to 400AD and, to this date, it has revealed 50 inhumations (burials) and 30 cremations. Although very little is known about the cemetery because it is situated under a hugely built-up area of London, mostly under roads, it is estimated that it may spread over almost 16 hectares and that only 15-20% of the area has currently been excavated.

Considerable post-excavation work and analysis now remains to be done, both on the dish and grave, as well as on the cemetery as a whole. Who was the owner of the dish whose cremated remains were found alongside the grave goods? When does the dish date back to? Why does the cemetery include both inhumations and cremations and what determined whether a Roman Londoner was cremated or buried?

The complex manufacture of the dish suggests that it would have been a valuable and highly-prized item. This suggests, in turn, that its owner was relatively wealthy. The millefiori technique is believed to have been particularly fashionable in the 1st and early 2nd centuries. However, the vessels discovered with the dish are of a later date, from the 3rd century. The design of the millefiori dish is allegedly slightly different to those previously discovered which date to the 1st and 2nd centuries. It may thus be possible that the dish is from the 3rd century, from the same period as the vessels. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the dish was of an earlier date and was passed down from generation to generation, which seems even more likely if it was a highly valuable item.

Why some Romans were cremated and others buried also remains a matter of speculation. It is possible that Roman Londoners had different religious beliefs. Another possibility is that customs changed over time and, given that the cemetery span over 400 years of Roman occupation, this seems a plausible explanation. It is an explanation that requires, however, considerable further research in order to date each of the bodies.

For further information about the excavation work carried out at Prescot Street, including videos and photos of the digs, visit the project website:
www.lparchaeology.com/prescot

For further information on Roman Britain, including articles on Roman attitudes to their British subjects and how archaeological discoveries have overturned accepted views about the Roman invasion of Britain, visit our Ancient Rome focus page.

Pictures: the Millefiore Roman bowl; fragments of the bowl; and the bowl and other vessels as they were discovered (Museum of London)

New Exhibitions in France!

by Kathryn Hadley

I have just updated our French history page with some exciting new exhibitions!
From the history of jazz in the 20th century, to the story of the allied occupation of Berlin between 1945 and 1989, and from Napoleon III's role in the foundation of the kingdom of Romania in the 19th century, to the cultural exchanges between France and China in the age of the Enlightenment, these exhibitions may be worth a visit if you are planning a trip to France in the coming months!

For more information, visit the French history resources section of our French history focus page.

Prince Charles’ private audience with the Pope and the appeal for Henry VIII’s divorce

by Kathryn Hadley

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall’s private audience with Pope Benedict XVI, this morning, was ‘historic’ in two respects. In the build-up to their meeting at the Vatican, there was raving speculation about whether or not the Pope would give Prince Charles a copy of a historic document relating to the divorce of Henry VIII as a gift.

Last Monday, the publishing house linked to the Vatican, Scrinium, confirmed that it hoped to present Prince Charles with a copy of the 1530 appeal by English peers for the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. However, Rev Federico Lombardi, the chief Vatican spokesman, thereafter denied the Vatican’s plans to present Prince Charles with the document. He provided no indication as to what the alternative present would be. The 1530 appeal is hugely significant insofar as it was a catalyst for the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome. Following Pope Clement VII’s refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII passed the First Act of Supremacy in 1534 which proclaimed him ‘supreme head on earth of the Church in England’.

In the words of the official guide to the Vatican archives:

‘Whatever the remote cause of the Anglican schism, there is no doubt that the
most immediate and determining cause was Henry VIII’s wish to get rid of his
legitimate wife, Catherine of Aragon’.

Beyond the speculation surrounding the gift of this historic document, Prince Charles’ visit is historic in itself. Prince Charles is the first senior member of the Royal Family to marry a divorcee since King Edward VIII’s marriage to Wallis Simpson in 1936. It is also the Prince of Wales’ first meeting with a Pope since his divorce in 1996. He had previously held a private audience with Pope Jean Paul II in April 1985 accompanied by Princess Diana. This morning's audience follows talks between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace last month to change the rules of British succession, including the ban on Catholic royals.

At the end of today’s meeting, Pope Benedict VXI presented the couple with a set of papal medals and an etching of St Peter’s Basilica. In exchange Prince Charles gave the Pope a set of desert plates with hand-painted flowers from his estate in Highgrove as well as a signed photograph of himself and his wife. There appears to have been no mention of the 1530 appeal.

For more information on Henry VIII, visit our Henry VIII focus page.

For the latest on Henry VIII, read Who was Henry VIII? in our April issue, in which Suzannah Lipscomb looks beyond contemporary stereotypes surrounding the monarch to reveal the truth behind Henry VIII's reign.

Churchill's Dislike of Plane Food: Part 2. Menu Sells for £4,800!

by Kathryn Hadley

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about the menu heavily annotated by Sir Winston Churchill during his last flight to the United States as Prime Minister, in June 1954. Dissatisfied with the breakfast provided on board the flight, Churchill effectively rewrote the menu requesting a somewhat more substantial breakfast of eggs, toast, jam, butter, cold meat, grapefruit, coffee, orange squash, whisky soda and a cigar!
The menu was sold by Mullocks Auctioneers yesterday. The menu, auctioned along with press cuttings, was expected to fetch up to £1,500. Yesterday's selling price was, however, over three times higher than estimates at the beginning of the month! Mullocks were unable to tell me the name of the buyer, but the menu sold for £4,800 and has been taken out of the country!

The Long and Winding Road to the Discovery of Cleopatra’s Tomb?

by Kathryn Hadley

Cleopatra’s tomb has never been found and its location remains uncertain.
22 bronze coins inscribed with Cleopatra’s name... An alabaster mask with a cleft chin resembling Mark Antony’s face... Shafts and tunnels beneath the temple of Taposiris Magna in Alexandria... The discovery, last week, of a nearby cemetery containing ten gilded mummies indicating the burial sites of members of the nobility…

A team of archaeologists from Egypt and the Dominican Republic believe that they may, at last, be on the path to the discovery of the tomb of Cleopatra and her lover Mark Antony. Evidence of their latest discoveries was presented, last Sunday, by Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who claimed that:

‘This could be the most important discovery of the 21st century […] This is the
perfect place for them to be hidden.’

Previous archaeological research had focused on a site in Alexandria which had been submerged by the sea in an earthquake in the 8th century. Kathleen Martinez, a Dominican Republic scholar, initiated research at the current site, situated in Burg Al Arab, 30 miles (50km) west of Alexandria. The temple, devoted to the goddess Osiris, the god of the afterlife, was built by Ptolemy II (282-246 BC). Martinez has studied the life of Cleopatra for the past 12 years and has been working on the site with her team for three years. Following a series of radar surveys in March, archaeologists discovered three chambers buried almost 20 metres underneath the rock and Martinez believes that Antony and Cleopatra may be buried together in one of the chambers.

She was quoted in an article published by Reuters at the beginning of the week:

‘[Cleopatra] needed a place to be protected in the afterlife […] If she had used
the other burial site, she would have disappeared forever.’

Martinez explained that the couple would have been buried in a temple rather than in a public burial in order to protect them from the Romans and told The Associated Press that she believed them to be buried at Taposiris Magna

‘because it was the most sacred temple of its time.’

Cleopatra allegedly committed suicide by means of an asp bite on August 12th in 30 BC, aged 39, following her and Mark Antony’s defeat against Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian. The main source for her death and burial is provided by the posthumous account of Plutarch who wrote 130 years after the event and claimed that the two loves were buried together.

Archaeologists plan to start digging as soon as possible. At the beginning of the week, however, there were fears that digs would have to be postponed until the autumn for security reasons because the site overlooks the summer residence of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak!

For further information on our perceptions of Cleopatra, read our articles Cleopatra’s Make-over and Cleopatra: From History to Myth.

Photos of East Germany in 1990

by Kathryn Hadley

Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the spring of 1990, West German photo journalist Karlheinz Jardner travelled to the East German island of Rugen to capture the fascinating world of the German Demrocratic Republic before it disappeared.

Twenty years after his trip, the photographer recently recalled his experience in an interview for Spiegel Online. Both the article published on Spiegel Online and 44 of his photographs are featured today on the homepage of Arts & Letters Daily.

http://www.aldaily.com/

The lost world of East Germany also briefly sprung back to life last February when an abandoned GDR era flat, which had been left totally intact as the owner had left it in 1989, was discovered in Leipzig. The furniture, fittings, food and personal belongings in the flat had been completely preserved and provided a fascinating and intriguing taster of life in the GDR!

To find out more about life in the Communist world, one of the latest books on the subject is The Lost World of Communism by Peter Molloy. It is reviewed by Taylor Downing in our May issue.

Shakespeare Found

by Kathryn Hadley

'Shakespeare Found' opens today at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. The exhibition features the Cobbe portrait, which was discovered just last month and is believed to be the only lifetime portrait of the playwright, allegedly painted in 1610, six years before Shakespeare’s death. Featuring other portraits that have rarely been on public display, the exhibition presents various arguments for the identification of the Cobbe portrait and explores Shakespeare’s posthumous reputation. The display notably includes one of the two only other portraits considered to be authentic representations of what the bard may have looked like: the brass engraving by Martin Droeshout published in the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623.
The opening of the exhibition also marks the beginning of four days of celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon to mark the 445th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. Celebratory events notably include theatre performances, lectures, processions, the Stratford Poetry Festival and Stratford Literary Festival.

For more information, visit http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/

For further information on the debates surrounding Shakespeare's true identity, read our articles Who Was Shakespeare? and Mystery Identities

Shakespeare Found
April 23rd – September 6th
Shakespeare’s Birthplace
Henley Street
Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6QW
Telephone: 01789 204016
http://www.shakespearefound.org.uk/

World Digital Library Goes Live

by Kathryn Hadley

The World Digital Library, a rich new online resource created by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency was launched on Tuesday (April 21st 2009). An opening ceremony was organised in Paris at the headquarters of UNESCO.

The new website is unique in providing free Internet access in multilingual format to primary materials, including manuscripts, books, films, prints, photographs, maps and sound recordings, from countries and cultures across the world. The World Digital Library is designed to provide resources for scholars, educators and the general public, to expand the variety and volume of cultural content on the Internet and to promote international and intercultural understanding. The project was initially proposed by James Billington, a librarian at the US Library of Congress, the world’s biggest library, in a speech to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO in June 2005.

The database currently includes almost 1,200 items, with material drawn from 30 libraries and archives from around the world, including the national libraries of Brazil, Germany, France and China. The oldest exhibit is an 8,000-year-old painting from Africa depicting bleeding antelopes. The manuscript of a Japanese novel which dates back 1,000 years and the earliest known map to mention America by name are also available online. The interface is currently available in English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese.
The project remains in its early stages and there are plans to considerably expand the existing database.

For a glimpse of the database, visit www.wdl.org

Nonsensical Nazi News: X-rays of Hitler’s Skull For Sale

by Kathryn Hadley

Here are two extraordinary news stories related to Nazi Germany…

On Monday, Daniel Finkelstein from The Times posted on his Comment Central blog a short piece about his recent discovery of the sale of two x-rays of Hitler’s skull on eBay! The sale is open for seven days and the starting price is $1,600! Whether or not the x-rays are truly of Hitler’s skull is in my mind dubious and it appears very difficult to ascertain their provenance. The seller nevertheless, described the x-rays as:

‘Two rare 5"x7" x-ray impressions of Adolf Hitler's head and skull.
They were probably made by the U.S. Army shortly after the war, as other copies
exist in the U.S. National Archives.
The originals were taken after the assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944.
Both are dated "19.9.44". They were given to my father by a colleague when my
father was a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and stationed at Walter Reed
Hospital in Washington, D.C. around 1946/1947.
I've compared them to others
presented in reputable historical works, and they match exactly.’

Here is a second headline: Nazi Cows Roam Devonshire Countryside!

A herd of 13 bulls, cows and calves, which descend from the Heck cattle species recreated by Nazi scientists, has recently been imported into Britain. The herd has been imported from a nature reserve near Amsterdam by the British conservationist Derek Gow.
The Heck cattle breed was recreated by Nazi scientists in an attempt to reintroduce the aurochs, the extinct ox which was the ancestor of today’s domestic cow and pictures of which are painted in ochre and charcoal on the walls of the prehistoric Lascaux caves in southern France. The Devonshire herd is descended from a few cattle which survived the Second World War.
The aurochs are believed to have become extinct in Britain during the Iron Age. Although the species survived in various parts of Europe into the Middle Ages, the last aurochs died in Poland almost 400 years ago.
Herman Goering initiated Nazi efforts to recreate a primeval Aryan wilderness in Germany’s conquered territories in Eastern Europe and the task to reintroduce the most primitive breeds of cattle was undertaken by the two zoologist brothers, Lutz and Heinz Heck. The brothers notably crossbred French and Spanish fighting bulls and Highland cattle with breeds from Corsica and Hungary. There has been significant debate surrounding the success of their breeding programmes notably because the Heck cattle are smaller than the aurochs. Nevertheless, few dispute the fact that the Heck cattle resemble the aurochs at least superficially.
Derek Gow described the Heck herd which now roams the Devonshire countryside:

‘They look like the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira. It makes you think of the light of a tallow lamp and these huge bulls on these cave paintings leaping out at you from darkened walls.’

Gandhi's Letter to Hitler

by Kathryn Hadley

The soaring sales of Mein Kampf in India are somewhat worrying. The claims in the article on the website of The Telegraph that India and Nazi Germany influenced one another and that Gandhi corresponded with Hitler himself are also disturbing and shatter the image of Gandhi in popular imagination as a representative and fervent defender of justice and equality.

Yesterday's article does not, however, provide any details as to what the exchange of letters between Gandhi and the Fuhrer was about, nor how often the two men were in contact with one another.

Over Christmas, I visited Mani Bhavan, Mahatma Gandhi's residence in Mumbai between 1917 and 1934, where one of his original letters to Hitler was displayed. This letter was hugely significant... Written on July 23rd 1939, as Hitler's designs for German expansion in Eastern Europe became increasingly apparent, Gandhi urged Hitler to prevent the advent of the Second World War. On March 15th 1939, the German Army had notably invaded Czechoslovakia and a week later Hitler demanded the return of the Free City of Danzig to Germany. In April, Hitler renounced the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact and on May 22nd Germany and Italy signed the Pact of Steel, which reasserted cooperation between the two countries and encouraged a joint military and economic policy.

'It is quite clear to me that you are today the one person in the world who
can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you
pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to
be?'

For more information on the period leading up to the Second World War see the 'Road to War' section of our focus page on the Second World War.

Record Sales of Mein Kampf in India

by Kathryn Hadley

An article published today, on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday on April 20th 1889, on the website of The Daily Telegraph, reported rising sales of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in India. Over the past six months, over 10,000 copies were sold in New Delhi alone. Business students in particular are increasingly reading Hitler’s autobiography for advice on business management and booksellers allegedly told the newspaper that the book is considered in India as a management guide similar to Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese, rather than merely as an apologia for Hitler’s anti-semitism.

The Indian Jaico Publishing House told The Telegraph that it reprints a new edition of the book at least twice a year to meet growing demand. In the words of R H Sharma, Jaico’s chief editor:

‘We were the first company to publish the book in India and there are now six
other Indian publishers of the book, although we were first to take a chance on
it […] The initial print run of 2,000 copies in 2003 sold out immediately and we
knew we had a best-seller on our hands. Since then the numbers have increased
every year to around 15,000 copies until last year when we sold 10,000 copies
over a six-month period in our Delhi shops’.

According to academics in India, India and Hitler’s Nazis exerted mutual influence over one another. Mahatma Gandhi corresponded with the Fuhrer, pro-independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army allied with Hitler’s Germany and Japan during the Second World War and the Nazis drew on Hindu symbolism for their Swastika motif.

India is moreover not the only country where Mein Kampf is popular. In Turkey it sold 100,000 copies in just two months in 2005 and in Russia it has been reprinted three times since the de facto ban on the book was overturned in 1992.

What did the British Empire ever do for us?

by Derry Nairn

To kick off a new debate series here at History Today, we have collected together the thoughts of some of the most prestigious thinkers on the British Empire to have graced the magazine.

Bernard Porter is Emeritus Professor of the School of Historical Studies at Newcastle University.

Sir David Cannadine is the chairman of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London

Piers Brendon is a writer, whose most recent work is The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (2007)

A. J. Stockwell is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Royal Holloway College in London.

Piers Brendon: Edmund Burke famously declared, 'The British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other.’ What governors and civil servants achieved in the latter stages of the empire was admirable. In India, they did their best to eradicate thuggee and suttee… in Africa they endeavoured to put down slavery… in New Zealand they suppressed cannibalism and the traffic in tattooed Maori heads… in Hong Kong they tried to stop foot-binding and infanticide.

Having said this, its purpose was not to spread sweetness and light but to increase Britain’s wealth and power. Naturally its coercive and exploitative nature must be disguised.

The British failed lamentably in India, as they did in Ireland, in their duty of care… During the South African War the British allowed a sixth of the Boer population, mostly children, to die in concentration camps.

David Cannadine: Despite the evidence of misrule, hierarchical empires and societies, where inequality was the norm, were in this sense less racist than egalitarian societies, where there was… no alternative vision of the social order from that of collective, antagonistic and often racial identities.

Since the British conceived and understood their metropolis hierarchically, it was scarcely surprising that they conceived and understood their periphery in the same way, and that chivalry and ceremony, monarchy and majesty, were the means by which this vast world was brought together, interconnected, unified and sacralised

A. J. Stockwell: The pursuit of an ethical policy is rarely a practical option because politics is the amoral art of the possible, the skill in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. At Suez, this argument continued, the nation and its leaders succumbed to a collective hysteria that robbed them of judgement and prevented rational consideration of the intractable problems of the real world and of the national interest in it.

Bernard Porter: Ramsay MacDonald said worthy imperialist causes ‘could easily be hijacked by nefarious capitalist interests'.

Just because the US has the power to impose her will on others (or so we thought until recently) it doesn’t mean that her way of democratizing (or, in the language of the early twentieth century, ‘civilizing’) them is best. Power doesn’t usually come with – for example – cultural sensitivity, understanding and tolerance.

PB: George Orwell, who had seen colonial dirty work at close quarters in Burma in the 1920s, acknowledged that the British Empire was much better than any other. It was vastly superior, in moral terms, to the French, German, Portuguese and Dutch empires.

It was nothing to compare with the bitter wars that the French fought before extricating themselves from Vietnam and Algeria. Thanks to pragmatic policies formulated in London, the Empire experienced what Ronald Hyam recently called ‘a quiet and easy death’.

AJS: Suez was not the first crisis that had divided the nation over the morality of empire. Remember, the slave trade, Robert Clive, the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Indian Mutiny, the Morant Bay rising in Jamaica, Gordon of Khartoum, the South African War, the Amrits ar Massacre, Gandhi’s salt march, the fall of Singapore, and countless other incidents. Nor did Suez bring closure to this debate which would flare up a few years later over killings in Kenya’s Hola Camp, over the so-called ‘police state’ of Nyasaland and over Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

DC: The Empire was a product of pre-modern times, with pre-modern values. It was a deliberate, sustained and self-conscious attempt by the British to order, fashion and comprehend their imperial society overseas on the basis of what they believed to be the ordering of their metropolitan society at home… The social structure was generally believed to be layered, individualistic, traditional, hierarchical, and providentially-sanctioned; and for all the advances towards a broader, more democratic electoral franchise, it was in practice a nation emphatically not dedicated to the proposition that all men (let alone women) were created equal.

The splendid anachronism of its pageantry at the time of George V’s Silver Jubilee and George VI’s coronation was deliberately projected as a powerful and reassuring antidote to the high-tech parades and search-light rallies in Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Red Square and Hitler’s Nuremberg.

PB: Transmitting programmes such as ‘This Sceptred Isle’ and ‘Empire’s Children’, the BBC promotes imperial nostalgia for a humane and benign Greater Britain, which print critics are apt to denounce as a blood-stained tyranny.

Britain’s conquests were necessarily violent and its subsequent occupations were usually repressive. Imperial powers lack legitimacy and govern irresponsibly, relying on force, collaboration and propaganda. But no vindication, even that formulated by Burke, can eradicate the instinctive hostility to alien control. Libertas opposes imperium.

BP: Both J. A. Hobson and Ramsay MacDonald realized that it was not enough to be an ‘anti-imperialist’ tout court, however warm and virtuous that might make one feel inside. There may be good reasons for ‘humanitarian intervention’ in certain circumstances. The problem is to ensure that such intervention is not distorted by selfish national or commercial interests, or negated by the effect of cultural ignorance. We’ve not cracked that one yet.

Text taken from the original articles...

Critics of Empire by Bernard Porter

Suez & the Moral Bankruptcy of Empire by A.J. Stockwell

A Moral Audit of Empire by Piers Brandon

Ornamentalism by Sir David Cannadine

Tales of Blood Sacrifice

by Derry Nairn

St Patrick's Day is the official national day of the Republic of Ireland. The 'Glorious' 12th of July is the day for celebration north of the border. Easter time, however, marks the defining event of modern Irish history. The Easter Rising of 1916 indirectly brought about the end of 800-years of British rule.

A small but committed collective of rebels seized strategic points throughout Dublin city centre while the Briish army was on holiday leave over 90 years ago. The Rising is notable for various reasons. These include the certainty of defeat in the minds of its leaders, the swiftness of their trial and execution, the political and gender composition of the rebel groups. But much of what followed can only be understood through the prism the event: The return of Irish Somme veterans, The War of Independence; partition; the Civil War; the De Valera era; and the Troubles.

History Today: The Big Guns

by Derry Nairn

We have an ongoing digitisation project here at History Today with the aim of getting our pre-1980 archives online. Although our current collection numbers over 10,000 full-length articles, there is over twice that amount waiting to be scanned and uploaded.

Many of the 20th Century's most well-known historians penned pieces for us between 1951 and 1979. Soon we'll be bringing you articles from this period by authors such as A.L. Rowse, Nancy Mitford, C.R. Boxer and Eric Hobsbawm.

For the moment, however, I've compiled a list of the best bits by some pre-eminent authors currently available in the 1980-2009 archive. Enjoy!

• David Starkey - Destruction and Renewal: An Introduction to Henry VIII
• 
  
• Tristam Hunt - Environmental History: England & the Octopus

• Mary Beard - The Classic Woman
• 
  
• Orlando Figes - Maxim Gorky & the Russian Revolution
• 
  
• Andrew Roberts - Masters & Commanders
• 
  
• David Hockney - Through the Looking Glass
• 
  
• Roy Foster - Erskine Childers: A Very English Irishman
• 
  
• Robert Service - Soviet Marxism's Obituary
• 
  
• Hugh Trevor-Roper - Prince Rupert 1619-82
• 
  

Chinese Treasures on Loan to Taiwan: Part Two

by Kathryn Hadley

Taipei’s National Palace Museum made the news just over a month ago, following the first ever formal visit by a delegation from the museum to its counterpart from Beijing’s Palace Museum. As a result of the visit, China agreed to loan 29 of its national treasures to Taiwan. The exchange was the first such cultural exchange in 60 years, ever since the end of the Chinese civil war, and was viewed as a sign of improved relations between the two countries, in particular since Taiwan’s new President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May last year. The majority of the National Palace Museum’s collection was formed, however, when the nationalist party retreated to Taiwan during the civil war, taking some of China’s treasures with it.

Last week, Reuters reported record numbers of Chinese visitors to the museum, eager to see some of the treasures taken from China. The overwhelming numbers of Chinese tourists notably forced the museum to implement crowd control measures, including a queuing system and rules for the crowds to be silent. The museum has recently received as many as 15,000 visits a day and a record of 63,277 Chinese tourists visited the museum in March. The figures have tripled since the previous month, with just 21,000 Chinese visits to the museum in February.

Museum director Chou Kung-shin explained:

‘We've made some special plans to spread [the visitors] out. Sometimes they talk
loudly, but we have our means of letting them know not to.’

There are also plans for the museum to be expanded by more than five hectares over the next four years, adding structures for more exhibits, as well as a tea house and hotel. The museum is one of the most popular attractions for Chinese tourists.

Anthony Liao, a tour operator and Taipei Association of Travel Agents official described how for Chinese visitors:

'Their first reaction is that these treasures were taken out of China. But for
them Taiwan isn't another country. It's domestic.'

Handel: A Charming Brute?

by Derry Nairn

George Frideric Handel has many fans. No less than Beethoven called him 'the greatest musical composer who ever lived'. Jimi Hendrix once lived in his former dwelling in London where Ruth Rendell is the main benefactor of the Handel House museum. His bed, in which he died precisely 250 years ago, forms the centrepiece of 'Handel Reveal'd', a new exhibition opening there this week. The shortened bed (Handel slept sitting up) is a modern reconstruction but, like the rest of the museum, is authentic in its detail. The Handel expert Christopher Hogwood calls the setting for the museum 'a film-set house'.

This is in part thanks to a painstaking inventory of the composer's possessions which was carried out at 23 Brook Street upon his death. Back then, of course, Brook Street and the surrounding Mayfair area wasn't seen as upmarket. Handel was the first occupant of his home, built to attract aspiring middle class tenants. Although he nurtured and retained important connections at court, and died a rich man, both Handel's political and financial fortunes endured peaks and troughs.

Perhaps this isn't so surprising, however, when the tumult of the era is considered. Both Handel and his music played witness to great events at a time of massive flux in British society. The Jacobite Uprising and the South Sea Bubble occurred during his lifetime, as did an explosion in the open political dissent of the coffeehouses. His 1727 naturalisation as a British citizen - a personal request of King George I, himself a German 'import' - is indicative of the increasingly cosmopolitan make-up of the capital city. Handel's music is associated both with Italian opera, the X-Factor of its day, as well as with the new middle class playgrounds of the time, such as Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

An anonymous wit of the day described the relative importance of these issues thus:

"Are you High Church or Low?
Whig or Tory;
Are you for Court or Country?;
King George or the Pretender:
But are you for Faustino or Cuzzoni?
...There's the question" *

Handel adapted well to the changing times. He sold sheet music from a shop on the ground floor of 23 Brook Street, while composing and performing upstairs. His health was also tested. At various times Handel experienced obesity, binge eating, and paralysis. He died blind. As Hogwood says 'he would persist in the face of an apathetic public, an altered musical taste, and rumours of a decline in his powers'.

As one moves between rooms on creaky timber floors and specially-widened staircases (for musical instruments), little imagination is needed to picture the great Hanoverian bulk doing the same. A menu of Handel's likely daily diet hangs on one wall. On another are a collection of portraits spanning youth to old age. These include a death mask. A stunning reproduction of an 18th century harpsichord sits in the main music room. Its my firm conviction that musical instruments should never be kept behind glass cases, and, thankfully, Handel House's curators have chosen to let musicians come in and play regularly on this wonderful example.

Despite very few personal accounts or letters, and the distractions of caricatures and Victorian anecdotes, the life and (more interestingly) times of this intensely private man has been successfully reproduced. A visit to Handel Reveal'd is highly recommended. Mark April 14th in your diary - there is free entry and music performances all day at Handel House.

*Popular Italian castrati singers of the day.

Churchill's Dislike of Plane Food

by Kathryn Hadley

A menu, due to be auctioned this month, has revealed Churchill’s dissatisfaction with the breakfast provided on board a BOAC flight to the United States, in June 1954. It was Sir Winston Churchill’s last flight to the United States as Prime Minister and he was accompanied by his Foreign Secretary Sir Antony Eden.

Unhappy with the existing menu, Churchill initially tried to write over the printed menu. His amended menu was too long, however, and he consequently wrote his own new menu on the back of the printed one. He requested that his meal be brought in two trays:

‘1st Tray. Poached egg, Toast, Jam, Butter, Coffee and milk, Jug of cold milk,
Cold Chicken or Meat. 2nd Tray. Grapefruit, Sugar Bowl, Glass orange squash
(ice), Whisky soda.’ He then added: ‘Wash hands, cigar.’

The menu was kept by the air steward and will now be sold along with press cuttings from the trip by Mullock's Auctioneers at Ludlow Racecourse, Shropshire, on St George's Day (23rd April). The menu is expected to fetch up to £1,500. Mullock’s Auctioneers are specialised in the sale of historical documents and ephemera. In December 2005, they sold the microphone that Churchill used to make his VE day speech at the end of the Second World War for over £18,000.

In the words of Richard Westwood-Brookes, who is selling the menu:

‘This is one of the most remarkable pieces of Churchill memorabilia we have
seen. It shows what a hearty breakfast he ate and it was all washed down with a
whisky, after which he smoked a cigar. It is the type of indulgence we've come
to associate with Churchill and it reassuring to know he ate so well in his 80th
year. There are some smudges and ink stains but it is a wonderful piece of
history.’

For more information on Churchill’s character and career, read our article Makers of the Twentieth Century: Churchill

For more information on Churchill’s last years as Prime Minister, read our article Churchill's Indian Summer

For more information on Churchill’s relinquishment of power, read our article The Long Goodbye

John Rabe

by Kathryn Hadley

John Rabe, a co-produced German-Chinese film in German and English, about the Nanking Massacre was released in cinemas in Germany yesterday. The film is based on the diary of John Rabe, a German businessman and a member of the Nazi party, who was working for Siemens in China and who saved thousands of Chinese during the massacre.

Rabe had worked in China for 30 years and was about to return to the headquarters of Siemens in Berlin when Japanese troops arrived in Nanjing, the Chinese capital at the time, at the beginning of December 1937. The city’s inhabitants were subject to extreme violence during six weeks and thousands of girls and women were raped in what has become known as the Rape of Nanjing. He remained in China, however, as the head of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone and, along with a few other Westerners and using his Nazi party membership, is believed to have prevented the massacre of over 200,000 Chinese. The safety zone was a 7-sq-km zone centred on the American Embassy and educational institutions in Nanjing (primarily the University of Nanking). Food was provided in the zone and 25 civic buildings were used as shelters. Rabe is believed to have sheltered 650 refugees in his own house and garden. He allegedly also wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to intervene! He returned to Berlin in 1938, where he was arrested by the Gestapo for having collaborated with the Chinese. John Rabe died in poverty in Berlin, in 1950, unknown in Germany. His legacy lives on in China, however, where he is remembered as a hero. His diaries only became public in the late 1990s, when they were published in Germany.

Rabe notably visited the mortuary in Nanjing on Christmas Eve in 1937 and later reported in his diary:

‘I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes, so that I can speak as an
eyewitness later. A man cannot be silent about this kind of cruelty!’

The film debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival in February and has already won two Bavarian awards. However, it is expected to spark considerable controversy in Japan, where the recognition of Japanese crimes during the Sino-Japanese war remains a heated political issue. Whilst the Chinese claim that 300,000 were massacred, some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny that the massacre even took place. At the end of the conflict, an allied tribunal estimated the death toll at 142,000. Controversy was notably still raving last November when Toshio Tamogami, the chief of staff for Japan’s Air Self-Defence Force, was dismissed following his publication of an essay in which he denied Japanese aggression before and during the Second World War.

In an interview for Reuters in February, director Florian Gallenberger explained:

‘We're fully aware the film could be explosive in Japan. It's an extremely
controversial subject in Japan and there are fears there could be severe
repercussions. I hope the film won't be silenced in Japan. I'd very much hope
this film could help get an opening-up of discussion going in Japan.’

Films have been made about Rabe in China before. However, they have never been taken particularly seriously because his story has often been misused for propaganda purposes. Gallenberger believes, however, that his film has achieved neutrality by remaining true to the facts in Rabe’s journal and that the time is now right for such difficult episodes of the two countries’ past to be addressed.

‘It's taken more than 70 years for John Rabe to get the recognition he deserves.
It was our duty to take a neutral view, not a Japanese nor a Chinese viewpoint,
and I believe we've accomplished that.’

The director also believes that Rabe’s attitude was neutral. He had no reason to take sides and acted out of moral reasons, rather than being motivated by a political agenda.

‘At the beginning of the conflict I think [Rabe] has great trust in the Japanese
as German allies to behave in a disciplined and fair way - but when it turns out
otherwise he is shocked. He feels it is his responsibility to act.’

William Kirby, head of the Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, confirmed this viewpoint:

‘He saw the Japanese as a normal army and initially resisted the stories of
wrongdoing - he was a neutral outsider.’

The film is due to be premiered in China at the Shanghai Film Festival in June. It remains unclear, however, as to whether or not it will be released in cinemas in Japan. Prince Asaka Yusuhiko, a son-in-law of the Japanese Emperor Meiji and the commander of the Japanese forces in the final assault on Nanjing, is played, however, by the Japanese actor Teruyuki Kagawa. During the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1946, Prince Asaka denied any massacre of Chinese; however, the film notably speculates on his involvement in the decision-making process. Kagawa’s participation in the film may raise its profile and popularity in Japan. Kagawa explained, however, that the film would be difficult to watch in Japan.

‘When faced with this film, many people will be shocked [to learn] the Japanese
carried out such cruel acts. I think Japanese people will find the two hours
very hard [to watch].’

The date for the UK release of the film has yet to be decided.

For more information on Nanking, a previous film about the massacre that was released in December 2007, read our article Nanking on Screen
For more information on the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, read our article The Xi'an Incident
For more information on Japanese difficulties in coming to terms with the legacy of the Sino-Japanese War, read our articles Remembering the Forgotten War and Japan's Uncomfortable Past.

The John Rabe Communication Centre also have a useful website with further information about Rabe, his house and the Nanking Massacre Memorial in China in Nanjing, photos of his diaries, a bibliography, as well as extracts from the press about the massacre - http://www.john-rabe.de/.
There is also an interesting article by Professor David Askew entitled ‘New research on the Nanjing Incident’ published on the website of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus - http://www.japanfocus.org/-David-Askew/1729

25th Anniversary of Cabinet War Rooms and 1984 Prices

by Kathryn Hadley

25 years ago tomorrow, on April 4th 1984, the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms were designated as a historic site and opened to the public. To mark the event, the museum is offering visitors 1984 admission prices just for one day, tomorrow, reducing prices from £13 to £2! The museum is also encouraging visitors to turn up wearing 1980s costumes and the museum café will be serving 1980s meals such as Prawn Cocktail, Shepherd’s Pie and Baked Cheesecake!

The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms is also commemorating its 70th anniversary this year from when it became operational in 1939 the week before the declaration of the Second World War.

Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms
Clive Steps
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AQ
www.iwm.org.uk

Madness & Modernity

by Derry Nairn

A fantastic new exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection charts the sometimes blurred line between artistic genius and insanity. Madness & Modernity focuses on how the issue of mental illness was broached in fin de siécle Vienna. This was a period of artistic flux in Austria's imperial capital, with radical departures from tradition felt across the arts.

Prominent artists of the day crossed paths with mental illness. The first room opens, for example, with a trio of spookily deranged busts by the sculptor Messerschmidt. Next the viewer can observe the grandiose Steinhof sanatorium, 'the city on a hill', built by one of the most celebrated modernist architects of his day, Otto Wagner.

Portraitists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka broke from the norm by depicting their subjects in contorted, often spasmodic positions. Not least of these subjects was Schiele himself who, in a series of famous self-portraits, portrayed his own body in a range of painfully angular poses.

The curators of Madness & Modernity have chosen to display Schiele's work alongside photos of sanatoria inmates. These are taken from contemporary psychological journals which were widely circulating among Viennese artists as source material at the time. The hint is of a canny rather than an unhinged artist, choosing to portray himself in such a fashion, and in the process tapping into an general fascination with mental illness among his peers.

Other rooms boast a Kokoschka portrait, a set of spellbindingly colourful minature paintings by a sanatorium inmate, and studies by Freud - which contrast his mind-centred approach to the 'bodily whole' cures of the original electrotherapy equipment sitting nearby.

It was the penultimate room which captivated me the most, however. Here, two lesser heroes of Vienna's early 20th century artistic renaissance are remembered: Max Oppenheimer and Peter Altenberg. Oppenheimer's works are studies in the disturbed mind, in spite of their subjects' perfect sanity. The caricature of Peter Altenberg (see above), cap in hand with wild eyes and wringing hands, shows an artist who not only insisted on such depiction, but cultivated it. He had spells in sanatoria, slept through freezing winters with windows wide open, and maintained a permanent table at Vienna's famous Cafe Central, receiving both post and visitors there like a private office.

Madness, then, became a central tenet for this set of artists. This fascinating show at the Wellcome Collection suggests that mental faults of one type or another - addiction, obsessiveness, insomnia - continue to mascarade as self-identity. This has been the enduring contribution to contemporary culture of an extraordinary time and place.

Ghurkhas Still Fighting

by Kathryn Hadley

On September 30th 2008, the London High Court ruled in favour of five Gurkha veterans and a Gurkha widow who had condemned the immigration law prohibiting UK residence to Gurkhas who had retired before July 1997, when the Brigade of Gurkhas base was moved from Hong Kong to the UK. An estimated remaining 2,000 veterans were still refused residence as a result of their retirement prior to 1997, and the judge, Mr Blake, set the Home Office a deadline of three months to review these specific immigration restrictions applicable to Gurkhas.

At the end of 2008, however, the government had made little progress and asked a tribunal for a three-month extension to produce proposals for new legislation and to review the remaining appeals. A couple of weeks ago, delays in government action led to protests and criticisms of the fact that the cases of more than 1,300 Gurkhas wanting to settle in Britain were still awaiting reviews.

Last week, however, the representative of the Gurkhas, Edward Fitzgerald QC, reportedly told Mr Justice Blake at the High Court that the new policies on the rights of Gurkhas to settle in the UK would be announced within the next month. Fitzgerald claimed that lawyers representing the Gurkhas and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, had agreed on most issues. Smith wished, however, to discuss the new proposals with Parliament first. Edward Fitzgerald reported that the Home Secretary had agreed to announce the new policy in parliament by 24 April and to reconsider the five leading Gurkha cases in the light of the announced policy before May 7th. Hundreds of other outstanding cases would also be reviewed by June 11th.

Many former servicemen have died whilst waiting for their cases to be resolved. Rifleman Prem Bahadur Pun notably died just two weeks ago, on March 15th.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said that anyone prepared to die for Britain should be allowed to live there. He criticised the government claiming that:

‘Ministers have dragged their heels and denied justice to these Gurkhas for too
long, and are only now agreeing a new policy because the courts have forced
them. The deliberate delay in making this decision is a gross insult to the
honour of these veterans.’

A battle which continues to be fought and a story to follow up… Updates on Jacqui Smith’s announcement of the new policy will follow in April…

Interesting talks today and tomorrow

by Kathryn Hadley
I thought that it was worth mentioning a few talks taking place this evening and tomorrow on a wide range of topics, from Henry VIII, to postwar Austrian history, to the Spanish Civil War...
This evening, Denise Stone will discuss European armoury from the time of Henry VIII at the Wallace Collection; Adam Sisman will be in Pembroke College, Oxford, piecing together fragments of evidence, which Dr Johnson's biographer, James Boswell, stole from his journal; and the Wiener Library will host a talk about the postwar trials in Austria.
Tomorrow, leading academics will explore the international dimension to the Spanish Civil War at the British Academy.
For more information, visit our 'Events' page http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=33099&amid=30260934