The Luddites of Britain’s Industrial Revolution: Technophobes with an Excessively Destructive Bent or Practitioners of Last Resort Workplace Bargaining?

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Economic history, Old technology, Popular Culture, Regional History, Social History

We’ve all heard the term bandied round—anyone who is reluctant to embrace new technology or the world of computers is labelled a Luddite. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a person who is opposed to the introduction of new working methods, especially new machines”. Many of us would also have an inkling of the term’s origins, deriving from the group of English workers in the early 19th century whose method of resisting new work technologies in Georgian factories and mills took on a very “hands-on”, destructive manner. Beginning with weavers in the textile industry in Nottinghamshire taking to the new machines with sledgehammers in protest, the movement soon spread to other parts of the Midlands and the North of England.

Rampage against the machine provokes a repressive reaction

The British government wasted little time in sending in an army of soldiers✱ in defence of capital. Their assignment was to protect the factories and quell the workers’ revolts. Parliament enacted laws making the workers’ trail of destruction against the machines a capital offence, and many of the offenders were summarily and violently dealt with (shootings, hangings, transportation to New Holland). Consequently, the Luddite movement lost energy and cohesion and petered out within a few years [‘The Original Luddites Raged Against the Machine of the Industrial Revolution’, (Christopher Klein), History, 04-Jan-2019, www.history.com].

Class loyalty

The ruling elite of the day viewed the actions of the workers in attacking the private property of employers as merely bloody-minded vandalism, a perspective that still held an attraction for some modern conservative historians in the 20th century… eminent historian JH Plumb for instance dismissed the Luddites’ revolts as nothing more than “pointless, frenzied industrial jacquerie”. But was that all there was to it, the mindless, purposeless, random savagery of working class vandals? 

In a ground-breaking article in the early Fifties radical historian EJ Hobsbawn took issue with the conventional “nihilistic sabotage” view of historians like Plumb. Hobsbawn places the rebellious workers’ actions in their proper context, that of the Industrial Revolution and the economic vicissitudes of the period. The machine-breaking by the weavers and other workers was a direct action form of industrial strategy initiated by labour, Hobsbawn calls it “collective bargaining by riot” [EJ Hobsbawn, ‘The Machine Breakers’, Past and Present, No 1, (Feb., 1952), pp.57-70]❂.

The threat accompanying automation

Workers such as the weavers in Nottinghamshire around 1811/12 foresaw the dire implications for them of the introduction of new inventions like the mechanical loom. The economic downturn Britain experienced during the drawn-out Napoleonic Wars resulted in loss of profits for the merchants who owned the mills and factories. But it harmed working families even more…unemployment was widespread, food became scarce and therefore more expensive. Magnifying the problem, trades like the stocking knitters and the lace workers were in decline. By using the new technology, employers could increase production allowing them to engage untrained workers at lower wages. This directly and adversely affected the weavers and other artisans who had spent years learning and honing the skills of their craft. Now the new machines were being taken over by untrained workers who produced inferior work. The job security of textile craftsmen were thus imperilled, by the use of the (new) machinery in (as they saw it) “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to circumvent standard labour practices❆. The danger identified, the textile workers found themselves limited in the forms of protest available to them—they could not legally form trade unions and they could not strike⦿. Smashing knitting frames and other machines was conceivably the only effective way to protest the inevitable erosion of their economic livelihood [George Binfield, quoted in Klein; ‘What is a Luddite?’, wiseGEEK, www.wisegeek.com].

Not technophobes of the Industrial Revolution

Hobsbawn is at pains to stress that the protesting mill and factory workers bore no hostility to the machines per se◙. Notwithstanding that the concept of trade unionism was inchoate and still barely nascent at this time, Hobsbawn describes the “wrecking (as) simply a technique of trade unions in the period before (and during) the early Industrial Revolution“. A more contemporary historian George Binfield concurs with Hobsbawn’s central thesis, stating that the derisory ‘technophobe’ tag is a mischaracterisation of the movement—the textile artisans were not against the new technology of the Industrial Revolution, but against the use of it to produce shoddy clothing and depress the wages of skilled workers (Binfield in Klein)¤. Actually, far from being inept, many of the Luddites in the textile industry were highly skilled machine operators [‘What the Luddites Really Fought Against’, (Richard Conniff), Smithsonian Magazine, March 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com].

Poster notice offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the frame-breakers who attacked George Ball’s Notts. workshop in 1812 🔻

Antecedents and successors of the Luddites

Luddism, as Donald MacKenzie put it, “was neither mindless, nor completely irrational, nor completely unsuccessful” [DA MacKenzie, ‘Marx and the Machine’, Technology and Culture, Vol 25, No 3, July 1984, pp.473-503]. Hobsbawn scuttles any suggestion that the Luddites’ movement was a one-off phenomena. Arguing that it’s antecedents can be traced back as far as the 17th century, he details instances of other English workers utilising the same industrial tactic as the Luddites—West of England clothing industry , 1710s-1720s; weavers in Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Devon, 1726/27✧; rioting of textile workers in Melksham (Wilts), 1738; and not confined to the textiles business – coal miners employed the same wrecking tactic in the Northumberland coal-field in the 1740s⊞. Hobsbawn notes that the Luddites’ tactic of destroying the tools of production in a calculated fashion did not end with the movement’s swift demise. He cites the riots in Bedlington (Durham) in 1831 in which strikers wilfully wrecked the capitalists’ winding-gear.

No unmitigated failure; the preventative measures tactic

Although the Luddites’ revolt ended in suppression and broken dreams, Hobsbawn makes the case that there were successes in the workers’ efforts in other episodes of machine-breaking. In some instances, the mere threat from disgruntled craftsmen to wreak havoc on factories and mills was sufficient to dissuade some employers from introducing the machinery as planned, eg, this was the case earlier with weavers in Norwich and shearmen in Wiltshire. Hobsbawn concludes that “invariably, the employer, faced with such hazards” decided to delay or not implement the new technology, cognisant of the latent threat to his property and even his own life. In several of the cases cited by the historian, the threats were a successful bargaining tool to stop employers from cuttingworkers‘ wages, and in the instance of the Northumberland coal miners, their provocative action in burning the mine’s pit-head machinery actually won themselves “a sizeable pay rise”.

🔺‘Ned Ludd’ (Image: Granger Collection, NY)

Footnote: The eponymous ‘leader’ of the movement
The Luddites’ leader was supposed to be one “Ned Ludd”, sometimes referred to as ‘General‘, ‘Captain’ or even ‘King’ Ludd. Purportedly he was an apprentice in the late 1770s who was either beaten or berated by his master and took revenge by damaging the factory’s stocking frame. It seems that in all probability Ned is apocryphal in the fashion of Robin Hood, the English personification of the mythical figure invoking social justice. Ned can be viewed as a symbolic leader for the wrongly-treated to rally round in pursuit of righting (in this instance) the workplace injustices foisted upon skilled industrial craftsmen (Ludd was even said to reside in Sherwood Forest, another nod to the inspiration of the Robin Hood legend in his invention).

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✱ some 12,000 troops in total were despatched, more than the number under the command of Wellington in the concurrent Peninsula War, a classic, heavy-handed overkill by the British authorities 

❂ one writer applies the term “labor strategists” to the Luddites as a de facto vocational appellation, [Brian Merchant, ‘You’ve Got Luddites All Wrong’, (Tech By Vice), 03-Sep-2014, www.vice.com]

⦿ being prevented from forming trade unions left industrial workers already behind the eight-ball when IR mechanisation came along—they were unable to establish a minimum wage, establish workers’ pensions and set standard working conditions

❆ the technology the Luddites railed against did not necessarily need to be new, the stocking frame for instance had been invented 200 years earlier (Conniff)

◙ nor were they “heroic defenders of a pre-technological way of life” – as romantically portrayed later in some quarters (Conniff)

¤ as Binfield contends, the Luddites were in fact willing to adapt to mechanisation…it was the direction that enhanced productivity was heading—enriching the merchant owners, not the workers—that was their beef. Their objective was a share of those profits, or at the very least, a decent wage

✧ their attack on the property and materials of masters and blacklegs had the positive outcome of gaining them a “collective contract” of sorts

⊞ workers in the East Midlands hosiery trade also resorted to frame-breaking as part of the riots in 1778 to protest wage erosion…Hobsbawn calls these hose-makers “the ancestors of Ludditism”

Lisbon’s Great 1755 Earthquake, a Cataclysmic Event with Far-reaching Reverberations

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Economic history, Natural Environment, Regional History

When Lisbon experienced an earthquake on November 1, 1755 (sometimes called the Great Lisbon Earthquake), it was not an unique event for the city. Previous earthquakes had punctured Portugal’s capital in 1321 and 1531. The 1755 quake, measuring an estimated magnitude of 8.5-9.0 Mw, however was qualitatively worse because of the widespread nature of the damage and the ongoing repercussions.

Lisbon Pombaline Downtown street plan [Source: www.travel-in-portugal.com]

No sanctuary in the churches
The focus of the earthquake in Lisbon was on the city centre where the churches, it being All Saints Feast Day, were packed with the pious. The churches’ antiquated construction methods, leaving them incapable of withstanding violent movement of the earth, guaranteed a high death toll of the attendees. The foundations of the churches, built on soil liquefaction, only enhanced their vulnerability to violent earth movements [‘November 1, 1755: The Earthquake of Lisbon: Wrath of God or natural disaster?’, (David Bressan), Scientific American, 01-Nov-2011, www.blogs.scientificamerican.com].
Earthquake decimation of one of the city churches

Fire on the heels of five-metre wide fissures in the earth
Fires were an immediate consequence of the earthquake. Some of these were firestorms triggered by the massive earth tremor, and some were a direct result of it being a day of religious significance. Scattered through the churches were lit candles in observance of the holy day, the convulsions tipped the candles over, igniting the displays of flowers and spread the fire in all directions. Buildings that managed to escape the destruction of the earthquake often were subsequently consumed by the firestorms [‘1755 Lisbon earthquake’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Tsunami triple-whammy
Because the earthquake hit the central part of the city, many Lisboeta❅ who survived the initial three-and-a-half minute-long megashock made for the docklands and the harbour. Tragically what was thought a safe move proved a fatal one for many. Just 40 minutes after the quake hit Lisbon, it was followed by a (20 foot high) tsunami which pulverised the shoreline and engulfed the Rio Tejo (Tagus River), sending the huddled crowds on the docks scurrying for their lives. The fires and the tsunami compounded the calamity of the seismic event and sent the death toll skyrocketing◘.

‘Ripples’ of the tidal wave
The 1755 tsunami was a teletsunamic event with the generated tidal waves crossing the vast ocean. The mid-eastern Atlantic tsunami which hit Lisbon with such force, had amazingly far–flung ramifications. The tsunami was felt literally around the known world. Within an hour it had reached Cornwall on the south coast of England and Galway in Ireland.It was felt as far afield as Finland, North America, Barbados and Martinique in the West Indies and maybe even in Brazil.

Fallout in the region
The devastation caused by the earthquake, fires and tsunami was not confined to Lisbon. Other parts of southern Portugal (the Algarve) suffered. Spain too, especially Cadiz which was hit by an even more massive tsunami (65-feet high), lost as much one-third of its population. Parts of Morocco also bore the brunt of the cataclysm with possibly up to 10,000 of its population perishing as a result [Pereira, Alvaro S. “The Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 466-99. www.jstor.org/stable/40263964].

Copper engraving, 1755

Casualty count
There have been widely diverse estimations of the human toll from the 1755 earthquake—ranging from 10,000 to anything up to 100,000. Economist AS Pereira has noted how unreliable estimates are…owing to the lack of dependable data on the Portuguese population prior to 1755 and compounded by the public authorities’ decision to swiftly bury the corpses before there was a chance of disease and plague taking root (Pereira). Pereira’s own estimate based at data from surveys in 1757 put the casualties at 30 to 40 thousand out of a possible 200,000 population at the time. Added to this is the up to 10,000 who died in Morocco from the catastrophe○.

The devastation and reconstruction It is estimated that around 85% of Lisbon’s buildings were destroyed by the earthquake and associated phenomena. Two-thirds of the city was made uninhabitable. Among the carnage, in addition to the churches already mentioned, were famous libraries and palaces. Also lost was the city’s new opera house Ópera do Tejo and many examples of distinctive 16th century Manueline architecture. The Palácio Real Ribeira was a casualty, lost were some 70,000 volumes of work including tracts on voyages of early explorers such as Vasco da Gama and art works by Titian, Corregio and Rubens, and so on.

Rua Augusta in the Baixa Pombalina [Photo: www.weheartlisbon.com]

The reconstruction was put in the hands of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later bestowed the title of Marques de Pompal by King José I (Joseph I). Pompal’s elevation to sole control of managing the reconstruction and his competence in carrying through the plan allowed him to wrest the political reins of Portugal away from the old aristocracy. Ordinary citizens were pressed into the immediate task of clearing the debris so that Pompal could commence the long and slow task of rebuilding the city largely from scratch. Erected were new, large squares, widened streets and rectilinear avenues. An entirely new lower town Baixa Pombalina (Downtown district) was created. The Pombaline buildings proved to be radically innovative, being among the earliest seismically protected constructions in Europe.

Embryonic signs of the science of seismology
There is one important factor which separates the 1755 quake from those preceding it. In its aftermath Pompal coordinated systematic surveys in the nature and course of the earthquake. The preservation of data collected and archived at the time has allowed modern seismologists to better analyse the natural event and its genesis. Thus, in a very rudimentary but pioneering way, this has contributed to the development of what has become the science of seismology and the practice of earthquake engineering (‘Lisbon earthquake’, Wiki).

The phenomena, a boost to scientific enquiry, also caused religious rumblings at the time. Many in staunchly Catholic Portugal wondered if the degree of devastation was a manifestation of divine judgement, God’s wrath on flawed mortals. Discussions of theodicy and other philosophical questions abounded (Bressan).

The earthquake‘s effects on the Portuguese economy
The catastrophic 1755 event presented Pompal with the opportunity to reform the country’s economy and to some extent reorganise society. Pereira‘s work has looked at the cost of the devastation to Lisbon. As he has pointed out, Lisbon at the time was “staggeringly rich” courtesy of the plunder of its colonies in Africa and the New World. The city was awash with huge stores of gold bullion, jewels and expensive merchandise✧. The economist estimated the direct cost of the earthquake at between 32 and 48% of Portugal’s GDP. Another consequence was prices and wages volatility, albeit this was only temporary (Pereira).

Pompal’s reforms
To counter the deterioration in the country’s public finances✬, the Marques introduced several economic reforms and institutional changes. The state bureaucracy was streamlined and the treasury was reformed with the advent of a new tax system. Pompal’s mercantilist policies revamped the Portuguese economy. Pompal’s policies long-term had the effect of enhancing the centralist orientation of the economy and reduced Portugal’s dependence on its main trading partner Britain (Pereira).Seismologists have speculated as to whether the Lisbon Earthquake remotely triggered two other earthquakes—in Cape Ann (near Boston, Mass) and Meknes, Morocco—which followed it by just 17 and 26 days respectively [‘1755 Cape Ann earthquake’, Wikimili, The Free Encyclopedia, http://wikimili.com].

Cape Ann Earthquake (Woodcut illustration)

Endnote: The “first modern disaster”Endnote:The “first modern disaster”
The cataclysm event in 1755, so redolent of apocalyptic imagery, prompted theologians, scientists and philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau to conjecture—was causation natural or divine? It’s “modern-ness” lying in several innovative aspects of the phenomena: a concerted and systematic attempt at “crisis management”; among the “first provisions for urban disaster mitigation and earthquake resistant building design“; an attempt to “investigate and record the effects of the earthquake throughout the affected areas”, anticipating the science of modern seismology [‘From 1755 to Today—Reassessing Lisbon‘s Earthquake Risk’, (Drs Guillermo Franco & Bingming Shen-Tu), AIR Currents, (15-Jul-2009), www.air-worldwide.com; Bressan].

═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═
❅ as residents of Lisbon are sometimes called
◘ given that the earthquake’s epicentre was in the Atlantic Ocean some 350-400 km from Lisbon, it is plausible that the fires and tsunami caused the greatest havoc and devastation (Franco & Shen-Tu)
○ possibly the death toll cited for Morocco on the 1st of November has been conflated with the Meknes earthquake on 27th November 1755 which also was reported as having had 10,000 victims
✧ in India House alone the holdings in diamonds amounted to 11-12 million cruzados
✬ in the wake of the earthquake Portugal’s colonial ambitions were stalled, which would have added to the economic decline

Manchukuo: An Instrument of Imperial Expansion for the Puppet-masters of Japan

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Economic history, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

In 1931 the Manchurian component of the Japanese Imperial Army faked the sabotage of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (which was controlled by the Japanese themselves) near Mukden (present day Shenyang). The Japanese military, playing the victim, alleged it was the work of Chinese dissidents, and used the so-called Mukden Incident to launch a full-scale invasion of Manchuria✴.

Kwantung Garrison troops in Shenyang, 1931 ⇓

The military onslaught from Japan’s Kwantung Army (formerly Garrison) [関東軍, Kantogun] (AKA the Guandong Army) met with determined if largely ineffective resistance…the Chinese were under-prepared, under-equipped and not as technologically advanced militarily as the Japanese, but their defensive efforts were also undermined by Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek who ordered the local warlord Zhang Xue-liang✪ to hold back on resisting the Japanese invaders. The reason – Chang had fixed on a strategy that prioritised gaining control over the rest of the China in the civil war against Mao’s Chinese communists [‘Mukden Incident’, Encyclopaedia Britannia, (John Swift), www.britannia.com]. The Japanese military successes were followed by the creation of a Japanese “puppet state”, Manchukuoꆤ, in Manchuria in April 1932 (comprising China’s Northeast and Inner Mongolia).

Background to Manchukuo: Japanese “special interests’

Japan had pursued an aggressively interventionist policy in the region for decades before Manchukuo. Victorious wars against a diminishing Chinese empire (First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95) and Tsarist Russia (Russo-Japanese War 1904-05) emboldened Japan’s ambitions. Japan’s spoils of war after defeating the Russians included the extension of its economic sphere of influence to southern Manchuria. Moving into ports, mines, hotels and other businesses and its takeover of Russian railroads, brought with it a big influx of Japanese settlers [‘Manchukuo’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

Even prior to Manchukuo’s creation, Japan had been conceded a portion of Chinese territory in the southern Liaoning Peninsula which included Dalian (renamed Darien by the Japanese). Known as the Kwantung Leased Territory, it remained in Japanese hands until 1945.

Manchukuo’s capital was Hsinking [Xīnjīng: (literally ‘new capital’)] (today reverted to its original name, Chángchūn) in Jilin province. In 1945 at the end of WWII the capital was moved to nearby Tonghua. Hsinking had the status of a “special city” under the Manchurian state, as did Harbin.

Puppet statehood

The Manchukuo state established by the Japanese militarists was initially a republic but in 1934 it was changed to a one-party constitutional monarchy, the so-called Empire of (Greater) Manchuriaᴥ. The Japanese dredged up the former boy-emperor Pu Yi (last Chinese emperor of the Qing Dynasty) to be the titular figurehead of the ’empire’. Executive power of the Manchukuo government purportedly resided with the prime ministers (Zheng Xiaoxu 1932-35 and Zhang Jinghui 1935-45). The Manchukuo PM held authority under an authoritarian–personalist dictatorship, but this was more perception than substance as real power lay firmly with the Japanese☯️.

“Emperor of Manchukuo” ⇓ (Model display of puppet emperor in palace museum)

Kwantung Army, a rogue element

The Kwantung◘ Army, the arm of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, functioned as something of a rogue element, habitually acting independently of the Japanese government and the Army General Staff in Tokyo which struggled to rein it in. The Mukden Incident (see above) and the Huanggutun Incident (see below) are two such instances of their rogue activities. Service in the Kwantung Garrison, which had its headquarters in the Manchukuo capital Hsinkingᕡ, was a recognised path for promotion in the Japanese high command…instrumental chiefs of staff Seishirō Itagaki and Hideki Tōjō were both beneficiaries of this [ibid].

Hsinking: Kwantung Army HQs ⇓

Highly politicised, the Kwantung Army adopted an extra-military role for itself in Manchuria, eg, the commanding officer of the Kwantung Army was also Manchukuo ambassador to Japan and held an extraordinary power of veto – even over the Emperor of Japan! [ibid.].

‘Race’-based stratification

Japan peopled the sparsely populated parts of Manchuria with Japanese migrants who sat atop a social pyramid with other ethnic groups in the region stratified under the Japanese. Rationing of essential foodstuffs (including rice, wheat and sugar) was administered in accordance with this racial hierarchy. The Japanese-dominated colony of more than 30 million has been characterised as more “an Auschwitz state or a concentration-camp state” than merely a “puppet state” [Yamamuro Shin’ichi, quoted in Smith, Norman. “Disguising Resistance in Manchukuo: Feminism as Anti-Colonialism in the Collected Works of Zhu Ti.” The International History Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 2006, pp. 515–536. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40111222].

Japanese dominated Manchuria was indeed a police state, one of the most brutal in an (interwar) era of totalitarian excesses. The Manchukuo regime unleashed a systematic campaign of terror and intimidation against the local Russian and Chinese populations (including arrests without trial, “thought crimes”, organised riots and other forms of subjugation) [‘Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Artillery unit of Fengtian Clique ⇓

Resistance to Japanese domination

After the establishment of Manchukuo and the ineffective performance of the Fengtian (Liaoning) Army against the Japanese war machine, various Chinese militias were formed to carry on the resistance. The main forces comprised Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies, backed by the KMT Nationalists and led by famous general Ma Zhanshanᕤ. Other resistance to the Japanese in the Northeast came from Communist-organised guerrilla units. The anti-Japanese militias’ campaigns, which included harrying and terrorising the Kwantung Army, lasted ten years until the Japanese Army and Airforce finally pacified Manchuria in 1942.

The brunt of the early Chinese fight-back against Japan’s imperial expansion was borne by these warlord militias and volunteer armies, but after Chiang Kai-shek was talked round to a truce with the communists and a united front against Japan in 1937 (in effect postponing the civil war to the conclusion of WWII), the Republic of China (ROC) army engaged directly with the Kwantung Army (Battles of Shanhai Pass, Rehe, Beiping-Tianjin, 2nd Battle of Héběi, Chahar Campaign, etc).

ROC flag (>1928) ⇓ 中華民國 Chunghwa Minkuo

1937: Second Sino-Japanese War

After colonising Manchuria, the Japanese military used it as a base to invade the rest of China. In 1937 the eruption of fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops near Peking (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) led to full-scale war. Antony Beevor [The Second World War, (2012)] marks this episode as being effectively the start of the Second World War (some historians date it’s origins earlier, from the Mukden Incident in 1931).

Marco Polo Bridge ⇓(Photo: The China Guide)

Siberian sideshow

Eventually the Kwantung Army, unchecked by Tokyo, overreached itself by invading Siberia, provoking the USSR into an undeclared war and several border conflicts and battles in the late 1930s. The clashes culminated in the decimation of Japanese 6th Army at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 [‘The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939’, The Diplomat, (Stuart D Coleman), 28-Aug-2012, www.thediplomat.com].

1930s Tokyo ‘spin’

The Japanese came under attack in the West for establishing a harsh, totalitarian regime in Manchuria. Attempts were made to deflect the criticism by portraying the interventions in China’s northeast as a positive contribution to the restoration of regional order. Apologists for Japan, pointing to the pattern of internecine conflicts between warlords, communist insurgency and general chaotic conditions in the rest of China in the first third of the 20th century, argued that Manchuria in the same period had, courtesy of Japanese involvement, enjoyed “peace and order, progress and prosperity, (making) great strides in commercial and industrial development” [Saito, Hirosi. “A Japanese View of the Manchurian Situation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 165 (1933): 159-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1018175].

Manzhouguo passport ⇓

Japanese spin imbued the Manchukuo regime with a pseudo-legitimacy that was almost mythic: “the ‘Manchus’ followed the ‘kingly way’ (王道 wangdao) of harmony, prosperity, and peace under the benevolent guidance and protection of imperial Japan” [Review of Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern, (Prasenjit Duara), by John J. Stephan, The International History Review,Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 181-182. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40110486]❅.

Myth-busting Manchukuo

Reconnecting with this, Japanese historians in the postwar period, tried to justify the horrors committed by the occupying Japanese army, characterising the incursion in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia as an act of ‘liberation’, prompted by motives which were ‘enlightened’. Recent research by Shin’ichi Yamamuro leads the Japanese academic to posit a view of the Manchukuo occupation that challenges the mainstream Japanese one. Yamamuro debunks the theory that right-wing Japanese military and civilian authorities were supposedly imbued with the idealism of wanting to construct a “paradise in earth” in China’s three northern provinces [Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, (Shin’ichi Yamamuro, translated by Joshua A. Fogel), 2006; Bill Sewell. “Review of Yamamuro Shin’ichi. Manchuria under Japanese Dominion. Translated by Joshua A. Fogel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006,” H-US-Japan Reviews, March, 2007. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=265211196449094].

Scope of the membership of the Greater EACP Sphere ⇓

“Greater Co-operation” – code for Japanese expansion and economic domination

In 1940 Japan incorporated its Manchurian client-state into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACS). The purported aim of GEACS was that it would be an economically self-sufficient “bloc of Asian nations led by Japan and free of Western powers”. In reality, this veneer of Pan-Asian idealism (regime motto: “five races under one union”) was a front for the Japanese militarists and nationalists to expand south and west and advance its domination of Asia [‘Manchukuo’, Wiki, loc.cit.].

A prized economic asset

Manchukuo (and the Inner Mongolia territory) was incorporated into both the Japanese war machine and the national economy. Rich in natural resources (especially coal and iron), under the Japanese Manchuria became an industrial powerhouse. Japanese citizens, who had been hard hit by the Great Depression, were enthusiastic in their support for the army’s intervention in Manchurian territory right through the period of Japanese occupancy [ibid.].

August 1945: D-day for the Japanese puppet states

August 9, 1945, the day after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, the Soviet Red Army and the Mongolian Army invaded Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, which was to be the final campaign of the Second World War. In a swift operation (Manchzhurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastupatelnaya Operatsiya), Manchukuo, Mengjiang and Japanese (northern) Korea were all liberated, thus culminating in the break-up of the Japanese empire. Manchuria and Inner Mongolia were returned to China, and the Soviets set about orchestrating a communist takeover of North Korea…meanwhile Korea south of the 38th Parallel was occupied by US forces [‘Soviet invasion of Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Victorious Soviet soldiers in Harbin ⇓Photo: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/

Footnote: ‘Manchuria’ as a geographic descriptor was first used by the Japanese in the 1600s and later adopted by Westerners in China…the Chinese themselves these days are less inclined to use the term ‘Manchuria’, preferring to describe this part of China simply as Dongbei (东北), the Northeast).

Manchurian malfeasance – for the record: these days the once imperial “puppet palace” of Manchukuo is a history museum – a reminder to Chinese and the very occasional 外国人 (foreign) visitor alike of the aberrant and abhorrent regime imposed on North-East China during the interwar period of the 20th century. Manchukuo (State of Manchuria) comprising northeastern China and part of Inner Mongolia Area: approx 1.19 million km Pop (est) 1940: 30-35 million Ethnic Mix: Han Chinese (majority), Manchus, Mongols, Huis, Koreans, Japanese, Belorussians (minorities)

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✴ in 1932 an independent inquiry with US participation, the Lytton Commission (Ritton Hōkokusho), found that both parties were at fault for the incident. In its Report which led to exposure of the Japanese duplicity, it condemned Japan for its aggression (albeit conceding it had “special interests” in the region), while also criticising China for inflaming anti-Japanese sentiments…the League of Nations subsequently demanded that Japan vacate Manchuria, Japan’s response was to give notice to withdraw unilaterally from the League (effective 1935) [‘Lytton Report’, (United States History), www.u-s-history.com]

✪ Zhang’s father, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, also a Manchurian warlord, had been assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung military in 1928, in an episode in Shenyang known as the Huanggutun incident. Zhang senior was one of the most powerful warlords in the Warlord Era, which saw local military cliques carve out territorial strongholds in different parts of China

ꆤ Manzhouguo in Chinese

ᴥ the Chinese expression for Manchukuo is 虚假帝国 (the “false empire”)

☯️ Zheng, a royalist and close collaborator of Pu Yi, had hoped that Manchukuo would become a springboard for the restoration of Qing rule in China, aims not shared by the Japanese who pressured him to resign in 1935 [‘Zheng Xiaoxu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. His successor Zhang Jinghui was even more of a powerless figurehead, content to allow advisors from the Kwantung Army run the state, earning Zhang the unflattering sobriquet of the “Tofu prime minister” [‘Zhang Jinghui’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

◘ Kwantung means “east of Shanhaiguan”, ie, Manchuria

ᕡ the Kwantung military also maintained a peninsula naval base at Ryojun (Port Arthur)

ᕤ the charismatic general started fighting against the Japanese, was then induced to swap over to the Japanese side and finally switched back to the cause of Chinese resistance

❅ Stephan summarises Manchukuo as “a producer of beans, bandits and bunk” with the ‘kingly way’ grandiloquence falling under the third of these attributes

💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮

The West Indies Federation: A Failed Attempt at Forging a Dominion Within the British Commonwealth (Part 1)

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Comparative politics, Economic history, Inter-ethnic relations, Racial politics, Regional History

The 1950s was a fashionable period for forming international federations in different parts of the globe. Nineteen Fifty-Eight saw the creation of two competing federations of national groupings in the Middle East (both short-lived unions), see my previous blog post (March 2019), Competing Strands of Arab Unity During the Cold War: UAR and the Arab Federation. The British West Indies Federation (BWIF), also coming into being in 1958, was another ephemeral, unsuccessful but very different effort at a regional confederation.

An idea with a long shelf-life

The germ of the idea of a federation of Caribbean islands is far from being a recent development, even in historical terms. Proposals and discussions about Britain’s Caribbean territories coming under collective control goes back as least as far as 1671 [Glassner, Martin Ira. “CARICOM AND THE FUTURE OF THE CARIBBEAN.” Publication Series (Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers), vol. 6, 1977, pp. 111–117. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25765588].

In the 19th century there were various attempts at “governor-sharing” of different British West Indian possessions, eg, the Windward and Leeward Islands had a sort of federated arrangement from the 1870s to the 1950s✲. The Crown also appointed a governor to take joint control of Jamaica and British Honduras…the same thing happened at one point with Barbados and the Windwards. These constructed entities did not necessarily have satisfactory or happy outcomes, the last of these imposed ‘unions’ was followed by the Confederation Riots of 1876 in Barbados (a protest by local black labour against the sub-par wages paid by the white planter class) [Kwame Nantambu, ‘W. I. Federation: Failure From the Start’, (art. updated 26-Oct-2014), www.tricenter.com].

In the early 1930s a conference containing “liberal and radical politicians” from Trinidad, Barbados and the Leewards and the Windwards, meeting in Dominica, resolved that federation was the best way forward. Their proposals to the West Indies Closer Union Commissions were however rejected on the grounds that “public opinion was not yet ripe for federation” [Hughes, C. (1958). ‘Experiments Towards Closer Union in the British West Indies’. The Journal of Negro History, 43(2), 85-104. doi:10.2307/2715591; Nantambu, loc.cit.].

Photo: Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (bitujamaica.org)

Agrarian class conflict: Quasi-slavery and organised labour militancy

In the 1930s a wave of grass-roots disturbances, riots and strikes, emanating from a burgeoning and increasingly militant labour movement, resonated throughout the Caribbean colonies. Britain, all-too-aware of the dangers of growing antipathy to its colonial rule, a scenario also playing out dramatically in British India at the time, put out ‘feelers’ to the West Indian political elites for their interest in a federation. A 1947 conference indicated that all of the colonies (with the exceptions of the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands) were in favour of a ‘loose’ association. The British government’s stated aim at this point was “the development of a federation which would help the colonies to achieve economic self-sufficiency, as well as international status as individual states” [ibid.].

Framework of the WI Federation

The UK parliament passed the British Caribbean Federation Act in 1956 (with the Federation to come into existence beginning of ’58). The framework of the West Indian Federation (originally named the Caribbean Federation) was to have an executive comprising a (British appointed) governor-general (Lord Hailes), a prime minister and cabinet. The parliament was a bi-cameral one and the federal constitution was based principally on the Australian model, allowing for a “very large measure of internal self-government” [Statement by the Earl of Perth (UK minister of state for colonial affairs), 29-Jul-1957 (WI Federation: Order in Council 1957), Hansard 1803-2005, www.api.parliament.uk].Flag of the West Indies Federation

1958 Member states of BWIF:

Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago✥.
The ten constituent territories signing on to the Federation comprised a total geographical area of 20,239 km and a population of around 3.2 million.

A good theoretical idea?

On paper there was a lot to be gained from a confederation of regional islands in the Caribbean Sea✪ – seemingly for both the coloniser and the decolonised. From Britain’s position, there was the cost and efficiency angle. Federation of the parts supposed that Britain and Whitehall would deal with ONE political entity (the whole), rather than having to cope with eight to ten territories, thus also reducing costs for the parent government. A single central federation of many parts eliminated the need for duplication of services, thus it would result in more efficient economic and social planning [GANZERT, F. (1953). ‘British West Indian Federation’. World Affairs, 116(4), 112-114. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20668810].

For the BWIF government, more advantageous economies of scale could secure better prices for its peoples’ commodities. Enhanced prosperity of the country would serve to head-off social unrest within the island societies. Lastly, a single political entity could foster and facilitate the desired objective of democracy more smoothly [ibid.].

Approaching Federation: Confrontational rather than consensual

Unfortunately for the prospects of the Federation venture, multiple problems quickly surfaced, not least the difficulty of finding common areas of agreement among the member states, these factors beset BWIF even before the Federation came into existence. Deciding where to locate the new Federation capital itself proved problematic. Early on there was a move to make it Grenada (St George’s Town), but Jamaica and Barbados objected to awarding it to one of the smaller islands. Jamaica and Barbados also objected to Trinidad as the site but the island was chosen in preference to either of them. Even after that was determined, there was issues…the federal capital was intended to be Chaguaramas (Trinidad) but the snag here was its availability, part of Chaguaramas housed a US naval base. Ultimately, due to this complication, the Trinidad capital Port of Spain became the de facto BWIF capital [‘West Indies Federation’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].Red arrow = de jure federal capital || White arrow = de facto federal capital

Things didn’t improve after the Federation came into effect for a host of reasons – I will explore these factors in some detail in the second part of this blog topic: The West Indies Federation: A Failed Attempt at Forging a Dominion Within the British Commonwealth (Part 2).

Footnote: The Canada/BWIF relationship
From the early, nascent rumblings of a desire for self-government in the Caribbean, the Canadian Confederation was a model examined by pro-federation West Indians. Individual islands in the Caribbean had even speculated at different times on the merits of joining Canada as a province. At least twice during the 20th century the Canadian parliament considered legally annexing the Turks and Caicos Islands however this never eventuated [‘Turks and Caicos Islands’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Aside from this particular colony, federation within Canada doesn’t seem to have been a serious proposition for either side …though relations between the Federation and Canada remained close [ibid.]. 🇨🇦

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✲ described by Hugh Springer as “weak and ineffectual” attempts at unifying the group of islands [Springer, H. (1962). Federation in the Caribbean: An Attempt that Failed. International Organization, 16(4), 758-775. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2705214]

✥ the UK mainland territories of British Guiana and British Honduras declined to join the Federation
✪ for a start the various scattered island entities shared a number of commonalities – a colonial history, the English language, a familiarity with British institutions, etc.