Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lives on

by Kathryn Hadley

‘History is replete with instances of men who by dying with
courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent
opponents.’ (Gandhi)

61 years ago today, Gandhi was shot whilst taking his evening public walk around the grounds of Birla House in New Delhi. The assassin was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical who had links with the Hindu extremist group Hindu Mahasabha, which notably blamed Gandhi for weakening India and sacrificing Hindu interests by insisting upon payment to Pakistan. He immediately surrendered himself to the police and was put on trial. He was sentenced to death for murder and hanged at Ambala Jail, on November 15th 1949.

On the night of Gandhi’s assassination, President Pandit Nehru broadcast a radio address to the nation:

‘Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country.’

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi or ‘Great Soul’, an honorific allegedly first given to him by the poet, playwright, novelist and composer Rabindranath Tagore. Gandhi is also referred to in India as Bapu ‘Father’ and is honoured as the Father of the Nation.

Although 61 years ago to this day India may have been plunged into darkness, the light of Gandhi still shines brightly. In India, January 30th is observed as Martyr’s Day in remembrance of those who gave their lives in service of the Indian nation. His birthday, on October 2nd, is also commemorated as a national holiday in India. In June 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted October 2nd as an International Day of Non-Violence. Mahatma Gandhi was named 1930 Man of the Year by Time magazine and, in 1996, the government of India introduced the Mahatma Gandhi series of currency notes. Statues have been erected in his memory all over the world. There is notably a statue in Tavistock Square, near University College London, where he studied law.

There exists a wide variety of resources devoted to Gandhi in India and worldwide. Mani Bhavan, Gandhi’s residence in Mumbai from 1917 to 1934, has an extensive library with a large collection of books both read and written by Gandhi. It also has a very comprehensive website.
Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya19
Laburnum Road
Gamdevi, Mumbai

www.gandhi-manibhavan.org

Another recommended website is that of the Gandhi Book Centre, which includes a bibliography, quotations, photographs, a selection of articles written about Gandhi, as well as links to other websites and Gandhi centres and institutions.
www.mkgandhi.org

Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (1982) is also well-worth watching.

For more information on Gandhi’s assassination, read Richard Cavendish’s article in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of his death
Mahatma Gandhi is Shot
See also David Bates’ article written for the 50th anniversary of his death
Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated
For more information on Gandhi and his legacy, read our article
Makers of the Twentieth Century: M. K. Gandhi

Bill Stone Remembered

by Kathryn Hadley

The funeral of the last remaining Royal Navy veteran from the First World War was held today in Oxfordshire. Bill Stone was also the last British serviceman to have seen active duty in both world wars because the other three surviving veterans only held civilian jobs in both world wars.

The service took place in St Leonard’s parish church, Watlington, Oxfordshire, where Bill Stone had lived since 1986. He died on January 10th at a care home near Wokingham in Berkshire. After the coffin was carried out of the church, a Royal Marines bugler sounded the Last Post and the Reveille and the church bells then tolled 108 times, one for each year of Stone’s life. A shrub was then planted and a plaque was dedicated to his memory in the grounds of the church.

Bill Stone was born on September 23rd 1900 in Ledstone, South Devon and was one of 14 children. He tried to join the Royal Navy aged 15, but his father, who already had sons fighting in the Great War, refused to sign the necessary papers. He eventually joined the navy on his 18th birthday, in 1918, as an Ordinary Seaman. He was then transferred to Stoker upon the insistence of his brothers who were already serving as Stokers. In 1922, he joined the battleship HMS Hood and travelled the world to various British colonies ‘showing the flag’. During the Second World War, he notably served as Chief Stoker on HMS Salamander and participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, making five trips to pick up the troops. He also took part in the Sicily landings in 1943 on board HMS Newfoundland.

After leaving the navy, Bill Stone returned to Devon where he ran a barber’s shop and throughout his retirement he regularly participated in commemorative ceremonies of both world wars. In 2004, he was presented with the National Veterans’ Badge. He appeared for the last time in public in November at the Cenotaph in London, where he led the remembrance ceremony with two of the three other surviving veterans of the First World War, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham. The third remaining 107 year-old veteran, Claude Choules, lives in Australia.

A few years Bill Stone was quoted:

I've had a wonderful life. I've always worked hard, never stopped for a minute and it's kept me going all right.

Commodore Al Rymer of the Royal Navy, who represented the Ministry of Defence at the funeral, said:

William Stone served in the Royal Navy for 27 years in a distinguished career that involved him in both world wars [...] I'm very honoured to represent the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy today in commemorating his remarkable life.

His life is an inspiration to us allIt was also 153 years ago today that the Victoria Cross was founded by Queen Victoria. For more information on the cultural, social and historical significance of the medal, read our article

The Victoria Cross

The Hidden Holocaust

by Kathryn Hadley

Yesterday, Holocaust Memorial Day was in most of the headlines and events were organised across the country in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. Today, however, the economic crisis is, once again, the main feature of most front pages. Will those who were remembered yesterday have to wait another year to be remembered once again? One of the issues raised by the existence of an annual official day of commemoration is that those who it is designed to remember risk being forgotten throughout the rest of the year. Has Holocaust Memorial Day become an excuse to push aside the painful and difficult memory of the victims of the Holocaust during the rest of the year?

This is not the only question raised by yesterday’s commemorative events. Who is Holocaust Memorial Day designed to remember? In theory, the ‘Holocaust’ only refers to the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War. The term is of Greek origin and literally means completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering to a God. The biblical word Shoah meaning calamity became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s. There is considerable debate amongst scholars as to whether or not the term also refers to the numerous other victims of Nazi persecution, such as political activists, homosexuals, the disabled and mentally ill, Slavs and Roma. In the light of the controversies surrounding the definition of the Holocaust, Holocaust Memorial Day consequently raises similar issues: are the other victims of Nazi persecution included in remembrance ceremonies? If not, is there, or should there exist, a specific day to remember each of the victim groups?

The Roma is one group whose memory has often been forgotten, yet it is believed that up to 500,000 died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers. There is a particularly high concentration of Roma in Romania and the story of Nazi persecution in Romania is one of those that has been less told. Following Romania’s attack on the Soviet Union, the dictator Ion Antonescu was able to recover the eastern region of Trans-Dniester (today mostly part of Ukraine), which became a depot area for Romania’s Jewish and Roma population.

In October 2003, a commission called the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, or commonly known as the Wiesel Commission, was established by the former president Ion Iliescu to research and write a report on the Holocaust in Romania and to make recommendations for educating the public on the issue. Led by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, it examined the persecution of Romanian Jews from December 1937 to May 1945, as well as the persecution of parts of the Roma population between 1942 and 1944. The report, published in November in 2004, claimed that the number of victims in Trans-Dniester is difficult to establish mainly because the lists of deportees were not systematically put together. Nevertheless, it is estimated that 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered or died as a result of the deliberate polices of Romanian civilian and military authorities and over 11,000 Roma were also killed.

The final report of the commission is available online on the website of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, which is Israel’s official memory to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust established in 1953.

For more information on some of the controversies surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day read our article, Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain
For an insight into the general debate surrounding the commemoration of historical disasters, read The Memory of Catastrophe

Past and Present meet on the seabed of the Gulf of Finland

by Kathryn Hadley

A sunken ship, which dates back almost three centuries, has been discovered in the Gulf of Finland during a seabed survey for the Nordstream gas pipeline project. The wreck was found, 54 metres beneath the seabed, near the island of Gogland along with the remains of five other ships from a Russian fleet which sank after a storm in 1713. The 16-metre long ship is a Dutch-modelled tjalk, a flat-bottomed military transport ship with a shallow draught particularly adapted to the rivers and coastal waters of Old Frislandia. It is one of the few remaining vessels from the time of Peter the Great and a precious relic of his attempts to build up the Russian navy and transform Russia into a maritime power.
Andrey Lukoshkov, the consultant for the project 'Sunken Ships', explained:

‘It was the time when Sweden and Russia fought each other over supremacy in Europe’s North’.

The ship is remarkably well-preserved and personal possessions and tableware are still identifiable in the captain’s cabin. Scientists now hope to raise the necessary funds in order to bring the ship to the surface and to transport it to a naval museum in Kaliningrad before construction work on the pipeline begins.

The extensive ‘Secrets of Sunken Ships’ project was initiated in St Petersburg in 2002 in an attempt to search, explore and ensure the state registration of the wealth of artefacts and ship wrecks discovered on the seabed of the Gulf of Finland and the Ladoga Lake. 10,000 sunken objects, which chart the history of northern Europe over a period of almost 1,400 years, have already been listed, including planes, tanks, torpedoes, anchors and ancient burials. It is believed that this figure represents a mere 30% of the artefacts which remain to be discovered. For more information on the project, visit the website

www.baltic-sunken-ships.com

For more information on the present struggle for the control of oil and gas and its history during the Great Game, read our latest article
The Great Game: Power Struggles in Asia

Holocaust Memorial Day

by Kathryn Hadley

Various events and exhibitions are being organised across the country for Holocaust Memorial Day, on January 27th, the date of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army. Here is a small selection…

Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust
Survivor testimonies recorded by the British Library’s Oral History team will go live, on January 27th, on the British Library’s Archival Sound recordings website http://sounds.bl.uk. The database includes over 440 hours of recordings, which explore 66 personal experiences of persecution across war-torn Europe and the impact of the Holocaust.

What ordinary Germans Knew and Felt about the Holocaust
January 27th, 7pm
Imperial War Museum London
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
Telephone: 020 7416 5000
www.iwm.org.uk
A lecture by Professor Richard Evans.
The Imperial War Museum will also be showing a selection of films from the museum’s archives, including Auschwitz – 60 Seconds of Silence (2004) and Auschwitz – the Final Solution (1974).

Stand up to Hatred
February 1st
Imperial War Museum North
The Quays
Trafford Wharf Road
Manchester M17 1TZ
Telephone: 016 1836 4000
www.iwm.org.uk
A talk by Dr Mark Levene from the University of Southampton. The museum is also organising a series of themed guided tours and presentations of archive materials.

The Jewish Museum London
Two travelling exhibitions on loan from the museum are on show at Holborn Library and Bruce Castle Museum.
The Boys- Triumph Over Adversity
Until January 31st
Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre
Holborn Library
32-38 Theobalds Road
London WC1X 8PA
Telephone: 020 7974 6342
www.camden.gov.uk/localstudies
The story of a young group of Holocaust survivors admitted to Britain in 1945 which explores how they have rebuilt their lives and integrated in the London community

Champion of the Child – Janusz Korczak
Until February 8th
Bruce Castle Museum
Lordship Lane
London N17 8NU
Telephone: 020 8808 8772
The story of the work of the pioneer in the field of children’s rights, Janusz Korzcak (1879-1942), with the children of Warsaw, his death at the Treblinka extermination camp and his legacy.

University of Essex
Telephone: 012 0687 3404
www.essex.ac.uk/events
The university is organising a series of events across the Colchester Campus.
January 27th, 7.30pm
Lakeside Theatre
Holocaust Memorial Service organised by the Colchester and District Jewish Community.
January 28th, 6pm
Senate Room
Colchester Campus
Discussion with Holocaust survivors about their memories of persecution. Speakers will include Professor Ladislaus (Laci) Löb form the University of Sussex, who is a child survivor of the Holocaust.
January 29th, 6pm
Senate Room
Colchester Campus
A discussion with Dr Gordon Walker about his experiences as a young medical student at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he arrived shortly after its liberation to help with the relief and rescue effort.

The Mystery of the ‘Land of the Twins’

by Kathryn Hadley

In a recent book entitled Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the Nazi post-war flight to South America, claimed that the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele may be responsible for the extraordinarily high proportion of twins in the Brazilian town of Candido Godoi (State of Rio do Sul, South Brazil). The average twin birthrate is one in 80 pregnancies; in Candido Godoi, however, one in five pregnancies typically results in twins, most of them with blond hair and blue eyes.

Camarasa’s book retraces the last years of Mengele’s life in South America, where he allegedly pursued his efforts to produce an Aryan master race. During the Second World War, Mengele was an SS physician in Auschwitz-Birkenau where he carried out genetic experiments for the production of twins in an attempt to create a master race for Hitler. He is believed to be responsible for 400,000 deaths in medical experiments in Auschwitz. In 1949, he fled to South America where he moved from Argentina, to Paraguay and finally to Brazil. He lived in Brazil for 18 years until his death by drowning in a swimming accident on February 7th, 1979. He was buried in Embu das Artes in the State of Sao Paolo under the name Wolfgang Gerhard.

Mengele allegedly visited the small town of Candido Godoi various times in the 1960s posing as a vet. Camarasa explained:

'I think Candido Godoi may have been Mengele's laboratory, where he finally managed to fulfill his dreams of creating a master race of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans […] There is testimony that he attended women, followed their pregnancies, treated them with new types of drugs and preparations, that he talked of artificial insemination in human beings, and that he continued working with animals, proclaiming that he was capable of getting cows to produce male twins […] Nobody knows for sure exactly what date Mengele arrived in Candido Godoi, but the first twins were born in 1963, the year in which we first hear reports of his presence’.

A former mayor of the town and local doctor, Anencia Flores da Silva, also carried out numerous interviews in an attempt to explain the exceptionally high proportion of twins and discovered that the name of Rudolph Weiss, an itinerant medic, was consistently cited. In the words of Dr da Silva:

‘[Mengele] attended women who had varicose veins and gave them a potion which he carried in a bottle, or tablets which he brought with him. Sometimes he carried out dental work, and everyone remembers he used to take blood’.

The town’s official crest shows two identical profiles and a sign welcoming visitors to a ‘Farming Community And Land Of The Twins’. The film The Boys from Brazil (1978) tells the story of Mengele’s life in South America, where he allegedly planned to found a fourth Reich with other Nazi sympathisers and sought to recreate the childhood of Hitler for the 95 boys he cloned from the Nazi leader. In the light of Camarasa’s recent statements, this fictional film rings worryingly closer to reality.

For more information on Mengele’s treatment of the Ovitz family in Auschwitz, read our article

Mengele and the Family of Dwarfs

Galileo : Blinded by the Light

by Kathryn Hadley

A group of Italian and British scientists have recently renewed their appeal to exhume the body of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) to carry out DNA tests in order to determine the extent to which his vision problems affected his findings. The scientists told Reuters last Thursday that the tests would help to resolve some of the unanswered questions about the health of the Tuscan physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher.

Throughout the second half of his life Galileo suffered from intermittent eye problems and the last two years of his life he was totally blind. His findings and his presentation of heliocentrism as a proven fact in particular, resulted in a papal trial in October 1632. He was accused of heresy and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition. Dr Peter Watson, president of the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis and consultant to Addenbrooke's University Hospital, Cambridge, suspects that he may have suffered from unilateral myopia, uveitis (an inflammation of the eye’s middle layer) or a condition called creeping angle closure glaucoma. Watson believes that:

"There were periods when he saw very well and periods when he did not see very well […] A DNA test will allow us to determine to what measure the pathology of the eye may have 'tricked' him".

According to Paolo Galuzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, who has published widely on the scientists and engineers of the Renaissance, including Galileo, and on the birth and history of the historiography of science, such illnesses may have been the source of one of Galileo’s most significant errors. Galileo believed that Saturn was not round, but had an irregular inflated side. His bad eyesight may have caused him to mistake Saturn’s gaseous ring and to conclude instead that Saturn was a planet with two moons as satellites. In Galuzzi’s words:

"This was probably a combination of errors. He probably expected to find satellites and his eyesight may have contributed to some confusion [...] If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope [...] We can formulate a mathematical model that simulates the effects it would have had on what he saw and using the same type of telescope he used we can get closer to what he actually saw […] We only have sketches of what he saw. If we were able to see what he saw that would be extraordinary".

During the first 100 years after his death, Galileo’s remains were hidden in a bell tower room of Santa Croce Basilica in Florence because the Church opposed a proper burial. He was reburied in the main body of the basilica in 1737 where a monument was erected in his honour. His bones were stored together with those of his disciple, Vicenzo Viviani, and those of an unknown woman. DNA tests would also help to determine if they are, as Galuzzi believes, those of one of his three illegitimate children, Sister Maria Celeste .

The scientists are still waiting for permission from the Church to exhume the body. The Institute of the History of Science will then require 300 000 Euros to finance the tests.

For more information on the links between Galileo’s discoveries and the paintings of his Italian contemporaries, read our article

A New Heaven - Galileo and the Artists
Who was the real inventor of the telescope, the crucial instrument in all Galileo’s observations? Find out more in our article Who Invented the Telescope?
Visit our History of Science focus page to find out more about the History of Science and some of its greatest icons.

Rabbie Round-up

by Kathryn Hadley

Here is a selection of events organised in celebration of the 250th anniversary, on January 25th, of the birth of Robert Burns (1759–1796)…

Zig-Zag: The Paths of Robert Burns
Until January 25th 2009
National Library of Scotland
George IV Bridge
Edinburgh EH1 1EW
Telephone: 0131 623 3700
www.nls.uk
A display of some of the 36,000 objects from Scotland’s national collections which explores how Robert Burns consciously created his own myth. The exhibition will also visit Aberdeen, Dumfries and Glasgow as part of the Homecoming Scotland 2009 celebrations.

Burns Day at the National Museum of Scotland
January 25th
National Museum of Scotland
Chambers St
Edinburgh EH1 1JF
Telephone: 013 1247 4422
www.nms.ac.uk
A full day’s program of events, including poetry, performers, art and music, to celebrate Scotland’s most famous bard and to mark the beginning of the museum’s programme of events for Homecoming 2009.

The Immortal Memory – The 250th Burns Night
January 25th
Finborough Theatre
118 Finborough Road
London SW10 9ED
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
An evening of poetry and music performed by the Live Canon ensemble including a Burns Night Supper in the Finborough Road Brasserie.
www.livecanon.com

Burns Country has a comprehensive website (www.robertburns.org) with an encyclopedia, an online database of the complete works of the poet, a discussion group and links to Burns resources.

What is a history blog?

by Derry Nairn

Our friends over at History News Network in the States ask themselves and their readers this challenging question, and come up with an answer History Today can agree with:-

In the fast-paced world in which we now live, public attention is focused on issues for ever briefer periods of time. If scholars want their analyses to be taken into consideration--and why shouldn't they?--they have to jump into the debate early and with forcefulness.

...what is a blog? It is nothing more than an old fashioned common-place journal in a new setting. It gives the reader the chance to look over the shoulder of a historian who's reacting daily to events.

...slowly over time as readers provide more and more feedback--readers like you!--we will get a better sense of what should appear in a blog written by a historian and what should not.

Amen!

Trophy Heads: Gruesome Practices from the Nazca Civilisation

by Kathryn Hadley

In 1925, the American anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) discovered a series of ‘trophy heads’ at six different sites in the region on the southern coast of Peru at the heart of the Nazca civilization, which flourished from approximately the first to the eighth centuries AD. The lips of the heads were sewn together with cactus spines and all the heads featured a hole in the centre of the forehead through which a carrying rope was inserted. Their meaning has remained a myth, however, for the past 100 years. Were they war trophies? Were they the heads of venerated ancestors, which bore a religious significance and were used in rituals or offerings?

Recent research has, however, revealed the geographical origins of the trophy heads, providing new clues as to their significance. Archaeologists compared strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope data found in the tooth enamel of 16 of the trophy heads, originally discovered in 1925 and currently held at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, with that from 13 mummified bodies buried in the Nazca region. The atomic structures of strontium, oxygen, and carbon vary by geographical location, thus reflecting where the person lived and his or her diet.

The results of the study, published online on December 11th in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, concluded that the trophy heads did not come from a distinct geographical region and that the individuals in the study consumed similar diets. The trophy heads came from the local Nazca population, rather than from a neighbouring enemy civilisation, thus hinting that they may have been used in rituals. Widespread depictions of trophy heads on painted pottery from the late Nazca period suggest that collecting and displaying trophy heads was a relatively common practice amongst the Nazca civilisation.

Nevertheless, researchers do not rule out that the heads may have also served as war trophies. Paintings on pottery often reveal warriors holding trophy heads, which may have come from warring in the Nazca area. Considering the extensive lifespan of the Nazca culture over more than seven centuries, it also seems likely that the role and purpose of trophy heads evolved over time.

In the words of Professor Kelly Knudson, the lead author of the study from Arizona State University:

"It is possible that the role of the trophy heads changed over time. It is possible that these individuals were sacrificed, but we don't have any evidence for that".

Italian Archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici, who has worked since 1982 excavating the ancient Nazca ceremonial city of Cahuachi, approximately 28 kilometres away from the modern city of Nazca, explained how:

"In 26 years of digging at Cahuachi, we have never come across any head used as a war trophy […] We are rather talking of 'offering heads' used in rituals. They belong to people of both sexes and in most cases they have been buried inside the ceremonial center. The images of disembodied heads in pottery and textiles are either representations of myths or indicate the high social status of the people who carry them".

The Wonders of Science

by Derry Nairn

In his latest history column for the Economist's Intelligent Life magazine, Andrew Marr puts forward the case for increased study of great scientists. He has been working on a forthcoming BBC series about Darwin's wider social impact, and has become convinced of the both the importance and romance associated with science and its many heroes:-

The lives of Lavoisier, Curie, Turing or Fermi were as dramatic and human as those of Roosevelt, Byron, Montgomery, Jane Austen or Queen Victoria.

Later in the piece he proclaims:-

We need ways of writing that illuminate something of the science for the general reader. This is not intrinsically more difficult than bringing alive 19th-century diplomacy or the disputes between renaissance painters over patronage and subject matter.

Well, right on time Andy, here comes History Today to the rescue!! On our new new history of science page, you can get an exclusive preview of Thomas Dixon's article on America's view of evolution from our forthcoming February issue. Plus, find out about all the latest Darwin-related books alongside a range of archived articles and reviews from years past.

Chemical Warfare in Roman Times

by Kathryn Hadley

In a recent colloquium held as part of the 110th annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Dr Simon James, from the University of Leicester, presented evidence for what may be the earliest archeological signs of “gas warfare”. He argued that around twenty Roman soldiers found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, died not as a result of sword or spear, but instead through asphyxiation.

The site of Dura-Europos on the banks of the Euphrates was conquered by the Romans around AD 160. In approximately AD 256 it was, however, attacked and subjected to a violent siege by an army from the rising Sasanian Persian Empire. There are no written records of the attack, the dramatic story of which is merely told by archeological remains. The Sasanians notably employed mining operations in an attempt to breach the walls of the Roman city, to which Roman defenders responded with counter-mines.

By studying the position of the bodies of the Roman soldiers found in a tunnel entrance, Dr James concluded that they had been deliberately stacked there in order to hinder the advance of remaining Roman army. Evidence of bitumen and sulphur in the tunnels provided that vital clues: the materials were used to start fires, which when ignited give off clouds of choking gases. Scars of severe burns on the corpses confirm that the bodies were indeed set on fire.

Dr James explained how:

“Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked
at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a
wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set
fire to the countermine, collapsing it, allowing the Persians to resume sapping
the walls. This explains why the bodies were where they were found. But how did
they die? For the Persians to kill twenty men in a space less than 2m high or
wide, and about 11m long, required superhuman combat powers – or something more
insidious.”

“The Persians will have heard the Romans tunneling and prepared a nasty surprise
for them. I think the Sasanians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery,
and when the Romans broke through, added the chemicals and pumped choking clouds
into the Roman tunnel. The Roman assault party was unconscious in seconds, dead
in minutes.”

Ironically however, this Persian mine failed in the end to destroy the city walls. Archaeological evidence reveals, nevertheless, that the Sasanians did manage to break into the city. Its inhabitants were massacred or deported to Persia and the city was abandoned forever. The site was only rediscovered in 1920. Recent excavations are part of a new research project on the archeology of Dura in order to build on previous campaigns of excavations conducted French and American teams in the 1920s and 1930s.

For more information about the history and archaeology of Dura, visit

http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/stj/dura/index.htm
For more information on the Archaeological Institute of America and its last annual meeting, visit www.archaeological.org

For further general information on the relationship between the Roman Empire and Syria, read our article The Syrian Cuckoo: Rome and the Unconquered Sun

Footage of Edwardian London

by Derry Nairn

While reading Time Out magazine's 'The Big Smoke' London blog, I came across this rather remarkable clip of Edwardian London. According to the author, Alex Barlow, the clip was:-

Filmed in 1904... [and] intended as a travelouge to give Australians an idea of what London was like at the turn of the century.

The footage is courtesy of the British Film Institute's Mediatheque

Newsletter

by Derry Nairn

Twice a month we select the best bits from our magazine and website and drop it in your inbox, free of charge.

This month's newsletter covers some big anniversaries: the publication of Origin of Species, the victory of Fidel Castro's rebels in Cuba and the first old age pensions in 1909.

If you'd like to sign up, just follow this link...

Repairs start on the ‘cradle’ of Parliament

Restoration work has started on one of London’s most ancient buildings and home of the first Parliaments. The English Heritage project started its conservation this week (Jan 13th) on the weathered exterior of Westminster Abbey’s Chapter House. The repairs on the Chapter House, which dates from the 12th century and held the King’s Great Council in 1257, are to be completed by 2010. Tim Reeve, Properties Director for English Heritage, said: ‘The Chapter House is a building of international importance and sits at the heart not just of Westminster Abbey but of the Westminster World Heritage Site, one of the most visited places on earth.’ Barry Stow, of project leaders Stow and Beale Conservation Architects, said: ‘The early Chapter House was reportedly 'finer than Salisbury'. In mediaeval times it was used as a place of government, as a meeting place for the House of Commons and subsequently as a document archive.’

See the History Today articles Westminster 1585 and The Cult of St Edward the Confessor.

Two Large-Scale Archive Projects Launched

by Derry Nairn

News today of the launch of two important but contrasting archive projects at Oxford and Essex universities.

A University of Essex led census project is set to create a massive historical research resource which focuses society in Britain for the period 1851-1911. The £1.06m project, is a collaboration between the university’s History Department and the UK Data Archive (UKDA), which is based on campus. It aims to bring together more than 200 million individual records from the censuses for .

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has funded research on the collection, which is the largest of its kind in the world. Professor Kevin Schurer, along with Dr Edward Higgs, is leading the project. Professor Schurer said:

These records contain vast amounts of information on every house, household and individual in the country and are the basis of much of our knowledge of changing social and economic structures over this period. Bringing all the existing computerised versions of these censuses together will completely transform our ability to research this period... This will put British social scientific research at the forefront of international efforts in this field

The project will bring together computerised versions of the censuses that have been created by public and commercial bodies. Once it is complete, it is hoped that researchers from a wide variety of fields will be able to carry out cross-discipline studies of the highest quality. Ultimately, if further funding can be found, the project may lead to the creation of a Victorian Panel Survey.

For more info, see Essex University's website

Meanwhile, over at Oxford University, plans are afoot to have records of the Hundred Years War available to academic researchers and to the general public.

The Gascon Rolls, as the pieces are known, number 113 unpublished manuscripts and cover the years 1317 to 1468. They contain copies of letters, grants and many other documents mostly written in Latin, to be published in English summaries in on-line and printed form. It is expected to take three years to complete the project.

Academics from Oxford are collaborating with the University of Liverpool and King’s College London on the initiative and have been funded almost three-quarters of a million pounds by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The National Archives and The Ranulf Higden Society are also co-operating in the project.

The Hundred Years War is a significant era in British history. It ended after a massive defeat by the French of an English army on a battlefield at Castillon, near Bordeaux. This marked the end of an era, terminating three hundred years of English rule in southwest France and the end of England’s rule as a continental European land power.

Dr Malcolm Vale, of St John’s College Oxford, said:

The history of the old emnity between England and France today still arouses interest and,... parts of the story have not yet been fully told. This research project aims to make available the most important unpublished documentary source for the Hundred Years War, its prelude, course and aftermath so we can arrive at a better understanding of how and why relations between the two countries deteriorated, leading to a century-long conflict.

Plans for the project include an initial translation and summary of the entries on the rolls, followed by editing and publishing and, finally, the production of a full edition (text and translation) of the roll for 1337-38.

Watch this space for more news!

...And in the meantime, feel free to browse this full-length 2006 article on the Hundred Years War:-

Poitiers: High Point of the Hundred Years’ War
Ian Mortimer remembers the English triumph at Poitiers in September 1356, and suggests that this victory was the dramatic culmination of Edward III’s visionary approach to waging war, the consequences of which are still with us today.

Visions of India past and present

by Kathryn Hadley

Colourful, chaotic and charming; India is also an enchanting and overawing country of extremes, with an immensely rich history and cultural diversity. Vasco de Gama landed on the Malabar coast in the south-western state of Kerala in 1498. The prospects of developing trade links with India sparked considerable European interest in India. Throughout the sixteenth century, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Danish and English traders increasingly set up coastal trading centres exporting commodities such as textiles, sugar, indigo, saltpetre, tea and opium.

The British East India Company was founded on December 31st 1600 following Queen Elizabeth I’s signature of a Royal Charter, which granted a group of London merchants a monopoly of all trade East of the Cape of Good Hope and West of the Straits of Magellan for an initial period of fifteen years. The Company first landed in Surat (Gujarat) on the East coast approximately two hundred kilometres North of Bombay in 1608 and gradually established trading posts in Madras (1639), Bombay (1660) and Calcutta (1690). Perceptions of India in Europe at the time were largely based on accounts and paintings by European travellers who published or exhibited their works upon their return.

How did the first Europeans arriving in India view and depict the new world which they discovered? An exhibition currently on show in Mumbai attempts to answer this question. The show at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum provides an important insight into European views of India from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. It is organised in collaboration with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum from which many of the paintings by British artists are on loan. The display includes works by both professional and amateur artists, by artists who travelled to India to paint first hand accounts, as well as by artists in Europe who based their depictions on Mogul works of art, written accounts by European travellers or who copied other artists’ works.

Artists painted scenes of some of the architectural and natural wonders of India which were entirely unknown to their European publics. However, in their depictions of such novel and previously unknown subjects they remained influenced by the changing artistic influences popular in Europe at the time. The chronological display of paintings, prints and sketches highlights the evolution of European artistic trends, from Romanticism from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, to the Realism of the end of the nineteenth century.

European painters first began to travel to India to paint first hand accounts of the landscapes and monuments which they visited in the eighteenth century. William Hodges (1744-1797) was the first English professional landscape painter to travel to India. He had previously accompanied Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific from 1772 to 1775. Hodges was granted permission to travel to India by the East India Company and arrived in Madras in 1780. He travelled for three years around the North of India and upon his return to London in 1783, he published a collection of 44 prints under the title Select Views in India.

Six years later, two other British artists, Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) and his nephew William Daniell (1769-1837), followed in Hodges’ footsteps. They arrived in Calcutta in 1786 where they set up a printing studio and then embarked on a tour of northern India. Returning to Calcutta in 1791, they then toured southern India for a further eight months. Their unprecedented collection of 144 prints was published in England between 1795 and 1808 under the title Oriental Scenery and saw considerable commercial success.

From the 1860s onwards, with the arrival of photography, European representations of India gradually changed. Subjects shifted from landscapes and architectural wonders to depict everyday and ‘real’ life, including the Indians themselves and their customs. This evolution of European artistic influences is particularly prominent in the works of John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) and John Griffiths (1837-1918). Both artists arrived in Bombay in 1864 where they were appointed to teach at the Bombay Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Griffiths became Principal of the school in 1865; Kipling was commissioned by the British government in 1870 to tour the North-West Provinces and to sketch the Indian craftsmen of the area. In 1875, he became Principal of the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore in British India (now the National College of Arts in Pakistan).

For more on British views of India, read our article
British Views of India

Here are the full details of the exhibition in Mumbai:

Indian Life and Landscape: paintings and drawings from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century
Until February 8th
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India)
159/161 Mahatma Gandhi Road
Fort, Mumbai 400 023

A fascinating insight into the initial perceptions of the unknown and alien country and culture which European travellers to India discovered, into the evolution of such perceptions and into how the visions of European artists in turn shaped views of India in Europe.

More photos from the 2009 Longman / History Today Awards

Winner of the Trustees Award, Simon Jenkins, with a beefeater

Paul Lay, History Today editor, congratulates one of the highly commended dissertation writers, Robbie Maxwell

Charlotte Crow, History Today deputy editor, & Martin Kaufmann

Paul Lay shares a joke with David Loades

A suitably atmospheric and misty night at the Tower of London

Amanda Vickery & friend

Helen Ellis (Harper Press) collecting a highly-commended book award from Paul Lay on behalf of Ffion Hague

The picture researcher of the year 2009, Melanie Haselden

Undergraduate dissertation of the year winner, Catherine L Martin

Trustees Award winner Simon Jenkins gives his acceptance speech

Lord Hurd & Peter Snow

Picture includes Richard Evans, Kevin Sharpe & Amanda Vickery

Suzannah Lipscombe with Mr & Mrs Derek Wilson

Paul Lay introduces another winner...

All of the winning books

Tim Tzouliadis wins the Longman / History Today 2009 Award

by Derry Nairn

An eerily misty winter night greeted the attendees at the 2009 Longman / History Today awards ceremony, held last night at the Tower of London.

Tim Tzouliadis was the overall winner for his book The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags – Hope and Betrayal in Stalin’s Russia published by Little, Brown. In awarding the prize of £2000, Paul Lay said:

Diligently researched and profoundly moving, Tim Tzouliadis has written a deeply moral and gripping work that anticipates further research – when more files are opened

The journalist Simon Jenkins was the winner of the Trustees Award, traditionally given to a person, or an institution, that has done remarkable work to promote and defend history. Mr Jenkins was praised by Paul Lay as:

a fearless defender of the importance of history, and the built heritage in both Britain and the world

There were also awards for the best history dissertation, won by Catherine L Martin of the University of Greenwich, and for picture research, won by Melanie Haselden for her work on Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory, by Lisa Jardine, published by HarperCollins.

The following is a full list of winners and commended runners-up with links to History Today book reviews where applicable:

• Overall winner: Tim Tzouliadis with The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags – Hope and Betrayal in Stalin’s Russia published by Little, Brown. [The winner also receives a cheque for £2,000.]

• In joint second place were: The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life by Ffion Hague (Harper Press); and Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, by Susan Hardman Moore (Yale).

• Highly commended were: War in England 1642-1649 by Barbara Donagan (OUP); Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics by Christopher Fletcher (OUP); The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution by Deborah E Harkness (Yale); and Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World by Stephanie J Snow (OUP).
  

• Winner of the Longman-History Today Picture Research Prize was picture researcher Melanie Haselden, for her work on Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory by Lisa Jardine, published by HarperCollins. [The winner also receives a cheque for £500.]

• In joint second place were: Discovery! Unearthing the New Treasures of Archaeology, edited by Professor Brian M. Fagan, published by Thames & Hudson - picture research Alice Foster; and A History of Herbert Smith by Tom Phillips, published by International Financial Law Review - picture research Caroline Wood.

• The dissertation of the year was awarded to Catherine L Martin of the University of Greenwich. Highly commended were Robbie Maxwell (University of Edinburgh) and Katherine McMullen (Oxford University)

Extreme Weather, Histrionics & History

by Derry Nairn

Since visiting Japan, I've always wondered what an earthquake would do to London. I don't mean that in a malevolent way, rather, the human effects of a non-lethal earth tremor would make interesting anthropological viewing. After all, in Tokyo, anything registering below a 5 on the richter scale is generally met with a shrug. In such cases, in libraries and on public transport, my experience was that people rarely glanced up from their manga comics to register that the earth was shaking. I imagine that the effects of such an event would be very much different anywhere in the UK.

After all, natural disasters and extreme weather conditions have always received a bad press in this country. So mild is the climate that the public reaction here to extremes in weather and temperature always seem a touch histrionic. The current cold snap is no exception.

An article in today's Evening Standard screams:-

Southern England... was gripped by conditions colder than parts of Iceland and Greenland as temperatures fell close to minus 12C (10.4F).

(my italics)

Then, very quietly, a few paragraphs down the page, a forecaster informs us that, in fact:-

Southern England will still be coldest tonight but temperatures are unlikely to fall lower than minus 5C

(my italics)

Catherine Ostler hits the nail on the head elsewhere in the same edition:-

Russians in London say the cold here is worse than at home, because we are so mentally unprepared for it that we make it feel like a catastrophe, or an epidemic.

In an piece from July 2007, our ex-editor Peter Furtado ruminated on the theme:-

One thing that history teaches us is a sense of proportion... When the Yellow River flooded in 1931, more than a million people died. In China, as in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and many other places, the need for a continual communal contribution to flood defences has shaped the development of society itself, and contributed to the development of a highly organised society. The fact that these have sometimes been overwhelmed, is tragic, but not the occasion for a loss of nerve.

Historically speaking, Britain and Ireland have had their fair share of freak acts of nature. I've selected here a few choice nuggets from the History Today Archive on the topic of the extremes of nature and humankind's reactions to it:-

The Great Smog F R E E
Devra Davis looks at the London Smog disaster of 1952-53.

The Lisbon Tsunami F R E E
Jenifer Roberts recalls the impact of an earlier tidal wave, which brought chaos and disaster to Portugal 250 years ago.

Under the Weather: Climate and Disease, 1700-1900
Climate, disease and the relationship between them fascinated 18th-century observers on both sides of the Atlantic. Ronald Rees explores the debate and its significance.

Israel & Palestine: Charting a Disastrous Century

by Derry Nairn

As missiles rain down on Gaza and rockets land in southern Israel, perhaps it is timely to consider how exactly history has conspired to lead the holy land into such chaos.

1920s - Policing Palestine

James Barker reveals how parsimony and muddle in Whitehall in the first years of the British Mandate in Palestine almost led to disaster in August 1929.

1930s - Weizmann and Ben-Gurion

With their differing approaches, the founding fathers of the state of Israel laboured to give Zionism unity, force, world respect and, ultimately, a homeland.

1940s - The Bombing of the King David Hotel

James Barker considers the role of terrorism in the establishment of Israel, on the 60th anniversary of the attack on the British military headquarters in Jerusalem.

1950s - Britain's Zionist Misadventure

Robert Carr argues that Britain's handling of, and withdrawal from, Palestine made bloody Arab-Israeli confrontation inevitable at a later date.

1960s - America, Israel and the Six Day War

The Six Day War spawned the special relationship between Israel and the United States of America. Elizabeth Stephens explores the cultural backdrop to this momentous development which resonates in the Middle East to this day.


1970s - The Yom Kippur War

Elizabeth Stephens examines how in 1973 the surprise invasion of Israel by Egypt and its allies started the process that led to Camp David.

1980s - Waltz with Bashir and the 1982 Lebanon War

Kathryn Hadley reviews a recent film which reopens debate over the role played by both sides in Israel's conflict with Hezbollah in the early 1980s.

Gallery saves important Victorian portrait

The National Portrait Gallery has retained a 19th-century portrait of a famous black nurse thanks to £96,200 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The only known painting of Mary Seacole, a nurse in the Crimean War and contemporary of Florence Nightingale, shows her wearing medals awarded for service. The oil picture, by Albert Challen in 1869, has been on loan to the Gallery in London since 2004 after being discoverd by historian Helen Rappaport. It was uncovered at a car boot sale in Oxfordshire in 2003 and will now be on permanent display at the Gallery after being purchased for £130,000.

Wesley Kerr, Chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund Committee for London, said: 'This is a moving and powerful painting that brings to life the courage, compassion and determination of an important figure in British history. As a woman and as a West Indian of mixed race she broke many barriers to make a huge contribution to Victorian society.'

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, stated: 'Mary Seacole is an inspiring figure and I am delighted that this painted portrait can now join the National Portrait Gallery Collection.'

See the History Today articles The Invitation That Never Came: Mary Seacole After the Crimea and Blacks in Britain: Mary Seacole.