Category Archives: Military history

Fin de siècle Anxieties and Self-doubts: The Second Anglo-Boer War, British Manhood and “National Degeneracy”

Literary & Linguistics, Military history, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture, Sport, , , , , , , ,
Robt Louis Stevenson’s classic novella

MORAL and physical decay was a preoccupation consuming the minds of Victorians in the late 19th century. Many Britons harboured nagging doubts that the world’s foremost empire might be in decline? The fear manifested itself in the art and literature of the day, especially in Gothic novels such as Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Contemporary commentators, social campaigners, liberal imperialists and advocates of ”national efficiency” proffered a raft of varied explanations for the alleged condition of society. Blame was attributed to the rising crime rate, insanity, poverty, unemployment, immigration, radicalism, sexual deviance, feminism, VD, the transformation away from rural life to the disease-ridden towns and the very stresses of modern civilisation (labelled “the dark side of progress”) (‘Deviance, disorder and the self’, www7.bbk.ac.uk).

The Second Boer War in South Africa, breaking out in 1899, did nothing to ease concerns that, maybe, British manhood was not made of “the right stuff” after all…Imperial Britain’s early sub-par performance in the conflict against a “rag-tag” army of Afrikaner farmers fed into the rising tide of British fears of the degeneration of its racial stock. The first portends emerged even before the hostilities began – in the recruitment halls of Britain. The early Boer victories required British reinforcements from home leading to a manpower dilemma – the unhealthy British cities and slums churned out recruits from the working class who were “narrow-chested, knock-kneed, wheezing, rickety specimens” of men. At the time of the Boer War the average British soldier was of diminished stature, shorter than that of 1845…40% of those volunteering in Manchester recruitment halls were rejected as unfit for military service. By 1901 the percentage had increased even moreⓐ.

Afrikaner guerrilla warfare

Once the fighting began, the lacklustre efforts of the British soldiers struggling to gain the upper hand left their Australian and New Zealand counterparts with a negative impression of the home country’s martial capability. While British soldiery laboured, the Australasian contingents of soldiers equipped themselves quite well. Colonial troops from Australia and New Zealand possessed natural ability to shoot and ride, equipping them to perform well in the open war on the veldt…this plus their ‘bushman’ capacity to live off the land, meant that they clearly adapted to the South African conditions better than the British soldiersⓑ.

The Australian and NZ dominion soldiers’ take-home message from the South Africa affair was that the “old Britons” were in decline, and that they, the “new Britons”, represented the “coming man”. This view fed into earlier established myths and assumptions – Australia benefitted, it was said, from a climate infinitely better than Britain, a lavish land … making for a vigorous and healthy ‘race’. WK Hancock described the Australian ‘type’ of man as a harmonious blending of all the British types, nourished by a “generous sufficiency of food (good diet) …breathing space (vast countryside) and sunshine”. At the same time British voices were ominously warning of “racial suicide” and the waning of the nation’s “racial energy”, the self-styled “Better Britons” of Australia and New Zealand were talking up their own supposed “racial vigour”.

Reassuring symbolism: Britannia saving the world from barbarism (Source: teachmiddleeast.lib.uchicago.edu/)

Footnote: “Degeneracy” out of vogue As Victorian Britain evolved into Edwardian Britain, the fears of racial deterioration didn’t diminish, birth-rates which were already in decline going back decades had plummeted dramatically since the Victorians. However, by the time of World War I degeneration theory had lost favour, advances in the understanding of genetics and the vogue for psychoanalytic thinking had prompted its obsolescence (‘Degeneration theory’, www.artandpopularculture.com).

Source: Pinterest

Postscript: Decadence and decay
“Decay” is closely related to the word “decadence” (Latin, decadentia, meaning ‘fall”. In 19th century imperialist thinking decadence and decay was a characteristic associated with the colonial anxieties of empire. The phenomenal success of the imperial powers, it was thought as in the case of past examples like Rome, made the elite complacent and weak, thus the seed of its downfall. The response of contemporary Europeans was a preoccupation with the morality and cultural values of their own societies (‘Decline and Fall’, William Rees, History Today, January 2023).

ⓐ one contemporary commentator, cricket writer Albert E Knight, thought the remedy for the physical and moral degeneration of Englishmen lay in cricket – advocating for the creation of more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen”

ⓑ a UK report conducted in 1904 with the title “Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration” confirmed that Britons were even more physically unfit than the war had suggested

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Great Escapees on Reel and in Real Life: Clichéd POW Movies and TV Shows, La Volpe and the Italian POW in Australia during WWII

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I happened upon the remarkable, daring exploits of Lt. Edgardo Simoni—the Italian prisoner of war who made a habit of repeatedly escaping from various Australian POW camps during WWII—while reading the non-wartime story of another (very different) ace escape artist, Kevin John Simmonds, a con on the run from NSW cops who bamboozled an extensive manhunt comprising 500-odd police and 300 volunteers in 1959, leading them on a long, fruitless chase through harsh and rugged bush land before being finally being recaptured. To their embarrassment the state’s police officers found themselves lagging far behind the solo fugitive in a catch-up game of “Where’s Wally”, with Simmonds making them at times look like “right” (and not very bright) “Charlies” (They’ll Never Hold Me, by Michael Adams (Affirm Press, Melbourne, 2024).

Kevin John Simmonds

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The theme of valiant escape and valiant escapees from POW camps is a standard trope of cinema and television that has been done to oblivion over the years. This sub-genre has been a recurring feature in cinema for the past seven or eight decades, including a raft of classic war (WWII) features like Escape from Stalag 17, The Colditz Story, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Von Ryan’s Express, The Wooden Horse, The Mackenzie Break and of course the most lauded of all movies subscribing to the sub-genre – 1963’s The Great Escape.

But for me my favourite POW screen vehicle is the antithesis of these largely stark and grim dramas. No, not Hogan’s Heroes but another TV war sitcom, an episode from the Seventies TV series Ripping Yarns (created by two-sixths of the “Monty Python” team, Michael Palin and Terry Jones) called ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’. The protagonist played by Palin (Major Phipps) is a serial escape attempter…during the war to date he has attempted over 560 escapes, 200 of them before he had left England, as a consequence he is transferred to Germany’s most infamous prison camp. At Luft 112B he continues his escape attempts 24/7, all of them ludicrously impossible. Meanwhile the rest of the British POWs frustrate Phipps no end by being perfectly content to sit out the war in their cosy and comfy little gentleman–officer confinement. By the show’s end the other POWs and German guards have all scarpered, leaving Phillips as the only man to never have escaped the “inescapable POW camp”. In his life after the war we learn that escaping is so intrinsically part of Maj. Phipps’ DNA that two years after his death and burial, locals discovered a tunnel dug from his grave to the cemetery fence: his final and “greatest” escape! A gem of a send-up of both the unrelentingly solemn POW film and British upper-middle class and upper class twits𖤓.

Michael Palin, ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’

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Back to the real life POW escapologist Signoré Simoni. Simoni was one of more than 18,000 Italian military personnel captured by the Allies and transported to Australian POW camps, in his case assigned to the Murchison Camp # 13, near Shepparton, Victoria. Unlike the fictional Maj. Phipps’ fellow prisoners and the great majority of his fellow Italian POWs, Edgardo Simoni never content to stay put behind barbed wire and high fences paralleled the fictional Phipps in trying to escape whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Italian prisoners of war arriving at Circular Quay wharf, Sydney, 1941 (source: coasit.com.au)

Simoni’s first shot at freedom failed but undaunted he soon tried again. Swapping uniforms with an Italian private in the prison was his passport to the outside POW work detail. From there he easily managed to slip away from the Murchison guards and head for metropolitan Melbourne. Once there, he took the alias “George Scoto” and got a job selling door-to-door cosmetics (very successfully) which lasted for ten months. Afterwards, Simoni moved to Mildura in country Victoria where he found work on a farm. Here he was recaptured by Australian military police and despatched to a higher security goal in the isolated town of Hay, NSW. Simoni was not intent to accept captivity in Hay and in no time he had escaped by painstakingly filing through the bars of his cell window, becoming the only POW to escape from that supposedly escape-proof incarceration facility. Simoni then walked 300km to Bendigo where he caught a train to Melbourne. His second sojourn in Melbourne was cut short by a stroke of rotten luck when he was spotted and arrested by the same policeman who had arrested him on the previous occasion! (‘Italian POWs in Australia’ by Frank O’Rourke, Newsletter # 580, 02–07–2021, www.melbashed.com.au)✦.

Italian POWs at Myrtleford Camp (photo: Geoffrey McInnes/Aust War Memorial)

Myrtleford, Victoria, was the next POW camp (# 5) to accommodate the peripatetic Signoré Simoni. Edgardo had been an anti-fascist in Italy and had joined Mussolini’s army only after swearing allegiance to the monarchy, but in Australia he started to embrace communism which led to the authorities placing him under special surveillance. Not very successfully it seems because Simoni was still able to regularly abscond from the Myrtleford facility at night-time without much effort to moonlight as an unofficial organiser for the local tobacco sharefarmers exhorting them to agitate for better working conditions (‘Edgardo Simoni oral history interview by Dan Connell’, 06–11–1986, http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au).

Col. Edgardo Simoni (ret.) in 1974: revisiting his eventful travels around SE Australia

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Endnote: All in all Lt. Simoni—who earned the nickname La volpe (“the Fox”) for his war-time escapades—made 13 escape attempts in the three years he was a POW in Australian detention. At the end of the war, upon release, Simoni returned to Italy and resumed his career in the military, rising to the rank of colonel. In 1974 La volpe re-visited Australia, this time on happier terms, to retrace the steps of his fugitive odyssey around NSW and Victoria.

𖤓 the 2000 Aardman film animation Chicken Run also mines the escape from prison trope, freely parodying WWII POW movies (especially The Great Escape) by exploiting all the familiar cliches
✦ the press closely followed Simoni’s escapades in Australia as if they were tracking “Public Enemy # 1”: ‘Search For Italian’ MELBOURNE. June 10. Police and military authorities searching for Lt. Edgardo Simoni, 25, the Italian who escapedon a bicycle from a prisoner ofwar camp in Gotiburn Valley on Saturday, believe that he has crossed the Victorian border. Detectives and railway enquiry officers are checking; every interstate and country train. and interstate detectives have joined the search ~ Adelaide Advertiser, June 11 1942”

Give it Your Best William Tell: The Crossbow through History

Ancient history, Biographical, Commerce & Business, Economics and society,, Media & Communications, Medieval history,, Military history, Performing arts, Popular Culture, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Obscure origins: Like so many things pertaining to the dark realms of antiquity it can’t be said definitively when the crossbow came into existence…at some point between the 7th to 5th centuries BC, the consensus of opinion says. What is pretty much settled is that it first appeared as a combat weapon in China. The Chinese employed it to good effect during the Warring States period (c.475 – 221 BC). Crossbowmen of this period comprised between 30 to 50 per cent of standing Chinese armies. The weapon was still popular during the Han Dynasty (late 3rd century BC to AD 220) but it’s popularity diminished after the Hans lost power, possibly due to the introduction of more resilient heavy cavalry under the succeeding Six Dynasties.

Crossbow from China’s Qin Dynasty, early 3rd century BC. Ancient Chinese crossbows were made from wood, sinew, bronze and bamboo.

The crossbow in Europe, decline and reemergence: From ancient China the crossbow spread to Europe’s early civilisations. Its use was recorded in a battle at Syracuse (Sicily) as early as 397BC. The ancient Greeks were responsible for several early iterations of the crossbow namely the gastraphetes, a hand-held crossbow invented before 400BC, and the ballista, a small assault weapon capable of firing both stones and bolts, which the Romans copied and modified as a composite catapult-crossbow called a scorpio. The scorpio was lethally effective, offering marksman-like precision of its projectiles. The cheiroballistra or maniballista was another Roman variant on the crossbow with specific application as a siege engine. After the fall of Rome the crossbow fell out of use in the West until the 10th to 11th centuries AD when it was revived. The French used crossbows in siege warfare and they were in use during the epochal Battle of Hastings in England in 1066. The famous Plantagenet warrior-king of England, Richard the Lionheart, was killed by a bolt from a crossbow. The crossbow attached considerable prestige especially in England, so much so that only knights were permitted to own and use the weapon in war.

Crossbowman in an AD 1225–1250 English manuscript. BL Royal 12 F XIII The Rochester Bestiary (source: British Library and Manuscript Miniatures)

Crossbow or siege engine? As iron-based crossbows were improved and made more powerful and elaborate, the concept of the crossbow starts to merge with that of the torsion-powered siege engine (the former requiring only one man to work it while the latter needed several men). Certainly medieval sources seem to have conflated the two…different authors writing on the Crusader wars for instance have described the ballista alternately as a crossbow or a siege engine [Stuart Ellis-Gorman, The Medieval Crossbow: A Weapon Fit to Kill a King (2022)].

The Ballista: crossbow–cum–catapult

Evolution of medieval crossbows: In the Middle Ages the arbalest was popular in Europe. This was a decided technical advance in crossbows, improved by having a special mechanism for drawing back and releasing the string. Arbalests were larger and heavier weapons with metal-tipped bolts replacing the earlier wood-bolted crossbows, thus achieving devastating impact against the armour of the enemy. By the 13th century further technological improvements in the use of crossbows came with the advent of winches and various spanning mechanisms such as winch pulleys, cord pulleys, gaffles, cranequins, and screws [‘Medieval Crossbow’, Medieval Britain, http://medievalbritain.com]. The crossbow increasingly evolved into a defensive weapon, a composite crossbow–catapult of sorts, used to defend castles during sieges and favoured for its longer range capacity.

Leonardo Da Vinci, design for a crossbow, ca1500 (made of wood and iron)

Crossbow versus longbow? Which weapon was more effective in medieval warfare situations? There is not a straightforward answer to this question because the two lethal projectiles had different strengths and advantages over each other. The (English) longbow had a flexibility and portability edge over the more clunky crossbow which need time (and sometimes assistance) to load. The crossbow however was more accurate including at distances in honing in on the intended target (with a range of up to 300m). The longbow having simpler parts was cheaper to manufacture and where it had clear advantage over the crossbow was in its frequency of shots. In the time it took the crossbowman to launch two or at most three bolts at the enemy, the longbowman could propel 10 to 12 arrows. The crossbow though perceptibly slower to load and much heavier to carry, required appreciably less strength to operate…it’s locking mechanism allowed the crossbowman to handle stronger draw weight so able to hold the bolt for longer with significantly less physical strain, which translated into better precision (‘Medieval Crossbow’). Another plus for the crossbow was ease of use, it required minimal training cf. the traditional bow which took years of training to master. The downside for the longbow in battle was that it couldn’t penetrate medieval armour as the heavier bolts could do. This didn’t seem to be a problem in the two most famous battles of the 100 Years War—Crecy and Agincourt—where the English bowmen triumphed completely over the numerically superior French and mercenary crossbowmen (and cavalry) [‘A quick history of the English longbow’, Notes from the U.K., 17-Jan-2025, www.notesfromtheuk.com].

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Genoese crossbowmen

The crossbow reaches its obsolescence point: By the 16th century the crossbow had seen its best days and was being supplanted by gunpowder weaponry – muskets, cannons, guns. Firearms had greater range, faster reload times and an overall firepower that crossbows could not begin to match. The final fling for the crossbow as a weapon of choice in war occurred in 1644 at the Battle of Tippermuir in Scotland (English Civil War).

ITV television adventure series of William Tell (late 1950s)

Endnote: Crossbow sellers’ greatest marketeer: Hovering at the intersection of history, myth and popular culture is the heroic legendary figure most popularly associated with deadeye expertise in the crossbow caper and a talent for shooting apples off his own son’s head, William Tell. Elevated by Swiss folklore as a symbol of the struggle for liberation from the tyrannical Austrians, baby boomers—opera buffs aside—will associate the mythical hero William Tell with the 1958–59 British television series The Adventures of William Tell in which Tell (played by Conrad Phillips) is portrayed as a sort of Robin Hood clone but with a different kind of bow and the Swiss Alps rather than Sherwood Forest for backdrop𖤓.

William Tell splitting the apple

𖤓 a nexus not coincidental, ‘William Tell’ was created to exploit the success of another highly popular ITV show of the Fifties The Adventures of Robin Hood. ‘Tell’ followed the earlier series’ familiar formula: a brave citizen turned outsider valiantly leading the resistance on behalf of the oppressed masses against a unredeemable evil tyrant

 

The US Military in War-time Britain: Preserving the American Way of Racial Separation During World War II

Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Racial politics, Social History, Society & Culture, , , , , , , , ,

The United States’ belated entry into the global fight against German Nazism and its Axis partners and the Allies’ strategy of “Germany First” had the consequence of seeing some 1.5 million American troops moving through the United Kingdom between January 1942 and December 1945. This aggregation of forces personnel included 150,000 black American troops (some sources put the figure at 240,000).

This development was to prove problematic both for the US military and its British host as the American armed forces maintained a strict policy of segregation of its personnel…White and African-American servicemen and women served in separate regiments, lived and ate in separate quarters and did not generally mix even in combat situations𝓪. Black servicemen were usually barred from combat roles𝓫 and utilised primarily in support or supply roles in the war (driving trucks, engineering works, catering, etc) [‘“They treated us royally”? Black Americans in Britain during WW2’, Imperial War Museums, (Emily Charles), www.imperialwarmuseums.org.uk].

An African-American regiment seeking directions from an English “bobby” (source: Channel 4)

Meeting American expectations of a segregated army: The dilemma was more acute for the Brits, Churchill had tirelessly courted Roosevelt with the objective of getting the US to intervene in the conflict on the allies’ side, Britain needed Washington’s military involvement and it needed America to bankroll the crippling cost of waging the escalating world war. The thorn in the side for Churchill was that American troops coming to the UK brought with them the US’ “Jim Crow” racial discrimination system which the American military was uncompromisingly wed to𝓬. A recent BBC documentary, Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid, explores how the Conservative war-time government calculatingly turned a blind eye to the Americans’ discriminatory practice towards its own citizens (a practice which Britain itself would not countenance). And yet Britain and its Allies were fighting a war of the highest stakes against Hitler, for freedom from totalitarian dictatorship [‘Channel 4 Examines UK’s ‘Secret Apartheid’ during WWII’, sphere abacus, 07-Oct-2024, www.sphere-abacus’s.com]. The irony of this contradiction was certainly not lost on the African-American servicemen and women stationed in Britain.

The Anglo–American special relationship: With the Churchill government intent on consolidating a “special relationship” with the US, in characteristically British fashion it settled for compromise, it “wouldn’t enforce the US’s extreme race policy, but wouldn’t ask any awkward questions about it either” [‘Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid, review: clickbait title masks a moving wartime story’, Anita Singh, Telegraph, 19-Oct-2024, www.telegraph.co.uk]. Britain acquiesced to Washington’s insistence on segregation but did so covertly, although Churchill biographer Baron Roberts of Belgravia contends that the British prime minister’s 1942 war cabinet comment that Britain would not assist the US Army in enforcing the segregation policy exonerates the Churchill government of collusion (sphere abacus). British soft-pedaling extended to mollifying American sensitivities by officially encouraging Britons in towns where Black soldiers were barracked not to get “too friendly” with them (Charles).

PM Winston Churchill (photo: PA)

Grass roots community support: Thus officially sanctioned, the prejudicial attitudes of White soldiers and officers (and military police) towards their Black countrymen in Britain continued to be given voice. What particularly inflamed the ire of White troops and led to violent clashes between the two groups was the sight of coloured servicemen fraternising and dancing with and enjoying the romantic company of local (white) English women. In fact, despite their government’s appeasing of the US, its failure to object to the colour bar in Britain thus perpetuating the inequality of Black troops, the ordinary people of the UK in the main took a much more positive and accepting view of the Black GIs and airmen (further enraging bigoted White servicemen). A 1943 poll in the UK indicated that the majority of British people opposed segregation [‘The Second World War, 1935 to 1945: Segregation’, RAF Museum, www.rafmuseum.org.uk]. Many Britons during the US occupation voiced a preference for the usually good-mannered Black servicemen over their entitled White counterparts.

Black GIs in rural England (photo: David E. Scherman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty)

Battle of Bamber Bridge: A pitched “battle” between a Black truck regiment and White MPs occurred in this small Lancashire village in 1943, the prolonged exchange of fire between the two groups resulted in one Black soldier being killed and several injured. The catalyst of the violent confrontation was the action of racist White officers who tried to coerce the three pubs in Bamber Bridge into serving whites only, this incident coming closely on top of news of a race riot back home in Detroit which had heightened tensions between the two groups of serving personnel in England. White prejudice was reinforced in the way the confrontation was dealt with by the top brass…the US military command in England chose to view the incident as an act of mutiny on the part of the Black soldiers and 30 of those involved were charged, convicted and court-martialled, whereas none of the White MPs were charged. Later in 1943 there was another inter-racial shootout between African-American and White soldiers stationed in Launceston, Cornwall. Again the trigger was attempts to exclude Black servicemen from the market town’s pubs and again the American military identified the offending party as the Black GIs, characterising them as “mutineers”. At the court-martial proceedings the Black Bamber Bridge defendants aired grievances which make clear their status in Uncle Sam’s army was that of second-class soldiers – compared to white troops they were given poor food, forced to sleep in their trucks when stopped at White bases and they were the victims of military police harassment for minor transgressions which were typically ignored for White GIs [‘UK village marks struggle against US Army racism in World War II’, Danica Kirka, AP, 24-June-2023, www.apnews.com].

Park Street, scene of the Bristol riot, 1944

War-time clashes between White and Black American military personnel weren’t confined to England…there were physical altercations between the two groups in Wales where many Black GIs were stationed at the ports, assigned to work as manual labourers. Blacks were also employed as labourers at the docks in nearby Bristol (west country England) under the supervision of less competent White officers. The city’s worse disturbance, known as the Park Street Riot (July 1944), escalated after heavy-handed attempts by White MPs to discipline the coloured soldiers, resulting in one White MP being stabbed, a Black GI killed and several wounded in the fracas.

The sight of inter-racial couples dancing together, even if in Britain and involving non-American women, was enough to enrage the more bigoted of White American servicemen (source: Gregory S. Cooke Collection)

𝓪 the US Army didn’t end segregation in the ranks until 1948

𝓫 those Black troops who volunteered for combat roles often had to relinquish their rank and take a pay cut…”the Army did not want a Black sergeant commanding a White private” [‘This WWII battle wasn’t against Nazis. It was between Black and white GIs in England’, Lauren Frayer & Fatima Al-Kassab, NPR, 21-Jun-2023, www.npr.org].

𝓬 the British Foreign Office had initially tried to persuade the US not to send Black troops on the grounds that it would create tensions but Washington ignored the request

Conflict at 18,000–Feet in Kargil: Pakistan and India Eyeballing the Nuclear Precipice over Kashmir

Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The post-independence relationship of India and Pakistan has been characterised by ongoing tensions, mutual suspicions and a sequence of short wars involving the sovereign state successors to the British Raj𖤓. At the forefront of this regional disharmony has been Jammu and Kashmir (J & K), the greater part of the area controversially awarded to Hindu-dominated India in the 1947 Partition of the Subcontinent but populated by a Muslim majority.

Kargil: 8,780-ft above sea level

Advancing by stealth across the disputed boundary: The most recent of these short-lived, episodic wars occurred in 1999 in Kargil in the remote union territory of Ladakh. Faced with the frustration of India holding the dominant hand in the disputed Kashmir region and unwilling to consider any alterations to the Line of Control (LoC)𖦹, Pakistan opted for a bold if brash strategy. “Infiltrators” from the Pakistan side, crossed the LoC and took hold of Indian positions in the inhospitable glaciated terrain of Kargil, initially undetected by the Indian command. Alerted to the incursion, the Indian military unleashed a counteroffensive and over two months of fighting drove the Pakistanis back onto their side. Islamabad first sought to explain the military incursion as the work solely of Mujahideen “freedom fighters”, but this deception was quickly exposed with Pakistan paramilitary involvement discovered to be central to the military operation❖.

Kargil and Kashmir (image: insightsonindia.com)

Islamabad’s motives for the act of aggression taken by what Indian media termed “rogue army” elements, seem to have been severalfold. The strategic plan was to cut India’s communication lines in Kashmir between Srinagar and Leh. Pakistan was probably also motivated by a desire to regain lost honour for earlier military reversals at India’s hands, especially the Indian army’s 1984 seizure of Siachen Glacier and the crushing defeat in the 1971 war (Liberation of East Pakistan). Islamabad hoped that the proactive move might also prove a fillip for the flagging Pakistani insurgency movement in Kashmir [RAGHAVAN, SRINATH. Review of Dissecting the Kargil Conflict, by Peter Lavoy. Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 44/45 (2010): 29–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20787524]. Essentially, Pakistan’s intent was to create a crisis in Kashmir with the aim of forcing New Delhi to sit down to negotiations and finally settle the Kashmir imbroglio.

Pakistani soldiers in snow-capped Kargil (source: au.pinterest.com)

Strategic miscalculation: The upshot for Islamabad was pretty disastrous, the status quo remained in New Delhi’s favour, strategically Pakistan failed to hold its advance position into enemy territory and found itself diplomatically isolated by its action…most of the international powers, including its ally China, criticised Pakistan for what some observers saw as its “reckless”, “adventurist”, “risk–adverse” behaviour. [Tellis, Ashley J., et al. “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KARGIL CRISIS.” Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis, 1st ed., RAND Corporation, 2001, pp. 5–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mr1450usca.8. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024]. This generally-held perception of Pakistan resorting to intemperate action allowed India to turn the information war in the Kargil conflict into a diplomatic victory for New Delhi.

Pakistan, First Islamic state to join the nuclear club (source: Topcity–1)

Spectre of the nuclear option: While the brief Kargil War was limited to a low intensity conflict, the potential was there for it to escalate into an expanded conventional war, and most alarmingly, into a nuclear confrontation. The possibility of this happening existed because a year prior to Kargil, in 1998, Pakistan joined India as the second South Asian state to attain nuclear weapon capacity. This became more acutely critical to the international community during the war when, in response to India’s massive build-up of military arms in Kargil-Dras sector, Pakistan foreign secretary Ahmed hinted that the country might resort to using nuclear weapons. Islamabad may have only produced the nuclear card as a deterrent to an Indian counter-thrust, nonetheless Pakistan Prime Minister Sharif was clearly engaging in nuclear brinkmanship – by moving nuclear warheads towards the border (for which he was roundly rebuked by US President Clinton) [‘India and Pakistan Fought in 1999. Why Didn’t It Go Nuclear?’, Sébastien Roblin, The National Interest, 14-June-2021, www.nationalinterest.org].

Indian soldiers celebrate victory in the Kargil War (photo: business–standard.com)

No let-up for the troubled Kashmiris: Although there hasn’t been any new wars in Jammu & Kashmir since 1999, tensions and conflicts have continued virtually unabated since then.  In 2019 there were troop clashes across the de facto border following Pakistani Islamist terrorist attacks. With Prime Minister Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist regime committed to integrating J & K, an administrative rearrangement of the territory saw it lose its autonomy and be downgraded in status. Civil and political rights of the majority Muslim population have been eroded and Indian security forces are frequently accused of human rights violations. Separatist and jihadist militants continue to wage a protracted insurgency against the authorities [‘Indian Kashmir’, Freedom in the World 2024, https://freedomhouse.org]. 

Heavy Indian army presence in Kashmir fuelling Pakistani resentment (photo: pakistanpolitico.com)

Postscript: Atlantique Incident After fighting in Kargil ceased in July 1999 there was no easing of Indo–Pakistani tensions. Just one month later the Indian airforce shot down a Pakistan navy plane in the Rann of Kutch (border land between Pakistan’s Sindh province and Western India’s Kutch district), accused of violating the former’s air space. The matter dragged out with both sides blaming each other and a failed international court appeal, leading to a further deterioration in the ruptured relationship.

Rann of Kutch, site of Atlantique Incident (Sir Creek) location of a second long-running Ind–Pak border dispute

 

𖤓 1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999

𖦹 the temporary border separating the two countries in the Himalayas region

❖ in so doing it breached the Simla Agreement (1972) between the two neighbours

The 1895 Republic of Formosa: Defying a Japanese Fait Accompli for 151 Days

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Since 1949, for the small island-state of Taiwan (ROC), the question of its security and independence has been dominated by its hostile and fractious relationship with its large mainland neighbour, communist China (PRC). But 130 years ago the people of Taiwan were preoccupied less with the threat of Chinese subjugation than with that of another emerging Asian giant, Japan. In 1894-95 the Empire of Japan and Qing Dynasty China fought a one-sided, eight-month war, resulting in a humiliating Chinese capitulation and the loss of a number of Chinese-controlled territories to Japan (Korea, Taiwan and the Pescadores (now Penghu Islands)){𝓪}.

1896 Meiji map of Taiwan under Japanese rule (image: pinterest.com.au)

Japanese spoils of war: Under the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ended the war, the Qing government ceded Taiwan (a province of China since 1887) to the victorious Japanese…the Japanese military has already captured the strategic Pescadores in the Taiwan Strait while peace negotiations were still taking place, thus blocking the possibility of Chinese reinforcements being despatched for the mainland to help the Taiwanese. This prompted a defiant reaction from within Taiwan…a group of Taiwanese notables led by politician Qiu Fengjia viewed the outcome as a betrayal and determined that they would resist the Japanese takeover. The group declared independence and proclaimed a free and democratic “Republic of Formosa”. The former Chinese governor of Taiwan Tang Jingsong was persuaded to take the office of president of the Republic of Formosa. As the Sino-Japanese treaty had already given legal status to the annexation, no international recognition was afforded the new republic. As for China itself, the Qing government kept strict adherence to the terms of Shimonoseki—compliantly cooperating with Japanese objectives—although there was considerable unofficial support, especially in Beijing, for the Taiwanese insurrectionists.

A Japanese triptych woodcut print of scene from the Japanese invasion of Taiwan

Baguashan and beyond: On 29 May 1895 the Japanese under General Kageaki invaded northeastern Taiwan and commenced their campaign to pacify the rebellious locals. They met little resistance in capturing Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, and the army pushed south. “Black flag” general Liu Yang-fu was now the effective leader of the republic’s resistance (the unnerved Tang having fled back to the mainland). Under Liu, the Taiwanese fighters comprising militia and volunteers were no match for the Japanese soldiers’ superior manpower and training, forcing them to resort mainly to guerrilla warfare. In central Taiwan the resistance was stiffer, with the Taiwanese militia almost halting the Japanese at the Battle of Baguashan (late August), ultimately though the numerically stronger and better armed Japanese attained their objective of taking the town of Changhua, opening up the south to its advance. The push rolled on, eventually reaching the remaining southern Republican stronghold Tainan. By this time Liu had fled the country and the disillusioned Qing troops defending Tainan were persuaded to surrender the city, bringing the short war to its long expected conclusion, with it the irrevocable collapse of the Republic of Formosa [‘The rise and fall of the Republic of Formosa’, Gerrit van der Wees, Taipei Times, 04-June-2018, www.taipeitimes.com]. The Japanese victory was comprehensive but it took five months to subdue the island, much longer than it had anticipated at the outset. After the war Japan declared Taiwan pacified, however scattered resistance to its rule continued in the form of uprisings by Chinese nationalists and Hokkien villagers engaging and harassing the occupying Japanese force for years after.

Imperial Japanese troops, capture of Taipei, 1895

The casualties of the Yiwei War (as it is known in Chinese) on the Taiwanese side amounted to around 14,000 deaths including civilians. The Japanese lost over 1,000 killed or wounded in action, a moderate toll compared to the Taiwanese losses, however disease, especially dysentery and malaria, exacted a much higher death toll on the Japanese troops (officially 6,903 dead) than the Chinese had inflicted on them in combat [Jonathan Clements, Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan (2024)].

The short-lived republic produced its own series of stamps for the purpose of raising finance to run its administration and military defence

A desire for progressive change?: Critics tend to dismiss the ephemeral Taiwanese ‘Republic’ as inconsequential, its material and military strength dooming it to failure from the get-go in the face of imperial Japan’s colonisation mission. Nonetheless the brief Formosa republican experiment did pave the ground for some lasting positive effects…helping to shape the island’s individuality and distinctive history, it demonstrated a genuine taste on the part of educated and literate Taiwanese for representative government based on democratic principles, and in the long term it signified to the Taiwanese people that their fate was ultimately in their own hands [Jonathan Manthorpe, Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan (2002)]. Its advocates and defenders in 1895 created the trappings and symbols of a modern sovereign state – its own distinctive (yellow tiger) flag. The Formosa government issued its own paper money and its own postage stamps. The experience was also valuable in playing a part in shaping a Taiwanese national identity, helping to unify disparate groups within the island society, Hoklo speakers, Hakka and the aboriginal population (Wees).

The Republic of Formosa (Lion) flag

{𝓪} the Liaodong Peninsula (Dalian, parts of Anshan, Dandong and Yingkou in China’s northeast) had also been given to Japan but under pressure from the Triple Intervention (Russia, France and Germany acting purely in their own self-interests), the Japanese accepted a deal to retrocede it back to the Qing Chinese

{𝓫} Formosa (Ilha Formosa = “beautiful island”) was the name Portuguese sailors gave to Taiwan, also used by Dutch colonists

The 13th Century Latin Empire: A Patchwork of Loosely Arranged Fiefdoms and Principalities Nominally under the Central Authority of Constantinople

International Relations, Medieval history,, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The siege of Constantinople in 1204, by Palma il Giovane

In earlier blogs we have seen how the ruling elites from aristocratic Byzantine Greek families managed to carve out chunks of the vast Byzantine Empire and establish their own imperial dynasties in the early 13th century. The three rump states of Trebizond, Nicaea and Epirus all came into being at the expense of the Latin Empire. Their action was a reaction to the Crusade leaders from Catholic Europe who had deposed the old regime in Constantinople (the Angelos dynasty) and proceeded to divvy up the imperial Byzantine lands among themselves and their financial backers. The latter, representing the political and commercial interests of Venice, a key player in the whole enterprise, did very well, netting three-eighths of the old empire’s strategic possessions including Crete) and innumerable war spoils from Byzantium. The crusader hierarchy elected from their leaders, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and Hainaut, as the first Latin emperor of Constantinople.

Nomenclature: the term “Latin Empire” was not contemporary to the period, and was only applied by historians in the 16th century to distinguish the Crusader feudal state from the classical Roman Empire and the  Byzantine Empire (both of which called itself “Roman”). The term “Latin” was chosen because the crusaders—Franks, Venetians, and other Westerners—were Roman Catholic and used Latin as their liturgical and scholarly language in contrast to the Eastern Orthodox locals who used Greek in both liturgy and common speech. The Byzantines referred to the Latin Empire as the Frankokratia (“rule of the Franks”) or the Latinokratia (“rule of the Latins”). The crusaders themselves in documents tended to use the expression “Empire of Constantinople” or more commonly referred to the empire as “Romania” and themselves as “Romans” [Jacobi, David (1999), “The Latin empire of Constantinople and the Frankish states in Greece”, in Abulafia, David (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. V: c. 1198–c. 1300, (Cambridge University Press), pp. 525–542].

Latin imperial crest

Attempts by the Crusader state to expand its imperial boundaries was hampered by constant conflict with its neighbours, the Bulgarian Empire to the north and the three Byzantine successor states. Baldwin I didn’t last long as Latin emperor, his army was crushed by Tsar Kaloyan’s Bulgarian troops at the Battle of Adrianople, with Baldwin captured and dying in prison later in 1205. Latin fortunes improved for a while with his successor, Henry of Flanders (for competence, the pick of the Latin emperors by a wide margin), who won back most of the lost territory in Thrace and concluded a successful peace treaty with the Bulgarian enemies after marrying Kaloyan’s daughter.

After Henry’s death there was a swift turnover of Latin regents🄰 and the Despotate of Epirus stepped up its campaign to wrest the Kingdom of Thessalonica from the Latin Empire, finally capturing it in 1224. The threat from Epirus receded however after the Epirotes were badly beaten by the Bulgarians under Tsar John Asen (Battle of Klokotnitsa, 1230)…around this time the burgeoning power of the Empire of Nicaea replaced Epirus as the principal Byzantine threat to the Latin state.

The Latin empire, now led by Baldwin II (known as Porphyrogenitus – “born to the purple”), was economically diminished and reduced in area to little beyond the city of Constantinople itself. Baldwin spent much of his long reign as emperor scurrying round the courts of Western Europe cap-in-hand in a largely fruitless quest for aid for Constantinople’s impoverished state. Nicaea meanwhile was tightening the screws on Constantinople. In 1259 the Nicaeans defeated the Principality of Achaea, a vassal state of the Latin Empire (Battle of Pelagonia). The loss of Achaea, the strongest of the Frankish states in Greece, was a decisive blow for the Latins in the defence of their imperial capital.

Seal of Baldwin II Porphyrogenitus

After a failed attempt to take Constantinople in 1260 the Niceans were ultimately successful in the endeavour the following year, without planning to do so. A small force of Nicaea on a scouting mission in the proximity of Constantinople’s walls fortuitously discovered that virtually the entire garrison and the Venetian fleet had temporarily vacated the city, leaving it defenceless. Seizing the opportunity the Nicaeans located an unguarded entry point and stormed the city, capturing it in the name of Nicaea’s emperor, Michael VIII Palaiologos. The Latins had lost, irrevocably, their Byzantine empire, with their remaining possessions reduced to a few enclaves in southern Greece, the title of emperor was nonetheless retained, in name only, by a succession of claimants up until 1383.

Composition of the Latin Empire: The empire was a feudalistic polity, comprising numerous vassal states or fiefdoms, including the Duchy of Philippopolis (northern Thrace); Lemnos (island in the Aegean); the Kingdom of Thessalonica (Macedonia and Thessaly)🄱; the County of Salona (modern Amfissa in central Greece); the Marquisate of Bodonitsa (central Greece)🄲; the Principality of Achaea (encompassing the Morea or Peloponnese peninsula🄳; the Duchy of Athens (encompassing Attica, Boeotia and parts of southern Thessaly); the Duchy of Naxos (or of the Archipelago) (encompassing most of the Cyclades islands); the Triarchy of Negroponte (island of Negroponte (modern Euboea); the Principality of Adrianople (modern Edirne, eastern Thrace)🄴; the County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos (several Ionian islands)🄵. All of these entities and regions within the Byzantine world were ultimately absorbed by the Ottoman Empire.

The Latin Empire entities, Venetian possessions and the Byzantine rump states

Encumbrances to empire: The Latin Empire was intended to recreate the Roman Empire in an eastern setting (Byzantium) with a Catholic monarchy, but as a political entity it only lasted a mere 57 years (cf. the preceding Byzantine Empire which, established by Constantine in 330 CE, was in its 874th year when Constantinople was sacked). The Latin Empire failed abjectly to establish itself as an enduring power, the seeds of which were present from the onset. The Crusade leaders started dividing up who gets what part of the Byzantine “pie” before they had started the process of conquest in some of the regions (in fact the conquest of the former Byzantine imperial space was never completed). The approach to the whole task lacked cohesion. Moreover, the “individual expeditions undertaken by various Latin knights and commoners, as well as by the Venetian state, prevented systematic implementation of the partition plan”. The territories the Latins occcupied in the European part of “Romania“ and the Aegean, as a consequence, became “a mosaic of (mainly small) political entities”[David Jacoby, ‘After the fourth crusade: The Latin empire of constantinople and the Frankish states’, (Jan. 2009) DOI:10.1017/CHOL9780521832311.028 in The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500–1492 (pp.759-778)]. These separate smaller “principalities and regions were in principle dependent on the Latin emperor’s suzerainty “ but were in “de facto (terms) practically independent entities” [Filip Van Tricht, The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium: The Empire of Constantinople (1204–1228) (2011)]. All of this worked against the task of making the empire centrally unified and coherent. Allied to this, Venice’s singular pursuit of its self-interest by its nature worked to the detriment of crusader goals. Another factor weighing down the Latin Empire was its economic decline, heavily in debt to the Venetians, Latin emperors were forced to resort to hocking their royal jewels to meet their costs. A succession of wars with the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine claimants proved costly. By the time of the last Latin emperor, Baldwin II, the population of the once-great metropolis Constantinople had plummeted alarmingly.

🄰 this period was the Latinokrakaria

🄱 Thessalonica’s short history as an quasi-independent entity was characterised by ongoing warfare, principally with the Bulgarian Empire before being conquered by Epirus (1224)

🄲 both Salona and Bodonitsa originally were vassal states of the Kingdom of Thessalonica

🄳 Achaea, the strongest of the Crusader states, exercising suzerainty over the Lordship of Argos and Nauplia. Achaea continued to prosper even after the eclipse of the Latin Empire. Its main rival was the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea which eventually succeeded in conquering the principality

🄴 the Principality of Adrianople committed itself to a course of fluidity in regard to the dominant powers venturing into its orbit, shifting allegiances readily from Constantinople to Epirus to Bulgaria to Nicaea during the 1220s for the quid pro qua of retaining its local autonomy [Filip Van Tricht, ‘The Byzantino-Latin Principality of Adrianople and the Challenge of Feudalism (1204/6–ca. 1227/28)’, www.core.ac.uk]

🄵 in addition to these both the Genoese and Venetians possessed colonies in the Greek islands and in mainland Greece at one time or other (Genoa: including Lesbos, Lemnos, Thasos, Samothrace, Ainos, Lordship of Chios and port of Phocaea; Venice: including Crete, Corfu, Lefkas, Tinos and Mykonos)

The 13th Century Empire of Nicaea: An Empire in Exile and the Restoration of Imperial Byzantine

Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Medieval history,, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

After crusaders from the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204—instead of attacking and subduing Egypt as the original plan was meant to be—the vast Byzantine Empire splintered into four main, distinct entities, comprising a Latin successor state in the Balkans and Constantinople itself, and three Byzantine Greek rump states. One of these in north-eastern Anatolia became the small Empire of Trebizond, which I looked at in a recent blog (08-May-2024), ‘Byzantine-Lite: The Empire of Trebizond under the Komnenos Dynasty’.

The Byzantine neighbourhood, post-1204

The largest and most powerful of the Greek successor states to emerge was Nicaea (then the name of a city-state in north-western Anatolia). Styling itself under the cognomen Empire of Nicaea, the dominant Laskaris family of nobles, proclaimed Theodore (I) Lakaris emperor (basileus) in 1205. The Laskarii staked a claim on the Byzantine throne as well but had plenty of competition, the other two Greek Byzantine successor states, Trebizond and (the Despotate of) Epirus, both advanced claims to be the rightful heirs to the Byzantine crown.

Emperor Theodore I Lakaris

Proceeding by conquest, alliance and intermarriage: While Theodore I and his successors within the Lakaris dynasty were eyeing off Byzantium, the Nicene Empire had plenty of more immediate challenges to face. The territorial boundaries of the empire was surrounded by hostile states, so it had to deal constantly with multiple conflicts and crisis points. Ongoing wars were waged against the Latin Empire𝕬 (Henry of Flanders, Robert of Courtenay) to the north; against the Seljuk Turks of Iconium (Asia Minor); and against its rival successor states, Trebizond and Epirus𝕭. Aside from waging war Theodore deflected some of the threats to Nicaea by the stratagem of alliances and arranged royal marriages.

Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (source: Etsy.com)

Less Roman, more Hellenistic: Theodore’s successor as emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (his son-in-law) continued the strategy, allying with Bulgaria against the Latins and to help neutralise any threats from Epirus𝕮. John failed in a combined Nicaean-Bulgarian siege of Constantinople in 1235 but his reign did achieve military victories and diplomacy which resulted in an enlargement of Nicaea’s imperial territories…eg, Battle of Poemanenum, 1224, John decisively defeated the Latin army, giving Nicaea a foothold on the Balkans littoral; military campaigning against Epirus led to new Nicene gains in Macedonia and Thrace (Thessalonica fell to John in 1246). John’s successful rule also benefitted from his domestic policy, the economy was reformed, agriculture boomed, taxes were reduced and prosperity in Nicaea thrived. Emperor Theodore II, a man of letters, succeeeded John III, marking a cultural renaissance for the empire – Hellenistic learning flourished with Nicaea forging a more distinctly overt Greek identity, throwing off the shadow of its Roman past. At the same time Theodore undertook a military restructuring, the creation of a formidable army of native Greek troops, ending the state’s reliance on foreign mercenaries [‘The Rise of the Empire of Nicaea: How the Byzantines Reclaimed the Throne’, Timeless Treasure, (video, You Tube) Nov. 2023].

Battle of Pelagonia, 1259 (source: Attarisiya/X.com)

Palaiologos’ palace coup: Theodore II’s reign unfortunately was too brief, he died in 1258 after only four years at the helm, with the throne falling to his eight-year-old son, John IV, creating a situation ripe for instability and opportunism. The power vacuum was quickly filled by the grand constable (megas konostaulos) Michael Palaiologos who launched a coup, making himself co-emperor with John IV. Within a short period Michael had deposed the infant John (and had him blinded). Taking the throne as sole emperor (basileus), Michael VIII Palaiologos’ dynastic line continued to rule the empire right up to the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople in 1453. Meantime, Michael consolidated his position and that of Nicaea by defeating the alliance of William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea and Michael II Komnenos Doukas of Epirus at the Battle of Pelagonia in 1259.

The Gate of the Spring – entrance in the Constantinople walls breached by Strategopolous and his soldiers

Capturing Constantinople by accident: Pelagonia elevated Michael’s prestige at home, however with the stigma of the “emperor-usurper” still figuring prominently in many Nicaean minds, for genuine legitimacy Michael needed to secure the ultimate goal, the prize of Constantinople [‘Michael VIII Palaiologos’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. First attempts at conquest in 1260 saw Michael personally leading a failed siege attempted on the city. While Michael was doing a deal with the Republic of Genoa to secure naval support for a new assault on the Latin capital, the unexpected happened. Nicaean general, Alexios Strategopolous and a small force were on a reconnaissance mission which took them close to the city of Constantinople, when it stumbled on a virtually unguarded city/citadel (most of the Latin garrison and the naval fleet were away conducting a raid on the Nicene island of Daphnousia). Alexios seized the opportunity and his force surreptitiously found its way inside the fortified walls where it easily overcame feeble resistance. Baldwin II the Latin emperor, panicked and fled the city, leaving the Nicaeans in complete control of Constantinople.

Emperor Michael VII Palaiologos

A hollow prize: Michael VIII by a stroke of good fortune had regained Byzantium for Nicaea, but the city and the empire was a shell of its former glory. Constantinople was in a very impoverished and diminished state, ravaged by war, most of its treasure either destroyed or shipped off to Western Europe (much of it ended up in Venice). Michael did what he could to fortify and strengthen the restored empire including a massive building project, but Constantinople as a trading port declined and Byzantium would never again hold the military and economic sway it commanded before the 1204 sacking by the Crusaders. After Charles I of Anjou triumphed over Manfred, king of Sicily (Battle of Benevento, 1266), Michael’s foreign policy became preoccupied with the rivalry with Charles. This proved a catastrophic blunder, long-term, as Michael withdrew troops from their posts in Asia Minor to bolster his army in confronting the Latins in the Aegean littoral, thus weakening his Anatolian defences against the burgeoning threat posed by the Seljuks to his east.

Hagia Sophia (former church) in Iznik (modern name of Nicaea) (photo: Greekcitytimes.com)

Byzantine post-Michael VIII, the inevitable decline and fall: After Emperor Michael’s death in 1282, his dynastic successors managed merely to squander the restored empire’s “remaining resources in several bloody civil wars” [‘The Accidental Reconquest of Constantinople’, Krystian Gajdzis, Medium, 28–Aug-2022, www.medium.com]. The cost of looking inward was ill-fated neglect of the growing menace of the tribe of Osman and their descendants’ piecemeal capture of Byzantine cities across northern Anatolia, taking them inexorably closer and closer to Constantinople, something succeeding Byzantine emperors were increasingly powerless to prevent [Roger Crowley, 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West, (2005)].

City of Nicaea: fell to the Ottomans in 1331 (Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, source: Byzantium.gr)

𝕬 the Latins were regularly bankrolled by the affluent Republic of Venice

𝕭 Nicaea got some respite from Seljuk border raids with the appearance of the all-conquering Mongol horde in Anatolia, forcing the Sultanate of Rum to focus its energies on repelling the Mongol advance

𝕮 John continued the practice, marrying off his son (Theodore) to a Bulgarian princess

Liqian, China: Settlement Site of Rome’s Lost Legion? Theory, History and Myth

Ancient history, Geography, International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chinese accounts of antiquity from The Book of the Later Han record the first contact between the Chinese and Roman empires as taking place in AD 166 (an event corroborated by the Roman historian Publius Annius Florus). This initial diplomatic contact of the two empires resulted from a visit of a Roman emissary—authorised by Emperor Marcus Aurelius—to Emperor Huang and the Chinese Western Han Dynasty court. Trade links were subsequently established, Chinese silk for upper class Romans and Roman glassware and high-quality cloth for the Chinese.

Book of the Later Han

Communications blocked by Parthian rivalry: This initial encounter was an initiative on the part of the Romans but earlier than this the Han Chinese had tried, unsuccessfully, to make direct contact with Rome. In AD 97 the Han Chinese general, Ban Chao, despatched ambassador Kan (or Gan) Ying on a journey to Rome(α)…upon reaching Mesopotamia from where he intended to travel by sea to his ultimate destination, Kan Ying was dissuaded from continuing by the Parthians’ exaggerated advice that the sea voyage could take up to two years to complete. Parthia had a vested interest in thwarting the forging of a Sino-Roman mutually-beneficial nexus which might negatively impact Parthian profitability from the lucrative Silk Road [‘The First Contact Between Rome and China, www.silkroad.com].

The Silk Road: (source: MPI/Getty Images)

The Silk Road: The natural route for expansion, Rome eastward and China westward, was along the Silk Road…with Roman eyes obsessively coveting Chinese silk, the premier fabric of the ancient world, and China Han rulers also keen to exchange for Roman goods, the incentives were present, but direct contact between the two great ancient empires did not eventuate(Ⴆ). Standing in the way were a host of obstacles – the distance between them was vast and over inhospitable terrain; another hostile, competing empire, Parthia, occupied the middle space on the Silk Road. Roman-Chinese trade depended therefore on intermediaries, “the people of Central Asia—most notably the Sogdians, as well as the Parthians, and merchants from the Roman client states of Palmyra and Petra—act(ing) as the middlemen” [‘Ancient Rome and Ancient China: Did They Ignore Each Other?’, Vedran Bileta, The Collector, 08-Nov-2022, www.thecollector.com].

Romani indu Sinae? In the 1940s and 50s there emerged one dissenting voice to the scholarly consensus that Romans never made it to ancient China. An American Sinologist Homer H Dubs, lecturing in Chinese at Oxford University, wrote a series of articles on the subject of Roman and Chinese contacts in the Han period, culminating in his controversial 1957 book, A Roman City in Ancient China, which made the startling claim that legionnaires not only reached China but established a Roman settlement on the western fringes of the Han empire.

Battle of Carrhae (source: wikio.org)

Dubs’ “lost Roman legion”:hypothesis: In 53 BC a Roman army under the powerful Marcus Licinius Crassus was on the receiving end of a crushing defeat in the Battle of Carrhae at the hands of Parthian heavy cavalry and archers led by Spahbed (commander) Surena in southern Turkey. The Roman legions lost massive numbers of men, either killed (including its leader Crassus) or captured, in one of the Roman Empire’s worst-ever military disasters. The Roman prisoners-of-war, numbering, according to Plutarch, 10,000, were apparently carted off to Central Asia where reportedly they were married off to local women(ƈ).

Dragon Blade, (2015) 🎥 starring Jackie Chan, a fictionalised movie very loosely based on the Roman legion story

This is where Dubs and his outlier theory comes in…the Oxford professor proposed that 100–145 of the Romans ended up fighting for the Xiongnu(ԃ) against a Chinese Han army in another battle some 17 years later. The Battle of Zhizhi (36 BC), in modern-day Kazakhstan, resulted a victory for the Han Chinese, with the Xiongnu chieftain Zhizhi Chanyu among the dead. Dubs contended that these 100-odd Roman legionnaires fought in the battle, his evidence of this was a Chinese source for the battle, Ban Gu, who referred to 100 or so foot-soldiers of the enemy who employed a strange, fish-scale formation in fighting, interpreted by Dubs as a reference to the Romans’ famous phalanx defence, the testudo (tortoise) formation of interlocking shields. Dubs speculated that the captured Roman soldiers found themselves POWs once again, this time of the Chinese who transported the 100 Roman captives back to the Chinese Empire where they were resettled in Li-jien(ҽ) (later called “Liqian”), located on the edge of the Gobi Desert in modern-day Gansu Province.

Roman testudo formation

Descendants of Roman legionnaires in a Gansu village? Gene testing: Professor Dubs’ controversial theory has drawn the attention of historians, researchers, archeologists, anthropologists and even geneticists over the years, but not widespread support. Detractors have generally debunked the theory, stressing the lack of tangible archeological or historical evidence for a Roman settlement in Liqian, no findings of habitation found, eg, no Roman coins or weapons.

Some residents of contemporary Liqian village (Yongchang), noted for their green or blue eyes, fair-coloured hair and non-Chinese facial features, underwent genetic testing in 2005 which gave some credence to the Roman link theory…a DNA finding of 56% Caucasian. Further DNA testing in 2007 deflated those hopes however, showing that 77% of the villagers’ ‘Y’ chromosomes were limited to east Asia. Researchers from nearby Lanzhou University have pointed out that it was standard practice for the Roman military to employ foreign mercenaries (Europeans and Africans) for their campaigns Moreover, the demonstration that a significant block of the Liqian respondents have foreign origins doesn’t prove that they were necessarily Roman. Professor Yang Dongle (Beijing Normal University) concurred with this view, noting that inter-racial marriage along the Silk Road was far from uncommon. Yang added that research has confirmed that Liqian County was settled a good seventy years earlier than the Roman POWs are supposed to have got there [Matthew Bossons, ‘The Vanished Roman Legion of Ancient China’, That’s, (Nov. 2018), www.thatsmag.com; ‘Finding the lost Roman legion in NW China’, New China TV (video), 2015].

Villager Cai Junnian (aka “Cai Luoma”) with his green eyes and atypical Chinese features has become something of a poster boy for the Liqian Roman ancestry claims (photo: Natalie Behring)

Endnote: Constructing a “Roman world” to exploit the rural legend The dubiousness of the connexion aside, the media attention generated by the DNA tests and the distinctive look of the Liqian Rong has prompted proactive locals to exploit the tourist angle for what it’s worth. There’s been a concerted effort to try to capitalise on the alleged Roman ancestry in Yongchang County – in a kind of “Disneyfication” elements of neoclassical architecture have popped up in the village, a Romanesque pavilion with Doric-style columns, public statues of ancient Romans, etc. Zhelaizhai (or Lou Zhuangzi) village, as Liqian was renamed, is now marketed by Chinese tourist operators as “Liqian Ancient City”.

Statues of Roman legionnaires at the Jinshan Temple visitors’ centre

(α) or as the Chinese called Roman Empire, Da Chi’en, also rendered as Daqin (“Great Qin”)

(Ⴆ) ancient Latin writers regularly referred to Roman travellers journeying east to a country they called Serica (ser = silk in Latin)…its thought that by this that they meant the Central Asian lands, possibly including northwestern China. The name Serica, to some Romans may alternately have been a collective description for a bunch of south and east Asian countries including China and even India

(ƈ ) though, according to Pliny the Elder, the legionnaires were stationed at Margiana on the Silk Road to guard Parthia’s eastern frontier

(ԃ) a nomadic tribal confederation of Hunnic peoples

(ҽ) Dubs postulates that this was the most ancient Chinese name for Rome [H.H.Dubs, ‘A Roman City in Ancient China’, Greece and Rome, Vol. 4, Issue 2, Oct. 1957, pp.139-148]

Britain’s Compulsive Afghan Complex: Venturing Thrice into the “Graveyard of Empires”

Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , ,

“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal … these things they misname empire.”
~ Tacitus, (Roman historian) c.AD 98.

۞ ۞ ۞

For much of the 19th century and beyond Britain had a preoccupation with the country of Afghanistan. Basically, it was all about Russia and India. Britain was engaging in a power struggle with Tsarist Russia for influence and expansion in Asia and Africa, part of what later became known as “the Great Game”. Russia had slowly grown its empire through “expansion creep” over several centuries, eastward to the Pacific but also pushing south deep into Central Asia. Britain’s concern was the security of its greater Indian sub-continent which provided the vast treasure trove of riches and resources which bankrolled Britain’s industrialisation juggernaut as well as paying for the upkeep of its other imperial territories. Russia’s systematic conquest of the Muslim states of Central Asia signified to Britain the likelihood that British India was also on the Russians’ radar.

Afghanistan & Central Asia, 19th century

Afghanistan found itself in the middle of this emerging 19th century conflict, stuck between the imperial ambitions of Britain and Russia. From the British perspective, Afghanistan, commanding the strategic northwestern passes into British India, its value to Britain was as a buffer state blocking Russian expansion any further south. British policy, hell-bent on preventing Russia getting a foothold in Afghanistan, led directly to war between Britain and Afghanistan in the 1830s with a British invasion (First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-42)…a war not universally popular in Britain as a number of politicians believed the Russian threat to India was highly exaggerated.

Map image: collection.nam.ac.uk/

Britain invaded Afghanistan with its “Army of the Indus” comprising East India Company troops including a large number of Indian sepoys. The army had early successes, capturing the seemingly impregnable Ghazni Fortress in 1839 and was able to march on the Afghan capital Kabul unencumbered. The British turfed out the ruling amir Dōst Mohammad and replaced him with the previous ruler Shah Shujā. This turned out to be a grievous misreading of the political situation by Britain which held a false notion of Afghan national unity (at best the country was at that time a loose grouping of semi-autonomous tribes) [Jones, Seth G. Review of Imperial Britain’s Afghan Agony, by Diana Preston. The National Interest, no. 118 (2012): 52–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42896440.] Shujā, of the deposed Durrani dynasty, far from being a strong, unifying ruler, was an oppressive tyrant extremely unpopular with the masses. Consequently insurgency broke out in Kabul and in different regions of the country, forcing the British force to abandon Kabul and retreat from Afghanistan. The retreat was calamitous, one of the worst calamities in British military history. Beset by harsh winter conditions (subzero temperatures) and rugged terrain, the straggling army “was eviscerated as it battled through biting cold, knee-deep snow and apoplectic tribesmen” (Jones). Of an original 4,500 soldiers and 16,000 support personnel, only a handful of men made it back to safety.

British army, Bōlan Pass into Afghanistan

Stinging from the catastrophic defeat and the loss of an entire army, a disgrace for nation and empire, the British Raj command launched a retaliatory raiding party from India several months later which sacked Kabul, but this was only ever, after the main event, a pyrrhic victory for the British. In 1843 the hated Shujā was assassinated and Dōst Mohammad and the Bārakzai dynasty duly resumed the Afghan throne.

Russia also experienced a military setback trying to invade the Khanate of Khiva in 1839

1878 Afghan war

The British made a victor’s choice for the new amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan (Sher Ali’s nephew), who agreed to Britain taking control of Afghanistan’s foreign policy (making it a protectorate of Britain) while London promised to not interfere with Afghan internal affairs (the status quo within the country was thus resumed). Within several years Britain and Russia reached a deal which demarcated the northern frontier of Afghanistan[̊𝓪], clearly defining the southern limit of Russian expansion in Central Asia [Azmi, M. R. (1984). RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL ASIA AND THE AFGHAN QUESTION (1865-85). Pakistan Horizon, 37(3), 106–135. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41393703].

Panjdeh incident

Before the Russo-British accord was reached, a diplomatic incident at Panjdeh, just inside the Afghan border with Turkmenistan in 1885 brought the rival empires to the brink of war. Owing in part to the poorly-defined boundary, a clash ensued between a Russian army and a force of the amir’s Afghans, with considerable casualties on the Afghan side. In the end diplomatic negotiations and a timely intercession from the amir averted war. Afterwards Russia and Britain nutted out an agreement on the issue which allowed the Russians, despite having been the aggressors, to keep the Panjdeh territories.

Gurkha Rifles v Afghan tribesmen. Artist: Frederick Roe, 1920 (collection.nam.ac.uk/)

1919 Afghan war

A palace coup in 1919, bringing a new amir, Amānullāh, and the “war hawks” party to the helm of Afghan politics, was the spark for an Afghan military incursion into eastern India in the aim of encouraging rebellion in India’s northwestern frontier and regaining lost Pathan lands. Amānullāh had timed the invasion to take advantage of British and Indian war-weariness from four long years of world war. The fighting was pretty indecisive but with the British blocking Afghan invasion routes into India both parties soon agreed to a ceasefire[̊𝓫]. The subsequent Treaty of Rawalpindi handed Afghanistan one definite positive from the war, Britain finally extended full recognition of Afghan sovereignty[̊𝓬], and for the British, the peace of mind of having the Durand Line reaffirmed as the undisputed frontier between Afghanistan and British India.

Afghan delegates to 1919 peace talks with British (source: afghanistan-analysts.org/)

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[̊𝓪] establishing what British Prime Minister Disraeli called a “scientific frontier”

[̊𝓫] beyond the peace maverick Afghan tribesmen continued to raid British forces in Waziristan and along the northwest frontier

[̊𝓬] accordingly Afghans also refer to this conflict as the War for Independence

1919 Afghan war

Italy’s Acute Case of Empire Envy in the Early 1900s

Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Invoking Italy’s heritage: the glory of Rome (photo: ISTOCK.COM/MUSTANG_79)

In the late 19th century the Kingdom of Italy was still in its infancy as a fully-fledged, unified state in Europe, nonetheless Italians were casting an envious eye over the smorgasbord of colonial possessions other European powers were snaffling up (seemingly effortlessly) in the free-for-all known as the “Scramble for Africa”. In a climate of burgeoning nationalist sentiments Italian politicians were quick to underscore the country’s historical association with Ancient Rome by way of its imperial credentials. By the turn of the century Italy had secured a minor foothold in Africa with two East African colonies, in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, but what it really wanted was a base in North Africa, a prerequisite for expanding its sway into the Mediterranean (mare nostrum – “our sea“𝟷̷). Real estate options in Africa had rapidly dried up however, France had already established colonies in Tunisia, Algeria and (shared with Spain) Morocco, and Egypt was a British “veiled protectorate”. The Italian focus turned to the one remaining Mediterranean territory in North Africa, Libya, then comprising several provinces, the principal ones being the Regency of Tripoli or Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica, both semi-autonomous vilayets of the Ottoman Empire.

Illustrated map of Italian campaign with fleet blockade of Libyan ports (source: Media Storehouse)

Italian imperialist designs: Search for a casus belli
Italian nationalists and imperialists, whipped up by the frenzy created by the jingoistic Italian press, started to agitate for Italy to annex Tripoli. The territory being in close proximity to the southern tip of Italy made it attractive as a base from which to control the central Mediterranean𝟸̷. As the groundswell for war in Italian society gathered momentum and pressured by war hawks in his own cabinet, Italian Prime Minister Gioltti sounded out the European powers, most of whom voiced no objections to Italy’s plan for occupation of Libya𝟹̷. The Italian government tried to provoke the Ottoman regime into war…drumming up pretexts for intervention, eg, the small Italian community in Libya was supposedly being mistreated (highly exaggerated!). On the strength of this Gioltti issued an ultimatum to the Ottomans to immediately cede Tripoli to Italy. The Ottoman government of the “Young Turks” vacillated before asking Rome to accept a Britain/Egypt style solution (the would-be coloniser assumes real power in the colony while the former coloniser retains nominal suzerainty over the colony). Italy refused this counter-offer point blank, declared war in September 1911 and commenced preparing its invasion force.

Port of Tripoli, ca.1910 (image: delcampe.net)

A settler-colonial society
Italy’s motives for acquiring a colony in Libya were not entirely about national pride and resurrecting the glory of the Roman Empire. The Italian state, post-unification, had serious social problems. The underdeveloped national economy was incapable of coping with the exponential growth in population, for which there was insufficient work and insufficient food for all the people. A new colony in North Africa just over the sea, the politicians surmised, would solve this dilemma, a receptacle to drain off surplus Italian population with the emigrants becoming small agricultural producers in Libya (‘The Italo-Turkish War’, Osprey Blog (Gabriele Esposito), 17-Sep-2020, www.ospreypublishing.com).

Italian troops in action, Libya 1911

Italian expectations, strategy and stalemate
When war was declared Italy’s superior navy was easily able to intercept and prevent attempts by Ottoman naval vessels to transport troops and equipment to Libya. Turkish commanders Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal and other army personnel had to resort to smuggling themselves into Libya, mainly via Egypt. Italian forces having landed in Tripoli quickly took control of the coastal regions of Libya necessitating the Ottoman military units and Arab Bedouin fighters to withdrew to the interior. Italy had expected a quick victory in the conflict and had counted on the native Arab population welcoming the Italian soldiers as liberators from the Turks, it was wrong on both counts. Arab and Bedouin tribesmen (Muslim Senussi clan), combined together with the Ottoman units to staunchly resist the invading Christians (the Arabs’ irregular forces (hamidiye) proved to be quite effective fighters). The invasion force also found itself fighting the Libyan conditions, harsh landscape, extreme heat, wind, etc described by one historian as scatolone di sabbia (a “box of sand”) (Charles Stephenson, Box of Sand: The Italo–Ottoman War, 1911-1912, (2014)). The Italians were further hampered by the utter inadequacy of its maps of the region (relying on old maps, some of which were from the Ancient Roman era!) The Italian military strategy was to try to draw the defenders into engaging in open, full-scale, conventional battles, the Ottoman and Arab resistance refused to oblige them, rather the defenders resorted to fighting a guerrilla war, a mode of fighting which the Italians failed abjectly to adapt to (‘Italy-Turkish War’, (documentary), The Great War series (2021)). A stalemate ensued…despite putting a force in the field in Libya of up to 100,000 soldiers (including Somali mercenaries), the Italians could not make any military headway inland and yet at the same time the desert-based defenders couldn’t expel the invaders from the country.

Mustafa Kemal with Senussi tribesmen, Tobruk 1911

Air, land and sea
With no progress in sight on the land front the Italians in 1912 opted for a new strategy, launching a naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman possessions in the Aegean Sea—the province of Rhodes and other islands in the Dodecanese chain—were attacked by gunboat and captured. The Italian navy heavily shelled the cities of Beirut and Smyrna in Asia Minor, blocked the Ottomans’ Red Sea ports and even made an unsuccessful assault by sea on the Dardanelles.

Ottoman surrender of Rhodes to Italians (source: La Domenica del Corriere, May-June 1912)

As the costly and increasingly unpopular war dragged on much longer than anticipated, the mounting concern of European states prompted them to initiate peace talks between the warring parties. After a few failures a peace agreement was eventually reached in October 1912 with the Treaty of Ouchy (AKA First Treaty of Lausanne) on terms favourable to Italy. The Constantinople government ceded Tripoli and Cyrenaica to Italy who promised to return the Dodecanese Islands to Turkey, however a turn of events in the region prevented this from ever happening.

Pax (source: Media Storehouse)

Fallout and Aftermath
The Italo-Turkish War’s biggest consequence was to contribute to the destabilisation of the Balkans. The impact of that was felt immediately – one day after the Treaty of Ouchy was signed Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, with the other member-states of the Balkan League doing likewise a week later, setting in motion a war continuum that would lead to the catastrophic Great War in 1914 and further reversals for the Turks. The Ottoman Empire emerged from the 1911-1912 conflict with its reputation as the “Sick man of Europe” further tarnished. Italy, though the victor, must have had some mixed feelings about its decision to commit to the military adventure. The war dragged on for over a year, drained 1.3 bn lira from the Italian coffers and cost several thousand Italian lives either killed in action or from disease. Yes, it won itself a colony in the North Mediterranean but this in itself brought further headaches for Italy as Arab and Bedouin rebels in the Libyan hinterland doggedly continued their violent resistance to their new colonial masters for decades afterwards (‘The Great War’).

Footnote: A series of martial “firsts”
Despite the Italo-Ottoman War being one of the lesser known international conflicts in modern history, it is significant for a number of innovations in warfare. It was the first war to utilise aircraft in combat missions, and the first to practice aerial bombing of the enemy lines. The Turco-Italian War also marked the debut of armoured vehicles. And it was the first three-dimensional war, ie, fought on land, sea and air. The Italians’ use of airplanes in warfare however was not particularly effective militarily in flight missions. It’s much greater benefit was in their reconnaissance value – aerial photographs, and intelligence allowing the Italians to spy on ground troop movements, etc (‘The Great War’).

Italian airplane raiding Turkish-Arab ground troops (source: suttori.com)

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𝟷̷ Mare nostrum, deriving from Roman antiquity, was a concept “deployed to anchor Italian imperialism in Africa” at this time and during the later Fascist period, Agbamu, S. (2019). ‘Mare Nostrum: Italy and the Mediterranean of Ancient Rome in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’; Fascism 8(2), 250-274. https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-00802001.

𝟸̷ Mussolini would later describe Libya as impero italiano’s quarta sponda (Italy’s “fourth shore”)

𝟹̷ Germany and Austria-Hungary were not so positive about the Italians’ move

🇮🇹 🇹🇷 🇱🇾

Hitler and the Nazis, the West’s Continuing Collective Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

International Relations, Military history, Popular Culture, World history,, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your own private Adolph Hitler

SUCH is the fixation in the West with everything Adolph Hitler and the Nazis, the story of the Third Reich’s dramatic rise and fall is just so familiar to everyone that it seems like we all have our own little piece of the megalomaniacal German dictator. Hitler is the most talked about/written about public figure of the 20th century. The obsession with Hitler and the Nazis since the end of the Second World War, now into its eighth decade—in cinema, in television dramas and documentaries, in popular literature, in scholarly dissertations and books from academe, in popular culture, in social media—is not only not abating but on the upsurge if anything🄰.

Hitler the demagogue in full flight (Source: Correo.com)

It seems as if every aspect, every scintilla, of the Nazi regime and every chapter of Hitler’s life, before and after attaining power, has been turned over, sifted through and scrutinised diagnostically to the nth degree. One explanation for the blanket coverage is the sheer volume of available material on the subject. We might not have the personal letters exchanged between the Führer and his mistress Eva Braun and we know that the existence of the Hitler Diaries was an outrageous sham fiction, but the Nazis, unlike other mass misery-inflicting, totalitarian regimes, left behind a plethora of filmic, photographic and written documentary evidence, to enable a compelling picture of the nature of the Third Reich to be pieced together [‘Why are we still fascinated by Hitler?’, John Jewell, Journalism, Media and Culture, 11-Sep-2013, www.jomec.co.uk].

Pages from the fake Hitler Diaries (Source: Times of Israel): though palpably bogus it’s “discovery” only fuelled the Nazi mania

Why does Hitler and Nazism continue to exercise this central role in the thinking of so many people? This question has continued to exercise the minds of international scholars, historians, political scientists, not to mention the average punter, ever since the 1940s.

The fact that the Third Reich remains relevant to our contemporary society—illustrated in a number of ways and forms—is a factor that keeps Hitler and his extreme right cronies in the forefront of peoples’ consciousness. There is the moral objectionableness of the Nazi regime per se. The nature of the regime was horrifically egregious to a degree that is sui generis, and the catastrophic consequence of its rise as a world power, total global war and mass destruction, stands as a lesson and a reminder for all nations of what happens when a hitherto cultured and advanced, democratic nation loses its moral compass and goes madly off the rails .

Source: Times of Israel

Hitler and the Nazis were not your ordinary garden variety mass murderers…when you weigh up the mega-scale and severity of the Nazis’ atrocities its hard to escape the conclusion that Hitler personified absolute evil. He and his vilified movement represent a moral abyss. Moreover, Hitler and by association German Nazism is the yardstick by which we measure the very essence of evil! Whenever someone or some institution acts in a brutal manner which we find anathema we tend to reach by reflex for the Nazi card (it might be prompted by something as everyday basic as an encounter with overbearing officialdom or a neighbourhood bully). As Roger Moorhouse put it, these “simple stereotypes (have made the term ‘Nazi’) part of the cultural furniture” [‘Why is the Public so Obsessed with the Nazis?’, Roger Moorhouse, History Today, Vol. 1, Issue 3 (Mar 2020), www.historytoday.com].

Der Führer launching the VW, 1938 (Photo: AP)

We are reminded of the magnitude of the Nazis’ criminality whenever the media outs some elderly individual who is accused of having been a Nazi functionary or collaborator and is (sometimes) brought to trial – the most recent, nonagenarian Oskar Groening, “the bookkeeper of Auschwitz” in 2015. At such times Nazism is thrust back into the spotlight once again (assuming it has ever left it)🄱. Then there’s the raft of large corporations who were associated with and in many instances benefitted from the dominance of the Nazi Party in the Thirties and Forties—household names from the business world such as Hugo Boss, Volkswagen, Porsche, Bayer and Siemens—all still operating profitably today.

Although the German state capitulated in May 1945 and the Nazi empire was completely dismantled, the spirit of Nazism didn’t end with WWII. The postwar era has seen a rebirth of the movement in the form of neo-Nazi groups which sprang up across Europe and beyond🄲. Many of these far-right organisations still operate, espousing racist, antisemitic and anti-immigrant views, including in democratic Germany itself (Alternative for Germany – AfG), their continued existence a reminder that the ashes of an abhorrent past are not entirely extinguished.

Neo-Nazi protest march, US (Photo: The Guardian)

Endnote: “The Nazi cinematic universe” Hollywood and European cinema in the postwar era has been awash with Nazi war movies, by far the biggest contributor to the war genre movie. Moviegoers have been assailed with a constant bombardment of films with various Nazi themes and stories…victims of the Holocaust; Allied POWs escaping from Nazi prisons; the Nazis invading Britain, France, Norway, etc; and so – a veritable avalanche of wartime action capers, many borrowing freely from popular fiction to embellish the history with fanciful tales of supposed Nazi plots.

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🄰 a good example pertaining to social media of the Nazi fixation is Godwin’s Law (AKA Godwin’s Rule of Analogies) – it states that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the more likely it is that someone will bring up the subject of Hitler or the Nazis

🄱 this aspect of the Nazi memory does of course have a tangible end-date, given every active participant in WWII war crimes still alive would today need to be nearly 100-years-old or older

🄲 including in Allied countries who had fought against the Third Reich such as US, UK, Australia and France

The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , ,

ARISING from the ashes of the catastrophic Great War the League of Nations was founded in 1919 on high Liberal ideals but with the most challenging of tasks – “to promote international cooperation and achieve peace and security “. Ultimately, the League failed to live up to its mission statement, in the end floundering badly in its efforts to stop aggressive acts by rogue states and prevent the outbreak of a second world war.

Fear of failure?
The interwar years were marked by numerous incidences of disputes between states over territories and borders. One of the most apparent shortcomings of the League (LoN) was its choosiness in deciding which conflicts to intervene in and which not to…under the League’s foundation secretary-general Eric Drummond, the approach was a cautious and selective one, prompted by the fear that failure might undermine the body’s authority in the international arena (‘League of Nations’, History, Upd. 23-Mar-2023, www.history.com).

Opening session of the League’s assembly, 1920 (Source: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) ◠

The LoN’s reluctance to involve itself in every international dispute also came down to the inherent weakness of its position. Where one of the discordant parties was not a member of the LoN and especially a larger power, the capacity of the organisation to effect a viable resolution was severely curtailed. The LoN declined to intervene when Soviet Russia attacked a port in Persia in 1920 in the belief that non-member Russia would disregard its authority. The LoN’s dispute resolution capacity was similarly neutralised in the 1923 Corfu incident…Mussolini’s Italy had bombed and invaded the Greek island leading to Greece asking the LoN to intervene but Mussolini, though a member, simply ignored the LoN’s attempts to mediate in the conflict.

Structural and functional weakness, the power of single veto
The League’s organisational structure proved a further impediment to the realisation of LoN’s primary purpose of maintaining inter-governmental peace. Unlike its successor world body the UN, all LoN members, whether powerful or minor players on the world stage, had equal voting rights in the assembly with the making of decisions requiring unanimity from the members, the necessity of universal consent a recipe for perpetual indecision and impasse (‘Why Did the League of Nations Fail?’, Luke Tomes, History Hit, 27-Oct-2020, www.historyhit.com).

◠ Map of LoN member countries

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“League of Victors” – minus the US
Critically, several of the more internationally significant nations were excluded from the new world body. The United States by choice excluded itself from membership, a massive setback to a world body’s claim to inclusiveness. In the aftermath of WWI and the Russian Revolution the vanquished Germans and the USSR🅐, were prevented from joining. At LoN’s point of peak membership (1935) there were 58 League nations, at its dissolution (1946) this had dwindled to only 23 members.

League idealism trumped by real politik
Viewed through rose-coloured glasses the LoN’s proponents assumed the organisation’s creation would herald in an era of internationalism. Their naïveté between the wars was exposed by the rise of ultra-nationalism especially when it coalesced in a totalitarian regime (acerbated by the Great Depression): for individual nations, League of Nations or no League of Nations, fundamental self-interest remained paramount (Tomes).

◠ 2nd Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-36

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Expansionism by far-right regimes unchecked
In the 1930s, in a deteriorating international climate, the eruption of serious crises demonstrated the LoN’s impotence vis-a-vís aggressively inclined renegade states. When the imperial Japanese army invaded Manchuria (Northeast China)—a clear breach of Article 10 of the League’s Covenant (disrespecting another member’s sovereignty)—the LoN took no action against the offending nation. When the Commission eventually ruled that Manchuria should be returned to China, Tokyo responded by simply relinquishing its League membership and staying put🅑. When Fascist Italy’s provoked a colonial expansionist war against a much weaker state Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, the LoN’s condemnation and subsequent economic sanctions on the Italian aggressors were undermined by the great powers Britain and France who in a secret deal green-lighted Italy’s action in East Africa. The British and French concession to Italy was meant to help lure Mussolini away from allying with Germany and Hitler. Once again particular countries put self-interest ahead of the collective security goals of the LoN. Rome’s response to the League’s threats, like Japan and Germany before it, was to to pull Italy out of the LoN. The Ethiopian crisis damaged the League’s reputation further and reinforced the paucity of its peacekeeping role.

The LoN failed miserably in its stated objective of bringing about international disarmament, on the contrary under its watch rearmament and military buildup in Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR greatly expanded in the 1930s. Without armed forces of its own the LoN was reliant on the great powers to enforce its authority which they were generally unwilling to do. The League in time of state conflicts thus fell back on negotiation and arbitration and the threat of sanctions (never fully implemented), in which it had a sorry track record (‘The League is Dead. Long Live the United Nations’, The National WWII Museum, 19-Apr-2022, www.nationalww2museum.org).

◠ Palace of Nations (Geneva) League HQs (Photo: League of Nations Archive)

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Footnote: The League’s legacy
While the League of Nations was unable to realise its raison d’être, a workable system of international cooperation and security, there was a positive side to its existence. Where smaller nations were involved the LoN did have some success in settling disputes of neighbouring countries peacefully, eg, between Finland and Sweden in 1921 over the Aland Islands. The organisation’s activities embraced many issues of concern and urgency in its day, including efforts to curb the opium traffic; tackling the scourge of tropical diseases like malaria and leprosy; post-WWI refugee crisis and POW repatriation; recognising the rights of ethnic minorities; regulation of workers’ wages and conditions; curtailing the arms trade. While not always successful in these projects the pioneering LoN can be credited for providing a framework for its successor the UN to carry out its humanitarian work.


🅐 Germany was eventually allowed to join in 1926 and Soviet Russia in 1934
🅑 Nazi Germany likewise relinquished League membership in 1933 when challenged by the League, freeing it to embark on a massive military buildup and pursue its territorial expansion goals in Europe. The Soviet Union was another significant withdrawal from the LoN family, expelled in 1939 for invading Finland

The Malayan Emergency: A Last Hurray for Britain and Empire

Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

◬ British Malaya 1948 (Image: NZHistory)

THE Second World War and the occupation of British Malaya by the Japanese gave the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) an opportunity to take a more prominent political role in Malayan society. Britain’s feeble submission at the hands of the Japanese invaders put paid to any notions of invincibility felt about the British colonial regime. Into the British void stepped the MCP, it’s military wing, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, mainly composed of ethnic Chinese guerrillas, bore the brunt of armed resistance against the Japanese. After the Japanese surrender the MCP were afforded a brief taste of governing before the British returned [Richardson, Thomas. “The Malayan Emergency.” In Fighting Australia’s Cold War: The Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965, edited by PETER DEAN and TRISTAN MOSS, 1st ed., 115–36. ANU Press, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv25m8dqh.13]. The MCP was also active in Malayan labour circles, embroiling itself in the vanguard of strikes and disturbances against substandard labour conditions and wages.The MCP increasingly targeted British-controlled industry in the country, especially the production of rubber and tin, the mainstays of the Malayan economy, putting it on a collision course with the British Malaya authorities.

◬ Advertisement: Guarding national assets against the “communist bandits” (Source: Pinterest)

Sungai Siput incident
 After three European planters were murdered by the komumis in Perak state in 1948, the MCP was proscribed as a political party and a state of national emergency declared in Malaya and Singapore. A protracted guerrilla war followed—for purposes of insurance it was not described as a war, hence the term “Malayan Emergency” (Darurat Malaya)a⃞—pitting Malayan Chinese communists against Britain, the Malay-dominated Federation and Commonwealth countries.

The combatants’ motives
 Britain’s motives for cracking down on the MCP radicals was transparent and twofold. First, it’s priority was to protect its economic and commercial imperial interests in Malaya…its prized reserves of tin and rubber representing “by far the most important source of dollars in the Colonial Empire”. In 1948 this was doubly important to the UK, having just lost its colonial possessions in India [‘British Imperial Revival In The Early Cold War: The Malayan’Emergency’ 1948-60’, Liam Raine, History Matters, 23-Nov-2020, www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk]. Secondly, in the bipolar context of the Cold War and as the US’ ally, Britain was doing its bit to keep South-East Asia in the capitalist camp by blocking an attempt to extend the communist imprint on the region. Conversely, the Chinese in Malaya, disaffected with British colonial rule and its monopoly of the country’s lucrative raw materials, were seeking to achieve Malayan independence and forge a socialist stateb⃞. The MCP’s military arm adopted a strategy of raiding mines and estates (industrial sabotage) and attacks on soldiers, police, colonial collaborators and high-ranking officials (even succeeding in assassinating the British high commissioner). When the British launched counter-raids, the communist guerrillas would retreat to jungle outskirts where they could be hidden within the Chinese community and receive crucial material support from a network of civilian supporters known as Min Yuen.

◬ Jungle patrol (Photo: Imperial War Museums)

◬ General Gerard Templer (Image: npg.si.edu)

Briggs Plan
To counter the guerrillas’ stratagem the British devised the Briggs Plan (Rancangan Briggs) to try to isolate the insurgents from their rural support base. Half a million rural inhabitants (including the indigenous minority, the Orang Asil), labelled “squatters” by the British, were forcibly removed from their land and resettled in “New Villages” (Kampung baru)c⃞. As well as physically separating the guerrillas from the Chinese community—thus halting the vital flow of food, information and recruits from the peasants to the insurgents—the plan included a campaign to win the “hearts and minds” of the rural population and lure them away from the communists. Separating the “fish” from the “water”, British intelligence called it. Education and health services including better amenities were provided for some of the New Villages. This second British objective was less successful as a force for achieving cohesion among rural Malayans. The new British initiative, under the new high commissioner Gerard Templer, while effective militarily, was ruthlessly heavy-handed in its approach. The strategy’s rigorous population control and punitive measures alienated the Chinese inhabitants, at the same time many Malays, jealous of the infrastructure afforded the new settlements, were disaffected.
[‘Briggs Plan’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wkipedia.org ].

◬ Chin Peng, “enemy of the state”

Decolonisation and independence
 The British counter-insurgency’s effectiveness in whittling away the guerrillas’ support prompting the MCP’s leader Chin Peng to try to negotiate peace, however talks failed due to the insistence by Malayan leaders, especially Tunku Abdul Rahman, that the guerrillas surrender unconditionally. The granting of independence to Malaya in 1957 was a critical body blow to the MCP’s hopes as thereafter the struggle was no longer an anti-colonial cause. Inaugural prime minister Rahman was now able to characterise the conflict against the communists as a “People’s War” and unify the majority behind him. Bereft of its raison d’être the guerrilla movement quickly dissolved with the last significant group surrendering in 1958 at Perak. Most of the other insurgents still at large including Chin fled north across the Thai border [DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) (2021), The Malayan Emergency 1948 to 1960, DVA Anzac Portal, accessed 14 April 2022, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/malayan-emergency-1948-1960 ].

 MCP failings
 At the end of WWII the communists’ guerrilla resistance to the Japanese had won it a following among significant numbers of Malayan Chinese, however during the Emergency it failed to consolidate that hold. The MCP’s stated mission was to build a broad coalition uniting Malaya’s racial groups (Malays, Chinese, Indians), in practice it blundered but making no real appeal to non-Chinese segments, the party remained predominantly the domain of the ethnic Chinese community. Even more damning was its non-engagement with rural Chinese (>90% of the Chinese population), the party steadfastly maintained an urban focus, failing to take the concerns of Chinese peasants seriously. The British were able to exploit the MCP’s omission to lever significant grass-roots support away from the guerrillas.[Opper, Marc. “The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960.” In People’s Wars in China, Malaya, and Vietnam, 173–204. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11413902.12].

◬ Chin Peng and Chairman Mao, 1965

Lurching into imperial irrelevance
In the twilight of Britain’s once majestic global empire, the Malayan Emergency was its fleeting, final hurray. The 1956 Suez Crisis nakedly exposed the limitations of Britain, foreshadowing a status as a spent international force. With decolonisation in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Oceania in full swing through the Fifties and Sixties, the Sun was setting on the British Empire after all.

Footnote: Peace delayed
 On 31 July 1960 the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Head of the Malayan government) officially ended the Emergency. The communist guerrilla force, without their general secretary Chin Peng (by now a guest of the Chinese government in Peking) and shrunken to less than 2,000 men, continued the futile fight against the Malayan state from their border outpost. Armed resistance to the government in Kuala Lumpur from underground units resumed in the late Sixties, but the splintering of the MCP into three opposing factions and a series of internal purges further undermined the effectiveness of its cause. Finally, in December 1989 the Thais brokered the Hat Yai Peace Agreement between the Malaysian government and the MCP [‘Chin Peng, an obituary’, Anthony Reid, New Mandela, 05-Oct-2013, www.newmandela.org].

|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|

a⃞ the MCP termed the conflict the “Anti-British National Liberation War”


b⃞ the MCP’s platform included progressive measures such as full equality for women


c⃞ in addition, 10,000 Malaysian Chinese suspected on being communist sympathisers were deported to mainland China

The ‘Battle of Broken Hill’: The Curious Incident of the Afghan Cameleers’ Two-Man War on the Silver City

Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Racial politics, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Image: britannica.com

On New Years Day 1915 two members of the small immigrant Afghan community of Broken Hill launched an unexpected and deadly attack on a passing convoy of open ore-trucks carrying 1,200 industry picnickers to Silverton. The incident itself did not escalate much further, the so-called ‘battle’ was over after a 90-minute shootout, with the perpetrators dealt with and summarily despatched by a contingent of police, soldiers and private riflemen from the town, however it’s ramifications were more lasting and widespread. What was on the surface a random, mindless and unprovoked attack on innocent picnic-goers, had a complicated lead-up.

The picnic train with overflowing “sardine tin” of passengers (Photo: Broken Hill City Lib)

The casualties:
In the carnage two of the “sitting duck” picnic party were killed by the attackers’ gunfire and up to ten others wounded. The two gunmen then retreated from the scene towards the West Cameleers camp, killing another, unrelated civilian on the way. The police, troops and volunteer militia members of the ‘posse’ caught up with the two attackers at Cable Hill and engaged them in a shootout at a nearby rocky quartz outcrop known as “White Rocks”. During the shootout a fourth victim was killed by stray shots from the perpetrators’ gunsⓐ. A police constable was also wounded and both Muslim assailants were ultimately killed in the affray.

‘White Rocks’ (Source: The Conversation)

In the immediate aftermath of the incident the two perpetrators were wrongly identified as Turks—the Ottoman Turkish Empire has recently sided with the German Reich in the world war against Britain (and therefore against Australia)—due to a Turkish flag and a letter pledging allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey found among the possessions of one of the attackers. In fact the two Muslims originated from the northwest frontier of British India (within modern Pakistan or just over the border in Afghanistan).

A still from a 1981 film, ‘The Battle of Broken Hill’

The assailants:
Badsha Gool Mahomed
(aged about 40) a Pashtu-speaking Afghan Afridi tribesman whose two stays in Australia were punctuated by periods of service in the Turkish Army. After a decline in work for cameleers he was employed in the Broken Hill area’s silver mines before being retrenched. At the time of the incident Mahomed was an ice cream vendor in the townⓑ.
Mullah Abdullah (aged about 60) a Dari-speaking halal butcher and imam for the local cameleer community. Abdullah too tried camel-driving but finding it not feasible turned to working as a butcher in “The Hill”, supplementing it by presiding as spiritual leader for the Afghan community.

‘Barrier Miner’ 2 January 1915’

The influential local newspaper the Barrier Miner had a field day with the incident… “War in Broken Hill”, “The New Year’s Day Massacre“, (Attack) “under the Turkish flag”. Some modern writers have described the “Battle of Broken Hill” as a terrorist incident, “terrorist-suicide mission” (and Abdullah as a) “grey-bearded zealot, fiery when insulted” [Christine Stevens, ‘Abdullah, Mullah (c. 1855–1915)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/abdullah-mullah-12763/text23021, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 10 February 2022], and inevitable parallels have been drawn with the contemporary landscape of international terrorism. Giving credence to the train ambush being considered a politically motivated act was the edict of Ottoman sultan Mehmet V that the faithful of the Islamic world take up the fight (jihad) against the enemy in the war, made just two months earlier in November 1914 (which undoubtedly struck a cord with the radicalised Mahomed) [‘History repeating: from the Battle of Broken Hill to the sands of Syria’, Panayiotis Diamadis, The Conversation, 03-Oct-2014, www.theconversation.com].

A union closed shop
Imam Abdullah on the other hand had fresh personal grievances against the locals. He had for some time suffered racist harassment from the town’s youths. In addition, Abdullah had fallen foul of the local branch of the Butchers Trade Union which took a discriminatory approach to not-British butchers in the town…only a week or so earlier the non-unionised Afghan butcher had been convicted for the second time of selling meat without a licence by the chief sanitary inspector. Whether the two men were motivated by a sense of persecution or patriotism, relations between the Afghan community and the Europeans in Broken Hill had been disintegrating for some time with the ‘Ghan’ cameleers camp targeted for sabotage. [‘The Battle of Broken Hill and repercussions for the German Community’, The Enemy At Home, www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au].

Photo: brokenhill.nsw.gov.au

Economic downturn knee-jerk
A heightening of inter-ethnic tension was a direct result of the grim economic climate of the day, mine closures in Broken Hill meant unemployed miners and the search for alternate work…it didn’t take long for resentments to surface about Muslim immigrants taking white jobs. Afghan immigrants were made to feel unwelcome in Broken Hill and other outback towns with the cameleers relegated to living on the edge of European society in ‘Ghantowns’. Tensions were particularly heated between the local unionised teamsters and the immigrants, largely due to the Afghans cameleers being simply more competitive labour options than the white teamsters…cheaper to hire and providing a quicker service than that of the teamsters’ wagons. This perceived threat to the position of European teamsters in the Broken Hill district led them to retaliate with violence against the Afghan community [‘The Battle of Broken Hill’, Mike Dash, Smithsonian Magazine, 20-Oct-2011, www.smithsonianmag.com].

Razed German Club house (Photo: Broken Hill City Archives)

A “lone wolf” attack
Despite the assailants leaving a note indicating that they had acted alone, many citizens in Broken Hill connected the event to the Turkish enmity towards the British Empire in the warⓒ. An incensed mob, hell-bent on wreaking retribution against the Afghan cameleer camp, had to be prevented from launching reprisals against the outlier Afghan community. The focus then switched to Broken Hill’s German community who many believed had agitated the brace of Afghans into attacking the picnic train. The police and military this time were unable to stop the rampant mob from torching the German Club to the ground.

Wider ramifications
A crackdown of the authorities was not long in coming. With newspapers like the Barrier Miner and the jingoistic Sydney Bulletin beating up the story for all it’s worth and with headlines trumpeting “Turk atrocity” and “Holy War”, “enemy aliens” from Austrian, German and Turkish working in the Hill’s mines were sacked, followed swiftly by Federal attorney-general Billy Hughes’s blanket internment of all foreign aliens in the country.

Photo: Destination NSW Media Centre

Footnote: In a bizarre coincidence Broken Hill’s “ice cream cart terrorism” had a resounding echo in the abhorrent 2016 Bastille Day “lone wolf” terrorist attack in Nice, France. The perpetrator who drove his lorry down a seafront promenade, killing 86 pedestrians (most of them mowed down by the speeding vehicle), told the police when questioned at the site prior to committing the atrocity that he was delivering ice cream.

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝

ⓐ the four victims of the two cameleers’ localised “Holy War” were the only Australians killed on home soil as a result of enemy fire during the Great War

ⓑ Mahomed‘s ice-cream cart was used to transport the duo’s concealed weapons to the railroad ambush site

ⓒ some people in hindsight saw the incident as a prequel on Australian soil to the Gallipoli conflict later that same year

A Prototype for ‘Modern’ Democracy and Universal Suffrage?…the Transitory Ripublica Corsa

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Corsica is best known of course as the birthplace of France’s most famous general/ emperor/dictator/egoist, the one and only Napoleon Bonaparte. However the rocky island of Corsica is deserving of greater recognition for the novelty of its 1750s experiment with democracy and universal suffrage. Prior to 1755 Corsica was a colonial outpost of the Republic of Genoa. Corsicans under the nationalist, resistance leader Pasquale Paoli rebelled against Genoa’s rule in that year[❂] and drove the Genoese off the island (except for a few coastal towns where they were still in occupancy).

▲ 1757 map of Corsica

Having declared the neophyte entity a sovereign state and a republic, Paoli drafted a revolutionary constitution which predated the more celebrated written constitution of the United States of America by three decades. It provided for universal suffrage for islanders over the age of 25…the inclusion of women in the Corsican franchise was a world first[§], building on the island’s earlier precedent of traditional female participation in the podesta (analogous to mayoral elections)[●̲̅̅] [‘The Real First Written Constitution’, Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily Newsletters, 03-Aug-2018, www.daily.jstor.org].

▲ Moor’s head emblem of Ripublica Corsa

Inspiring the Corsican constitution were the deeply pervasive ideas of the Enlightenment, thinkers such as Rousseau and Voltaire and the ideals of independence, democracy, progress and liberty. Corsica became a constitutional democracy with a Cunsulta (diet or legislative assembly). Enlightened or not, the new republic went unrecognised internationally with the singular exception of the Bey of Tunis [‘Corsican Republic, the small and ephemeral independent state that held the first modern Constitution Jorge Álvarez, LBV, 30 June 2020, www.labrujulaverda.com].

▲ Monument to Pasquale Paoli

Alas, both Corsican sovereign independence and universal suffrage did not sustain for long. The Genoese, unable to supplant Pasquale Paoli’s hold on Corsica by themselves, “horse-traded” Corsica to France, precipitating a French invasion of the island in 1768. The Corsicans fought a guerrilla war against the invaders but were always at astronomically long odds of succeeding. After the decisive Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769[✜] the overpowered Corsican republic’s fate was sealed and Paoli was forced into exile in Britain.

▲ Anglo-Corsican Kingdom blazonry

Postscript: “The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom”

At the time of France’s conquest of Corsica the British debated intervening to restore Corsican rule but rejected it at the time. The state of war between Britain and France from 1793 following the French Revolution prompted Britain to reverse the earlier decision. ‘Invited’ by the Anglophile Paoli (now back in Corsica) to intervene, the upshot was the creation of a unique if ephemeral union between Britain and Corsica. Although there was some flowery talk about common political values and “sister nationhood”, British motives were primarily military and strategic – with its preeminent naval power, control of Corsica gave it a vital Mediterranean base vis-á-vis revolutionary France (especially important after the British fleet’s 1793 expulsion from Toulon by Napoleon). The outcome of the brief experiment of the union (1794-96) with Corsica as a client of imperial Britain was disillusionment on both sides. Aggravating the situation was the relationship between the London-appointed viceroy Sir Gilbert Elliot and the representatives of the Corsican people, especially Paoli – one of mutual distrust. After 1796 Corsica realigned its future to association with France, a province of which it remains to this day [Carrillo, Elisa A. “The Corsican Kingdom of George III.” The Journal of Modern History 34, no. 3 (1962): 254–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1874355.; ‘Britain and Corsica 1728-1796: political intervention and the myth of Liberty’, Luke Paul Long, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (2018), http://DHL.handle.net/10023/13232].

ıılılıllllılılıı

▲ Corte & Corsica (Photo: Flickr)

ılılıllllılılı ıılılıllllılılıılılıllllılılıı

[❂] following an earlier uprising by the Corsicans in 1729

[§] Sweden in the early 17th century granted women a limited franchise but only for those holding land and property

[●̲̅̅] Paoli introduced other reforms, a University was established at Corte, the Corsican language was fostered, Corsica minted its own coinage

[✜] the year of Bonaparte’s birth

Returning Serve to the Nazis: Britain’s WWII Radio Propaganda Machine

International Relations, Media & Communications, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
❝History stopped in 1936 – after that, there was only propaganda❞
~ George Orwell

❝We want to spread disruptive and disturbing news among the Germans which will induce them to distrust their government and disobey it❞
~ Sefton Delmer

⨳⨳ ⨳ ⨳ ⨳ ⨳

Previous blogs on this site talked about how the Nazis used expat Britons and Americans to launch a blast of psychological warfare against the Allies with the objective of undermining their forces’ morale in WWII, the means utilised, the ‘weapon’ of powerful radio transmission (voiced by role-playing figureheads, in particular the so-called “Lord Haw-Haw” and “Axis Sally”). It wasn’t long into the World War before Britain decided it too would infiltrate the enemy airwaves in a counter-attempt to try to mess with German military minds.

𝔓𝔯𝔬𝔭𝔞𝔤𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔞 𝔴𝔞𝔯–𝔣𝔦𝔢𝔩𝔡, 𝔚𝔚ℑℑ (ℭ𝔯𝔢𝔡𝔦𝔱: 𝔉𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔨𝔯)

∘

Es spricht der Chef
To undertake the task the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was formed with the brief of disseminating ”black propaganda”⦑a⦒ against the enemy.The idea involved setting up a number of fake German radio stations—the first called Gustav Siegfried Eins (shortened to GS1) using shortwave frequency, harder for the Nazis to jam—as the propaganda vehicle for deceiving the Fatherland. From May 1941⦑b⦒ every day at 1648 hours a broadcaster purporting to be an old school Prussian officer known as der Chef would come on the air on German radio and, predictably, denounce the enemy, the ‘Brits’, the ‘Ruskies’ and the Jews, but then launch into a full-blown rant castigating Nazi officialdom too…in “profanity-laced tirades” the Chief would lambast Nazi officials’ “buffoonery, sexual perversity and malfeasance…condemning their incompetence and their indifference to the deprivations” suffered by the German volk⦑c⦒. Because he sounded ‘legit’ the impression many listeners got from the disillusioned Chief’s on-air ‘sprays’ was that there must be a rift within the German high command (‘The Fake British Radio Show That Helped Defeat the Nazis’, Marc Wortman, Smithsonian Magazine,28-Feb-2017, www.smithsonianmag.com).

𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔷𝔬𝔫.𝔠𝔬𝔪

∘

Other little parcels of poison delivered by “the Chief” via the radio waves included insinuations that the supposedly ‘Ayran’ army of the Third Reich was being contaminated by the influx of foreign troops in its ranks. He also alleged that injured German soldiers were receiving infusions of “syphilis-tainted blood” of captured Slavs. Another unsubtle avenue pursued by the Chief was to play on German officers’ fears of spouse infidelity at home.

𝔊𝔖1 ℜ𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔬 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔞𝔱 𝔐𝔦𝔩𝔱𝔬𝔫 𝔅𝔯𝔶𝔞𝔫 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔅𝔢𝔡𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔅𝔬𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔤𝔥 ℭ𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔠𝔦𝔩)

∘

In truth, the voice they heard belonged not to a disaffected Prussian army veteran but to Peter Seckelmann, a refugee from Nazi Germany acting out the role of der Chef. The panicked Nazi commanders combed the Reich to try to locate what they thought must be a maverick German general on the loose, all the time Seckelmann was secretly housed in England, in a small radio studio tucked away in quiet Bedfordshire.

𝔖𝔢𝔣𝔱𝔬𝔫 𝔇𝔢𝔩𝔪𝔢𝔯 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔎𝔲𝔯𝔱 ℌ𝔲𝔱𝔱𝔬𝔫/𝔓𝔦𝔠𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔢 𝔓𝔬𝔰𝔱/ℌ𝔲𝔩𝔱𝔬𝔫 𝔄𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔰/𝔊𝔢𝔱𝔱𝔶 ℑ𝔪𝔞𝔤𝔢𝔰)

∘

Sefton Delmer at the helm
 The mastermind behind Britain’s black propaganda campaign was Denis Sefton Delmer, born in Berlin of Australian parents. Recruited by PWE in 1940 because of his fluency in German and familiarity with the Nazi leaders⦑d⦒, Delmer had a thing for colourful descriptions of what his black propaganda unit did…”psychological judo” and “propaganda by pornography”⦑e⦒. The former German-based Daily Express journalist moulded PWE “special operations” into a “veritable fake news mill”, assembling an efficient team of artists, writers and printers who worked tirelessly to create thousands of phoney German newspapers and leaflets (not to neglect the role of American bombers who dropped two million units of the bogus literature every day over enemy territory)⦑f⦒. Gathering information from various sources (British intelligence, German POW interrogations, resistance operatives, bomber debriefings), PWE deceived and bewildered the Axis enemy through a carefully measured mix of lies and fact (Wortman). The tactics of ‘black’ radio were “short-term, rumour-filled⦑g⦒ and deceptive” (Nicholas Rankin, Churchill’s Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 (2008)).

ℭ𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔢 𝔄𝔰𝔭𝔦𝔡𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞 𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔰𝔪𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔱 𝔚𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔫 𝔗𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔯 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔞𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔳𝔢.𝔬𝔯𝔤.𝔲𝔨)

∘

The fake news network
Soddatensender Calais (G9) was another, British-run, faux Nazi radio station. ‘Aspidistra’, a medium wave radio transmitter located in Crowborough, East Sussex, conveyed the Sefton Delmer blend of music, innocuous information (appealing to German servicemen) together with the manipulated, ‘black’ kind of information (‘Fake News is Nothing New: 5 ‘Black Propaganda’ Operations From the 1930s and 1940s’, Jeanette Lamb, History Collection, 24-Mar-2017, www.historycollection.com).

𝔅𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔞𝔦𝔫’𝔰 𝔭𝔰𝔢𝔲𝔡𝔬–𝔊𝔢𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔫 𝔫𝔢𝔴𝔰𝔭𝔞𝔭𝔢𝔯
∘

Getting back to “the Chief”, Seckelmann under the direction of Sefton Delmer made in all 700 broadcasts to the German population. The Nazis tried to jam the broadcasts coming through the GS1 station but to no avail. Delmer, having decided to close down GS1, orchestrated a dramatic denouement for der Chef charade, having him ‘assassinated’ on-air in the final episode in 1943 (transforming “the Chief” into a kind of martyred loyalist to the Führer⦑h⦒).

Backlash to Delmer’s black propaganda approach
 Not everyone in Britain including those within government were on board with Delmer’s black radio activities. There were critics inside Churchill’s war cabinet, like Richard Stafford Cripps, who condemned PWE for taking the moral low ground … serving up a cocktail of outrageous lies and dirty tricks – from inventing military sex orgies to discredit the SS⦑i⦒ to fake news of American ‘miracle’ weapons like the new, non-existent ”phosphorus shells” to abrade the morale of German listeners [‘Black Propaganda in WW2’, The History Room, YouTube video, 2014). Delmer himself was a forthright, controversial and sometimes polarising figure, he had no compunction about exploiting sex in its most extreme manifestations including ”beastly pornography” and even pederasty, fabricating atrocities including the rape of German soldiers’ wives and sisters. Delmer was eyed with suspicion by both sides, some Germans thought he was a British spy and some Britons thought he was a Nazi spy (Rankin).


How effective were PWE’s black propaganda broadcasts?
PWE’s sheer weight of rumours, lies, half-truths and disinformation from PWE certainly no doubt took some toll on a already sagging German morale in the latter stages of the conflict, but did Delmer’s ”psychological judo” “disrupt the enemy’s will and power to fight on”? (‘Propaganda – A Weapon of War’, NLS, www.digital.nls.uk). It is not possible to definitely answer this question in the affirmative or negative. At the end of the war PWE was disbanded and all its records and documents were shredded. The deficit of data precludes any firm idea of how big and widespread the Germany wartime audience for the phoney radio transmissions was. Praise for PWE’s work however came from on high in the enemy camp, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels no less who conceded that Britain’s black Soldatensender had accomplished a “very clever job of propaganda” (Goebbels’ 1943 diary entry).

𝖁𝖔𝖑𝖐𝖘𝖊𝖒𝖕𝖋ä𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗 (𝖑𝖎𝖙. “𝕻𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊’𝖘 𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖊𝖎𝖛𝖊𝖗”) (𝕾𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖈𝖊: 𝕮𝖔𝖔𝖕𝖊𝖗 𝕳𝖊𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖙 𝕮𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓)

∘

Footnote: ‘Black’ v ‘white’ propaganda
Black propaganda is distinguished from the more common type ‘white’ propaganda. The ’White’ kind is propaganda that does not hide its origins or nature, that emanates from bodies from government international information services (eg, BBC, The Voice of America). A third variant, ‘grey’ propaganda, straddles the other two – the origin of the information and messages is concealed so it can’t be discerned, eg, during the Cold War the CIA beamed grey propaganda into the Eastern Bloc through the intermediary of radio stations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (’Grey Propaganda’, www.powerbase.info).

ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–ლ–

⦑a⦒ a form of propaganda (used by both sides in the war) which “is presented by the propagandizer as coming from a source inside the propagandised” (Becker, H. (1949). ‘The Nature and Consequences of Black Propaganda.’ American Sociological Review, 14(2), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.2307/2086855) , ie, by those it is supposed to discredit (Wikipedia)


⦑b⦒ the onset of Der Chef’s broadcasts coincided with the defection of the Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess to Britain


⦑c⦒ the Chief’s main target for ”character assassination” were ”lower-level Nazi functionaries” and their presumed corruption, ‘His Majesty’s Director of Pornography’, Stephen Budiansky, HistoryNet, www.historynet.com)


⦑d⦒ Delmer met Hitler himself while inspecting the Reichstag fire in Berlin


⦑e⦒ he even referred to himself irreverently as “HMG’s Director of Pornography”


⦑f⦒ producing “agitprop masquerading as inside dirt” (‘Fighting the Nazis With Fake News’, Matthew Shaer, Smithsonian Magazine, April 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com)


⦑g ⦒ one baseless rumour spread by the bogus German stations that led the Gestapo on a wild goose chase concerned a resistance group of anti-Nazis supposedly inside the Reich called “Red Circle” ‘Undermining Hitler (Part One of Three)’, Providentia, 07-Feb-2016, http://drvitelli.typepad.com)

⦑h⦒ Seckelmann‘s dissident officer in his radio diatribes had been careful to exclude Hitler himself from any blame, suggesting that it was the subordinates who had betrayed the Führer


⦑i⦒ the PWE artists’ role in the Brits’ deception was to skilfully forge documents which falsely incriminated Nazi personnel in the SS and other arms of the forces


ƿՐ૦ƿค૭คՈძค ८૦Ն૦υՐs

WWII’s Psychological Warriors of the Airwaves 3: DJ “Orphan Ann” and the Many Voices of Tokyo Rose

Cinema, International Relations, Media & Communications, Military history, Society & Culture, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

”Greetings everybody, this is your number one enemy” (typical sign-on for “Tokyo Rose”)

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

Image: National WWII Museum

In just about every movie and television series Hollywood has made involving Japan and WWII the name of “Tokyo Rose” invariably seems to pop up. It’s a standard trope in American war dramas and in TV comedies such as the popular McHale’s Navy. The San Francisco Chronicle called Tokyo Rose “the Mata Hari of radio”. However, unlike Mata Hari(ǟ), there was no actual “Tokyo Rose”. The name was generic, applied to some dozen or so English speaking Japanese women radio broadcasters who penetrated the airways of American, Australian and New Zealand servicemen in the Pacific theatre of war. Tokyo Rose wasn’t even confined to Tokyo, the female propagandists operated from several cities in the Japanese Empire including Manila, Shànghâi and Tokyo(ɮ).

Many Tokyo Roses but one message
The Tokyo Rose broadcasts would follow a familiar pattern…in between spinning American pop records (to remind the GIs of home), the women in conversational manner would make jokes and taunt the servicemen in an attempt to sap their morale and blunt their appetite for war(ƈ). Paradoxically, for some of her American GI audience the Tokyo Rose radio broadcasts had an opposite effect, they were popular as entertainment and “a welcome distraction from the monotony of their duties” (‘How ‘Tokyo Rose’ Became WWII’s Most Notorious Propagandist’, Evan Andrews, Upd. History, 26-Nov-2019, www.history.com).

Listening to Tokyo Rose on Zero Hour (Source: psywarrior.com)

As stories of Tokyo Rose were spread between GIs, she took on a mythic element in American minds, it was said her snippets of information were “unnervingly accurate (about the Allies), naming units and even individual servicemen” (‘Tokyo Rose (1944)’, www.publicdomainreview.org). The ramifications of this belief were to prove momentous later on for one of the women identified as Tokyo Rose — see Note (ɖ).

Iva at the mike

Iva Toguri/“Orphan Ann”, the ‘real’ Rose?
American opinion hit on a surprising candidate for the real identity of Tokyo Rose, Iva Ikuko Toguri (D’Aquino). Toguri was one of its own, a US citizen of Japanese descent born in Los Angeles who found herself stuck in Japan as hostilities broke out between the two countries. Coerced into broadcasting on Japan’s ‘Radio Zero’ shortwave station as a disc jockey, Toguri played records and performed comedy sketches. She did appeal in her friendly American voice to lonely GIs to return to their loved ones in the US but her propaganda value to the Japanese was considered limited. Returning to the US after the war Toguri, labelled by the press as “the one and only Tokyo Rose”, was eventually tried in 1949. Toguri’s conviction for treason was dubiously arrived at and it was widely felt she was made a scapegoat (‘Tokyo Rose’, Upd.  6-Oct-2020, www.biography.com). The supposed “Tokyo Rose” was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000, serving six years and two months. On release she spent overs 20 years living in Chicago ‘stateless’ before a fresh investigation of the case discovered two of the prosecution witnesses had been coerced by the Justice authorities into perjuring themselves…consequently President Ford pardoned her in 1977 (‘Iva Toguri Patriot’, American Veterans Center, (YouTube video, 2021)

Belated presidential pardon (Screenshot ‘Iva Toguri, Patriot’)

🌹 🌹 🌹
Mitsu Yashima, Tokyo Rose in reverse Mitsu Yashima (Source: Densho Encyclopedia)

Endnote: Anti-Rose
A parallel but very different story to Tokyo Rose is that of Mitsu Yashima. In the 1930s Mitsu (born Tomoe Sasako), a Japanese artist, was pro-peace, anti-military and anti-imperialist in an increasingly militaristic right wing Japan. After imprisonment and torture for her left-leaning views she and her husband escaped to the US in 1939. Once America committed to the World War Mitsu joined the war effort – working for the Office of Strategic Services, she used her language skills to broadcast anti-Japanese propaganda through the airwaves. On radio she made a particular pitch to the women of Japan, urging them to commit acts of sabotage aimed at helping to bring the Japanese military machine to a halt (‘Mitsu Yashima’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org ; ‘The Epic Lives of Taro and Mitsu Yashima’, Greg Robinson, Valerie Matsumoto, Discover Nikkei, 11-Sep-2018, www.discovernikkei.org).

 

Credit: IMDb

Postscript: Hollywoodised Tokyo Rose
As the war in the Pacific was reaching its climax the US made its own propaganda capital out of Tokyo Rose with a 1946 potboiler of a movie of the same name. Tokyo Rose exploited and sensationalised the story, The feature was “not merely a fiction, but a dangerous distortion of the truth”…according to Greg Robinson, it depicts the title character‘s radio propaganda as being “directly responsible for the death of demoralised American soldiers” and thus contributed to the jaundiced atmosphere that pervaded the subsequent trial of Iva Toguri (‘Tokyo Rose: The Making of a Hollywood Myth’, Greg Robinson, Discover Nikkei, 01-Nov-2021, www.discovernikkei.org).

 

▓ See earlier posts on Lord Haw-Haw and Axis Sally in this series of war radio propaganda broadcasters, WWII’s Psychological Warriors of the Airwaves, Part 1 and Part 2

︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻

(ǟ) ”Mata Hari”, the nom de plume of a Dutch exotic dancer executed by the French for allegedly spying for Germany during WWI

(ɮ) none of the female radio hosts ever referred to themselves as “Tokyo Rose” on air (it was purely an American invention”)

(ƈ) and as with her Axis counterpart in Europe, Axis Sally, the Tokyo Roses would try to sow little seeds of doubt in GI minds about the fidelity of their wives and girlfriends in America

 

WWII’s Psychological Warriors of the Airwaves I: Lord Haw-Haw’s Career in Radio Propaganda

International Relations, Media & Communications, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
WWII calling via the family wireless (Source: news.bbc.co.uk)

A novel feature of Axis and particularly German propaganda during World War II was the broadcasting of radio messages to the enemy, heaping scorn and invective on the Allies’ war efforts via the airwaves. The most famous/notorious of these broadcasters acquired the nickname of Lord Haw-Haw¤. There were in fact several “Lord Haw-Haws” broadcasting from Nazi Germany during the war, including Munich Anglophone journalist Wolf Mittler and a British spy for Germany, Norman Baillie-Stewart. But the person who came to personify Lord Haw-Haw for the British and American publics was William Joyce.

Mosley & his Blackshirts

A pathological anti-Semite and fascism fan boy from his teens, Joyce was drawn to Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the early 1930s, becoming the party’s director of propaganda and even rising eventually to deputy to leader Mosley. By 1937 Joyce’s violent rhetoric and frequent recourse to brawling with political foes led to a fallout with Mosley and Joyce’s ejection from BUF§.

‘Jairmany’ calling
Joyce tipped off that the British authorities were going to intern him defected to Hitler’s Germany a week before war broke out in 1939, finding work as a broadcaster for Reichsrundfunk (German Radio Corporation). Joyce would began his Radio Hamburg diatribes to the UK and the US with the words “Germany calling”, which in his strange, affected upper-class, nasal drawl sounded like “Jairmany calling”. “Haw-Haw” would bang on about how hopeless Britain’s cause was in the face of the unstoppable German Reich juggernaut, criticising the UK over the calibre of its politicians and soldiers, it’s rationing policy, inciting the Scots to rise up against their English overlords etc, saying anything he thought that might demoralise the Allied troops and their countries’ citizenry.

A dapper looking Wm Joyce in Berlin

Radio ratings king
Remarkably, considering his unrelenting message of doom and gloom and the awareness of Britons (soldiers and civilian) of the blatant propaganda of his unbridled rants, Joyce as Haw-Haw early in the war was pulling in an estimated six and nine million listeners a week (some weeks he scored over 50% of the UK radio audience).

British wartime satire depicted Lord Haw-Haw as a jackass

Why were his broadcasts so popular? One reason was their pure entertainment value, in the difficult days of world war many Brits found his fantastic claims a diversion and a fillip, not to mention wildly funny.  Listening to the ‘weirdo’ expat British Nazi mouthpiece was the done thing in UK homes. Being widely ridiculed didn’t stop Joyce from acquiring a kind of cult status among Allied audiences. The high level of war censorship imposed in home countries (eg, the BBC’s freedom was strictly curtailed) was another drawcard for many Brits and Yanks, regularly tuning in from home. Their reasoning was that, notwithstanding the propaganda, they might pick up some clues on the circumstance or whereabouts of family members engaged in the combat (‘The Rise and Fall of Lord Haw Haw During the Second World War’, Imperial War Museums,www.iwm.org.uk).

Long before the war began to turn pear-shaped for the Nazis Joyce’s popularity with enemy audiences ebbed. Nonetheless he continued peddling his defeatism theme in his broadcasts—imploring Britons to surrender—right up to the bitter end of the Third Reich. Joyce escaped after Hitler’s death and was captured in hiding in Flensburgϖ, near the Danish border.

Joyce, captured (Photo: IWM)

Stitched up, a quasi-show trial?: Treason for a reason
Transported back to London, Joyce was quickly put on trial for high treason, charged with having “given comfort and aid to the King’s enemies in wartime”. The problem about treason in this case was one of nationality. Joyce, born in the US and brought up in Ireland, had obtained a British passport by deception. As he was never a subject of Britain, therefore it was thought that he could not be expected to give allegiance to the king. However, the prosecution aided by a partisan judge successfully argued that as Joyce held a British passport in 1939-40 (prior to his becoming a naturalised German citizen) he did in fact (briefly) owe allegiance to the British crown. As historian AJP Taylor remarked of the episode: “technically, Joyce was hanged for making a false statement when applying for a passport, the usual penalty for which is a £2 fine” (‘When Speech Became Treason’, Mary Kenny, Index on Censorship, 1 2006, www.journals.sagepub.com).

Queue outside Old Bailey trial of Joyce (Source: thejc.com)

There was quite a lot of unease both within the British legal fraternity and in the public—notwithstanding the perceived abhorrence of his vile words and opinions—about the death penalty for Joyce, a sense that any conviction should have been for unlawful actions he may have committed, not for what he said. That Joyce’s sentence was commensurate with major war criminals who committed massacres in concentration camps, some Britons asserted, was a travesty (‘William Joyce’s Lord Haw-Haw Crime Files’, Crime + Investigation, www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk; ‘When Speech Became Treason’).

Settling scores with the English voice of Nazi Germany
Was there an element of payback in Joyce’s draconian fate? A lot of Britons in their homes might not have taken Haw-Haw seriously but the authorities did, he caused the government a lot of grief…he mocked Britain and it’s leadership, he taunted it with his announcements of where Germany bombs would hit Britain next and (bogus but hurtful) reports of Allied loses. And as Mary Kenny notes, London “came within an ace of jamming the broadcasts and banning them” (‘When Speech Became Treason’). Quite simply, Joyce had been the wartime voice of Nazi Germany and the establishment was prepared to do whatever was necessary including resuscitating an archaic law, the 1351 Treason Act, to secure his execution.

 Postscript: Lady Haw-Haw
Joyce’s wife Margaret who accompanied him to Germany played her own supporting role in the wartime baiting of the Allies (she had her own propaganda radio air time spot). Ultimately though “Lady Haw-Haw” managed to avoid William’s fate at the gallows. No charges against Margaret Joyce were ever proceeded with. Nigel Farndale suggests that rather than an act of leniency, Margaret’s avoidance of punishment may have been due to a deal her husband did with the authorities not to reveal his MI5 links.

 

Ξ See elsewhere on this site for follow-up blogs on WWII female counterparts of Lord Haw-Haw  – Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally.

¤ Britons tended to imagine “Lord Haw-Haw” as some kind of toffee-nosed aristocratic type 

§ Joyce was linked to a host of other extreme right organisations in Britain like the Nordic League and White Knights of Britain and ultimately started his own local Nazi-wannabe party, National Socialist League

ϖ Flensburg was the last capital of the Nazi empire

 

Envisaging Canada as “51st State”: A Preoccupation with Invading and Annexing, an American Tradition North of the 49th Parallel

International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

During the time of European settlement of North America there has been at least three attempts to invade Canada by Americans (or by British settlers in what was to become the United States of America). All three ended ignominiously. The first in 1690, part of the Anglo-French conflict known as King William’s War, was a naval expedition by the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Sir William Phips with the objective of seizing Québec City, the capital of New France. The English bombardment of Québec was an abject failure and Phips’ expedition was forced to return to Boston in smallpox-infested ships on which hundreds perished on the journey [‘King William’s War 1688-1697’, Colonial Society of Massachusetts,  www.colonialsociety.org]<ᵃ>.

1690 assault on Québec City from Massachusetts Bay colonists

The second invasion attempt was in 1775, during the early days of the American Revolutionary War. The idea to invade came from American army colonel (and later defector to the British side) Benedict Arnold, the rationale being to try to induce French Canadians to join the war for independence against their British rulers. The assault on Québec led by Arnold was easily repulsed by a reinforced British garrison and the American patriots reduced to 100 men were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs back to the American side [‘Battle of Québec: When Benedict Arnold Tried to Invade Canada’, Patrick J. Kiger, History, Upd. 29-Sep-2021, www.history.com].

1775 invasion of Québec, brainchild of Benedict Arnold
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The third occurrence was during the War of 1812, when the Americans invaded Canada, urged on by the “war hawks” in Congress who predicted it would an easy victory (in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a mere matter of marching”)<ᵇ>.Despite making several invasion attempts, via both Upper and Lower Canada, the Americans again emerged empty-handed from their efforts (due to a combination of factors including inept US military leadership and woeful preparedness, and fierce resistance from the allied forces of British ‘Redcoats’ and First Nation warriors). In early 1813 the  Vermont newspaper Green-Mountain Farmer lamented that the Canadian campaign had produced nothing but “disaster, defeat, disgrace, and ruin and death” [‘How U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago’, Jesse Greenspan,  History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com].

Guernsey Is stamp, commemoratingMaj-Gen Brock, War of 1812 (Source: rpsc.org)

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In addition there have been other unsanctioned invasions from the US, such as the Patriot War of 1837-38, a series of disjointed raids from the US borderlands in support of the Canadian rebels (Rebellions of 1837). The Americans who participated, many from the Hunters’ Lodges, were motivated both by antagonisms against what they saw as British tyranny and by a sense of adventurism (Washington under Van Buren maintained a policy of neutrality during this episode to safeguard its trade interests with Britain).

Map source: New York Almanack

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After the American Civil War Irish-American Republicans from the Fenian Brotherhood crossed the border, raiding British military strongholds in both the west and east of Canada as part of a stratagem to force the British into negotiation for Irish independence…the most notable of these engagements was the Battle of Ridgeway (1866) in which the Fenians were victorious over inexperienced Canadian volunteers. For the Fenian militia it was a pyrrhic victory, serving only to a spur for the realisation of Canadian confederation rather than to advance the cause of Irish independence<ᶜ> . [‘An Irishman’s Diary on the Battle of Ridgeway, the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866’, Brendan Ô Cathaoir, The Irish Times, 01-Jun-2016, www.irishtimes.com].

And when Americans weren’t engaged in the process of actually invading Canada, they were often scheming and planning to annex their northern neighbour. One of the more bizarre instances of this was “War Plan Red”, this 1930 US plan to invade Canada was, unlike earlier ones, supposedly a scheme to get in first! The US military’s predessors to the Pentagon feared that Britain in the years following WWI might launch an invasion of the US from Canada. Canadians in fact had already preempted the US with the military coming up with its own “Defender Scheme No. 1”, a five-pronged attack plan to invade the US (the idea was that Canada would make the initial (surprise) strike on key American cities and then rely on Britain and it’s other dominions to follow up the invasion).  Fortunately, nothing came of either of these plans and they were quietly shelved by the time North Americans managed to crystallise in their minds who the real enemy was (Nazi Germany) [‘The Time the U.S. Almost Went to War With Canada’, Kevin Lippert, Politico Magazine, 21-Jun-2018, www.politico.com].

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Parliament ablaze in Montreal

Another odd manifestation of the tendency toward annexation came from north of the 49th Parallel in the 1840s. In 1846 Britain repealed the Corn Laws<ᵈ> ending preferential colonial trade which provoked a merchant revolt in Canada. Conservative Anglophone businessmen were fearful that without protection for their produce the Canadian economy might plummet into recession,  some of them rioted, burning down the new parliament building in Montreal. 325 of the Tory businessmen, convinced that republican system of the United States would be more profitable to them, signed a document known as the Montreal Annexation Manifesto (1849), calling for the US to annex Canada. This of course never came to reality but the movement’s primary objective,  reciprocal free trade with the US and access to its market, was ultimately realised with the Elgin-Marcy (Reciprocity) Treaty in 1854…by which Canadian lumber and wheat entered the US duty-free, in exchange the Americans were given fishing rights off Canada’s Atlantic coast.

 

✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠

<ᵃ> an unexpected consequence of Phips’ disastrous Québec adventure was Massachusetts’ introduction of the first government-backed paper currency in the American colonies, necessary to pay the near-mutinous troops, promised a share of the loot from Québec’s capture [Goldberg, Dror. “The Massachusetts Paper Money of 1690.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 1092–1106. http://www.jstororg/stable/25654034.]

<ᵇ> once again the American invaders made the error of thinking they would be received as liberators in Canada

<ᶜ> curiously, in this same year (1866) a bill—designed to appeal to American Fenians—was introduced into the US Congress to formally annex “British North America”, but it never passed the House of Reps

<ᵈ> the ‘corn’ laws in the UK encompassed all cereal grain crops

 

Juggling the Double-edged Sword of Late Antiquity Imperial Migration: The Roman Empire’s Mishandling of a 4th Century Gothic Refugee Crisis

Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2015 was an apogean year for international refugee influx into Europe, the dislocation of war and the fear of persecution in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea brought more asylum seekers to the continent than any time to that point since WWIIa.The sheer scale of the refugee movements, the tragedy of mass drownings, military interventions and border controls, the hostility of some governments towards the continuous tide of migration, the utter chaos and misery of the refugees’ plight, the whole humanitarian disaster all has echoes from distant history.

⍓ Clash between refugees and Hungarian police (Photo: www.rt.com)

The Huns, movers and shakers in the barbarian lands
The refugee crisis in Europe reminded some observers of a chapter in the declining days of imperial Rome. The catalyst for this Late Antiquity migration story was the emergence of the nomadic and war-like Huns. Leaving their homeland (not known for certain but possibly Kazakhstan in Central Asia) after AD 350, the Huns moved along the Black Sea, engaging and defeating the Vandals, the Alans, the Goths and other Germanic and Slavic peoples that they encountered on their path of destruction. By circa 370 the military success of the Hunnic hordes had forced many of the defeated peoples to migrate west toward the Roman Empire. As a consequence, in 376 a large group of Goths comprising perhaps 100,000 men, women and children from two tribes—the Thervingi and the Greuthungi—suddenly turned up on the banks of the lower Danube River, the boundary of Rome’s eastern imperial reach, fleeing from the Huns. The Goths pleaded with Valens, emperor of the east for sanctuary, pledging their allegiance to the empire. The absorption of ‘barbarians’ within the Empire was an established policy of assimilation practiced by Rome, an initial step on a process of transforming foreigners into Roman citizens, albeit with certain limitations on their rights [‘1,700 years ago, the mismanagement of a migrant crisis cost Rome its empire’, Annalisa Merelli, Quartz, Upd. 09-May-2016, www.qz.com].

⍓ Valens’ numismatic likeness

Receptiob or denego?
After lengthy deliberation Valens made a momentous decision…allowing the Thervingi into the imperial territory in return for loyalty to Constantinople and that they provide infantry for the emperor’s armies. At the same time Valens denied permission to the second group of Goths, the Greuthungi, to enter Roman territory. According to the main source we have for this period, historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Valens thought he had secured himself a great deal, a cheap supply of foreign labour and a boost to the empire’s tax revenue [Dan Jones, Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021)].  

⍓ Moesia/Danube border, Roman Empire

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Roman border security
Traditionally, the Romans were very efficient at managing the flow of migration within the empire. Rarely using walls, they relied on natural barriers in the landscape such as rivers and mountains. To defuse any potential threats, the foreign tribes were customarily relieved of their weapons, broken up into smaller groupings and sent off to underpopulated regions. Unfortunately for this project, the traditional practices were not implemented. The operation, delegated to two venal Roman officials to coordinate, was a disaster. The two, Lupicinus and his deputy (dux) Maximus, were incompetent, corrupt and exploitative in their duties. The Thervingi were not made to hand over their weapons, nor were they divided into smaller numbers and dispersed to different regions. In their greed the Roman officials allowed too many of the Thervingi to cross the Danube at the same time, with the result that many Goths perished in the river. When it came to settling the Goths, the two officials committed a series of abuses against the new settlers including selling them the desperately needed supplies at massively inflated pricesc .  And to top off the snafu, Lupicinus and Maximus failed to prevent the barred Greuthungi from crossing the Danube illegally by their own means further downstream [‘Immigration: How ancient Rome dealt with the Barbarians at the gate’, Cavan W. Concannon, The Conversation, 13-Feb-2019, www.theconversation.com].

(Image: slidetodoc.com)

Spirally out of hand fast
From there things went from bad to worst between the Romans and the ever more aggrieved Thervingi. Valens tried to eliminate the Thervingi leadership which backfired spectacularly…a riot ensued and their chieftain Fritigern reneged on his allegiance to the emperor, and most dangerously allied with the Greuthungi against the Romans. Valens was faced with “a unified, massive Gothic army, loose and armed in Roman territory” (Concannon).  The increasingly formidable Goths launched a series of revolts and plundered wealthy Thracian villages and estates (Jones).

Blundering into a military catastrophe 
In 378 Emperor Valens, underestimating the strength of the enemy and imprudently declining to wait until reinforcements arrived from the western Roman emperor (his nephew Gratian), engaged a combined army of Goths and Alans (with cavalry) in the Battle of Adrianopled . The battle went badly for the Romans, Valens made tactical errors and the army was outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by the barbarians led by Fritigern, resulting in a crushing total defeate .This time Valens paid for his blunder with his life, along with that of roughly two-thirds of the Roman army. Reverberations from the debacle went deep, both Christian and pagan contemporaries saw it as the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. For St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, it signified “the end of all humanity, the end of the world” [Lenski, Noel. “Initium Mali Romano Imperio: Contemporary Reactions to the Battle of Adrianople.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 127 (1997): 129–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/284390.]

⍓ Solidus depicting Emperor Theodosius

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The new emperor, Theodosius I, brokered a peace with the Goths in 382, the circumstances after Adrianople compelling him to accept the settlement of the semi-autonomous group of the Thervingi between the Danube River and the Balkan mountains. Within the Roman Empire, the Goths and other barbarians were granted the status of foederati (a federation of client peoples allied by treaty to Rome – in return for certain subsidies and benefits the barbarians were required to provide manpower for military service, eg, as auxiliary mercenary forces to guard the Empire’s frontiers, AKA līmitāneī). At best Theodosius’s pax Gothica was a holding operation, buying the declining Empire time only. The barbarians once inside the imperial borders evolved swiftly into an entrenched force and a growing threat, as the rise of the Visigoths (see note below) and their king, Alaric I, was to demonstrate in the 390s.

 

⍓ Delacroix’s painting of Attila the Hun

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Postscript: The Huns’ invasions of the lands to the south and west, a decisive push to expand its empire, stimulated  the “Great Migration” of peoples, successive waves of migration, raids and rebellions, which weakened the fabric of Roman civilisation, contributing to the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire (AD 410).The Hunnic empire reached its peak in the two decades from 434 when its most famous leader Attila attained power. Under Attila the Huns cut a swathe through Eastern Europe (even invading Gaul), forcing the eastern Roman emperor to agree to pay him an annual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold in return for peace. Attila died in 453 and bereft of his cohesive and dynamic leadership the Hunnic empire collapsed within six years.

(Image: Historical Atlas of the Mediterranean)

Note: Visigoths vs Ostrogoths
Visigoths was the name ascribed to the western tribes of Germanic Goths, who are thought to have descended from the Thervingi tribe. In the 5th century their sphere of influence extended as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. Ostrogoths is the corresponding name for the eastern tribes of Goths, their antecedents coming from the Greuthungi tribe. From their base north of the Black Sea the Ostrogoths in the 5th century extended their influence into Italy.

⁌—————————————————⁍

 a 1.3M, escalating rapidly thereafter, by the end of 2016 the numbers had reached 5.2M (‘Refugee crisis in Europe’, www.unrefugees.org

b receptio (Latin) was the Roman term for integrating external groups seeking asylum in the Empire

c even forcing the starving Goths to sell them their children for slavery in return for dog food!

d modern-day Edirne in Turkey

e Rome’s worst military reversal since Cannae and Hannibal (216 BC)

 

 

Imperial Games of Cricket and War: South Africa v England, 1901

International Relations, Leisure activities, Military history, Social History, Society & Culture, Sport, Sports history, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1900 map of SA (Source: fruugoaustralia.com)

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Between 1899 and 1902 Britain and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were locked in conflict in the Second South African War, more commonly known as the Boer War (or more accurately the Second Anglo-Boer War). With the overconfident British failing to secure the expected quick victory over the Boers’ “citizen army”, the war dragged on into a long guerrilla engagement. In 1901, in the middle of the conflict in South Africa, of all things a cricket team from South Africa visited England and Ireland to take part in a series of international matches. How did this sporting incongruity take place while the two countries were engaged in a controversial, bitterly fought and increasingly divisive war?

Lord Hawke’s MCC tourists to SA 1898-99

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Making it happen: JD Logan, the “Squire of the Southern Karoo”
In fact, the tour of Britain had been originally meant to occur in 1900ⓐ, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of hostilities, understandably enough. At this point in stepped Cape Province-based expat entrepreneur and cricket patron James Douglas Logan with his (long-cherished) plan to organise a new tour. Logan negotiated with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) through the highly influential Lord Hawke, who managed to persuade the MCC to give the tour the green light. Despite the war still very much raging and the outcome far from decided, it was rescheduled for the following year. The announcement for the tour to take place in 1901 unleased opposition and misgivings from within both countries.

Newspaper cartoon of James Logan (Source: hermanus-history-society.co.za)

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The South African press lambasted the team chosen–a mix of “socialite-gentleman” cricketers (including Logan’s own son who had never played first-class cricket!) and more skilful players—for being overall well below par. Moreover, the press criticised the private venture by the “Laird of Matjiesfontein” as being not legitimate because the touring players predominantly from the Cape Colony had not been officially selected by the South African Cricket Union (which had suspended the Currie Cup and disbanded with the onset of war) {Sport Past and Present in South Africa: Trans(forming) the Nation, Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grindingh (Eds.), (contributor Dean Allen) 2013; Peter Wynn Thomas, The Complete History of Cricket Tours At Home and Abroad, 1989}.

Sherlock’s creator: make war, not cricket
From the host country, probably the most vociferous critic was world renowned author (and cricket fan and amateur player) Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle, in the forefront of countering the anti-war propaganda within the British homeland with his own pro-war propaganda, was incensed that a team of predominantly English-speaking cricketers should be coming to Britain to play when they should be stay in South Africa and fight the Boers. The vexed author of Sherlock Holmes called it “a stain on their manhood” (Cornelissen, Grindingh).

Conan Doyle in cricket gear, definitely a “gentleman” (Source: arthur-conan-doyle.com)

Despite the dissenting voices, what ultimately clinched it for Logan’s private tour was the MCC and the major English county clubs’ agreeing to give the tour matches first-class status. Even then there were second thoughts on the South Africa side and a suggestion made that the tour should not go ahead…this was scotched by the MCC who insisted it proceed to prevent the dislocation of the 1901 English season (Cornelissen, Grindingh).

Jimmy Sinclair (Photo: Cricket Weekly Record)

The cricket tour 🏏
Logan’s 14-man team was predominantly Uitlanders (‘foreigners’, immigrants, mainly British in composition but from other countries as well)…it included one Afrikaner cricketer Johannes Kotze who proved one of the more accomplished performers. The South Africans’ ‘gun’ batsman coming in to the tour was JH Sinclair, however his batting never really got going on the tour (unlike his bowling which was quite effective). Sinclair had been captured by the Boers but escaped in time to make the trip to Britain. Maitland Hathorn was the most successful “willow-wielder” on the tour (827 runs, average 35.95). Overall the team performed moderately though it did beat five of the major counties and tied one. Financially, Logan lost a substantial sum on the venture.

1901 Sth African tourists (Source: ebay.com)
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Cricket’s special role serving the Empire
To the English, cricket, the game they invented, was the quintessential sport, and an essential companion of empire building. This was the “golden age“ of cricket (1895-1914) with WG Grace’s shadow still very much dominating the sportⓑ. The Victorians revered cricket as an established institution, it was integral to the ethos of the English gentleman and a sign of his cultural supremacy. Moreover cricket was considered educative, part of an Englishman’s training. Spreading the game to the Empire, to Australasia, the West Indies, the Indian Sub-continent and Southern Africa, symbolised the “civilising mission of the Englishman abroad”. Participation in cricket was equated with the civility of English Victorian society and an endorsement of Anglo-Saxon values. Cricket tours by the MCC, the sport’s governing body in England, stimulated the colonies‘ interest in the English game, but its deeper purpose was to “promote imperial ideology”, extolling the virtues of allegiance to Britain, Empire and patriotic duty {Dean Allen, Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa, Logan of Matjiesfontein, 2015}. Allen’s thesis is that cricket was injected by the English ruling classes into South Africa “as much for political and propagandistic reasons as for sporting ones”

War an instrument of empire with cricket the mentor
The late Victorians affirmed that “manly games” were integral to training for life. Above all the ‘school’ of cricket taught lessons of “discipline, self-abnegation, a sense of fair play and team-work”, it built character. Britain’s willingness to engage in the 1899 War to enlarge the Empire—the scramble for colonies in Africa in competition with Germany and France—brought the cricketing fraternity squarely into the frame. Cricketers, to the English mind, were “made of the right stuff” for mortal combat, they were up for martial challenges (Donaldson, Peter (2017) ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899-1902. War in History, 25(1). ISSN 0968-3445). Many cricketers enlisted in the South African War (some former teammates found themselves on opposing sides), and there were cricketing casualties in the conflict {Dean Allen (2005) ‘Bats and Bayonets’: Cricket and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902, Sport in History, 25:1, 17-40, DOI: 10.1080/17460260500073033}, including some fine players of the day like Anglo-Australian test bowling ace JJ Ferris.

Australian troops playing cricket at the front in SA (Photo: awm.org.au)
∘

Endnote: Pioneering South African XI on the Sub-continent
An unintended co-occurrence of the Boer War was that it led to the staging of the first cricket match between South Africans and local cricketers on Sub-continent soil, 90 years before Apartheid sport ended in South Africa. ‘Representing’ South Africa were Afrikaner POWs incarcerated in Ceylon…Diyatalawa Camp v Colts XI, Nondescripts Club ground, Colombo 1901. The local XI won! {‘The First South Africa. side to play in the sub-continent: Boer Prisoners of War in 1901’, CricketMash, 4-Jul-2020, www.cricmash.com}.

Mafeking reported in (not exactly balanced) cricketing terms (source: independentaustralia.net)
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Postscript: 1899 South African War, cricket as antidote to physical and moral degeneration
The poor health of many Boer War recruits and Britain’s early reversals in the war added weight to prevailing concerns about national and ‘racial’ degeneration {Robb, George. “The Way of All Flesh: Degeneration, Eugenics, and the Gospel of Free Love.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 6, no. 4, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 589–603, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617222.} Some commentators of the day, bemoaning the ”neglect of an active athleticism“, called for more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen” {Anthony Bateman, Cricket, Literature and Culture: Symbolising the Nation, Destabilising Empire, 2016}.

𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽

ⓐ the English MCC side had just concluded their own tour of South Africa in April 1899, just six months before the war commenced
ⓑ Dr Grace loomed larger than life in cricket during this period as the sport’s first genuine superstar

The ‘Wicklow Chief’ and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 Remembered in a Sydney Coastal Cemetery

Biographical, Military history, Regional History, Society & Culture, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The first time I wandered through Waverley Cemetery in the chic, beachside eastern suburbs of Sydney I was somewhat bemused to find in the midst of the congested maze of gravesites of famous Australians—poets, politicians and judges, sports men and women, aviation pioneers among others—a large, impressive marble, bronze and mosaic memorial to the martyrs of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.

Honouring the sacrifices of 1798
The connexion only became clear to me later when I did some research on the ‘mystery’. The nexus linking the heroic but lost cause of nascent Éireannach 18th century insurrection against the indignities of English rule to a Sydney cemetery turned out to be one Michael Dwyer, whose remains along with those of his wife are buried within the grand monument. The memorial was constructed for the 100-year anniversary (1898) of the uprising, the plot and monument paid for by the local Irish community in New South Wales.

Michael Dwyer, hero of Wicklow resistance

Dwyer in the ‘Pantheon’ of Irish independence heroes
Native Wicklow man ‘Captain’ Dwyer fought in the ‘98 Rebellion, later leading an effective guerrilla campaign against the British army in the Wicklow Mountains. Dwyer held out till 1803, earning himself the sobriquet “the Wicklow Chief” before his eventual capture and transportion to the NSW colony (not America as he had been promised). In any event Dwyer got off pretty lightly compared to many of the rebels – given his freedom and a land grant of 100 acres on Cabramatta Creek. Dwyer’s life in Australia was a roller coaster of a ride and colourful to put it mildly…twice imprisoned and tried for plotting an Irish insurrection against the British authorities in NSW, a highly dubious charge that that he was acquitted of (though he still had to do time in Norfolk Island and Van Diemens Land penal colonies). When the NSW Corps overthrew Governor Bligh in the Rum Rebellion, Dwyer was reinstated as a free man, fortune favoured him again a couple of years later when he was made chief constable of police at Liverpool, NSW, and then it deserted him once more when Dwyer ended up in debtors’ prison (Ruan O’Donnell, ‘Dwyer, Michael (1772–1825)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/
biography/dwyer-michael-12896/text23301, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 9 September 2021; O’Sullivan, Michael, 1798 Memorial, Waverley Cemetery, Dictionary of Sydney, 2012, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/1798_memorial_waverley_cemetery, viewed 10 Sep 2021).

First steps on a long road to liberty
The inspiration for a surge in Irish nationalism and a sovereign republic free of English domination came from the French and to a lesser extent American revolutions. Ireland had a parliament of its own in Dublin but democratic participation was strictly limited by religious and property entitlements, squeezing out Catholics and Presbyterians and leaving the “Protestant Ascendency” in control of the country. The Society of United Irishmen (SUI), a secular organisation not restricted to Catholics¹,was formed to push for real autonomy for the Irish. Some reforms were forthcoming such as the franchise for non-Protestants but this was not near enough for the more radical elements of SUI.

Wolfe Tone

The SUI leader (Theobald) Wolfe Tone forged links with French republicans aimed at overthrowing English rule, leading to a 1796 invasion of Ireland by a nearly 14,000-strong French army. Unfortunately nature intervened and the invasion fleet ran into storms off the Irish west coast, loss of vessels and lives forced the abandonment of the invasion. The response of the government in Ireland—symbolically known as Dublin Castle—was to crack down heavily on the SUI radicals. The SUI was driven underground in a wave of repression culminating in the imprisonment of many of the organisation’s leaders. Though the Irish republicanism of SUI was a popular sentiment in the country, it didn’t have universal support even on the Catholic side, the Catholic Church strongly opposed what it saw as the ‘atheistic’ United Irishmen (‘The 1798 Rebellion – A Brief Overview’, John Dorney, The Irish Story, 28-Oct-2017, www.theirishstory.com).

Battle of Vinegar Hill

An uncoordinated insurrection
The Irish rising in 1798 was ill-timed and badly organised – most of the SUI leadership was still incarcerated. The insurgents’ planning was strategically inept, the rebellion was intended to be nationwide, but was largely confined to isolated pockets – Wexford, Leinster, Mayo, Antrim and Down. Dublin which should have been central to the revolt played virtually no part in it (Dorney). Historian Thomas Bartlett disputes the commonly held view of the rebellion being a localised affair…he argues that far from being confined to the east coast, the uprising produced “tremors throughout the country” with disturbance occurring in a very large number of counties (Bartlett, Thomas. “Why the History of the 1798 Rebellion Has Yet to Be Written.” Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr15 (2000): 181-90. Accessed September 8, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30071449). The rebels had some brief, early successes (especially the Battle of Oulart), but superior English troops and weaponry overwhelmed the poorly equiped Irish force inside a month. A subsequent incursion from a small French expeditionary force offered a momentary flicker of hope for the rebel cause but this was quickly snuffed out as the English-led forces took complete charge of the country. Retribution against the rebel leaders was swift and uncompromisingly brutal, most were summarily executed (or in Wolfe Tone’s case took his own life while awaiting execution). Atrocities were committed on both sides. A large number of the insurgents (like Michael Dwyer later on) were transported to the penal colony in New Holland. The failed ‘98 rising left a mixed legacy, intensifying the level of sectarian bitterness in Ireland but also inspiring countless Irish republicans and revolutionaries to continue the struggle for a free Ireland (‘The 1798 Irish Rebellion’, Thomas Bartlett, BBC, 17-Feb-2011, www.bbc.co.uk).

1800 Act of Union

In the wake of the crushing of the rebellion by the Marquis Cornwallis², fundamental political changes were enacted. The Irish Parliament was dissolved and direct British rule imposed by virtue of the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland, a situation that would stay in force until the Irish Free State came into being in 1922.

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¹ in fact many of the leaders like Wolfe Tone, Harvey and Keogh were Protestant
² the same (Lord) Cornwallis in the forefront of the ignominy associated with the 1781 English surrender at Yorktown which ended the land conflict in the American War of Independence

In Pursuit of Vertical Take-off and Autorotation Landing: From Rotorcraft to Autogyro to Practical Helicopter

Aviation history, Military history, New Technology,, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

🚁 Helicopter, from the Greek: helix (‘spiral’ or ‘whirl’ or ’convolution’) + pteron (‘wing’); into French: hélicoptère.

(Photo: Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images)

We know that manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight in an aircraft began with the Wright brothers in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina—unless that is you accept the audacious alternate candidate, Gustave Whitehead’s flight in Connecticut made two years earlier🅰—but when did the first helicopter get off the ground? The primitive archetype seems to be the brainchild of Frenchman Paul Cornu. Cornu, like the brothers Wright, started off as a bicycle maker before veering off into the nascent field of aerodynamic engineering.

M. Cornu (Photo: FAI)

Getting the concept off the ground
Near Lisieux in northern France in 1907, Monsieur Cornu became the first person to (ever so briefly) pilot an airborne rotary-wing, vertical-lift aircraft. The rotorcraft (using an unpowered rotor in free autorotation to develop lift) from Cornu’s own design was a twin-rotor job, the blades rotating in opposite directions which neutralised the torque. M. Cornu’s craft levitated about 1.5 metres off the ground, hovering for some 20 seconds. The Cornu ”Ur-copter” wasn’t manoeuvrable at all (requiring manpower to hold it in position from the ground) and therefore wasn’t practical, but it is considered to be a forerunner of the modern helicopter.

Juan De la Cierva (Photo: Crouch/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

De la Cierva and the autogyro
From 1912 on, numerous inventors and engineers were turning their hands to building prototypes of the rotorcraft, but with limited or ephemeral success. Compared to fixed-wing aircrafts, progress with rotorcrafts evolved very slowly, due to intrinsic problems with torque, dissymmetry of lift and control. Sikorsky (below) spent 30 years working on developing helicopters before his breakthrough. Etienne Oehmichen, whose early prototypes included vertically-mounted rotors and a tail rotor, allowing it to fly a distance of one kilometre in 1924! Oehmichen was also the first to carry passengers in his Oehmichen No. 2 helicopter. By the early 1920s Spanish aviator and engineer Juan De la Cierva built the autogyro (sometimes called a “windmill plane” or ‘gyroplane’)… his success advanced the understanding of rotor dynamics. Cierva’s autogiro had air safety in mind, proposing a solution to the craft losing its lift or stalling even at very low speeds. The Spaniard worked out that the autogyro’s rotor function is driven by the speed of the air, cf. the helicopter’s which depends on a motor…in the descent of the autogyro the rotor functioned as a kind of parachute according to Cierva. Ultimately, the helicopter’s superior velocity made it the preferable mode of aerocraft, however Cierva’s principle of the self-turning rotor remained a vital contribution to the later development of functional helicopters. Cierva’s flapping rotor blades has been described as “the single most important discovery in helicopter development” (CV Glines). A countryman of Cornu’s, Louis Bréguet, also experimented with the autogyro in the Thirties, his Bréguet-Dorand “Gyroplane Laboratoire” improving both the craft’s speed to 120km/h and its control capacity.
Another step forward in the evolution of helicopters came from Nazi Germany. Professor Heinrich Focke applied Cierva’s pioneering work on aerodynamics to the task of transitioning from the limitations of the autogyro to the creation of a “pure helicopter”. In 1936 Focke and Gerd Achgelis‘ Focke-Wulf Fw-61 smashed existing helicopter records for range and altitude and demonstrated autorotation descent to landing. This plus a control system much more reliable and robust than earlier rotorcrafts leads many aviation geeks to consider the Fw-61 to be “the world’s first truly functional helicopter”.

Image: http://primeindustriesusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/prime-industries-history-of-the-first-helicopter-infographic.jpg. ’History of the First Helicopter’.

Sikorsky’s practical copter
What Cornu started, Russian-born American designer Igor Sikorsky brought to commercial fruition. Sikorsky invented the first mass-produced, and in the opinion of many, the first practical helicopter, the VS-300, in Stratford, Connecticut in 1939🅱. In commercial production called the R–4, it would go on to play a significant role in the Second World War. By the war’s end Sikorsky had added the R–5 and the R–6 models, specifically designed for the military and specialising in search-and-rescue missions. Although he didn’t invent the first prototype of the helicopter, Sikorsky is commonly thought of as “the father of helicopters” because “he invented the first successful helicopter upon which further designs were based”. The VS-300 became the model for all modern single-rotor helicopters.

Igor Sikorsky, 1939 test flight

༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

🅰 see the November 2014 blog on this site, ‘Wright or Not Right?: The Controversy over who really was “First in Flight”’

🅱 Sikorsky’s 1939 flight was actually tethered, so the first ‘free’ copter flight (also by Sikorsky) didn’t take place until the following year, 1940

☬ ☬ ☬ ☬ ☬

Sites and articles consulted:

‘History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More’, Aaron Randle, Inside History, 09-Jul-2021, www.insidehistory.com

’Focke-Wulf Fw-61’, Modelling Madness, Brian R Baker,  www.modellingmadness.com

‘World’s First Helicopter — Today in History: September 14’, September 14, 2018, Connecticut History.org, www.connecticuthistory.org

‘History of the Helicopter’, Mary Bellis, ThoughtCo, Upd. 04-Oct-2019, www.thoughtco.com

‘Who Invented the Helicopter? (and When?)’, Aerocorner, www.aerocorner.com

‘Juan de la Cierva: Autogiro Genius’, C.V. Glines, Aviation History, Sept 2012,  www.au.readly.com

‘History of the Helicopter from Concept to Modern Day’, Prime Industries Inc, 31-Aug-2015,  www.primeinustriesusa.com

’Juan de la Cierva and the Autogyro’s Invention’, Javier Yanes, Ventana al Conocimiento, 21-Sep-2015,  www.bbvaopenmind.com

English Channel Islands under the Swastika, 1940–1945

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the wake of the catastrophic Allied defeat in the Battle of France in 1940, Britain made the decision not to defend the strategically-unadvantageous but sovereign Channel Islands lying just eight miles from the French coastline, giving up the oldest possession of the Crown “without firing a single shot” (Hazel R. Knowles Smith, The changing face of the Channel Islands Occupation, 2007)⚀. The islands were demilitarised, giving the German Wehrmacht a saloon passage into them in June 1940. There was no resistance to the German invasion…in addition to the British government withdrawing all troops, the locals were instructed not to resist the German invaders. Unfortunately no one told Berlin about the demilitarisation and German bombers raided Guernsey and Jersey, resulting in the death of 44 civilians✦.

Resistance by the islanders was pretty much out of the question due to geography as well as the numerical strength of the German military commitment (some 21,000 troops and a ratio of two Germans to one civilian in some areas). The islands’ terrain, being very small, flat and easy to search, made it “very difficult for a potential resistance to hide and organise” [‘Life under Nazi rule: the occupation of the Channel Islands’, (Rachel Dinning), History Extra, 25-Nov-2020, www.historyextra.com].

🔺 (Photo: World Travel Guide)

A so-called “Model occupation?”
Compared to the harshness of the Nazis’ subjection of Eastern European peoples, the occupying German military exerted a softer, lighter touch in its handling of the residents of the Channel Islands. The occupation has been described as “a gentler and kinder one with a correspondingly civil ladies and gentlemen’s resistance” MCGETCHIN, D. (2017). Journal of World History, 28(1), 154-161. Retrieved July 3, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44631517]. Even the attorney general of Guernsey depicted it as a “model occupation”. Hitler clearly saw an opportunity for an exercise in public relations (Dinning). The greater lenience given to the islands’ Britons also can probably be attributed to the Nazis’ perception of the occupied people as “racially elevated”, similar to how the Germans treated the Danes and Dutch, in contrast to the much harsher treatment meted out during the war to Russians and Poles for example (McGetchin).

While relations for the most part were cordial with the majority of islanders accordingly willing to peacefully co-exist with the German presence, the “softer approach” of the Germans shouldn’t be overstated—islanders were not free to speak their minds, they were subjected to curfews, 2% of the population were convicted and some imprisoned, two persons were executed, over 2,000 were deported including some Jews—certainly not a Sunday school picnic and things got tougher over time as the inhabitants faced critical food shortages which progressed into the very real reality of starvation.

🔺 Seigneur of Sark (Dame Sibyl Hathaway) visited by Wehrmacht officers at her fiefdom (Source: Twitter)

Pockets of non-militarised resistance
A lack of overt resistance didn’t mean there was no resistance at all. Among the islanders there was episodes of defiance of a non-violent kind – Britain’s BBC encouraged people to chalk the ‘V’ (for Victory) sign on buildings, ‘V’ jewellery was made, some civilians and local policemen as well raided German stores and supplies, others engaged in intelligence gathering, arson and graffiti-writing (Dinning). Act of sabotage on a small scale occurred and many islanders fed and even hid especially Russian POWs in their properties. On the other side of the coin there were varying forms of collaboration with the invaders, including paid informants who turned in their own people to the Nazis. The most vilified collaborators were women—derisively labelled ‘Jerrybags’ by townsfolk—who had sexual liaisons with the soldiers stationed on the islands (‘Defending Jerrybags’, (Colin Smith), Prospect, 20-Apr-1997, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk).

🔺 ‘V’ sign on Robin Hood pub, St Helier  (www.jerseyeveningpost.com)

A Nazi island fortress
With the British civilian inhabitants largely under wraps, the Nazi Führer embarked on his plans to “battle-proof” the Channel Islands. The Nazis transported massive amounts of steel and concrete for the grandiose-scale building scheme, tower forts, 45m-high gun stations, casements, anti-tank walls, air-raid shelters, bunkers and tunnels§. Beaches were mined and barbed wire laid around the coastlines. Hitler has plans for the heavily fortified islands in the post-war Third Reich as well, to serve as a haven for Axis soldiers [‘Did you know about Hitler’s insane “war-proof” islands?’, (Jeremy Caspar), SBS, 17-Mar-2017, www.sbs.com.au]. The value of the Channels’ coastal defence network to Hitler as propaganda against enemy Britain accounts for Berlin’s out of proportion material commitment to the Channels, constituting 10% of the Nazis’ Atlantic Wall resources⋔ (‘Occupation of the Channel Islands by Nazi Germany’, New World Encyclopedia).

Forced labourers building island fortifications 🔻

(Photo: Priaulx Library & Occupation Archives)

The fortresses were built by Organisation Todt (OT – the Nazi civil and military engineering group) employing forced labour mainly from Eastern Europe (French and Spanish prisoners were also forced into service on the mega-building project). The effectively enslaved workers (Ostarbeiter) were treated appallingly badly (with a resulting large loss of life) by the Wehrmacht soldiers who looked on them as Untermenschen (“sub-human”) (Dinning)✪. The Nazis built four labour camps on Alderney Island, two for ‘volunteer’ labourers (Hilfswillige) and the other two were concentration camps.

(Source: tvtime.com)

Hitler’s fortresses, or the remnants of them, remain highly visible to this day – especially on Alderney the most northern of the Channel Islands. Alderney was the most heavily fortified of the islands (nicknamed “Adolf Island”), after virtually all of its inhabitants were evacuated [‘The Nazi Occupation of the Islands of Guernsey‘, (Stephanie Gordon), Historic UK (nd), www.historic-uk.com].

Footnote: How did the Channel Islands first become English?
Traditionally belonging to the Duchy of Normandy, the collection of small islands became English when Norman noble William the Conqueror was victorious at Hastings and succeeded to the English throne in 1066.

Postscript: the return of evacuees to the Channel Islands from mainland Britain after liberation in 1945 led to a difficult period of reintegration for all. A schism within the communities developed and sustained for a long time, some of those who stayed thought the evacuees cowardly for leaving, whereas the latter retorted that it was they who had gone through the real war facing the Blitz while the “safe-at-home” ‘stayers’ cosied up to the Germans (Barrett).

❖~¤~❖~¤~❖~¤~❖~¤~❖❖~¤~❖~¤~❖~¤~❖~¤~❖

⚀ Britain prime minister, Churchill, in his ‘bulldogged’ forthright fashion still wanted to defend the Channel Islands on a matter of principle, however the stark realities disclosed by the naval high command—the islands were situated too far from mainland Britain, too close to enemy bases in France, the martial materials required to do so would have left Britain vulnerable to defending itself—made the decision a “no-brainer” [Duncan Barrett, Hitler’s British Isles, 2018]

✦ there was token resistance to the raids from a solitary ground gun on the Isle of Sark

§ in both Guernsey and Jersey 200-250 strongpoints were constructed by OT

⋔ the Atlantikwall was an extensive Nazi coastal defence system built along western continental Europe and Scandinavia

✪ around 16,000 forced/slave workers were sent to Jersey alone [‘World War Two: Forced labourer who made Jersey his home, BBC, 10-May-2020, www.bbc.com]

A Shipwreck Graveyard at the Top of the Harbour

Coastal geology & environment, Local history, Military history, Natural Environment, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rusting and decaying dinosaurs of the sea moored permanently off Sydney Olympic Park

ҩԅԅҩ ᓏҩԅԅҩ

Walkers and cyclists doing the path section of Sydney Olympic Park that stretches from Bennelong Speedway (oops! I mean Parkway) to the Badu Mangroves that guard the northern edge of Bicentennial Park would be familiar with the sight of half-a-dozen or so shipwrecks sitting calmly in the waters of Homebush Bay.

🔺 HMAS Karangi: once an important contributor in the defence of Darwin against the Japanese attack, now decomposing incrementally in the bay

🔺 the “interpretative and scenic lookout”

ჱჲს A metal plaque on the ground alongside the trail directs the curious passerby to an old wooden viewing platform where you can observe these maritime relics redolent of rotting timber and rusting metal. This spot contains the ship-breaking ramp (or what remains of it) that was used to dismember these ex-naval vessels. Missing is the wooden crane (presumably submerged) and the telescope.

🔺 The ship-breaking dock

ჱჲს The story of how these ships ended up here begins in 1966 when the Maritime Services Board approved the use of land here as a ship-breaking yard for the Port of Sydney. From 1970 till to the early Nineties private companies leased the yard to demolish hulks which had surpassed their use-by-date.

ჱჲს With the passage of time, left to nature and the elements, a number of these ex-ships have experienced an almost complete organic makeover. The dense mangroves of the bay have invaded the vessels, turning them into what one observer described as “a floating mangrove forest” (May Ly) and another, “a floating rusty relic forest” (Ruth Spitzer). The stricken and abandoned vessels are now a haven for local coastal birdlife (at dusk the hovering and nesting white gulls are easy to spot aboard the arboreal hulls).

ჱჲს The most striking example of this process of afforestation of wrecks is the SS Ayrfield. The UK-built steam collier, which ended up in Homebush Bay in 1972 after World War 2 service, is spectacularly overgrown with mangroves, a dense armada of trees literally bursting out of the ship’s disappearing hull and threatening to swallow it whole! High-rise residents in the Wentworth Point estate and people  strolling along the waterfront of the Point are afforded the best views of the organically-refashioned Ayrfield.

ჱჲს Also warranting special mention for a similar makeover courtesy of its biotic vibrancy–albeit much more obscurely located around the bend close to the Waterbird Sanctuary–is the 1924-built SS Heroic. The Heroic, a steam tug boat, saw service in both world wars before being consigned to the Homebush Bay cast-iron graveyard. Hidden behind a cloak of thick mangroves, you need to position yourself right on the muddy edge of the water and crane your neck to get a decent sighter of the nature-engulfed old tug boat. Its predicament, mirrors the Ayrfield’s but in a less advanced stage of arboreal encroachment.

ነሃጣፈነ A curious footnote to the 50 year-presence of the scuttled and abandoned ships in Homebush Bay is that the vessels, despite the egregiously bad state they are in, are ‘protected’ by legislation (under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976).

⥼ ⥽⥼ ⥽⥼ ⥽⥼ ⥽⥼ ⥽

Materials referenced:

‘Shipwrecks of Homebush Bay’, (May Ly), 30-Jul-2013, www.weekendnotes.com

‘Graveyards of a different kind at Homebush Bay’, (Ruth Spitzer), 2015, www.ruthspitzer.com

Fort Scratchley, Guarding the Hunter River Estuary

Local history, Military history, , , , , , , , ,

Situated on a bluff high above the coastline, Fort Scratchley, a leisurely walk from Newcastle’s city centre, boasts position A views of the popular Nobbys Beach and Head and the mouth of the Hunter River. The site has a long history – European land use of the headland began about 1804 with mining of the coal seams at its base¹. Indigenous use predates this with local aboriginal clans thought to have utilised the coal as well as taken advantage of the site’s desirability as a prominent lookout.

The military installation didn’t emerge until 1882² (constructed by colonial architect James Barnet), prompted by British concerns about Russian intrusions in the western Pacific. The fort was named after one of the officers who conducted a reconnaissance of the area in the 1870s, Lt-Col Peter Scratchley.

Fort Stratchley and other east coast fortifications, like Middle Head and Bare Island in Sydney, never sighted the Tsarist Russians but it did briefly see action during World War 2. On the night of 7–8 June 1942 it’s 6-inch guns fired two salvos at Japanese submarine l–21 bombarding the city’s shoreline, the only occurrence of a coastal fort firing on an enemy naval vessel in Australia.

(A model of the Japanese submarine, source: www.battleforaustralia.asn.au)

The fort’s guns were decommissioned in 1962 and the fort itself closed in 1972. Vacant for several years followed closure, it has since been occupied by the Newcastle Regional Maritime Museum and the local historical society. Today, open to the public and with some of its guns repositioned, guided tours of the fort and it’s tunnels are a principal feature of the site’s activities.

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¹ before acquiring the name Ft Scratchley the site had a sequence of different English names, “Beacon Hill”, “Fortification Hill”, “Signal Hill”

² although the first (seven-gun) earthen battery was installed there in 1828

✿ ✿ ✿

Referenced websites and sources:

‘Tunnel into 200 years of history’, Fort Scratchley Historical Site, www.fortscratchley.com.au

‘The Newcastle Fortifications – SMH 24 May 1881’, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13484259

‘Fort Scratchley’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org

Late Communist Era Capitalist Cravings: The Pepsi Swap

Commerce & Business, Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Popular Culture, , , , , , , , , , ,

During the Cold War not many people outside of the USSR knew of the Russian penchant for it’s ideological rival’s second most popular cola drink. The Soviet Union’s love affair with Pepsi-Cola started with a meeting between Premier Khrushchev and US Vice-President Nixon in 1959. As part of what was a rare cultural exchange for the time, Khrushchev was introduced to the sugary, carbonated beverage, the taste apparently meeting with the Soviet premier’s approval.

⏏️ Pepsi’s role in the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate So began a novel bilateral trade. With Russian rubles not valued outside of the USSR, a barter system was forged. The Russian and other Soviet people got to drink Pepsi, in return vodka (in the form of the state-owned brand Stolichnaya) was made available in the US market.

Things went smoothly enough until 1980…the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan threatened the Pepsi deal. Americans boycotted Soviet goods including Stolichnaya…the popular vodka’s sales plummeted in the US. In the late 1980s the Pepsi company—mindful that seven billion Russians were drinking Pepsi each year—hit upon a new and more unorthodox US/Soviet exchange deal.

To keep the Pepsi flowing to Russian consumers, Pepsi accepted a flotilla of ageing Soviet warships in lieu. Taking possession of 17 rusty Soviet warships plus a few other auxiliary naval vessels. The fleet was far from being in A1 shipshape condition, but it enabled the soft drink giant to boast that it possessed the world 6th most powerful navy at the time – on paper if not on water!

(Source: www.naval-encylopedia.com)

Pepsi’s move earned the displeasure of the US military but the company CEO’s slightly disingenuous rejoinder to the Pentagon was that it was dismantling the Soviet fleet faster than they were!*

Pepsi didn’t hang on to the decidedly decrepit Russian fleet for long, selling the warships to a Swedish scrap-recycling business in the early 1990s. A few years later Coca-Cola usurped it’s place in the Russian market.

____________________________

* undoubtedly Pepsi’s billion-dollar stake in the USSR remained it’s primary motive

Sites/works consulted: 👁‍🗨👁‍🗨👁‍🗨

’When the Soviet Union Paid Pepsi in Warships’, (Anne Ewbank), Atlas Obscura, 12-Jan-2018, www.atlasobscura.com)

‘ How Pepsi became the 6th largest military in the world‘, (Tom Kirkpatrick, We Are The Mighty, 28-Jan-2019, www.wearethemighty.com

‘Pepsi Navy: When the Soviets Traded Warships for Soft Drinks’, Sandboxx, 06-Nov-2020, www.sandboxx.com

The Brazilian Empire of the Braganzas: Endgame Emperor, Dom Pedro II’s Rule

Biographical, Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pedro II’s reign as emperor of Brazil started in the least propitious of circumstances. The first and immediate threat to the longevity of his rule was that he was only five-years-old when he acceded, necessitating a regency in Brazil until he came of age to rule in his own right. The other obstacle was that Brazil was still a fledgling empire wracked by political instability. Civil wars and factionalism plagued the empire, a vast region posing extremely formidable challenges to rule … between 1831 and 1848 there were more than 20 minor revolts including a Muslim slave insurrection and seven major ones (some of these were by secessionist movements). Pedro II had more success in foreign policy, the empire expanded at the expense of neighbours Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay as the result of a series of continental wars. Some early historians saw Dom Pedro’s long reign in Brazil (1831-1889) as prosperous, enlightened and benevolent (he freed his own slaves in 1840) [Martin, Percy Alvin. “Causes of the Collapse of the Brazilian Empire.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 4, no. 1 (1921): 4-48. Accessed December 3, 2020. doi:10.2307/2506083.], certainly the emperor was viewed widely as a unifying force in Brazil for a good two-thirds of his reign.

1870s, on a course for turbulent waters in the empire
From the 1870s onward however the consensus in favour of the rule of Pedro the ‘Unifier’ had started to show signs of fraying. The institutions that formed the three main pillars of the empire’s constitutional monarchical system—the landowning planter class, the Catholic clergy and the armed forces—were all becoming gradually disaffected from the regime, as were the new professional classes.

The landowning elite
Pedro II’s reign came to an end in 1889 with his overthrow. The pretext for the removal of the Brazilian monarchy, according to the conventional thesis, was grievances of the planter oligarchy at the abolition of slavery (The Golden Law, 1888), which Dom Pedro had given his imprimatur to (CH Haring). This view holds that the landowners❋ deserted the monarchy for the republic because they were not compensated properly for their loss of slaves (Martin). This conclusion has been challenged by Graham et al on several grounds: the plantation owners dominated the imperial government of Pedro making them complicit in the decision to abolish slavery (ie, why would they be acting against their own interests?); many slave-owning planters favoured abolition because it brought an end to the mass flight of slave from properties; the succeeding republic government itself did not indemnify planters for their loss of slaves. More concerning than the abolition of slavery to the planters, in Graham’s view, was the introduction of land reform, something they were intent on avoiding at all costs. The planter oligarchs were willing to concede the end of the slave system so long as it forestalled land reform, the linchpin to real change in the society. Siding with the republicans, Graham concedes, was a calculated risk on their part, as there were many radical and reformist abolitionists¤ under the pro-republic umbrella with a very different agenda (national industrialisation) to them, but one they were willing to take⚉ [Hahner ; Graham, Richard. “Landowners and the Overthrow of the Empire.” Luso-Brazilian Review 7, no 2 (1970): 44-56. Accessed December 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3512758.]

🔺 Slaves on a fazenda (coffee farm), 1885

The clergy
The conservative Catholic hierarchy were traditional backers of the emperor and the empire in Brazil. But a conflict of state in the 1870s between secularism and ultramontanism (emphasis on the strong central authority of the pope) undermined the relationship. This religious controversy involving the irmandades (brotherhood) drove a rift between the Brazilian clergy and the monarchy [Hahner, June E. “The Brazilian Armed Forces and the Overthrow of the Monarchy: Another Perspective.” The Americas 26, no. 2 (1969): 171-82. Accessed December 3, 2020. doi:10.2307/980297].

The national army
The army had long-standing resentments about its treatment in Brazilian society…its low wages and the lack of a voice in the imperial cabinet were simmering grievances. Understandable then that together with the republicans, they were in the forefront of the coup against the monarchy, the pronunciamento (military revolt) that occurred in 1889. A key and popular figure influencing the younger officer element away from support for the monarchy was Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca (Marechal de campo in the army). Marshal Deodoro assumed the nominal leadership of the successful coup. Swept up in the turmoil of republican agitation, Deodoro, despite being a monarchist, found to his surprise that he had been elected the republic’s first president. The coup has been described as a “barrack room conspiracy” involving a fraction of the military whose “grievances (were) exploited by a small group of determined men bent on the establishment of the Republic” (Martin).

🔺 Allegory depicting Emperor Pedro’s farewell from Brazil (Image: Medium Cool)

Revolution from above
Historians have noted that the 1889 ‘revolution’ that toppled Pedro II was no popular revolution…it was “top-down”, elite-driven with the notable absence of participation from the povo (“the people”) in the process (Martin). In fact the emperor at the time still retained a high level of popularity among the masses who expressed no great enthusiasm to change the status quo of Brazil’s polity.

The Braganza monarchy, hardly a robust long-term bet
With the health of the ageing Dom Pedro increasingly a matter of concern, the viability of Brazil’s monarchy came under scrutiny. For the military the emperor was not a good role model, Pedro’s own pacifist inclinations did not gel well with the army’s martial spirit. The issue of succession was also a vexed one…Princess Isabel who deputised several times when Dom Pedro was called away to Europe was thought of as a weak heir to the crown. She did not enjoy a positive public perception and Pedro’s transparent failure to exhibit confidence in her did little to bolster her standing, contributing to a further erosion of support for the monarchy [Eakin, M. (2002). Expanding the Boundaries of Imperial Brazil. Latin American Research Review, 37(3), 260-268. Retrieved December 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512527]. The Brazilian monarchical state has been characterised as a kind of monarchy-lite which contributed to its lack of longevity – viz it failed to forge an hereditary aristocracy with political privileges, its titles mere honorifics not bestowing social privilege in Brazilian society. So that, by 1889, the empire had been reduced to a “hollow shell” ready to collapse (Martin).

A loose-knit empire?
One perspective of the 19th century empire focuses on the sparseness and size of Brazil’s territorial expanse. Depreciating its status as an ‘empire’, this view depicts it as being in reality comprising something more like a “loose authority over a series of population clusters (stretching) from the mouth of the Amazon to the Río Grande do Sul” (Eakin). The lack of imperial unification, according to another view of the course of its history, surfaced as an ongoing struggle between the periphery (local politics) and the centre (national government), resulting in the weakening of the fabric of the polity [Judy Bieber, cited in Eakin].

Landless and disenfranchised
Other issues in addition white-anted the legitimacy of Dom Pedro’s regime, notably the shrinking of the franchise. By 1881 the number of Brazilians eligible to vote had dropped alarmingly – less than 15% of what it had been just seven years earlier in 1874. And this trend was not corrected by the succeeding republic regime, portending a problematic future for Brazilian harmony because with the new republic came a rapid boost in immigration [‘The Old or First Republic, 1889-1930’, (Country Studies), www.countrystudies.us].

The cards in Brazil were always stacked in favour of the landed elite, an imbalance set in virtual perpetuity after the 1850 Land Law which restricted the number of Brazilians who could be landowners (condemning the vast majority to a sharecropper existence). The law concentrated land in fewer hands, ie, that of the planters, while creating a ready, surplus pool of labour for the plantations [Emília Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (2000)].

Structural seeds of the empire’s eclipse
One theory locates Brazil’s imperial demise squarely in a failure to implement reform. The younger Pedro’s empire, projecting a rhetoric of liberalism which masked an anti-democratic nature, remained to the end unwilling to reform itself. The planter elite, with oligopolistic economic control and sway over the political sphere, maintained a rigid traditional structure of production—comprising latifúndios (large landholdings), slavery and the export of tropical productions (sugar, tobacco, coffee)—while stifling reform initiatives and opposing industrialisation [McCann, Frank D. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 18, no. 3, 1988, pp. 576–578. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/203948. Accessed 3 Dec. 2020]. Another criticism of the monarchical government concerns its economic performance. Detractors point to the regime’s failure to take the opportunities afforded by the world boom in trade after 1880, a consequence of which was that powerful provincial interests opted for a federal system [‘The Brazilian Federal State in the Old Republic (1889-1930): Did Regime Change Make a Difference?’, (Joseph L. Love), Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies, University of Illinois, www.avalon.utadeo.edu.co/]

Primeira República, “King Coffee” and industrial development
Initially the political ascendency in the First Republic lay with the urban-based military. However within a few years the government complexion was changed. The ‘Paulistas’, a São Paulo civilian cliche of landowners, elbowed the ineffectual Deodora aside. Exploiting differences between the army and the navy, the landowning elite then edged the remaining uniformed ministers out of the cabinet [Hahner], consolidating the “hegemonic leadership” of monolithic Paulista coffee planters in the republic✪.The First (or Old) Republic (1889-1930) was marked by uneven, stop-start spurts of industrialisation together with high level production of coffee for export. The Old Republic ended with another coup by a military junta in 1930 which in turn led to the Vargas dictatorship [Font; Graham].

Río de Janeiro, 1889 🔺

Endnote: The anomalous Brazilian empire of the 19th century
During its 60-plus years of existence Brazil’s empire stood out among the post-colonial states of 19th century Central and South America as the single viable monarchy in a sea of republicanism. Briefly on two occasions it was joined by México, also a constitutional monarchy but one that didn’t truly take root. On the second occasion the fated Emperor Maximilian—who was Pedro II’s first cousin—tried to forge an imperial network of sorts with Brazil.

PostScript
After the South’s defeat in the American Civil War, Pedro II, wanting to cultivate cotton in the empire, invited Southerners to settle in Brazil which still practiced slavery (others went to México or to other Latin American states, even to Egypt). Estimates of between 10 and 20 thousand took up Dom Pedro’s offer, settling mainly in São Paulo. Most of these Confederados found the hardships too challenging and returned home after Reconstruction, some however stayed on in Brazil with their descendants still living in places like the city in São Paulo named Americana [‘The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil’, (Jesse Greenspan), History, upd. 22-Jun-2020, www.history.com].

⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯

❋ a dominant force in Brazilian economics and society which had benefitted from the 1850 Brazilian land law which restricted the number of landowners

¤ such as Joaquim Nabuco

⚉ the planter elite decided in the end that a governo federal system would better protect their land monopolisation than the empire could (Graham)

✪ coffee from Minas Gerais, Río de Janeiro and especially São Paulo plantations were the mainstay of the Brazilian economy (Font)

The Brazilian Empire of the Braganzas: Founder-Emperor, Dom Pedro I’s Rule

Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Brazil at the start of the 19th century was the jewel in the imperial crown of Portugal, the kingdom’s largest and richest colony. In 1808 Napoleonic aggression had taken the European-wide war to the Iberian Peninsula. An inadvertent consequence of the invasion set Brazil on the path to independence. Portuguese prince regent, the future João VI (or John VI), not wanting to emulate the Spanish royals’ circumstance (incarcerated in a French Prison at Emperor Napoleon’s pleasure) fled Portugal for Brazil, reestablishing the Portuguese royal court in Río de Janeiro.

Dom Pedro o Libertador, an empire of his own

João returned to Lisbon as king of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves on the wave of the Liberal ‘Revolution’ (1820), leaving son Pedro as regent to rule Brazil in his stead. Unfortunately for him Pedro had his own plans, defying his father and the Portuguese motherland, he split Brazil off from Portugal. In a famous “I am staying” speech (Dia do Pico), Pedro rebuffed the demands of the Cortes (parliament) in Lisbon that he yield. Pedro’s timing was good, his move won the backing of the Brazilian landed class. [‘Pedro I and Pedro II‘, (Brazil: Five Centuries of Change), www.library.brown.edu]. Militarily, he met only limited resistance from Portuguese loyalists to his revolt. Aided by skilful leadership of the Brazilian fleet by ace navy admiral, the Scot mercenary Lord (Thomas) Cochrane, Pedro triumphed over his opponents with a relatively small amount of bloodshed, declaring himself emperor of Brazil in late 1822 and receiving the title of “Perpetual-Defender of Brazil”.

(Source: Bibliothèque National)

Pedro, despite benefiting from the able chief-ministership of José Bonifácio, soon found his imperial state on a rocky footing, embroiled in a local war with the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. In the conflict, Brazil’s southern Cisplatine province, encouraged by the Argentines, broke away from the empire, eventually re-forming as the independent republic of Uruguay (both Brazil and Argentina during this period harboured designs on the territory of Uruguay). On João VI’s death in 1826 Pedro I became king of both Portugal and Brazil, but immediately abdicated the Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Maria II [‘Biography of Dom Pedro I, First Emperor of Brazil’, (Christopher Minster), ThoughtCo., Upd.15-May-2019, www.thoughtco.com]

Politics within the ruling House of Braganza in this time were turbulent, both in Portugal and Brazil. The king’s younger brother Miguel (“o Usurpador”) usurped the throne of the under-aged Maria, causing Pedro I to also abdicate the Brazilian throne and return to Europe to try to restore the crown to his daughter Maria. Pedro’s five-year-old son, Pedro II, succeeded him in a minority as the new emperor of Brazil in 1831. In Portugal Dom Pedro gathered an army and engaged in what was effectively a civil war between liberals and conservatives who were seeking a return to the rule of absolutism. The war spread into Spain merging into the larger First Carlist War, a war of succession to determine who would assume the Spanish throne. The Portuguese conflict was decided in favour of Dom Pedro and the liberals, but not long after in 1834 Pedro I died of TB.

A whiff of Lusophobia in the Brazilian air

Pedro I’s abdication of the Brazilian throne provoked a brief outbreak of Lusophobia (hatred of the Portuguese) in Brazil. Triggered by perceptions that Lisbon harboured designs to restore Brazil by force to its colonial empire, some Brazilians in a frenzy randomly attacked Portuguese property and killed a number of Portuguese-born residents [‘In the Shadow of Independence: Portugal, Brazil, and Their Mutual Influence after the End of Empire (late 1820s-early 1840s’, (Gabriel Paquette), e-Journal of Portuguese History, versão On-line ISSN 1645-6432, vol.11, no. 2 Porto 2013].

The Filibustering Fifties: American Armed Incursions into the Mexican Frontier

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Filibuster: a soldier of fortune who engages in military adventurism in a foreign country or territory to foment or support a revolution (flourished 1840s/1850s) [‘Filibuster (military)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Also known as ‘freebooters’, they were privately organised, irregular soldiers or militia used to try to effect regime change or exploit a power vacuum. 

 

The 1850s coincided with a surge of filibuster activity launched from within the United States and targeted at Mexico. The majority of the filibuster expedition participants were Americans of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent but there were other nationalities involved including French expeditions (eg, de Pindray, Raousset)✱.

What accounts for the massive spurt in filibuster ventures at this time? Conditions on both sides of the US and Mexican borders were conducive to their prevalence. A contributing factor was the inability or unwillingness of both sets of authorities to curb the filibusters. 

∆ “Republic of Sonoro” flag

An accessible and porous Mexican frontier
The area of the western border region—separating the new American state of California and the Territory of New Mexico (including Arizona) from the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonoro—was largely frontier land, lacking effective natural boundaries and sparsely populated at the time. The northern Sonoro part of the frontier in particular was a bit of a “no man’s land” and thus considered a “lawless zone”. The Mexican government lacked the resources and men to patrol the northern border properly. Indian raids from US territory into the Mexican frontier were common [Scott Martelle, in ‘Hundreds of 19th Century Americans Tried to Conquer Foreign Lands. This Man Was the Most Successful’, (Sarah Pruitt), History, 07-Mar-2019, www.history.com]. The government in Mexican City was doing little to redress the northern vulnerability, a plan to colonise (thus strengthening) Sonoro’s northern frontier, the Paredes Proyectos in 1850, was rejected by the Mexican National Congress. To the American filibusters, all of this made the prospect of invading Mexican territory more appealing.

∆ Filibuster militia in training (Source: Britannica).
US turns a blind eye to filibusters
Official complacency and a reluctant to commit effectively also prevailed on the US side. Hamstrung by a small army, the troop commitment by Washington to the border, which stretched 3,200 km from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, was in perpetual shortfall. With insufficient numbers to police the borders and ports, the government’s response to private filibuster ventures was confined to threats [‘The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective’, ((Matt M. Matthews), (The Long War Series Occasional Paper 22), www.apps.dtic.mil/]. Various neutrality acts forbid Americans from engaging in warfare with foreign countries, however its enforcement by Congress was sporadic and selective. At best, the US approached the task of curbing the wave of filibusters in a half-hearted fashion, ‘Feature the Filibuster Movement’, PBS, www.pbs.org/].

President Fillmore (Whig Party) was not not inclined towards expansionism himself, but he did little to curb the filibuster raids on Mexican soil. His successor Franklin Pierce (Democrat) was more open in his expansionist policies including attempting, unsuccessfully, to purchase Cuba from Spain (which many, especially Southern Americans thought would open the way to it becoming a pro-slavery state) [Joseph Allen Stout, Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848-1921, (2002)].

Southern comfort to the Filibusters
The filibuster movement elicited strong support from the South – in troops and in financial backing. Wealthy Southern landowners and agriculturalists helped finance expeditions into Mexico. José Carbajal, a Tejano, recruited Anglo-Texans including Texas Rangers for his 1851 armed incursion across the Rio Grande into Tamaulipas. Carabajal’s inducement to gain Texan participation was the opportunity to capture runaway slaves from Texas✪ [José María Jesús Carbajal‘, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Texas, expanding slavery and the filibusters
As with US’ designs on Cuba, Texan land barons saw the prize of land south of the border as a means of securing independent, slave-owning states, thus tipping the balance in favour of pro-slavery states in the US. Chunks of Mexico and other Latin American countries such as Nicaragua were desirable to Texans as viable trading stations for the African slave trade, and as a cheaper source of labour than Texas [‘Texans and Filibusters in the 1850’s’, (Earl W. Fornell), Southwestern Historical Society, LIX(4), April 1956]. The model for an American colony in northern Mexico took inspiration from Sam Houston’s ‘liberation’ of Texas from Mexico [‘How Tennessee Adventurer William Walker became Dictator of Nicaragua in 1857′, (John E. Norvell), Middle Tennessee Journal of Genealogy and History, Vol. XXV, No 4, (Spring 2012), www.thenashvillecitycemetery.org].

∇ The Walker story gets the Hollywood treatment (1987)

William Walker and the “Independent Republic of Sonoro”
The best known of the American filibusters in the 1850s was William Walker. Tennessean Walker’s idea was to colonise Mexican territory in Baja California and Sonoro, where he sensed there was a power vacuum. With an armed force comprised mainly of Tennesseans and Kentuckians, Walker tried to establish first one then another self-declared (but unrecognised) republic. Walker’s attempted takeover was short-lived, meeting unexpected stiff resistance from the Mexican army and local citizens (Norvell).The Tennessean chancer’s venture ultimately floundered on poor planning (logistics problems, shortages of supplies, unfamiliarity with the territory). Forced to return to California Walker was put on trial for violating the US/Mexican Neutrality Act, but with American sympathy running high for Walker and for filibusterers in general he was swiftly acquitted in a travesty of a trial (Pruitt)🀾.

Nicaraguan adventure
This was a green light for Walker to roll the dice again in the hemisphere filibuster game, turning his attention to Nicaragua in 1855…this time however it wasn’t to end as happily. With a small army of mercenaries he invaded the Central American country and did succeed in usurping power and installing himself as “Dictator of Nicaragua”, and even securing recognition from President Pierce for his regime. However from that point on it went badly “pear-shaped” for Walker. By 1857 Walker had alienated locals as well as American shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. A combined force from Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua, bankrolled by Vanderbilt, routed Walker’s army and banished him. Imprudently, Walker made two more coup attempts in Central America before his notoriety caught up with him. The British, concerned that Walker’s fomenting of rebellion might destabilise its colonies in the Greater Caribbean, handed him over to the Honduran government who promptly executed him in 1860 [‘William Walker: King of the 19th Century Filibusters’, (Ron Soodalter), HistoryNet, www.historynet.com/].

(Source: www.wsj.com)

Endnote: Filibusters and Manifest Destiny
William Walker’s personality has been described as “a mix of hubris, ambition and nascent white supremacy” (Martelle, cited in Pruitt). The military men who followed him and other filibuster leaders were motivated by several considerations – a love of adventure, greed for personal gain and ideology. They like many contemporary Americans believed in the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny”, in the 19th century ingrained in American culture. This embodied the belief that it was an inalienable right of Americans to extend their civilisation across the continent (‘Feature the Filibuster Movement’)⎈.

PostScript: Historian Brian E May has made the interesting observation that the plague of filibustering expeditions had an counter-effect hampering the United States’ best efforts to empire-build in the hemisphere. The activities of filibusters, though they had widespread support within the US, he notes, damaged US foreign policy and limited its territorial expansion, almost in defiance of the locomotive of Manifest Destiny. The rebound from the filibusters’ intervention engendered hostility from foreign countries such as Canada and Great Britain, and Hispanic-Americans, who pushed back against US expansionism [A. James Fuller. ‘Reviewed Work. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America, by Robert E. May, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 22, No 4 (Winter 2002), pp.722-724. www.jstor.org/]

▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒▒▒▒▒█▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒▒▒▒▒█

✱ many of these has been lured to California by the prospect of gold discovery, these hopes disappointed, they turned their eyes south to other potential sources of enrichment, eg, news of gold and silver finds in Baja California

✪ Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, if Texan filibusters could capture territories in northern Mexico, it would make the reintroduction of slavery possible

🀾 Henry A Crabb, a schoolmate of Walker’s, followed him in a filibuster foray into Mexico, also making a failed attempt to colonise part of Sonoro in 1857 – claiming to “liberate the people of Sonoro” and suffering the same fate as Walker, execution at the hands of Mexican troops

⎈ as Nelson put it, “filibusters epitomised the romantic, muscular spirit of American adventure”, a sense of mission inspired by Manifest Destiny (Nelson)

🃗 May also reminds us that the increasing intensity of the criticism of the filibusters by the Federal government hardened Southern resolve to ultimately secede from the Union (Nelson)

The Blacks Between the Reds and the Whites: A Ukrainian Anarchist Entity in a “Stateless Territory”

Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Russian Revolution in 1917 fostered a desire for self-determination within the Ukraine (as with other national minorities inside the empire), setting up the impetus for a conflict in Russia’s ‘underbelly’ which would become economically and geopolitically crucial to Soviet ‘imperial’ statehood. The Ukrainian conflict that followed (1917-21)✱ was a complicated affair involving a civil war, foreign interventions by countries from both the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance, the White Armies (a loose confederation of international anti-communist forces), the Bolsheviks (the Red Army) and from neighbouring countries Poland and Romania with their own territorial ambitions in the Ukraine. The struggle for political control in Ukraine involved the succession (and sometimes the co-existence) of 14 separate governments◘, before the Bolsheviks finally established the country as a constituent republic of the USSR [The Times Guide to Eastern Europe, (Edited by Keith Sword), (1991); Encyclopedia of the USSR, (Warren Shaw & David Pryce), (1990)].

 

Reds, Whites and Blacks  
Various social and political groups within Ukrainian society—peasants, Cossacks, nationalists, socialists, communists, anarchists—formed into autonomous partisan detachments and embroiled themselves in the southern front showdown between the Red (Russian) and the White (foreign) armies. Of these groups, the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, colloquially known as the Black Army, in particular found itself in the middle of the White versus Red warfare.

Makhnovia AKA ’Makhnochina’
Of the assortment of homegrown players in the conflict in Ukraine, the Black Army was the most intriguing ideologically. Led by a brilliant military commander, Nestor Ivanovitch Makhno, and composed of peasants and workers, they were an army of revolutionary anarchists (or anarcho-communists). Makhno was engaging in a social revolution experiment by trying to establish a stateless, libertarian society in “free territory”. The Makhnovist Movement was based on the principle of self-government, a “federation of free soviets” without recourse to a dominant central authority◔ – a defiantly anti-statist position that was of course anathema to the Soviets. Aside from anarchists, the movement’s ranks were also swelled by Left Social Revolutionaries, Maximalists and maverick Bolsheviks [Nestor Makhno, Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921, (Alexandre Skirda), (2004)]. At its high-water point Makhnovia boasted an army some 100,000-strong [‘The forgotten story of the Free Territory’, (John Dennehy), Contributoria, July 2015, www.contributoria.com].

The Bolsheviks in their Ukraine military campaign alternated between forming alliances with the Black Army against the White Army when it suited them, and warring with them at other times. Makhno’s effective use of guerrilla tactics and his own martial innovation, the tachanka◘, played a decisive role in stopping the advance of Anton Denikin’s White Army on Moscow by cutting its lines of supply. When the Reds eventually got the better of the Whites in the war, Leon Trotsky (Soviet Commissar of War) reneged on the agreement with the Makhnovists, vilified Makhno as a “bandit warlord” and a “counter-revolutionary”, and proceeded to crack down on the Blacks ruthlessly [‘Free Territory of Ukraine’, Libertarian Socialist Wiki, www.libsoc.wiki.fandom.com]. With the Black Army’s strength decimated by the desertion of thousands of soldiers, the Red Army, superior in numbers and better equipped✧, ultimately defeated and dispersed the Blacks, forcing Makhno to flee Ukraine, eventually taking refuge in France.

Footnote: Makhnovia’s geographical base in eastern Ukraine
Makhno’s powerhouse was on the left bank of the River Dniepr, in the provinces of Ekaterinoslav and Northern Tavrida and in part of neighbouring provinces…an area forming a rectangle measuring 300 km by 250 km and populated by seven-and-a-half million people (Skirda).

⇣ A 1919/20 pictorial map of Ukraine (Image source: Christophe Reisser & Sons)

Postscript: Ukraine, ‘Malorossiya’ and historic ‘Great Russia’ assumptions of hegemony
The perception historically of Ukraine as “Little Russia”—held by by both Russians and the outside world—as a geographic entity falling naturally within the realm of “Great Rus” or even as indivisible from it, has acted as a handbrake on Ukraine’s aspirations for independence❂. In the present Ukraine/Crimea imbroglio, Russia’s military intervention and support for separatism in Ukraine (ie, the 2014 idea of eastern Ukraine as ‘Novorossiya’, (“New Russia”), the encouragement of the separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic”), is the Soviet strategy redux of what happened in 1917 – the setting up of an alternative authority in the country to that of the Ukrainians, namely a pro-Russian regime in Kharkiv. The Europeans in 1917, perhaps with an underlying sense of the vast, sprawling Russian Empire as amorphously heterogeneous, had a poor awareness of the difference between Ukrainians and Russians (the Soviet policy of Russification was designed to further blur those differences)⧆ [‘Illusion of a friendly empire: Russia, the West, and Ukraine’s independence a century ago’,  (Ihor Vynokurov), Euromaidan, 02-Sep-2017, www.euromaidan.com].


࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏࿏

✱ because of the causal link the conflict in Ukraine is sometimes characterised as the southern front of the Russian Civil War. Invading White Army leader General Denikin referred to the region as “Southwestern Krai”, a name with Russian imperial overtones

◔ Makhnovia relied on the adherents to an anarchist model to self-organise into peasant communes and worker co-operatives (Dennehy)

◘ horse-drawn machine guns

✧ the Bolsheviks routinely and deliberately underarmed Makhno’s army (the Black Army always had more volunteers than guns) (Skirda)

❂ this is a part of a continuum which had its genesis with Muscovy’s supplanting of Kyiv as the centre of the Russian state

⧆ when the Ukrainian war for independence broke out, the western powers, in striking contrast to their ready endorsement of Polish self-determination and independence after WWI, failed to offer the same support to the Ukrainians’ aspirations (Vynokurov)

United Fruit, CIA, Do Business with Guatemala, Cold War Style: 2) Democracy to Coup D’état

Comparative politics, Economics and society,, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CCACBF24-9484-466C-AD4D-9150E57E5250With the go-ahead from incoming president Eisenhower in March 1953, Allen Dulles and the CIA continued the covert plot to undermine and destabilise the Árbenz government. The highly-orchestrated assault on the Árbenz regime took place on several fronts. Washington blocked a much needed loan from the World Bank to Guatemala and imposed an arms embargo on the country❈. The CIA forged an alliance of neighbouring states which were hostile or potentially hostile to Árbenz. The dictators running Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic and Venezuela didn’t require much persuading. Success by Árbenz in redistributing Guatemalan land could easily inspire the peasantries in their own countries to make similar demands, so the tiranos-caudillos were only too happy to get on-board with the CIA’s mission and pass on valuable intelligence about Guatemala to the US, and in the case of Nicaragua’s Somoza, Dominican Republic’s Trujillo and Venezuela’s Jiménez, help finance and arm the anti-Árbenz rebels.

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⬆️ Dulles Bros Inc

Within the turbulent atmosphere of Guatemala CIA pursued a strategy of divide-and-rule. The US dangled the carrot of future armaments before the country’s military high command –  the arms withheld from them would be made available on the proviso that they were prepared to break with their loyalty to Árbenz. [Bowen, Gordon L. “U.S. Foreign Policy toward Radical Change: Covert Operations in Guatemala, 1950-1954.” Latin American Perspectives 10, no. 1 (1983): 88-102. Accessed July 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/2633365].

Peurifoy and anti-communism in one country
At the same time the US State Department also utilised diplomatic channels to lever pressure on the Guatemalan regime. The State Department purposefully chose John Peurifoy as the new ambassador to Nicaragua. Peurifoy came with the right credentials to ‘help’ in Guatemala. As US ambassador to Greece in 1950 he interfered in post-civil war Greece to consolidate an anti-communist climate in the country. As Washington’s man-on-the-ground in Guatemala Peurifoy played a key role in destabilising the Árbenz government. The ambassador  approached the task of rooting out communists in Guatemalan politics very zealously, describing a meeting with Àrbenz thus, “I came away definitely convinced that if President is not a communist, he will certainly do until one comes along, and that normal approaches will not work in Guatemala” [‘The Ambassador in Guatemala (Peurifoy) to the Department of State, Office of the Historian, www.history.state.com/]⧆. The CIA’s anti-Árbenz propaganda campaign also secured the assistance of the Catholic Church in Guatemala, whose priests infused their sermons with censure of the government.

Washington parachutes ”anti-red troubleshooter” into Guatemala ⬇️
(New York Times)


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Self-appointed gatekeeper of the Western Hemisphere
Historians have debated the reasons for Washington’s persistently determined pursuit of the Guatemalan democracy. In the early to mid-Fifties the mania of anti-communism was at its peak in America. Eisenhower had been elected in 1952 pledging to stop the spread of the “communist scourge” both at home and globally⌑. In such a charged climate the US Administration found itself very disposed towards seeing developments in Guatemala under Árbenz as evidence of a Soviet beachhead in the region, as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine◰, and therefore justification for Washington to intervene in Guatemala’s affairs [‘Upholding the Monroe Doctrine: American Foreign Policy in the 1954 Guatemalan Coup d’Etat’, (Nadjalisse C. Reynolds-Lallement), [Dr. Karen E. Hoppes HST 201: US History June 5, 2013], http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/].

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A symbiosis of political and economic interests?
The consensus among historians is that Cold War politics was the prime mover for the US, and that the economic interests and profitability of United Fruit Company (UFCo) in Guatemala always was secondary in the scheming – although as Gordon has argued, there was a reciprocal relationship between the two at play, the US’ government’s “Cold War and anti-communist hysteria provided public cover for government action on behalf of UFCo, (the company’s) personnel facilitated the CIA’s Cold War task of subverting the Árbenz government” [Gordon, Max. “A Case History of U. S. Subversion: Guatemala, 1954.”Science & Society 35, no. 2 (1971): 129-55. Accessed July 27, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40401561].

Notwithstanding the fact that local communists held some sway over the Guatemalan labour movement, their impact on decision-making within the Árbenz government was at best minimal. Árbenz’ objectives on taking control were not doctrinal but pragmatically liberal ones – political liberalisation, creation of a middle class, modernisation of the country, to free the Guatemalan economy from dependency on world coffee prices and from control by foreign corporations𝄪 (Gordon). Try as they may, US apologists arguing that the intervention was saving the country from communism have failed to make any plausible, even indirect, connexion between the Árbenz government and the Soviet Union✧. Immerman’s view is that the State Department confused communism and nationalism [cited in Bowen)❂.

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⬆️  JF Dulles, Time’s “Man of the Year, 1954”

Isolating the Western Hemisphere’s outlier state 
With former UFCo lawyer John Foster Dulles guiding US foreign policy, the diplomatic isolation of Guatemala was complete when it cajoled the other members of the Organisation of American States (OAS) into accepting its anti-communist resolution in the region at the Caracas meeting early in 1954. The US, with assistance from the UK, also blocked Guatemala’s efforts to secure UN intervention against those seeking to destabilise its democracy.

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 Rebel troops attacking Guatemala City ⬆️
(Source: www.latinamericanstudies.org)

End-game: The putsch and its denouement
By late 1953 Eisenhower had given the “green light” to the invasion plan that became Operation PBSUCCESS in 1954. The US propaganda campaign intensified a few months later with saturation airdrops of anti-Árbenz leaflets across the country. Concurrently, the US Embassy in Guatemala City employed  blocking equipment to jam the government’s official wireless channels and replace it with misinformation discrediting the Árbenz regime (Bowen). The CIA chose a renegade, expat Guatemalan officer on the outer with Árbenz to lead the coup attempt. From Honduras, Colonel Castillo Armas, with a small force of Guatemalan exiles and mercenaries and financed largely by the CIA, invaded the country. At first repulsed by Árbenz’s troops, the rebels fortunes turned around after Peurifoy persuaded JF Dulles to provided them with air cover. US-piloted planes duly strafed Guatemala City and other towns. American intimidation and terror had a telling psychological effect on the population. Guatemalan army commanders, fearful of a full US military intervention, defected from Árbenz, and refused to allow the president to arm the peasant militia to resist the invaders, this prompted a demoralised Árbenz to resign his office in June 1954 and seek asylum in the Mexican Embassy. After some jockeying for power within the country’s military junta Castillo Armas emerged as the new (US recognised) national leader, hurling Guatemala once again into the void of a crippling military dictatorship [RABE, STEPHEN G. “The U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: The Documentary Record.” Diplomatic History 28, no. 5 (2004): 785-90. Accessed July 30, 2020.www.jstor.org/stable/24914824.]

⬇️ Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s graphic take on the Guatemalan putsch   

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❈ forcing it to seek arms from Czechoslovakia, allowing the US to fling further mud, characterising it as an evidence of Árbenz’s ongoing collusion with communism

⧆ revealingly, the New York Times at the time described Peurifoy as “a man of action rather than a diplomat”, The New York Times, 18-July-1954

⌑ as Moye has noted, the Guatemala crisis provided a convenient and fairly easy way for the Eisenhower administration to demonstrate its promised “victory over communism”  [MOYE, LAURA. “The United States Intervention in Guatemala.” International Social Science Review 73, no. 1/2 (1998): 44-52. Accessed July 31, 2020. www.jstor.og/stable/23883544/].

◰ a foreign policy position of the US, first enunciated in 1823, warning off European powers from interfering with the governance of existing countries on the American continent

𝄪  at the time of Guatemala’s to transition to a democratic state, the US accounted for 77% of its exports of 65% of its imports. UFCo functioned in Guatemala (and elsewhere in the region) as a “state within a state”, controlling 42% of the Guatemalan land and benefitting from light tax and import duty burdens [‘Background on the Guatemalan Coup of 1954’, www.umbc.edu/].

✧ Marks offers a contrary view, that the Árbenz government did pose a genuine communist threat, had a tendency towards authoritarianism itself and that the president had lost the confidence of the majority of Guatemalans by 1954 [MARKS, FREDERICK W. “The CIA and Castillo Armas in Guatemala, 1954: New Clues to an Old Puzzle.” Diplomatic History 14, no. 1 (1990): 67-86. Accessed July 30, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/24912032]. Although Rabe et al have countered that Marks’ conclusions rely on early State Department documents that have been discredited

❂ Getchell contends that in fact the USSR were “unwilling to prop up what they considered a bourgeois-democratic revolution” [‘Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala: The Soviet Union, the United Nations, and “Hemispheric Solidarity”’, (Michelle Denise Getchell), Journal of Cold War Studies, 17(2):73-102. April 2015. DOI: 10.1162/JCWS a 00549]

1898, A Vintage Year for United States Empire Building

Economic history, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography” ~ Mark Twain (attributed)✱

〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥

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The axiomatic nature of the above much-referenced quotation resounds most strongly in the year 1898. In that year the US expanded its offshore territorial acquisitions in different parts of the Pacific and in the Caribbean. It secured the islands of Cuba, the Philippines❂, Guam and Puerto Rico as a result of a short, opportunistic, one-sided war with a declining European power. At the same time Washington annexing the Hawaiian Islands, closed the door on four years of ‘independent’ republicanism which followed a successful coup by American businessmen against the indigenous Hawaiian monarchy.

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🔺 Flag of the short-lived Hawaiian Republic


What triggered US involvement in a Cuban conflict against far-off Spain? The immediate pretext was the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbour. The explosion is generally believed to have been an accident but leading American newspapers (the Hearst press and to a lesser extent the Pulitzer publications) drove the charge of war jingoism within the country, declaring Spain culpable for the loss of life on the Maine. This and the ongoing reporting of the Cuban insurrection which deliberately exaggerated Spanish atrocities against the Cubans—examples of the “yellow journalism”◬ practiced especially by Hearst—helped to create a groundswell of popular support and agitation for war whilst boosting the newspapers’ sales.

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“Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” 🔺 (source: www.pri.org) 

Humanitarian concern for the Cuban people?
In response to the charge that the US engineered the war as a grab for territory (á la Mexico 1846), apologists for the US intervention clothed the action in the garb of a humanitarian attempt to free the Cuban people from the colonial yoke of imperial Spain [Foner, Philip S. “Why the United States Went to War with Spain in 1898.” Science & Society, vol. 32, no. 1, 1968, pp. 39–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/404402321. Accessed 21 July 2020]. The McKinley Administration in Washington DC also justified it as an imperative to act given the political instability in Cuba, so close to US soil, and certainly Washington as the hegemonic regional power with a self-appointed role as regional ‘policeman’ had an interest in ridding the Western Hemisphere of the remnants of an old European colonial power [‘The Spanish-American War, 1898’, Office of The Historian, www.history.state.gov/].

Contemporary criticisms of aggressive US foreign policy
Washington’s rapid trajectory towards war in 1898 drew a skeptical response internationally. Keir Hardie, British labour leader, stated that he “cannot believe in the purity of the American motive”, seeing rather the hand of “trusts and Wall Street financiers intent on extending American dominance over Cuba, Latin America, and the Far East”. The French government agreed that the professed humanitarian concerns were “merely a disguise for (US) commercial desires” to conquer the Caribbean and Latin America. Non-mainstream press in the US  like the socialist The People and the New York Tribune argued that the US government ’s real aim was to ”divert attention from economic evils at home” and to protect the US’s extensive interests in Cuba [Foner, Philip S. “Why the United States Went to War with Spain in 1898.” Science & Society, vol. 32, no. 1, 1968, pp. 39–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/404402321. Accessed 21 July 2020].

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An economics-driven war
In fact economics was the principal driver of America’s intervention in Spanish Cuba. First, the US was massively invested in the island in the 1890s, importing sugar (predominantly), plus tobacco and minerals from Cuba…the US’s Cuban business ventures were valued at about $50 million in 1895 [‘American Business in Cuba 1898-1959: A Brief Overview’, (Lisa Reynolds Wolfe), Havana Project, 17-Aug-2011, www.havanaproject.com]. The Maine was in Havana harbour to protect these same American interests when it met with disaster. So, rather than a humanitarian motive to aid the beleaguered Cubans, the intervention can be seen as pure economic self-interest: “halting a nationalistic revolution or social movement that threatened American interests” and the subsequent withholding of sovereignty to Cubans (and to Filipinos) [Paterson, Thomas G. “United States Intervention in Cuba, 1898: Interpretations of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War.” The History Teacher, vol. 29, no. 3, 1996, pp. 341–361. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4944551 . Accessed 21 July 2020].

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🔺 President McKinley

The contemporary state of the American economy was a factor in America’s timing to act. Economic depression and unemployment was plaguing the country. New markets needed to be found for US goods, this meant not only Cuba and the American ’backyard’, but even extending to the Philippines and the lucrative Chinese market (Paterson). Tom Fiddick argues that the real reason President McKinley backed by the American capitalist class opted for war—having seen Spain‘s failure to pacify the Cuban rebels—was to make certain that the insurectos did not succeed in liberating the island and thereby pose a threat to US business interests in Cuba [Fiddick, Tom. “Some Comments on Philip S. Foner’s “Why the United States Went to War with Spain”.” Science & Society 32, no. 3 (1968): 323-27. Accessed July 22, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40401358].

 

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🔺 Battle of Guantánamo Bay (Cuba)

US strategy thinking around imperialist objectives was evident prior to the move to war in 1898 – plans were already afoot for the establishment of naval bases in the strategically important Caribbean and in Hawaii, a precondition to expanding economically further into Latin America and into Asian markets. This “game plan” also envisioned US control of the Isthmus of Panama, an objective secured a few years after the victory over Spain (Foner).

Underpinning ideology for upping territorial expansion
The hawkish US foreign policy in 1898 accords with the prevailing 19th century belief of “Manifest Destiny”, a view that settlers in the US were destined to expand inexorably across the continent of North America◙. Correspondence between key players (T Roosevelt and HC Lodge) disclose that the McKinley Administration was committed—before the outbreak of hostilities—to  “intervention in Cuba as a stepping stone for expansion in the Far East through the acquisition of Spain’s Pacific possessions”. Foner notes that Cuba comprised the ‘fulcrum’ providing the opportunity for US occupancy of the Philippines as “a base at the doorway to China’s markets” for US capitalists. Also shaping this was the influence of Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis—the idea that American democracy was defined by a moving frontier line—if America’s frontier at home was closing off as was thought by some, then the most viable course may be to seek new frontiers abroad. The increasingly dominant current in international thought, social Darwinism, was also informing American thinking…the national assertiveness shown in 1898 can be seen as a quantum leap in the “deliberate, calculated pursuit of United States’ greatness” (Paterson).

🔻 Battle of Manila Bay (Phil.)

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Hawaii, a foothold on the “American Lake”
The groundwork for the US’s absorption of the Hawaiian islands as part of the Manifesto Destiny credo was laid five years earlier when a group of American sugar planters under Sanford B Dole✦ overthrew Queen Liliuokalani, replacing the monarchy with a provisional government with Dole as president. The coup was tacitly recognised by the US government (with US marines despatched to Hawaii to protect US citizens), although President Cleveland tried unsuccessfully to reinstate the monarchy. His successor William McKinley, recognising the strategic importance of Pearl Harbour as a naval base in the war with Spain, “rubber-stamped” the formal annexation of the islands by the US in August 1898 [‘Americans overthrow Hawaiian monarchy, History, www.history.com/].

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US sailors and marines in Honolulu c.1894 🔺

Footnote: A “Spanish-American War”
Thomas G Patterson notes the exclusionist nature of the name given to the 1898 conflict – the omission of reference to Cuba and Philippines in the title—in effect “air-brushing” the native populations out of the conflict—was (Paterson suggests) an attempt by the victors to obscure uncomfortable truths, the denial of full-fledged independence to Cubans and Filipinos once freed from Spanish control, and to try to avoid America’s role in the affair being labelled as ‘imperialist’ (Paterson).

🔻 1900 map (Source: Pinterest)

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PostScript: The Filipino insurgency
After the Spanish defeat Filipino nationalists under Emilio Aguinaldo asserted the Philippines’ independence (proclaiming the First Philippine Republic) in 1899. This action was opposed by the US and a conventional-cum-guerrilla war ensued until 1902 when US forces finally subdued Aguinaldo’s army and the Philippines were made an unincorporated territory of the US (although a number of splinter groups of local insurrectos continued to fight the US military occupation for several years) [‘The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902’, Office of The Historian, www.history.state.gov/].

Flag of the República Filipino 🔻


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◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢

✱  this famous but elusive quote has also been attributed in slightly modified form to Ambrose Bierce

❂  the US government paid Spain $20 million, compensation for the loss of infrastructure in the Philippines  

◬ characterised by sensationalism (eg, eye-catching headlines) typically with scant regard for accuracy

◙ US business giant Standard Oil for instance talked about its ”Manifest Destiny being in Asia” (Foner)

✦  calling themselves the “Committee of Safety”

Remembering the “Forgotten War”: The Korean War, 70 Years On

International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This week marked the 70th anniversary of the first shots fired in anger of probably the most consequential of the numerous forgotten wars in modern history – the Korean War (25th June 1950).

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Prelude to the conflict
Tensions between the north and south of the Korean Peninsula can be traced back to the 1930s and the Japanese occupation of Korea. Japan’s dominance prompted a resistance movement which included future communist leader and dynasty patriarch of North Korea Kim Il-sung. Some Koreans willingly collaborated with the Japanese invaders including fighting for it against the Korean guerrillas trying to liberate the country (one such agent of the Japanese was a former South Korean president, Park Chung-hee, assassinated in 1979) [‘Collaboration with Japanese hangs over South Korea’, Taipei Times, 08-Mar-2019, www.taipeitimes.com].

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(Photo: Bettman Archive/Getty Images)

At the end of WWII, Korea was divided into two zones of military occupation, north (with Kim as leader under the tutelage of the Soviet Union) and south (under US control☼ but eventually with right-wing strongman Syngman Rhee installed as president), with the demarcation line quite arbitrarily defined at the 38th Parallel (38° N) by two American officers . The leaders of both Koreas held ambitions for reunification of the peninsula but with very different kinds of political outcomes in mind. The US’ withdrawal of almost all its military forces from the South in the late 1940s decided Kim on putting the communist reunification plan into action. With USSR and China agreeing to support it, North Korean forces attacked the South in June 1950✧. The ensuing three years saw the opposing forces push each other back and forth along the peninsula (the South’s capital Seoul was captured on four separate occasions) resulting in a stalemate.

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⇧ Chinese Volunteer Army crossing the Yalu River (Source: www.goodfreephotos.com)

The Korean War was both a Korean civil war and a proxy superpower war militarily pitting the US v Communist China – as well as an early chapter of Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and America wrestling for influence over strategically-positioned Korea. The response to North Korea’s invasion was a UN-sanctioned “police action” comprising sixteen nations including Britain and Commonwealth countries but led by the US. After initial defeats and a re-consolidation of its position, the US army drove the North Korean forces back into the northern border with China—at one point the US army captured and held the communists’ capital Pyongyang for eight weeks—this prompted China to enter the conflict with a massive manpower commitment, throwing over 250,000 troops against the Americans and allies and forcing them back deep into South Korea [‘The US Army once ruled Pyongyang and 5 other things you might not know about the Korean War’, (Brad Lendon), CNN, 24-Jun-2020, www.amp.cnn.com].

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⇧ MiG-15 fighter: the Korean War saw the first appearance of  jet vs jet ‘dogfights’—American F-80s & F-86s fought Russian MiG-15s (manned, first by Russian, and later Chinese and North Korean pilots) with aerial combat taking place in a section of North Korea and the Yalu River that became known as “MiG Alley”

A heavy toll including civilians and MIAs
All together, somewhere between three and four million people died in the conflict. The US army lost nearly 37,000, the South Koreans nearly 138,000. The North Koreans lost up to 400,000 soldiers and the Chinese forces, over 180,000. The MIA tally (missing in action) was very high, over 300,000 from both sides combined. The toll on the civilian population was greatest – the US military unleashed a relentless bombing campaign on North Korea resulting in excess of 280,000 casualties. Virtually all of the modern buildings in North Korea were levelled by the 635,000 tons of US bombs dropped (Lendon).

⇩ Picasso’s ‘Massacre in Korea’ (1951)

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A Cold Warrior blueprint from the Pentagon
The US’ involvement in Korea was a key plank in the overall strategy of containing communism in Asia – known in the Pentagon as “Forward Defence”. With the postwar map of Eastern Europe encompassed within the Soviet empire and China under communist rule, Washington saw intervention in the peninsula as fundamental and essential to prevent South Korea from becoming another fallen ‘domino’ to communist infiltration of Eurasia…the same logic that held sway a decade later when America stumbled into an infinitely harder regional conflict to disentangle itself from in Vietnam.

A “limited war”
Mindful of the risk that the Korean War might escalate into a wider Asia conflict or even into “World War III”, US president, Harry S Truman, ordered the US military not to extend it’s aircraft raids into Manchuria and Chinese territory, even though the Chinese were using its north-east provinces to amass its forces to enter the Korean war-zone. This also ruled out using atomic weapons in the conflict, Washington’s reticence to do this was sharpened by awareness of the Soviet Union’s recent demonstration of its own nuclear weapons capability [’Never Truly Forgotten: The Lethal Legacy of the Korean War’, (Rebecca Lissner), War on the Rocks, 25-Jun-2020, www.warontherocks.com].

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Korea’s Cold War reverberations for America 
An armistice in 1953 brought an end to the hostilities on the peninsula but left the issue unresolved. A demilitarised zone (DMZ) was set up between the two Koreas – a ‘contained’ hotspot which threatens periodically to spill over and reignite hostilities. The conflict in Korea prompted a radical transformation in US defence thinking. To secure its regional forward defence perimeters the US in the early Fifties forged defence alliances with the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. And with this came a diverse mushrooming of US overseas military postings and bases in the Asia-Pacific region. Most significantly, the war reversed an earlier contraction of US defence spending, by 1951 it’s spending skyrocketed to $48.2 Bn, setting a pattern for future US military expenditure, including a large standing army in peacetime and an increasingly-funded CIA which expanded its surveillance activities across the globe (Lissner; Cummings).

⇩ a US M-24 tank crew, Nakdong River, 1950

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Out of sight …
Why was the Korean War consigned to history’s back pages so swiftly? Timing is part of the answer. WWII ended less than five years earlier, it was still fresh in people’s minds and they had had enough of war. The Korean War, when it came, was an unpleasant reminder of that world-shattering, traumatic episode [Eric McGeer, quoted in Toronto Sun, 21-Jun-2020]. Korea was “overshadowed by the global conflagration that preceded it and the nation-rending counter-insurgency campaign in Vietnam that followed it” (Lissner). But the Korean War’s unresolved conclusion has “kept it alive as a major influence on Asian affairs” [Shiela Miyoshi Jager, “5 US Wars Rarely Found in History Books’, ( Jessica Pearce Rotondi), History, 11-May-2020, www.history.com]. Since the ceasefire in 1953 the peninsula has remained a potential world hotspot, a state of tension persisting to the present thanks largely to the periodical bellicose threats of North Korea’s communist dictator Kim Jong-un to use nuclear warfare against South Korea and the US.

End-note: Perpetual state of war

Though hostilities ceased on July 27, 1953, technically the Korean War has never ended as no peace treaty between the combatants was ever signed.

PostScript: A reprieve for Taiwan 🇹🇼 
The outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula presaged a change of fate for Taiwan. In 1949, Mao Zedong, having emerged triumphant from the Chinese Civil War against Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, had amassed a force of troops on the mainland ready to invade and “take back” Taiwan. Korea turned that seeming fait accompli on its head! With fighting starting, Truman, fearful of the war spreading across east Asia, positioned the US 7th Fleet in the Taiwan Strait. Stymied, Peking jettisoned its plans to invade Taiwan and relocated the formation of soldiers to the Korean front (Lendon).

𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯

☼ during the three years of direct US military administration of South Korea to 1948, the US injudiciously misread the political situation and employed despised Korean officers of the former Japanese colonial police to impose security – leading to an open revolt in the country (Cumings)

✧ although the conventional view is that Pyongyang was the aggressor and initiated the fighting by invading the South, some observers have noted that in earlier encounters on the border in 1949, South Korea arguably initiated the bulk of the fighting (Cumings)

 

India v China, the Road to War, 1962: An Early Flexing of Regional Muscle by Two Future Asian Superpower Rivals

Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Political History, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Just last month there was a border flare-up on isolated Himalayan territory between northern India and China (Tibet)…one with familiar echoes of the past. A seemingly random clash of troops on the banks of Pangong Tso (eastern Ladakh) apparently initiated by the Chinese, some injuries, accusations of trespassing and of illegal building of defence facilities, a serious face-off between two bodies of troops 〚’China vs India: Beijing troops take control of border accusing India of trespassing’, (Brian McGleenon), Express, 18-May-2020, www.express.co.uk〛.

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Nathu La border, 2020  (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

Though the incident is concerning of itself—two Asian military superpowers with nuclear empowerment going head-to-head—this is nothing new, there have been a number of such “minor incidents“ between the two countries over the past six decadesφ. Similar incidents to this occurred in 2017 at the same location and at the Doklam tri-junction (India/Tibet/Bhutan). Small incursions across the contested borderlands by both sides have long been a common occurrence 〚‘Chinese Troops Have Entered Disputed India Territory Several Times in Recent Days’, (AFP), Business Insider, 19-Aug-2014, www.businessinsider.com〛.

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Asian brotherhood – before the strains
Independent post-colonial India and the People’s Republic of China both emerged in the late 1940s. Initially the relationship between them was cordial, India even fulfilling a role as a diplomatic go-between for communist China to voice the isolated Peking regime’s concerns on world bodies like the UN〚‘India-China War of 1962: How it started and what happened later’, India Today, 21-Nov-2016, www.indiatoday.in〛. Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru pursued a pragmatic approach to the gigantic northern neighbour, entering into the Panchsheel Pact (“Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”) with China, eventually even recognising Peking’s right to rule Tibet. Nehru’s expression or slogan for the relationship during these “glass half-full” days was Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai (Indian-Chinese brotherhood) (India Today).

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Deterioration of Sino-Indian relations
In 1959 the relationship started to turn for the worst. The Lhasa Uprising and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent exile into India didn’t endear India to China and its leader Mao Zedong. But much more permanently troubling has been the ongoing spat between China and India over their shared and disputed borders. India inherited one nightmare of a border mess from the British colonials⌫…on two separate fronts – in the northwest of the country it has several contested boundaries with Pakistan and China (ranging over Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir,  Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and in the northeast with China (Arunachal Pradesh (“South Tibet”), Assam, Sikkim).

Border clashes and the road to war
In 1959 there were clashes on India’s North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) – at Kongka Pass, Ladakh (nine Indian and one Chinese soldiers killed) and at Longju, on the disputed McMahon Line (one Indian border guard killed). Both sides argued that the other transgressed into its territory first, a standard refrain in the Indo-Chinese confrontations. Mao was rebuked by Soviet leader Khrushchev at the time for harming the relationship with India〚’China’s India War: How the Chinese Saw the Conflict’, (Neville Maxwell), May 2011, www.chinaindiaborderdispute.files.wordpress.com〛.

From sabre-rattling to open war
Within three years the continuing border fracas developed into a full-blown border war between China and India…in October 1962 the Chinese People’s Liberation Army attacked the concentration of Indian border posts in Ladakh. The brief war itself was an unmitigated disaster for New Delhi and Nehru. The Indian army was badly led, out-manoeuvred and out-fought by the disciplined, efficient Chinese soldiers. Having spectacularly pushed the Indians back, Peking unilaterally called a ceasefire after one month of fighting and withdrew to the Line of Actual Control (a demarcation line separating the territory controlled by each side) leaving China in control of Aksai Chin (the location of Peking’s principal claim).

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The Sino-Indian war subsumed within the broader context of the Cold War
As India licked its wounds and tried to compose itself after the shock of the military debacle, Nehru set about portraying China as the belligerent aggressor and India as the aggrieved party merely trying to defend its own territory. Given the prevailing political climate of the time, the US and the UK readily agreed with New Delhi’s assessment of  China‘s actions as “bellicose and expansionist”. Peking was almost universally depicted as the villain in the piece with many Western countries adopting the “knee-jerk” anti-communist response, automatically denouncing Chinese aggression and offering support for the victim India. Both the US and the Soviet Union, who had just emerged from a superpower nuclear stand-off over the Cuban Missile Crisis, funnelled  lavished amounts of aid to India in the war’s wash-up〚Gregory Clark, Book Review of ‘India’s China War’, www.gregoryclark.net/; Neville Maxwell, India’s China War (1971)〛.

“Forward Policy”
The subsequent investigative work of Anglo-Australian journalist Neville Maxwell on the lead-up to the war turned this hitherto-accepted view of the conflict on its head. Maxwell obtained a copy of the top-secret, classified Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report⊗ leaked from an ‘insider’ and published its findings in a book in 1971. Maxwell and the HBB Report exploded the “convenient military mythology” of the 1962 war as being caused by China’s unprovoked aggression 〚’National Interest: Who’s afraid of Neville Maxwell?’, (Shekhar Gupta), The Indian Express, 22-Mar-2014, www.indianexpress.com〛.

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Aksai Chin  (Source: www.thediplomat.com)

The documents revealed that India from the end of the Fifties pursued “Forward Policy’, an aggressive strategy of military patrolling of disputed land claimed by China (provocatively and repeatedly setting up military posts ever more forward, so that the Indian post troops found themselves eyeballing the Chinese ones✦), Also disclosed was the folly of India’s complete unpreparedness for war at the time 〚’Burying Open Secrets: India’s 1962 War and the Henderson-Brooks Report’, (Shruti Pandalai), The South Asia Channel, 02-Apr-2014, www.archive.org/〛. The classified report and Maxwell show an ill-conceived plan from go to woe on India’s part…Nehru and members of the government pushed the military into a course of reckless adventurism on the northern borders (with Nehru urging the Indian army to drive the Chinese invaders out of the Dhola Strip)(Clark).

Peking showed itself willing to negotiate border disputes with it’s other southern neighbours, working through obstacles and doing so amicably with Burma, Nepal and Pakistan (the latter only too happy to reach a settlement with the PRC, seeing it as buying an insurance policy against it’s number one enemy, India).

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(Image: www.differentbetween.info/)


Failure of diplomacy, a negotiating cul-de-sac 
In negotiations with India, China made it clear that it was prepared to exchange it’s claims to NEFA in it’s entirety for New Delhi’s recognition of it’s claim to Aksai Chin (important to China as a route between it’s northwest province Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet)). Eminently fair and reasonable as that appeared, Nehru was unwaveringly intransigent and refused to budge on an inflexible, previously-stated position that the frontier and boundaries were already delimited. Nehru presented the Chinese with what was tantamount to a fait accompli, saying effectively, this is what we insist upon, agree to this and then negotiate the rest. Or equally unhelpfully Nehru would insist that the Chinese evacuate Aksai Chin but without making a reciprocal concession on India’s part (Clark).

An alternate view to Nehru’s refusal to countenance any degree of compromise at the negotiating table (Maxwell) has it that at least up until 1959 the Indian PM was favourably disposed to Chou En-Lai’s Aksai Chin/NEFA exchange proposal (Clark).

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Chou En-Lai in India  (Source: www.indiandefencereview.com)

A calamitous miscalculation
The approach of Nehru and his defence minister, Menon, was predicated on the assumption that Peking under no circumstances would resort to war¤ — this transpired to be a fatal misreading of the Peking mindset. Equipped with this (false) sense of security the Nehru government felt free to push the envelope as much as it liked, getting closer and closer to the Chinese posts, raising the stakes each time. Premier Chou from the Chinese side tried repeatedly to negotiate a solution with the Indian PM, while all the time fortifying China’s military position on the disputed borders. 

Extra-cabinet Policy-making
Nehru, intent on projecting an unwavering show of strength, insisted that the retention of “India’s territories” were non-negotiable, a question of “national prestige and dignity”. With the domestic opposition egging on the government to take an even more aggressive stance on the border issue, Nehru set the stakes too high, as the situation proceeded relentlessly, he could not back down without risking great loss of face. As India plunged deeper into the diplomatic crisis, Nehru monopolised decision-making in his own hands,  often by-passing cabinet and parliament altogether  (‘India’s China War‘).

Ultimately, a frustrated Peking lost all patience with such bloody-minded stonewalling by the Indian side and took the drastic step that to Nehru and New Delhi had been previously unthinkable 〚’China Was The Aggrieved; India, Aggressor In ‘62’, Outlook, (Interview with N Maxwell, 22-Oct-2012, www.outlookindia.com; ‘India’s China War’〛.

 

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(Source: www.firstpost.com/)

India’s ”Pollyanna approach” to the military situation
India blundered into a war it was wholly unprepared for. As Maxwell pointed out, India’s championing of a non-aligned position in world politics and the prestige that afforded it, led it to let it’s guard down defence-wise. During the Fifties the strength of the country’s armed forces was allowed to become depleted. The complacency circa 1960 was manifest in Indians’ characterisation of the border confrontations with the PRC as a “police action”, and in Nehru’s comments that the Himalayas represented an “effective barrier“ to stop China. The effortless annexation of Portuguese Goa in 1961, against hardly any opposing forces, further lulled India into an unrealistic assessment of its own military capability. Signs of hubris even! When it came to the actual conflict in October 1962, the contrast was stark. India had maybe a quarter of the strength of China stationed in the conflict zone. India was deficient to the Chinese in many other areas: in weaponry (shortage of tanks and artillery; it’s jawans (soldiers) lacked the warm clothing essential for the weather and were unacclimatised to the altitude; the Chinese had the advantages of location and communications; and the Indians underestimated the difficulty of the terrain 〚’’Reassessing the Soviet Stand on the Indo-China conflict’, (Arun Mohanty), Russia Beyond, 25-Oct-2012, www.rbth.com; ‘India’s China War’〛.

Blame for the military fiasco also lands heavily on the generals themselves…Lt-General Kaul in particular comes badly out of the report’s findings. The politicians did not get realistic advice from the military commanders on India’s capacity to handle the border conflict, in part because they themselves had dismissed the unfavourable but accurate advice they were getting from subordinate officers at the front concerning the army’s clear lack of combat readiness (‘India’s China War’).

Drifting away from non-alignment
There had been an Indian eagerness to engage in reckless war rhetoric in the lead-up to the Himalayan war. India was awash with a mood of nationalistic jingoism…following Pandit Nehru’s lead very few were talking about negotiation, inside and outside the government. This, together with it’s swift recourse to warfare to secure Goa just ten months earlier, lost India credibility in the eyes of other countries in the non-aligned camp, and as Nehru was very much the embodiment of non-alignment statesmanship, this diminished him as well⊟. The fracturing of Indian non-alignment was further underscored with the country gravitating towards both Moscow and Washington at the conflict’s end (‘India’s China War’).

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As we have seen since 1962, the posturing and muscle-flexing by India and China on the mountainous border continues to the present. These fracas may on the surface be ‘contained’ shows of bluster, but the geo-strategic importance of the China-Indian border, and its proximity to another unresolved latent border flashpoint in Kashmir (India v Pakistan), remains a very real concern for all three players to avoid the errors of the past 〚’India’s two-front conundrum’, (Shahzad Chaudhry), The Express Tribune, 31-May-2020, www.tribune.com.pk〛.

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PostScript: An emerging rift in the “fraternal socialist states”
The Indo-Chinese War had piquant ramifications for the Soviet/PRC relationship. When the conflict took a serious turn, China’s expectation would be that it’d get the support of its fellow socialist state against a capitalist democracy, but the USSR annoyed Peking by adopting a neutral stance (a sign to the PRC of emerging “Soviet revisionism”)◊. Moscow’s position shifted over the course of the conflict, initially tilting slightly toward the PRC then back more openly toward India. The Soviets saw friendship with India and Nehru as useful—in a Russian global strategy that was moving towards a peaceful co-existence with the capitalist world—culminating in the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. The war signalled the emerging ideological gap between the two communist powers which would splinter further apart in 1963 (Mohanty).

∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪∩∪

Φ the former Indian army chief VK Singh has stated that he is unconcerned by the most recent fracas, attributing Chinese aggression to an attempt to deflect attention away from it’s current problems at home〚’Amid India-China border stand off, Army Commanders Conference begins’, The Hindu, 27-May-2020, www.thehindu.com〛

⌫ “(India) inherited frontiers…(but) no boundaries”, as Maxwell pithily put it
⊗ the report to this day has not been officially released by any Indian government, it is said, due to its “extremely sensitive” nature and “current operational value” (Pandalal)

✦ in the sensitive Chip Chap Valley almost 40 Indian posts were positioned on territory claimed by China

¤ this was a massive fail on the part of the Indian bureaucrats too. The Congress government was acting on advice from Intelligence Bureau director BN Mullik who assured it China would not react militarily to Indian advance movements

⊟ in the trauma and shock of the catastrophic military reversals, a despairing Nehru tried to talk the US and Formosa (Taiwan) into attacking China. As Maxwell noted of India’s curious dualism in this: to Nehru the use of force was “reprehensible in the abstract and in the service of others, but justifiably both politically and morally when employed by India in disputes” (‘India’s China War’)


◊ the USSR had its own protracted boundary disputes with China in the Far East which weren’t resolved until the early Nineties

The 1961 Annexation of Goa: Taking a Decolonising Broom to the Remnants of Estado Portugués da Índia

International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Having cut itself adrift of British colonial imperialism after WWII, the newly independent Union of India still had a few pieces of the Sub-continent’s geographical jigsaw it wanted to replace. Portugal, a waning colonising power had retained some small fragments of it’s once great empire within the territory of India. Principal among these was Goa on the western coastline of India, held by Portugal since 1510. Together with the tinier exclaves of Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, they comprised what parent Portugal called the Estado da Índia✥.

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In the early Fifties India tried to negotiate with Portugal to get it to hand over Goa and the other exclaves, but Portugal and its dictatorial leader António de Salazar point-blank refused to relinquish the territories. Lisbon’s position was that Goa, Daman, etc were not Portuguese colonies but provinces and an integral part of metropolitan Portugal, and that furthermore the Republic of India did not exist at the time Portugal acquired them. Indian prime minister, Pandit Nehru, having failed to arrive at a diplomatic solution, soon adopted a more direct approach to bring about decolonisation. In 1954 3,000 unarmed Indian activists captured landlocked Dadra and Nagar Haveli unopposed and it was governed as a de facto state until incorporated into the Indian Union in 1961◘ [‘Dadra and Nagar Haveli: When an IAS officer became the instrument of accession’, (RR Dasgupta), Economic Times, 10-Aug-2019, www.economictimes.com].

🔻 Primeiro Ministro Salazar

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Issue heats up: India ratchets up pressure on Portuguese Goa
The shooting of Indian activists in 1955 by Portuguese police for trying to enter Goa only hardened public opinion against the Portuguese colony, spurring on a Goan resistance movement which had been active for decades. Resistance took the form of Gandhi-esque non-violence as well as armed conflict targeting colonial officials (funded and aided by the Indian government). Groups like the “Free Goa Party” were fighting an intermittent guerrilla war against Portuguese control of  Goa [‘1961 Indian annexation of Goa’, Military Wiki, http://military.wikia.org].

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Lisbon dug it’s heels in, rejecting a call for a referendum to decide the colony’s future. The government worked the diplomatic channels to try to drum up international support for its cause, with scant success. Britain, reminded of its 1899 alliance with Portugal by Salazar, choose to stay out of the dispute [‘Goa Falls to Indian Troops’, (Richard Cavendish), History Today, 61(12), Dec 2011, www.historytoday.com].

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Nationalist fervour spills over into full-blown invasion
By late 1961 the Goa situation was at flashpoint, especially after an Indian passenger vessel was fired on by Portuguese shore artillery (killing one passenger and injuring the boat’s chief engineer). In December an out-of-patience Nehru, ignoring calls from the US and the UK not to use force to achieve India’s neo-colonialist aims, launched “Operation Vijay” (Victory). A two-pronged assault, one detachment of forces invaded the enclave Daman and the second, Goa itself. With overwhelming military superiority on land, sea and air, the Indians overran the Portuguese forces within two days…the Portuguese commanders once they assessed the hopelessness of their situation surrendered quickly, disobeying Salazar’s order to fight to the last (a prudent decision which kept the casualty toll on both sides of the conflict low (52))✪ (Military Wiki).

🔻 Portuguese POWs in Goa, 1961

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(Photo: AP)

Aftermath of “Goa’s Liberation”: Legal perspective
A motion in the UN Security Council to censure India’s unilateral aggression and demand it withdraw it’s troops from Goa was vetoed by the USSR. Delhi attempted to deflect international criticism by justifying the invasion as “self-defence” (Nehru later conceded this line of argument had been a sham) and held to the view that the UN’s commitment to the goal of decolonisation gave it the right to ‘liberate’ what was India’s “sovereign territory” [‘What not to do in Hong Kong: Lessons from Goa, 1961’, (Bruce Gilley), The Article, 02-Sep-2019, www.thearticle.com]. Some legal observers have described the 1961 takeover as a case of legitimacy overriding legality (the yardstick of which Delhi’s act of force didn’t meet) [‘The annexation of Goa’, Australian Magna Carta Institute, www.ruleoflaw.org.au]. 

🔻 Indian stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the  Goa annexationEEFE9EA3-16BA-4C8B-9463-28B0440BC7D8
Lisbon’s reaction: Propaganda, “fifth column” mobilisation and terror
Portugal made no attempt to retaliate militarily  but immediately severed all diplomatic ties with India, refusing to recognise the de facto takeover of Goa by Delhi, and offered the territory’s 650,000 residents Portuguese citizenship. Salazar took the loss of Goa and the other possession very hard, feeling let down by the UK and betrayed by a UN “controlled by communist countries and an African-Asian bloc”. The Portuguese did not let it rest there though, Lisbon devised a scheme to undermine India’s position in Goa. The Plano Gralha was launched at a time when India‘s attention was focused on the worsening confrontation with China (which would erupt into open border war in October 1962). Utilising the Portuguese national radio station, Emissona Nacional, the regime’ propaganda channels reached out to disaffected Goans—many of whom were Catholic and wary of integration into a Hindu-dominated nation—in the hope of fomenting active resistance to Indian rule. The plan also called for a series of terrorist attacks on Indian ports – planting bombs on ships anchored in Bombay and Mormugao (Goa), other targets were identified. In 1964 bombs were planted at two locations in Goa by Portuguese PIDE agents to create havoc and spread terror in the province [‘Records show colonizers were not done with Goa”, Times Of India, 19-Dec-2011,  www.timesofindia.com].

Salazar’s Portugal eventually gave up it’s campaign of subversion but relations between India and Portugal remained estranged until after the Carnation Revolution in 1974 which saw Portugal’s authoritarian Estado Novo regime overthrown and the country set on the path to democracy and full decolonisation. With the new government in Lisbon, finally came recognition of India’s sovereignty over Goa and the exclaves and the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two former enemies.

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(Source: Flickr)

Footnote: India did not emerge from it’s 1961 act of annexation with its reputation unscathed. The US, the UK, the Netherlands and Pakistan were particularly vehement in their criticisms …charges  of “naked militarism”, “reckless adventurism” and hypocrisy (for having  previously preached the non-use of force to pursue national agendas) abounded. The anachronistic behaviour of Portugal didn’t escape international criticism either, pilloried for hanging on to its colonies way too long [‘Annexation of Portuguese India’, http://infogalactic.com/]. 

𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿𖠿

✥ originally there were many more enclaves making up the Portuguese State of India, but by the time of India’s independence these were the ones still in Lisbon’s possession

◘ Portugal disputed the takeover in the International Court of Justice, which in its 1960 (mixed message) judgement ruled that Portugal did have sovereign rights over the territories but that India also had the right to deny Portugal passage to Dadra and Nagar Haveli across Indian territory

✪ they also refused to carry out Salazar’s “Scorched Earth” orders to destroy everything of worth in Goa rather than let it fall into Indian hands (upon repatriation to Portugal the senior officers from Goa were punished for their failure to comply with the PM’s directives)

Declaring War on an Internal Enemy Hiding in Plain Sight: The ❛Deep State❜

Media & Communications, Military history, National politics, Political History, Politics, Public health,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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In the fiercely combative arena of Washington DC politics, one term that gets bandied about a lot especially from the GOP side of politics—before and continuing through the time of pandemic—is the notion of the existence of a “Deep State”. Whenever the expression gets publicly uttered, it’s purpose is to serve as the answer to some or other momentous development or outcome. Left there hanging in the air, vague, nebulous, mysterious and unelaborated but always unambiguously pejorative – the innuendo of conspiracy.

༄ ༄༄

Alternately called “a state within a state”, the “shadow government” or “the permanent state”, the Deep State connotes images of shadowy individuals talking in soto voco, practicing the political dark arts.

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So, what actually is a deep state? In get to the essence of this concept let’s survey a cross-selection of responses to the question:

⌱ a type of governance made up of networks of power operating independently of the state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals [Wikipedia]

⌱ a conspiracy theory which suggests that collusion and cronyism exists within the US political system and constitute a hidden government within the legitimately elected government [Wikipedia]

⌱ a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy [Oxford English Dictionary].

⌱ the idea that a cabal of unelected security officials across a number of government bodies maintain influence over elected politicians [Will Worley, The Independent (UK)]

⌱ (“the seed for many tantalising conspiracy theories”…the existence of a premeditated effort by certain federal government employees or other persons to secretly manipulate or control the government without regard for the policies of Congress or the President [Robert Longley]

⌱ an underworld of unaccountable authority [Peter Dale Scott]

⌱ belief in an informal or parallel government that exists to countermand legitimate, usually more democratic, institutions (whose usage includes) a catch-all term applied to any number of extraordinary, usually violent, episodes, eg, JFK assassination, 9/11, etc. [Ryan Gingeras]

⌱ a massive informal government comprising untold thousands of bureaucrats, technocrats and plutocrats committed to driving president-elect Trump from power [Breitbart]

⌱ (how it functions) when elected governments threaten the deep state’s domestic or international interests, actors aligned to this coalition (the military, the clandestine service, the mafia and far-right activists) employ any means to reverse the state’s political course…these coalitions within the government work to ‘veto’ or ‘fine tune’ policies related to national security [Ola Tunander]

༄ ༄༄

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The topicality of the Deep State as a conspiracy theory and as a form of politics in practice, as I indicated at the start, resides within, indeed permeates, the present US political realm, but the political phenomena itself did not start in the US. Let’s first look at the modern origins of the deep state – in early 20th century Turkey.

Turkey: volatile zero-sum-game
The notion of an unofficial para-authority, a deep state within the nation’s polity, has probably existed since the time of antiquity, but as a normative concept it can be traced back to the rise of the Young Turks movement in Turkey (revolution of 1908). In the struggle for power in the vacuum created by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks, and Kemal Ataturk who would become the ‘architect’ of the modern Turkish Republic, used criminal elements to eliminate political opponents. Ataturk’s group, through a violent, intra-government resistance to the ruling clique in Turkey, destabilised and undermined it (from within), eventually establishing control over state and society for itself. Turks called this secret network, derin devlet (literally the “deep state”). Since then, the phenomena has been replicated elsewhere, eg, Soviet Union/Russia, Egypt, Pakistan❈, with the tradition maintained in Turkey up to the (present) Erdogân era, eg, the failed military coup in 2016 seeking to overthrow the Erdogân autocracy [‘Turkey’s “Deep-State” and the Ergenekon Conundrum’, (H Akin Ünver), Middle East Institute, 01-Apr-2009, www.mei.edu].

↴ Erdogân state (Source: www.time.com)

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Deep state sans conspiracy
Drawing together the different threads of responses, a deep state exists when a network of different groups covertly coalesce, forming a power base independent of and parallel to the legitimate government, with the purpose of pursuing its own objectives. In practice it tends to exercise soft power (rather than the more violent type seen in Turkey) by undermining and discrediting the legitimate government, with the aim of subverting its operation and bringing it down. The collusive elements of the network or cabal is typically drawn from the state’s security services, the bureaucracy, the military, the media, the private sector, even from organised crime.

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The deep state in America
It was general–turned–GOP president Dwight D Eisenhower who first alerted America to the dangers of a deep state emerging…at his farewell address in 1961 he said: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. A couple of years later the assassination of Eisenhower’s successor John F Kennedy provided conspiracy theory obsessives with endless material for imaginative speculation. Inevitably some of that speculation has joined the dots between the never-satisfactorily explained Kennedy murder and the Deep State. A perusal of the web turns up numerous posts with titles like ‘JFK was Murdered by the Deep State’ and ‘JFK Was Assassinated by LBJ, Establishment, Deep State’…fairly self-explanatory but these generally fact-thin ‘revelations’ detail a deep state hit squad of assassins and conspirators which includes Lyndon B Johnson and a coterie of southern Democrat politicians, the American mafia, Texas oil tycoons, Fidel Castro, the CIA, the KGB and a host of other nominated suspects⊠. And of course popular movies like Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK was a further shot-in-the-arm for political conspiracy buffs and the perpetuation of the Deep State/JFK thesis (portraying “a cabal of shadowy officials as the puppet masters behind Kennedy’s assassination”)◘. As Professor Paul Musgrove remarked, “the deep state is catnip for conspiracy theorists” [‘How a Conspiracy Theory Went From Political Fringe to Mainstream’, (Tom Porter), Newsweek, 08-Feb-2017, www.newsweek.com].

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Deep State rhetoric: How to vilify your opponents and turn back criticism, it’s all a conspiracy by the enemy!
The term finally acquires staying power and everyday currency in the US political lexicon with Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency in 2016/2017. Trump, a self-acknowledged outlier of Washington politics, came to office promising to “drain the swamp in DC”, his avowed aim, to ditch the old, distrusted model of federal government. With Trump doing things very much his own (peculiarly idiosyncratic) way in the White House, this caused waves, there was a “natural pushback” from a bureaucracy accustomed to a very different approach under Obama. This is a normal part of the process of regime change in parliamentary democracies universally – a residual if usually temporary feature of the culture of resistance to government change. [‘President Trump’s Allies Keep Talking About the “Deep State”. What’s That?’, (Alana Abramson), Time, 08-March-2017, www.time.com].

The practice of leaking information
From within the president’s fold, warnings of “covert resistance” from within to the president, emerged. Talk of a “Deep State” was heard from the far-right✪, Trump strategist Steve Bannon among the voices. The complaint was that elements within the bureaucracy, the State Department, Pentagon, wherever, were leaking damaging information to a media hostile to Trump (eg, New York Times, Washington Post), to which Trump’s “knee-jerk” reaction was to label it as “fake news”⍤. Two points need to be made about the leaking of information from democratic governments: as Abramson has noted, this is “not a new dynamic” or unique to the US, career civil servants—who are extra-political—have always leaked information to the press. The (legitimate) government from time to time itself will leak favourably information to the media (Abramson).

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Watching the president
The second point is that the various federal government agencies, being non-partisan, see a component of their role to act as a check on wayward and irresponsible behaviour by an incumbent chief executive that would be harmful to the nation. Previous directors of the CIA have stated that the military would refuse to follow orders given by Trump which are unlawful [‘US Military to Disobey Trump’s ‘Illegal’ Nuclear Strike Order’, Sputnik News, 15-Nov-2017, www.sputniknews.com]. In such a scenario, the “permanent national security apparatus” has a right to act, as “a check on the civilian government” (Musgrave).

“COVERT–19” – another Deep State linkage with the coronavirus for conspiracy fans? The “Covert-19” pandemic? ↴

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Using the Deep State catch-phrase to your own advantage
Opposition to Trump, to his style of presidency and approach to government, in the form of hostility from almost the entirety of the mainstream US media, the leaking of information from within the ‘citadel’ such as the charge that Russian interference in the 2016 elections assisted a Trump victory, have provided the ammunition for the Trump’s enablers and supporters to construct a narrative of a deep state, a ‘conspiracy’ of anyone seeking to subvert the presidency, including foreign powers (like China) and many bureaucrats they see as loyal to the former president (Obama).

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Trump has turned internal criticism of himself into an excuse to fire officials, creating scapegoats for the shortcomings of the administration he heads. Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson, sacked after alerting Congress of Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine’s leader into investigating the president’s domestic political opponents, remarked pointedly that he was dismissed, not for failing to do his job but for doing it properly [‘Trump’s safari into the wilderness of the deep state’, (Jacob Heilbrunn), Spectator (America), 08-Apr-2020, http://spectator.us]. Numerous other subalterns from the White House staff, Pentagon, Homeland Security, FBI, Treasury, Attorney General, etc have suffered the same fate after earning Trump’s ire. As Professor Timur Kuran, an economist who has studied the deep state concept in both Turkey and the US, said: in many authoritarian regimes, dictators often blame their failures on a “deep state enemy” within the legitimate state [‘Deep State: Inside Donald Trump’s Paranoid Conspiracy Theory’, (Michael Hanford), Rolling Stone, 09-Mar-2017, www.rollingstone.com].

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Connecting coronavirus to the Deep State conspiracy
In the turmoil of the COVID-19 crisis in America, it didn’t take long for a number of Trump’s cronies and followers to play the pandemic conspiracy card. TV commentator Rush Limbaugh has labelled the coronavirus a deep state hoax⍝ (calling health experts fighting the virus outbreak functionaries of the deep state). The right-wing “shock jock” has said the crisis was being used by as a political weapon to destabilise and undo the Trump presidency [‘Rush Limbaugh: coronavirus a “common cold” being “weaponised’ against Trump’, (Martin Pengelly), The Guardian, 26-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]⦿. Other “true-believers” of the DS conspiracy myth see the coronavirus crisis as a plot to destabilise global markets and cripple the US economy, or alternately a Deep State plan to suppress dissent and impose “mandated medicine” on to the unsuspecting masses [‘Right-wing conspiracy theorists see coronavirus as a plot against Trump’, (Mikael Thalen), The Daily Dot, 26-Feb-2020, www.dailydot.com; ‘Scientist with 4 Degrees from MIT Warns ‘Deep State’ Using Coronavirus Fear-Mongering To Suppress Dissent’, (Carmine Sabina), The Western Journal, 17-Mar-2020, www.westernjournal.com].

➰➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➰

❈ there have been numerous other Deep State scenarios internationally, a classic one in recent history was the 1973 Chilean coup where foreign elements, the American CIA and IT&T, combined with a right wing military clique in Chile to overthrow the democratically-elected Allende government


⊠ many of the conspiracy hypothesisers who accept that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, depict the gunman as having been an agent of the Deep State


◘ with hindsight we can see earlier instances of the (unnamed) deep state in American politics, beavering away to undermine a US president – in the Thirties and early Forties the Dulles brothers, Foster and Allen, exploited their key diplomatic roles in arms of the Roosevelt administration to covertly pursue their own agendas which were at variance with FDR’s policies, David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015)

✪ one of the wildest is the QAnon Deep State conspiracy which alleges that a “cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles” have joined up with Hollywood liberals and Democrat politicians to try to overthrow the Trump regime


⍤ sometimes hitting back with his own brand of fake news, such as his unsubstantiated tweet claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election


⍝ a view with popular backing among sections of the Alt-Right, patriot-militia groups in the US


⦿ Limbaugh last month, looking to cloak the ‘conspiracy’ in an even more sinister light, suggested to his viewers that there were eighteen earlier strains of the disease which he has likened to the common cold, therefore COVID-19 was nothing to be concerned about, he reasoned. Limbaugh’s woeful ignorance—the 19 in the disease’s name refers to the year it was first identified, 2019—earned him much scorn and derision from liberal America (although amazingly it didn’t deter a Trump lackey from repeating the gross misinformation in a “Fox & Friends” rant against WHO) , ‘Coronavirus skeptic Rush Limbaugh thinks COVID-19 means there were 18 other COVIDS’, (Brian Niemietz), Daily News, 12-Mar-2020, www.nydailynews.com

Weihaiwei Under the Union Jack: An Odd Little British Enclave in China

Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Weihai City is a commercial port and major fishing centre jutting out on the north-easternmost tip of Kiaochow Peninsula in Shandong province. Geographically it is the southern point guarding the entrance to the Gulf of Zhili (Bohai) and the maritime route to Tianjin, the gateway to Beijing. Up until 1895 Weihai or Weihaiwei as it was formerly known was the China’s base for it’s Beiyang Fleet (Northern Seas Fleet). That year the port city was taken by the Japanese in the Jiawu War (First Sino-Japanese War).

⇓ Liugong Is. Chinese naval memorial

Britain’s motives for securing a port at Weihaiwei
Britain in the late 19th century was one of several European powers jockeying for territorial possessions in China. Weihaiwei was important to the diplomats in Whitehall, not so much because it had a deep-sea port (the British already had Hong Kong, to which they added the New Territories in 1898), but as a strategic buffer to other great powers in China. Early in 1898 the Chinese government leased Qingtao (Tsingtao) in southern Shandong province to Germany and the Liaoning Peninsula to Russia (which included the geopolitically important Lüshunkou, renamed by the Russians “Port Arthur”). Acquiring Weihaiwei in 1898 gave Britain a strategic foothold on the mainland to counterbalance the presence of the Germans and the Russians✲. Britain’s lease, it said, would last until the Russians pulled out of Port Arthur. However when Russia withdrew from Port Arthur in 1905, Britain stayed in Weihaiwei, mainly because another rival, Japan, took its place.

⇓1st Chinese Regiment, Weihaiwei

(Picture: www.history-chron.com)

The British War Office took charge of administering Weihaiwei (the capital of which was called Port Edward) locating it’s naval base just off the port at Liugong Island (Liu-Kung-Tao). A garrison of 200 British men (who saw service in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in Peking) and a local Chinese regiment was stationed at Pt Edward [‘Wei-Hai-Wei Police’, (Harry Fecitt), Gentleman’s Military International Club, 11-Nov-2008, www.gmic.co.uk].The Navy’s plans for a base in the mould of Hong Kong turned topsy-turvy when Port Edward was found to be unsuitable either as a major navy base or as a trading port. Administration of the territory was passed from the War Office to the Colonial Office which appointed a civilian commissioner to take charge [‘Weihaiwei under British Rule’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The Navy retained a presence at Port Edward using it mainly as it’s China Station for summer anchorage∎.

A peculiar British enclave
As British overseas entities go, Weihaiwei was quite atypical. First, it was a leased territory, a legal occupancy, but not a colony like Hong Kong. Britain had no sovereignty over Weihaiwei or it’s Chinese population. Unlike Hong Kong Chinese residents, the Chinese in Pt Edward could not achieve UK citizenship. From 1898 to 1930 Weihaiwei remained a Chinese territory with the British exercising “exclusive jurisdiction over a Chinese population”. Another difference from the colonial model: Hong Kong’s top office-holder was the governor, whereas Port Edward’s administration was headed up by “a lowly commissioner”⌖ [Reviews of British Rule in China: law and justice in Weihaiwei, 1898-1930, by Carol G S Tan, (2008), (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Peter Wesley-Smith, Vol. 49, 2009; Li Chen, Law and History Review, Vol. 28, 2010)].

A quiet, unassuming ‘backwaters’
With British ambitions for Pt Edward scaled down considerably, the navy and the civil administration—both largely doing their own thing—settled down for a long and uneventful tenure in Shandong province. Weihaiwei’s mild summer climate (compared to the hotter climes in Peking and Hong Kong) free of malaria, allowed the Navy to use the locale for the pursuit of rest and recreation for UK personnel serving in China⌂ (Weihaiwei under British Rule’, Wiki). The British civil servants posted to Weihaiwei also enjoyed these relaxed conditions. Commissioner Lockhart, who spent nearly 19 years running the post, spent the bulk of his leisure time horse-riding and playing golf (Lethbridge).

⇓ Comm. Lockhart with some local headmen (1909) (Picture: National Galleries Scotland)

Relations with the local population
Lockhart’s tenure as civil commissioner from 1902 defined the pattern for the leasehold’s duration. A standardised tax-collecting system utilising the headmen of Weihai villages was established. The commissioner made sure that the enclave’s expenditure never exceeded that of revenue while implementing a modest program of reforms to education and infrastructure. Lockhart was able to administer Weihaiwei largely unencumbered…being free to govern unilaterally as there was no legislative council in the territory acting as a check on his actions. Lockhart, as a dedicated Sinologist, established a rapport with the middle-class Chinese merchants. He adopted an approach to the local community that was prudent and pragmatic, generally leaving them to run their own political and economic affairs at the village level. The Chinese headmen being conservative in nature in turn didn’t cause any undue problems for the commissioner (Wesley-Smith; Lethbridge).

Retrocession of Weihaiwei
In 1930 the lease expired on Weihaiwei, Britain handed back the territory to China and removed its garrison. By agreement Britain was allowed to retain certain buildings and facilities on Liugong Island for use by the British Navy for a further 10 years. Britain retained some personnel on the island using it only during winter…meanwhile the golf course activities continued. The day after the extended lease was up in 1940, a band of Japanese soldiers occupied Weihaiwei. Britain protested this action, contending that it had optioned a further extension on Liugong Island, but with larger issues to deal with didn’t press the matter. The remaining British personnel including the surgeon-commander were evacuated [‘Weihaiwei Withdrawal: Rights Reserved by Britain’, The Straits Times, 08-Dec-1940, www.eresources.nib.gov.sg]

Note: the last UK administrator of Weihaiwei, Reginald Fleming Johnston, had been a tutor and adviser to China’s last emperor, Pu-Yi.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Weihaiwei British Leasehold, 1898-1930. Capital: Port Edward.
288 square miles (including Liugong Island, 3.16 square miles)
Population (1901) >120,000 European portion <200 (Li Chen)


✲ the British pressured China into the lease of Weihaiwei, doing so after the Japanese withdrew their forces, but apparently after overcoming some reservations within Westminster (Wei Peh T’i, Review of British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers, by Pamela Atwell, (1985), Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 27, 1987)
∎ although it did function also as a free port until 1923
⌖ although one biographer of Commissioner Lockhart equated it with the rank of lieutenant-governor (Lethbridge, Henry James. “SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART: COLONIAL CIVIL SERVANT AND SCHOLAR.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 12, 1972, pp. 55–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23881565. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020)
⌂ today under the PRC Weihai is a health and convalescence town

Hugo Boss, Gentlemen’s Outfitters to the German Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei

Commerce & Business, International Relations, Military history, Racial politics, Regional History, Retailing history, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ahh Hugo Boss … luxury watches, fragrances, men’s suits and fashion wear and accessories, Nazi uniforms. Wait! Run that last one past me again? Yes, it’s true. Hugo Boss AG＊, that doyen of international fashion houses with annual revenue exceeding €2.7 billion (2018) and over 1,100 stores worldwide, provided the German Nazi Party, with their uniforms during (and prior to) the Third Reich. Although you wouldn’t know so from a perusal of the Hugo Boss website which keeps a watertight lid on the company’s unsavoury past❂.

The clothing company was started in Metzingen (southern Germany) in 1924 by the eponymous Hugo (Ferdinand) Boss…it commenced supplying the NSDAP (National-Socialist Workers Party) with their brown military uniforms, according to the company’s own claim in 1924 (the same year Hugo Boss was founded)∅. Initially Boss designed and provided the standard Nazi brown-shirted outfits including Stürmabteilung (SA) uniforms, Nazi workwear, and Hitler Youth uniforms. In the Depression Boss’s company was like many, many businesses severely hit and Boss was forced into bankruptcy in 1931. That year was momentous for another reason, HF Boss joined the Nazi Party, an event that was to turn his fortunes round dramatically. At the same time the failed businessman also joined the SS (Schutzstaffel) as a “sponsoring member”.

By appointment to the Führer
Membership of the party meant more contracts for Hugo Boss as a favoured supplier of Hitler. Under the Nazi dictatorship Boss’ sales grew from 38,260 RM in 1932 to 3,300,000 RM in 1941 (Timm). Boss’ motives for joining have been attributed to “economic opportunism” and its clear that he saw the business advantages of tying his colours to the Nazi flagship, but there’s equal little doubt that his commitment to the Nazi cause was heartfelt (a photo of him with the Führer was said to to be one of the tailor’s most prized possessions)❊ [‘Hugo Boss’ Secret Nazi History’, (Fashion and War), M2M, (video, YouTube)].

🔻A Boss ad placed in the SS newspaper

Nazi fashionistas
From 1937 on, the relationship acquired an exclusivity, Hugo Boss made clothing only for the Nazis, including the black uniforms worn by the elite Nazi force, the SS (Boss didn’t design the uniforms worn by Himmler’s SS Corps, two party members unconnected to the company designed them). Boss continued to heavily advertise his fashions in the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, and fashionably chic the uniforms were! One of the pillars of the Nazis’ ideology was the pseudo-scientific belief in Aryan superiority, this involved showing the world what the “new man” looks like. There was no finer exemplar of this than the Wehrmacht military man, and this is where Boss provided the finishing touches. The firm’s stylish, sharply cut uniforms conveyed the desired outer appearance, the SS corporate identity that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to project to the world (Fashion and War).

HB as slave-labour drivers
From 1940 Boss used slave labour at it’s Metzingen textile factory, predominantly comprising women and later supplemented by the infusion of Polish and French POWs. The company  (sans it’s founder), after decades of dodging accusations, finally came clean about it’s shameful Nazi collaboration, after being pressured into issuing a mea culpa in 1997 for the gross mistreatment of the workers. Later the corporation commissioned a book on it’s dark past association❏ [‘“Hitler’s Tailor” Hugo Boss apologises for using slave labour to make Nazi uniforms’, (Lauren Paxman), Daily Mail, 24-Sep-2011, www.dailymail.co.uk].

(Source: www.militaryuniforms.net/Pinterest)

A discounted form of justice
After the war Boss was tried along with other German collaborators by a regional Denazification tribunal. The man known as “Hitler’s Tailor” claimed in his defence that he only joined the Nazi Party to save his firm. The court found Boss to have been a “beneficiary of the system” and fined him 100,000 RM, made him sever all connexions with his own firm and stripped him of the right to vote, join a political party or professional organisation. However, on appeal, the fine was reduced by 75%, the other restrictions were lightened and his culpability was downgraded to ‘follower’ of the regime. Before the findings could be ratified by the French Military Government and the punishments imposed, Boss died in 1948 (Timm).

(Photo: Hutton-Deutsh Collection/Corbis/Getty Images)

Endnote: Supping with the 卐 devil
Hugo Boss AG was far from the only company to profitably cohabitate with Hitler and the NSDAP. The list of big corporations doing mutually advantageous business was extensive, both within Germany and outside  – including Volkswagen, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Kodak, Ford, General Motors, IBM, Siemens, Chase National Bank and Associated Press [‘Companies with Ties to Nazi Germany’, (Debra Kelly), Grunge, (Upd.17-Dec-2019), www.grunge.com].

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＊ Aktiengesellschaft (German limited company)

❂ either that or trying to conceal or gloss over the inconvenient truth of the corporation’s history, eg, “in the 1930s it produced uniforms for various(sic) parties around the time of the world war”, www.bangandstrike.com

∅ the firm’s advertising in the 1930s stated that it was a “supplier of National Socialist uniforms since 1924”, however research suggest that this overstates by four years the length of Boss’ association with Hitler and the Nazis [Elisabeth Timm, ‘Hugo Ferdinand Boss (1885-1948) und die Firma Hugo Boss: Eine Dokumentation’, (Metzingen Zwangsarbeit – Forced Labour), MA Thesis, 1999]

❊ it was a ‘reunion’ of the two humble German corporals from World War I

❏ author Roman Koester wrote: “it’s clear that (Boss) did not just join the party out of economic calculation…he was a convinced Nazi” (Hugo Boss, 1924-1945. A Clothing Factory During the Weimar Republic and Third Reich)

Hitler in Norway: Raw Materials for Matériel, Geopolitics, Ideology and Propaganda

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Norway, Sweden and Denmark (www.geology.com)

At the onset of world war in 1939 the principal adversaries of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler were clearly seen to be the United Kingdom and (initially at first) France. So, why did the Third Reich focus so much on Norway in the global conflict?

War strategy was part of the answer. German military planning ante bellum had pinpointed Norway’s geo-strategic importance. It was also aware of the danger of a blockade of Germany’s sea-lanes posed by the British Navy. By controlling Norway’s long (16,000 mi) coastline, Germany could control the North Sea, providing the optimal maritime attack route for an assault on Britain. It would also ease the passage of Germany’s warships and submarines into the Atlantic Ocean. As far back as 1929 German Vice-Admiral Wegener outlined in a book the advantages of seizing Norway in a future war to expedite German naval traffic [C N Trueman, “The Invasion Of Norway 1940”, www.historylearningsite.co.uk . The History Learning Site, 20 Apr 2015. 5 Feb 2020]. The Nazis believed that Norway’s strategic ports were the key to control of the Atlantic and to the overall success of Germany in the war (‘Nazi Megastructures’).

Norway’s proximity to Sweden was another factor in Germany’s focus on the Scandinavian country, arguably the main consideration in Hitler’s and the Nazis’ calculations. Buried in the north of Sweden—mainly at the Kiruna and Gällivare mines—were vast quantity of high-grade iron-ore. In 1939 Germany imported ten million tons of the mineral from Sweden, all but one million of it from these mines [‘The Nazi Invasion of Norway – Hitler Tests the West’, (Andrew Knighton), War History Online, 01-Oct-2018, www.warhistoryonline]. This raw material provided the steel for the German war machine – its armaments and equipment (weaponry, tanks) and aircraft.

Kiruna mine 🔼

As Sweden was (like Norway up to April 1940) a neutral country in war-time and was freely selling iron-ore to the Germans, why did Hitler need Norway? The problem was the port of Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden, from where the Nazis transported the precious loads of ore…in winter it would freeze over. To meet the exigencies of “total war” the Nazis needed to keep the production lines rolling, the war schedule couldn’t afford long delays in the delivery of the iron-ore. The solution lay in Norway – the northern port at Narvik by contrast didn’t freeze over and was accessible all year round. Logistically, the Germans could easily re-route the Swedish iron ore via the Norwegian coast (Trueman). What made this more pressing for the Germans was that Britain spurred on by Winston Churchill was planning to mount a expeditionary force to capture the Swedish iron-ore mines to deprive their enemies of it [Tony Griffiths, Scandinavia: At War with Trolls, (2004)].

In April 1940 Germany, concerned that Britain was trying to engineer Norway into the war, implemented Operation Weserübung, invading both Denmark and Norway at the same time. Neighbouring Denmark for Germany was a staging post and base for its Norway operations. Denmark capitulated virtually immediately but Norway, with some limited and not very effective help from the British, French and Polish, held out against the massively superior might of the Nazi Heer, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for over two months.

🔼 Quisling inspecting the Germanske SS Norge troops in Oslo

The Norwegian surrender came, inevitably, after the Allies withdrew their support. The German Wehrmacht stayed in occupation of the country for five years guarding the precious iron-ore route. Hitler, wanting to project a veneer of legitimacy, installed a pro-German Norwegian puppet regime under Vidkun Quisling, a fascist collaborator and leader of Norway’s Nasjonal Samling party✱. Quisling, evoking an ancient Viking concept, the hird✧, formed his own paramilitary organisation [Tony Griffiths, Scandinavia: At War with Trolls, (2004)], however real power lay with the Hitler-appointed Reichskommissar Josef Terboven.

Hitler had another, ideological motive for extending the scope of his Third Reich empire to Norway. The Nazi Führer was an ardent admirer of Viking and Norse culture. Nazi ideology rested on a belief in so-called “Aryan superiority” which elevated Nordic people such as the Norwegians. This ideology was reflected in SS recruitment posters circulated in Norway (and Denmark) during the German occupation…propaganda aimed at an historic appeal to Norwegian manhood, conflating of the Wehrmacht soldier spirit with the valour and exploits of Viking warrior culture [‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’, (Eleanor Barraclough, History Today, 68(4), April 2019, www.historytoday.com].

The Nazis’ program of Lebensborn –intended to create “racially pure” offspring was practiced in Norway, resulting in somewhere between ten and twelve thousand babies being born to Norwegian mothers and German fathers⊚ (‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’).

🔼 (L) Quisling, (2nd from L) Himmler, (3rd from L) Terboven

Hitler’s preoccupation with Norway, its natural resources and its supposed Aryan virtues, was to have critical and fateful repercussions for the “big picture” war strategy of the Third Reich. The Nazis fortified Norway more heavily than any other nation it occupied during the war, several hundred thousand German soldiers (regular army, Waffen and Schutzstaffel – SS) were stationed there – a ratio of one German soldier for every eight Norwegians! [‘German occupation of Norway’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. When the Allies launched their decisive D-Day operation in 1944, these unused, excess troops in non-combative Norway may very likely have been vital to the German efforts to stem the Allies’ major offensive at Normandy.The Nazis used ancient Viking rune symbols on their uniforms and flags, like the SS’s sig rune insignia (above)

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𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶

✱ adding a new word, ‘quisling’, to the lexicon. The charade was maintained with Hitler declaring that occupied Denmark and Norway were under the protection(sic) of the Nazi state, Hitler‘s Scandinavian Legacy, Ed. by John Gilmour & Jill Stephenson, (Introduction) (2013)

✧ in Old Norse, originally a retinue of informal armed companions, analogous with a housecarl, a household bodyguard

⊚ the most famous of which is Frida (Anni-Frid) of the Swedish pop group ABBA

The 1918 Spanish Flu: History’s Most Deadly Pandemic

Environmental, International Relations, Medical history, Military history, Public health,, Regional History, Science and society, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The ongoing fight to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, the Coranavirus—now entering a new stage of transforming itself into a global epidemic—gives rise to recollection of another virus that swept the world just over one hundred years ago, the so-called Spanish Flu✺. For most of the rest of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu (sometimes known as La Grippe) was largely neglected by researchers and mainstream historians, and study confined to actuaries, specialist epidemiologists and virologists and medical historians [Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, (2017)].

(Credit: CNN International)

Why did such a devastating pandemic fly under the radar for so long? The timing of the outbreak goes a good way to explain this. After having suffered four long years of a unique world war, people tended to treat the Spanish Flu as a footnote to the Great War conflagration. Moreover, the war, concentrated in Europe and the Middle East, had a limited geographical focus for people, contrasting with the pneumonic influenza outbreak which was truly global [The Spanish Flu Pandemic’, (L Spinney), History Today, 67(4), April 2017]. As catastrophic events go, the two stand in stark contrast. With today’s scientific and medical advances experts estimate that the Spanish Flu killed at least 50 million people worldwide, some estimates put it as high as 100 million [NP Johnson & J Mueller 2002;76: 105-115 (‘Updating the accounts: Global mortality of the 1918-1920 “Spanish” Flu pandemic’, Bull Hist Med)]. Estimates of World War I casualties—military and civilian–—sit somewhere in the range of 20 to 22 million deaths [‘WW1 Casualties’, (WW1 Facts), http://ww1facts.net]⌖. By the late 20th century and early 2000s outbreaks of new viruses like SARS, Asian Bird Flu, Swine Flu, etc, spurred mainstream historians◙ to look afresh at the great global influenza of 1918-20.

An abnormal spike in morbidity and mortality
The Spanish Flu was truly global, like the Coronavirus its lethal reach touched every continent except Antartica, both are novel (new) respiratory illnesses. Similarities have been noted between the responses to the two outbreaks, eg, the issuing of instructions or recommendations by the authorities for the public to wear masks, avoid shaking hands (part of social distancing), good hygiene, quarantine, an alarmist overreaction by the media [‘Coronavirus response may draw from Spanish flu pandemic of 100 years ago’, ABC News, (Matt Bamford), 05-Mar-2020, www.amp.abc.net.au]. The great flu of 1918’s morbidity and mortality rates were frighteningly high and far-reaching…one in three people on earth were affected by it✪. Between 2.5 and 5% of the world’s population perished, including India a mind-boggling 17M-plus, Dutch East Indies 1.5M, US (up to) 675,000◍, Britain 250,000, France 400,000, Persia (Iran) (up to) 2.4M, Japan 390,000-plus, Ghana (at least) 100,000, Brazil 300,000, USSR (unknown, but conservatively, greater than 500,000)⊞.

While densely crowded communities were thought the biggest risk of mass infection, the Flu caused human devastation even in remote, isolated corners of the world, eg, in Oceania, Samoa bereft of immunity, lost 22% of its population in two months, the Fijian islands lost 14% in a 16-day period⌀. The kill rate was something around 2.5% cf. a ‘normal’ flu outbreak a rate of no more than 0.1% would be expected [‘The Spanish Flu Pandemic’, (Spinney, History Today ; ‘The Spanish Flu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].(Source: National Library of Australia)

If the Spanish Flu didn’t originate in Spain, where did it originate?
No one knows for sure is the short answer…but there has been much speculation on the topic. At the time of the epidemic a popular notion was that the Flu started in China, but China experienced low rates of infection compared to other regions of the world. The explanation for this perhaps lay in that China was subjected to an initial, mild flu season which gave its citizens an acquired immunity to the disease when the more severe strain of the virus hit them.

🔺 Red Cross volunteers: caring for the sick during the Spanish Flu fell overwhelmingly on women (volunteers and professional nurses) who bore the brunt of the work at quarantine stations and camps, as well as exposing themselves to great personal risk

🔻 Influenza-ravaged Ft Riley soldiers in hospital camp

The military, mobility and zoonosis
Another theory attributes the Spanish Flu’s beginnings to the movements of the combatants in WWI. Virologist John Oxford favours the village of Étaples in France as the centre of the 1918 influenza infection. From a hospital camp here, 10,000 troops passed through every day…with their immune systems weakened by malnourishment and the stresses of battle and chemical attacks they were susceptible to the disease which was probably transmitted via a piggery and poultry on the same site. Once contracted, it’s dissemination was likely facilitated by mass transportation of troops by train.

Another view that has gained wide currency locates the Flu’s genesis in America’s Midwest. In recent times, historians led by Alfred W Crosby have supported the view that the epidemic started not in Europe but in a US Army base in Kansas in 1917 (America’s Forgotten Pandemic). According to adherents of this theory soldiers training at Fort Riley for combat in Europe contracted the H1N1 influenza virus which had mutated from pigs. The infected troops, they contend, then spread the virus via the war on the Western Front. Whether or not the virus started with WWI fighting men in France or in the US, it is undeniable that the soldiers moving around in trains and sailors in ships were agents of the Flu’s rapid dissemination [‘Spanish Flu’, History Today, (Upd. 05-Feb-2020), www.historytoday.com]. A recent, alternative origin view by molecular pathologist Jeffrey Taubenberger rejects the porcine transference explanation. Based on tests he did on exhumed victim tissue, Taubenberger contends that the epidemic was the result of bird-to-human transmission [‘Spanish flu: the killer that still stalks us, 100 years on’, (Mark Honigsbaum), The Guardian, 09-Sep-2018, www.theguardian.com].

(Image credit: Guia turístico)

Demographics: differential age groups
The pattern of Coronavirus mortality points to the disease being most virulent and most fatal to elderly people (the seventies to the nineties age group). This accords with most flu season deaths, although unlike seasonal flu outbreaks Coronavirus contagion has (thus far) had minimal impact on children, in particular the under-fives (Honigsbaum). But the pattern of Spanish Flu was markedly different, the records show a targeting of young adults, eg, in the US 99% of fatalities in 1918-19 were people under 65, with nearly 50% in the 20 to 40 age bracket (‘Spanish Flu’, Wiki). Statistics from other countries on the 1918 outbreak conform to a similar trend.

🔺 Conveying the health message to the public (Source: www.shelflife.cooklib.org)

The Flu in a series of varyingly virulent waves
The first wave of the Flu in early 1918 was relatively mild. This was followed by a second, killer wave in August. This mutated strain was especially virulent in three disparate places on the globe, Brest in France, Freetown in Sierra Leone and Boston in the US. There were myriad victims, some died (quickly) because they had not been exposed to the first, milder wave which prevented them from building up immunity to this more powerful strain [‘Four lessons the Spanish flu can teach us about coronavirus’ (Hannah Devlin), The Guardian, 04-Mar-2020, www.msn.com]. The second wave was a global pathogen sui generis. The bulk of the deaths occurred in a 13-week period (September to December). The lethality of the disease, and especially the speed with which it progressed, was the scariest part✧.

2nd wave curve in the US, 1918: note the different mortality peaks during Oct-Dec 1918 for St Louis (imposed a stringent lockdown) vs Philadelphia (much less restrictive approach)
(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007)

The symptoms of this murderously effective strain were unusual and extreme, eg, haemorrhaging from mucous membranes, bleeding from the eyes, ears and orifices, etc. The extreme severity of the symptoms were thought to be caused by cytokine storms (overreaction of the body’s immune system) (‘Spanish Flu’, Wiki) [‘Spanish Flu’, History, 12-Oct-2010, www.history.com]. The third and last strain of the Flu, in 1919, was markedly milder by comparison to the second, but still more intense than the first.

Many parallels exist between the 1918 flu outbreak and the present pandemic – of a positive nature, the widespread advocacy of wearing masks to limit the spread of disease and mandatory lockdowns. Plenty of negative parallels too – the disregarding of science and medical expertise on how to tackle the outbreak; countries engaging in playing the “blame game” against each other rather then co-operating on a united approach to the pandemic. There was especially, but not only in the US, a repetition by some of the denial at the national leadership level to square up to the pandemic and give it the complete seriousness it demanded.

✥ ⌯ ✥ ⌯ ✥

In 1919 in the middle of the flu crisis, Irish poet WB Yeats wrote in a poem the line for which he is perhaps best remembered: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

✥ ⌯ ✥ ⌯ ✥

Footnote: The health authorities’ inability to check the juggernaut of the 1918 virus was exacerbated by misdiagnosis – at it’s onset the Spanish Flu was widely believed to be a bacterium like the Black Death, not a virus. Misreading the symptoms, the influenza outbreak was variously and erroneously diagnosed as dengue, cholera or typhoid (Spinney, ‘History Today’; ‘Spanish Flu’, History).

(Photo: State Archives & Records, NSW)

PostScript: The lessons of a global catastrophe
The Spanish Flu in its vast human decimation rammed home lessons for post-WWI governments and health practitioners in its wake. Being helpless to prevent or halt the virus once in full swing, the vital need to develop vaccines to counter pandemics was subsequently understood. Advanced countries started to restructure their public health systems to try to cope (such as the United States’ NIH – National Institutes of Health, which emerged about 10 years after the Spanish Flu) [‘The great influenza The epic story of the deadliest plague in history‘ (JM Barry), Reviewed by Peter Palese, (JCI), www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov]. And of course the 1918 flu virus had other, indirect, outcomes…it led to universal healthcare, alternative medicine, intensive care facilities and a modern preoccupation with the benefits of healthy exercise under clean, clear skies (‘Pale Rider’).

⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴

✺ the name is a misnomer. The Spanish association came about thus: with the Great War still raging other combatant European nations such as France and Germany had imposed censorship restrictions on the reportage of the flu outbreak, whereas Spain being neutral in the war did not. When the Spanish press freely reported a serious eruption of the Flu, people outside the country unquestioningly assumed that the influenza came from Spain

⌖ to further break that down, more American troops died from the Spanish Flu than in combat during WWI (‘Pale Rider‘)

⊞ the numbers cited tend to be approximations given the paucity of adequate record-keeping at the time

◙ part of a new multidisciplinary approach to the subject including economists, sociologists and psychologists

◍ consequently life expectancy for Americans dropped by 12 years in 1918, and for the first time since Britain commenced recording data, the death-rate in 1919 exceeded the birth-rate (Honigsbaum)

✪ Pandemic: pan ⤑ all ║ demos ⤑ the people (not literally but fairly close)

⌀ although isolation did prove beneficial in some instances, such as in Australia where the virus didn’t arrive until 1919 and entry was closely monitored with a maritime quarantine program. As a result Australia’s death-rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population was one of the lowest recorded [‘Influenza pandemic’, National Museum of Australia, www.nma.gov.au]

✧ Philadelphia alone experienced 4,597 influenza deaths in a single week

Heligoland, the North Sea’s “Border Island”: A Mini Platform for Historic Anglo-German Rivalry

Geography, International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The small but strategic island that Britain gave away twice

Heligoland, is a tiny speck of land (a mere 0.67 sq mi) in the North Sea. The main island (Hauptinsel) is a formation of rock and stone cliffs frequently impacted by wind and storm – or as one observer described it, “an outcrop of sandstone and chalk” [Harry Campbell, Whatever Happened to Tanganyika? The place names that history left behind, (2007)]. It’s dominant geographical features are a 200-feet high Oberland (upper land) and a Unterland (lower land)✲. Just to the main island’s east is a second, smaller island known as the Düne or Sandy Island for its collection of small beaches❅. Heligoland is 40 miles from the town of Cuxhaven in the Lower Saxony region of Germany (also close to and coming under the provincial administrative jurisdiction of Schleswig-Holstein), and some 290 to 300 miles from the nearest point on the British Isles.

The remoteness and fairly nondescript appearance of Heligoland (in German and Danish: Helgoland, presumably from Heyligeland, “Holy Land”) belies a rather colourful history of fluctuating fortunes, especially over the last two centuries. Up until 1807 the island was the property of Denmark (interrupted by one or two brief periods when it fell under the control of Hamburg). ThIs “No-Man’s Land” has traditionally served as something of a haven for mainlanders – a refuge from the severe climatic conditions of the German Bight, and also occasionally from Danish taxation officials [George Drower, Heligoland: The True Story of German Bight and the Island that Britain Betrayed (2002)].

In 1807, as the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe, the British Navy under orders from Whitehall seized it from the Danes. Heligoland was of value to the British in the war against Napoleon as a means of circumventing the economic blockade imposed on Great Britain by the French emperor (the Continental system). Having Heligoland provided the British with a handy base to carry on (illegal) trade with Europe in defiance of Napoleon…between 1809 and 1811 alone, some £86 million worth of goods passed through the island and into the hands of German merchants. Heligoland’s economic activity flourished with most of the smuggled merchandise comprising tea, coffee, tobacco, rum and sugar from GB’s commodity-rich colonies around the globe [‘Heligoland’, (The British Empire), www.britishempire,co.uk/].

“The Gibraltar of the North Sea”

A spa was introduced to the island in 1826, luring visitors and holidayers from the nearby German mainland. Some came in search of a haven of a different kind, liberal Germans were attracted because it offered them, they believed, “a political retreat from the nationalistic fervour of their homeland” [‘Heligoland: Germany’s hidden gem in the North Sea’, (James Waterson), The Guardian, 24-Apr-2011, www.theguardian.com]. The new German-British trade ran hand-in-hand with the traditional island vocation of fishing (mainly for lobsters). The permanent population of Heligoland, despite the boost, has over the years remained pretty stable, never rising above 3,000 at any point (predominately the locals have been of German stock, speaking a North Friesian dialect)〥.

A coloniser’s swap: Heligoland for Zanzibar

The status quo on Heligoland remained intact till the late part of the century. In 1890 the change occurred that was to have seismic repercussions in the 20th century. As part of “the scramble for Africa” at the time, the British traded Heligoland to Germany in return for Zanzibar and part of Tanganyika◘, adding to GB’s “patch-quilt pattern” of GB’s ‘pink’ colonies on the world map. But the British were to discover that the true cost was the loss of a significant strategic asset in it’s 20th century foreign policy. Heligoland’s location on a ‘corner’ of the North Sea guarded the entrance to the port of Hamburg and was approximate to the estuary of the Elbe, the Kiel Canal and three other great North European rivers (Drower).

▵ Aerial view of Heligoland, between 1890 and 1900

With the European powers preoccupied with war preparations by the early 1900s, Imperial Germany strengthened the fortifications on Heligoland. When war (WWI) did come, Heligoland did not escape the conflict. It was the site of one of the earliest engagements of the war, the Battle of Heligoland Bight⊕, and involved in one of the first seaplane attacks, the Cuxhaven Raid (Christmas Day 1914)(ibid.). Whatever the fortunes of the British and German forces in Heligoland, the biggest losers were the island’s inhabitants who were summarily ejected from their homes on the island, having been given no say in the matter❂. They were given only six hours to pack and take only what could be transported by hand. The house-holders’s bedding and furniture was left behind. They were ‘reassured’ that they would be able to return after the war was won – in a few weeks! (ibid.). After the war Germany in accordance with the Versailles Treaty was required to demilitarise Heligoland, it was however allowed to retain the island – despite entreaties to Britain from the islanders (returned from their five year-plus exile) that it take back its former colony (ibid.).

▵ An artist’s impression of the Cuxhaven Raid

Island spring-time

The interwar period heralded something of an economic renaissance and the introduction of large-scale tourism for Heligoland. In the 1930s it annually drew 30,000 visitors with enhanced spending power to patronise the new fashionable drinking establishments and expensive gift shops. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi consolidation of power saw a rebuilding of the island’s fortifications. Hitler harboured other grand plans for Heligoland (an anti-aircraft fortress and a gigantic new naval base intended to rival the Royal Navy’s one) but these never came to fruition.

During the Second World War, Heligoland was the site of another early aerial/sea battle between GB and Germany and the onset of the global conflict in 1939. After the Allies gained the upper hand over Germany and it’s Axis partners, the British RAF subjected the fortified island to great devastation (over a two-day period in April 1945 7,000 bombs were dropped on the island, resulting in the flattening of the middle section of Hauptinsel).

Allied victory in the war did not mean a respite from the British destruction for the island. GB having taken interim charge of Heligoland, once again cleared the island of the local population and used it as a bomb-testing range over the next seven years. This assault included a British “Big Bang” (6,700 tonnes of explosives on one single day), thought to be the single largest non-nuclear explosions ever!) [Jan Rüger, Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea, (2016)].

▵ German Federal Republic stamp commemorating the 1952 hand-back

Cold War sacrifice

After the war, the devastated state of the island proved good propaganda fodder for the new West German Federal government, allowing it to represent itself as “an emblem of German victimhood and nationalism“. In 1952, the Brits, preoccupied with the wider Western imperatives of the day (the Cold War), gave the tiny archipelago back to the West Germans as an inducement to bind them and their influential chancellor Adenauer firmly to the Western anti-Soviet camp [ibid.].

In peace, once more the rocky island reverted to a pleasant holiday destination for continental (mainly German) day-trippers. In the early 1960s Heligoland rebuilt it’s tourist industry and the island was transformed yet again into a modern holiday resort with attractive duty-free benefits and a new spa complex. The present ambience of the born-again island has been likened to “the understated charm of a classic British seaside resort, a miniature Scarborough transplanted into the middle of the German Bight”. Contemporary Heligoland and it’s harbour has also resumed its earlier role as a venue for yacht races. [Waterson, loc.cit.; Rüger, loc.cit.].

Germany’s only Hochseeinsel⊞

For all they have suffered materially and emotionally as a consequence of British misrule, in war and in peace—the betrayals, the dismissive lack of consultation, the physical devastation—the Heligolanders seem to have buried that sorry chapter in the past. The German tourist spiel for the island depicts it as Deutschlands einzige meersinsel (“Germany’s only sea island”), projecting images of quaint and colourful fishermen’s harbourside cottages. Phrases such as “offshore oasis of relaxation”, “a unique natural setting…(and)…mild maritime climate” litter the pages of published promos (www.germany.travel/).

Footnote: Promised resort lifestyle aside, contemporary Heligoland eschews many of the trappings of modernity for a more minimalist if not entirely back-to-basics existence—no autos, no bicycles (push-scooters and hiking the prevailing modes of transport), no high-rise, no internet, no invasive smells, noises or sounds of industry—a diet of peace and tranquility and migratory bird-watching, befitting Heligoland’s curative, get-away-from-it-all role over much of it’s history.

▵ Heligoland crest

︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻

✲ these days the island also has a crater-shaped Mittelland (middle land), thanks to the British bomb-testing program of the Forties and early Fifties

❅ severe storm action has massively altered the geology of Heligoland over the centuries…until 1720 the two islands were connected [‘Heligoland’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

〥 today they number around 1,500-2,500

◘ Lord Salisbury, the architect of the exchange, had first had to overcome staunch internal opposition to the relinquishment of Heligoland, not least from Queen Victoria herself

⊕ three German light cruisers and one torpedo-boat was sunk

❂ this has been a recurring motif with Heligoland, GB’s disposal of the island in 1890 was likewise done without consulting the 2,000 inhabitants of Heligoland

⊞ offshore island

The Chinese Chariot: A Weapon of Ancient Warmaking Tailored for Local Conditions

Archaeology, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When we think of the chariot and it’s association with antiquity, those of us weened on a cultural diet of Hollywood epic cinema might think about Ancient Rome and chariot racing in the Circus Maximus (such as famously featured in Ben Hur) or Ancient Egypt (imperial chariots ostentatiously ferrying proud pharaohs to some battle or conquest in The Ten Commandments). However, those that bought the Hollywood spin on ancient history might be surprised to learn that the chariot as a vehicle for hunting, racing or war in the ancient world did not have its genesis with either Rome or Egypt❋.

Traditionally, most historians of the ancient world have traced the chariot’s origins to Mesopotamia and the Near East (roughly dated as somewhere around 3,000 to 2,000 BC). More recent archaeological findings have however thrown up a rival candidate, the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. In the 1970s archaeologists unearthed the remains of chariots in the Ural Mountains of Central Russia which are thought to be as old as 4,000 years (there has some some conjecture as to whether these were chariots or carts and wagons) [‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’, Documentary, UK 2016, (aired SBS 15-Nov-2019)].

Asiatic onager ⇑

The first chariots in use, whether they were in the steppes of Central Asia and Asiatic Russia, or Mesopotamia, were not powered by horses, which were relatively late to be domesticated. Instead, other four-legged beasts, especially donkeys, onagers (Asiatic wild asses) or oxen, were initially employed. The concept of horse-driven chariots can trace its origins to those same steppes, the landscape in which the horse was first domesticated [“The Wheels of War: Evolution of the Chariot” History on the Net, (© 2000-2019), Salem Media. December 9, 2019 <https://www.historyonthenet.com/the-wheels-of-war-evolution-of-the-chariot>].

The horse’s domestication in the great steppes of Asia and evidence of early chariot-making in Russia/Central Asia are clear indicators of the pathway by which the chariot arrived in China. The oldest surviving remnants of the chariot in China dates its appearance to around 1,200 BC, coinciding with the Shang period of rule (found at Anyang in Henan Province). Other items excavated at Chinese sites reinforce the early existence of chariots in Ancient Chinese society, such as the characters inscribed on oracle bones—on some of these the image of chariots can be detected (‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’).

Oracle bone from Shang dynasty ⇓

Chariots of a different hue

The chariot in China reached its peak in the Western Zhou (1,046-771 BC) and the succeeding Eastern Zhou periods (771-226 BC), with chariots numbering in the thousands [Mark Cartwright, ‘Chariots in Ancient Chinese Warfare’, Ancient History Encyclopedia, (13-Jul-2017), www.ancient.edu]. One of the most interesting features of the Chinese chariot is it’s distinct differences from the chariots used by the earlier Sumerian, Hittite and Egyptian civilisations. Chinese chariots tended to be plus-sized compared to those from the Near East, the Caucasus, etc. The carriages were rectangular and large, with the vehicle’s axle located at the central point of the platform, giving the vehicles better balance (Near Eastern and Egyptian chariots typically positioned the axle at the end of the chariot).

But even of more striking difference was the Chinese wheels, they were huge and of a multi-stoked variety (usually comprising between 18 and 26 stokes on each wheel). The Western Asian/Near Eastern chariot wheels of antiquity by contrast were small and compact, usually with only six stokes per wheel (even earlier ones were made of heavy solid wood). The Chinese “super-size me” wheels were designed with local conditions in mind. The lighter, more flexible wheels were better suited to China’s rough terrain, accordingly they also made the horses’ task of pulling the chariot easier too [‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’; Andrew Knighton, ‘ The Rise and Fall of the Chariot – It Changed History, But Eventually Was a Victim Of Its Own Success’, War History Online, 04-Nov-2016, www.warhistoryonline.com].

A symbol of one’s class

Chariot and chariot horse ownership, much like the most expensive luxury cars today, was the preserve of the very wealthy in society✪. The archaeological evidence found in tomb pits confirms this. Chariots were a sign of great status for the nobleman. Owners needed to be well cashed-up as the vehicles were expensive to make and to maintain. Accordingly, noblemen in China, Egypt and elsewhere, when they died, would have their chariots and their horses interred with them in their burial tombs. Chariot pits such as those discovered in 2015 at Zaoyang, Hubei Province (dating to ca. 700 BC), shed light on the chariot’s significance. An aristocrat’s power was measured in the number of chariots he owned. The aristocratic class was expected, as part of their leading military role, to have the personal skills to master the chariot in warfare [‘Pictures: Ancient Chariot Fleet, Horses Unearthed in China’, National Geographic, 28-Sep-2011, www.nationalgeographic.com].

Photo: Zhang Xiaoli, Xinhua via Fame/Barcroft

The Zaoyang pit has proved particular fertile ground for chariot exhumation. Comprising a massive area of 33m x 4m, archaeological field workers divested it of 28 chariots and 49 pairs (49 x 2 = 98) skeletons of horses neatly arranged side by side [‘Archaeologists in China find 2,800-year-old tombs surrounded by 28 chariots and 98 horses’, (April Holloway), Ancient Origins, 22-May-2018, www.ancient-origins.net].

Horses for courses

The unearthed skeletons of the horses at Zaoyang and at numerous other burial sites reveal that the Chinese ‘chariotocracy’ used a specific kind of horse for their chariots – stocky, strongly-built Mongolian horses, standing about 1.4m tall, were deemed most suitable to haul the large Chinese chariots around the countryside [‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’].

Chinese chariots had some features that was different from elsewhere in the ancient world. Normally, a chariot crew (ma) in action comprised two men, this was standard. But commonly in Chinese chariots there were three men on board. The driver or charioteer⌑ and the archer were accompanied on the chariot platform by a third man. Sometimes called a rongyou, his job was to protect the other two in combat armed with a kind of spear-axe or halberd (known in China as a Ji). There were also specialist war chariots in China with a “crow’s nest” (ch’ao-ch’e) attached, a tower on an elevated chassis mounted above the platform of the chariot. This permitted an army commander to observe the field of battle more easily and to communicate orders to the army’s flag wavers (Cartwright).

Another advance in weapon technology at the time, the supplanting of the all-wood bow by a new, shorter composite bow (made of wood, horn and sinew), made the mobile archer a more effective and more potent element in battles (Knighton). The streamlining of war chariots, making them lighter and more manoeuvrable, made it feasible for them to outrun light infantry and heavier chariots. These chariots were still not without their limitations or drawbacks, they required flat ground to be effectively mobile and were prone to breaking down (armies often brought chariot repair teams with them to the battlefield) [‘Chariot tactics’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘The Wheels of War’].

Role in unification of the Chinese states

The importance of chariots as a military weapon in China coincided with the period of Warring States (Zhànguó Shídài). The kings (gúowáng, 国王) of the two strongest states Qin and Chu each had about 1,000 chariots at their command, and the vehicle certainly played its part in the eventual unification of China under the Yins. But the decisive role of chariots in war, even then, was diminishing. A combination of several developments in the military sphere undercut the chariot’s effectiveness in battles—army reforms saw increased reliance on the mobility of massed infantry and cavalry (greatly diminishing the crucial role played by nobleman). Chariots could not compete with fast-moving, well-coordinated cavalry. These developments and the introduction of iron weapons, especially the lethal eight-picul crossbow (nu), blunted the effectiveness of chariot-led warfare⌻ [‘Warring States period’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞

❋ in fact, chariot racing, so synonymous with the Romans, was a sport they copied from the Ancient Greeks (Homer’s Iliad includes a description of chariot racing in Book XXIII, ‘Chariot racing’, Britannica, www.britannica.com). Chariots were also used for hunting and funeral processions

✪ the conspicuously affluent citizens of the day paraded their chariots around town as ceremonial vehicles in much the same way as Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other prestigious luxury vehicles are ostentatiously shown off today. The chariots were decorated colourfully and elaborately with cowrie shells and bronze fittings

⌑ the charioteers were the most costly, prestigious and influential section of the army (Knighton) with entry to its ranks very competitive. The Luiu-t’ao (Six Secret Teachings), (5th-3rd BC military treatise, describes the necessity for chariot warriors to be the best and fittest in the army (age, height and agility standards had to be met) (Cartwright)

⌻ crossbows proved the nemesis of the war chariot, and once humans were successful in bending horses to obey their will, fleet-of-foot cavalry units could inflict considerably more damage on the enemy line than chariots could (‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’)

Canfranc Railway: Nazi Gold Train, Spanish Ore and War-time Border Espionage

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(((((((((((((((((o)))))))))))))))))

At the commencement of the world war in 1939, Francisco Franco’s authoritarian Spain was officially a neutral state in the global conflict※, this despite the Spanish dictator’s pro-Axis leanings and his debt of gratitude to Hitler and the Axis for its invaluable contribution to the Falangists’ victory in the recently-ended civil war in Spain. 

The Spanish Caudillo ⇪
Because of Franco’s neutrality path, Hitler was not able to make Spain and the Iberian Peninsula a base of war operations for the Axis side [L. Fernsworth (1953). ‘Spain in Western Defense’, Foreign Affairs, 31(4), 648-662, doi: 10.2307/20030996]. Notwithstanding this Franco’s Spain still proved a useful and even vital ‘ally’ to the Axis powers, especially to Nazi Germany, during the war. This was nowhere more evident than in the role played by a single railway which linked southern France to northern Spain. 

The track through the Pyrenees 
Before that story, first some background on the railway line and its remarkable ‘central’ station. The idea of a train line between France and Spain via the rugged and formidable Pyrenees mountain chain goes back to the mid-point of the 19th century. The first step to turn the dream into actuality started on the French side in 1904. World War I held things up, as did the fact that the project was an enormously hard, almost Herculean challenge to the railway engineering and building methods of the day.  To complete the line, in excess of 80 bridges, 24 separate tunnels and four viaducts had to be hacked out of the rocky terrain of the middle Pyrenees, as well as a massive deforestation of the regional landscape [‘Urban Exploration: Canfranc Railway Station’, Forbidden-Places, www.forbidden-places.net/].

The enormity of the Canfranc rail line earned it the sobriquet, “The Titanic of the Mountains”.  Finally, by 1928, it had become a reality. The line ran from Pau in France to the village of Canfranc not far inside the Spanish border▣.

Canfranc-Estacíon
Canfranc was the jewel in the crown of the whole international rail network. The railway station (designed by Fernando Ramírez de Dampierre), architecturally a mix of Art Nouveau and Neo-Classicism, was built on an XXL scale. Boasting some 365 windows, a linear monolith of concrete, glass, steel and marble, it had space for living quarters for both Spanish and French customs officials, an infirmary, restaurants and bars, and (later) a hotel. Effectively, the station’s “French section” functioned as a French embassy [‘3rd Reich’s Abandoned “Highway” For Stolen Gold’, George Winston, War History Online, 17-Jul-2019, www.warhistoryonline.com]. The platforms extended for over 200 metres in length! The station has been described as “perhaps the world’s most beautiful disused railway station” [‘The most beautiful abandoned train station on the planet’, The Telegraph (UK), 02-Oct-2017, www.telegraph.co.uk]. 

The train line’s commercial fatal flaw: the irregular Iberian gauge
Despite Canfranc’s imposing and glamorous edifice, the Pau to Canfranc line’s history is a tarnished and diminished one. Some have called it’s history jinxed. Right from the start of operation there were problems and drawbacks. The biggest structural flaw for a supposedly international railroad was that the gauges were different! Spain retained its broad-gauge rails cf. the standard-gauge in France and elsewhere on the Continent. Passengers had to change trains once inside the border, this proved even more disruptive for goods cargo…the need to move the load to another rail vehicle meant that ultimately the line was too slow (and therefore too costly) to transport goods freight. The Wall Street collapse and the Depression occurring just one year after the Canfranc line commenced didn’t help business either. And to complete the ‘cursed’ thesis, in the early years there was a devastating fire affecting the line. 

Throughout its lifetime the Canfranc railway always fell short of achieving economic viability. By the early 1930’s there were as few as 50 passengers a day using the service [‘Is Europe’s ghostliest train station about to rise again?’, Chris Bockman, BBC News, 01-Oct-2017, www.bbcnews.com]. To compound matters, during the civil war Franco had the line’s tunnels sealed off to prevent arms smuggling to the Republican side from France. 

(Photo source: www.canfranc.pagesperso-orange.fr)

The Nazi “Gold Highway” 
Following upon Hitler’s conquest of Western Europe the railway got a new lease of life, albeit one inspired by less than the purest motives. Franco reopened the tunnels to the Nazis and in 1942 deals were struck between the interested parties. Hitler and the German Wehrmacht needed the “Spanish (and Portuguese) ore”, tungsten (AKA wolfram), for producing metal and steel for the Nazi war machine—as much as they could get their hands on! And after the neutralising of France, the Canfranc line became a vital conduit for its delivery. The arrangements were mutually advantageous with plundered Nazi gold from Switzerland and French grain wending it’s way in the opposite direction to Spain and Franco⊡. US documents declassified during the Clinton years reveal that Franco returned only a portion of the stolen gold in 1948 (described as a “marginal amount”)—and that only after pressure was applied by the Allies [‘Secrets of the Railways: “Nazi Gold Highway”‘, (SBS Television, aired 03-Nov-2019)].

The reopened train line was advantageous not only to the Nazis and Spain. Refugees (Jews, communists, leftist artists like Max Ernst and Marc Chagall) and allied soldiers used the train and the Somport Tunnel route into Spain (and thence to safe destinations beyond) to escape Nazism.

The highly adaptable M. Le Lay ⇪

(Photo source: www.caminandoporlahistoria.com)

Spy and counterspy: Life imitating art
Despite the railway and the key Canfranc Station being in Nazi hands, the place was a hotbed of spying and smuggling activities. At parties and events held by Nazi officials stationed at the glitzy hotel, pro-Resistance railway workers gathered important intelligence and passed it on to the Allies. A figure instrumental in the espionage activities was the hotel proprietor Albert Le Lay. Le Lay had a dual role as congenial hotel host for the Nazi guests and as head of the local border control. This allowed him, in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the movie Casablanca with Le Lay the unsuspected Resistance spy resembling a real-life “Rick Blaine”, to undermine the Germans and help smuggle many Jews out of France [ibid.]. Le Lay’s dangerous game kept him one step ahead of the Gestapo, but in 1943 he too was forced to flee as the Nazi net was closing in on him.

Decline and fall…and rise again?
After the war the Canfranc railway stumbled on, still operating but never coming close to reaching the potential of its planners’ high hopes for it. An unfortunate mishap in March 1970—a train derailment on the French part of the line causing a bridge collapse—proved not just costly, but signalled the end of the road for the railway. The French authorities, despite the opprobrium heaped on them by their Spanish counterparts, flatly refused to rebuild it. The railway was discontinued, replaced by a bus service. The stock and buildings were left to be vandalised and run into the ground slowly—seemingly for good!

Recently though, a (belated) rescue plan of sorts has emerged. The Aragon municipality in Spain has signalled its wishes to resurrect the once grand Phoenix from the ashes. It has indicated it wants to open a new rail line on the location. There’s talk of a £350m restoration project to restore Canfranc to its long lost railroad glory. Encouragingly, the corresponding French provincial authority , Aquitaine, has offered to assist in the project. This life-line has prompted renewed interest in the rail relic from the public with new tourism accounting for more visitors to the train site than there had been passengers using the service in it’s heyday! [Bockman, loc.cit.; Winston, loc.cit.].

Footnote: Portugal in on the largesse

Portugal possessed the same raw material (wolfram) so prized by Hitler and Portuguese dictator Salazar was happily agreeable to a clandestine deal. Accordingly some of the stolen Nazi gold made its way to Lisbon via Canfranc and into the vaults of the Bank of Portugal. This is reflected in the figures which show a dramatic upsurge country’s gold reserves:

1939|63.4 tons|||1945|356.5 tons

[Neill Lochery, Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945 (2011)]António Salazar ⇪

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜
※ after the fall of France in June 1940 the official policy was modified to one of “non-belligerence”. Franco’s position of non-involvement was basically about not antagonising the western powers, especially the USA whose exports Spain depended on at a time its economy was still brittle after the civil war
✦ for instance Franco’s ‘neutrality’ didn’t prevent him from “green-lighting” Spanish volunteer brigades to fight for the German Nazi army (the Division Azul or Blue Division) against the Soviet forces (but not the Western Allies) 
▣ from Canfranc there was a further rail link to Jaca, and eventually to Zaragoza
⊡ estimated at close to 90 tonnes of gold (Winston)

Contemporary Yemen: A Vulnerable Pawn of Convenience in a Regional Cold War

Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Background to the present imbroglio

The unification of the hitherto bifurcated Yemen in 1990 left the North Yemen strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh holding the reins of power. At the same time, a future stakeholder in the country, the Zaydi Shi’a group Ansar Allah✽, was about to emerge on the scene. Ansar Allah, better known as the Houthis (after their leader Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi), was tentatively etching out a spot for itself in the Yemeni political landscape. Cynically, the opportunistic Saleh initially tacitly supported Ansar Allah’s formative endeavours to establish itself, sensing that the Houthi rebels would be a distraction and impediment to Saudi Arabian schemes to meddle in Yemen.

(Source: www.edmaps.com)

The residual grievances of South Yemen at the perceived inequity of the earlier unification (Saleh, previously president of North Yemen, clearly favoured the numerically larger north in the new state’s distribution of resources) led to a resumption of civil war in 1994✦. After a brief conflict the southern army was defeated gifting Saleh a fairly free rein to shore up the foundations of the unified republic.

By around 2000 the political dynamic within Yemen was shifting after the government sealed an agreement with Saudi Arabia over a border demarcation issue (Treaty of Jeddah). Saleh’s view of the Houtsis had changed from initially having considering them a useful buffer to Saudi interference in Yemen to something potentially menacing to his own position controlling the republic.

Saleh meeting Russian leader Putin

Saleh’s crackdown
In June 2004 Saleh’s government outlawed Ansar Allah, hundreds of Houthi members were arrested and a reward offered for the capture of commander al-Houthi, now public enemy № 1 in the republic. In September Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi was killed in fighting between Yemeni military and the rebels. The fighting continued in 2005, now with the dead leader’s brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, in charge of the insurgents. The government-Houthis conflict results in hundreds of casualties, the fighting was punctuated by ceasefires and Saleh grants a partial (and temporary) amnesty to Houthi fighters in 2006, a device which helped the Yemeni leader to get re-elected in the 2006 elections. The fighting resumed in 2007 until another truce was brokered between Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and Saleh, this time with the assistance of neighbouring Qatar.

Operation Scorched Earth
The persistence of the conflict led Saleh to launch Operation Scorched Earth in 2009 with the aim of crushing the Houthi resistance in their stronghold of Sana’a. Concurrently, Houthi militias engaged in fighting with Saudi troops in border clashes in the north. Saleh accepted another ceasefire in February 2010 with the rebels…while at the same time the Yemeni military launched “Operation Blow to the Head” to try to silence both the Houthi rebels and Al-Qaeda militants in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The operation against AQAP extended to Shabwa in southeast Yemen.

The “Arab Spring” imprint in Yemen
The Arab Spring movement having impacted on other parts of the Middle East and North Africa spread to Yemen in 2011. People power (the Yemeni Intifada) was tentatively flexing its muscles in Yemen…there were public demonstrations against the 33-year rule of Saleh which he tried to appease with the offer of concessions (including a promise not to seek re-election). This was not enough to quell the public disquiet – Saleh (predictably) followed the ‘carrot’ with the ‘stick’…a further crackdown by the regime left a death toll estimated variously at between 200 and 2,000 Yemenis.

Saleh, again true to form, reneged on his agreement for hand-over of power (which had been brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council). This prompt some supporters of the government (the influential Hashid Tribal Federation plus several army commanders) to switch allegiances to the regime’s opponents. A bombing seriously injured Saleh requiring him to decamp to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. Upon his return after recuperation, Saleh again tried to avoid the inevitability of regime change but in November 2011 he was finally forced to relinquish the presidency to his deputy, Abrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who formed a unity government in early 2012.

Hadi’s unstable political inheritance
Within a short time, the rift between the Hadi government and the Houthi rebels dangerously widened…in 2014 an intensification of anti-government protests forced Hadi to dissolve his cabinet and do a U-turn on a planned fuel hike. The Houthis picked their moment to step up the pressure on the Yemeni regime…by late in the year they have extended their hold over most of the capital Sana’a and captured the strategically important port city of Hodeida on the Red Sea.

Inevitably, with the edge in the conflict moving towards Ansar Allah, Hadi was placed under house arrest and forced to resign. By early 2015, the Houthis were in control of the government in Yemen (Hadi having fled to Aden on the southern gulf). Around the same time, Islamic State, having established a toe-hold on Yemeni territory, was playing its terror card in the troubled country (ie, initiating suicide bombing of Shi’a mosques in Sana’a).

Escalation of war: Saudi Arabia joins the civil war
By 2014-15 the conflict had reached a dangerous escalation phase with the intervention of external players. Hadi, who relocated to Saudi Arabia after a Houthi counter-offensive, persuaded Riyadh to intervene in the conflict. The eager Saudis headed up a coalition of Arab states – which comprises most of the Gulf states (exception: neutral-aligned Oman), Jordan, Egypt and several North African states – with the intent of restoring Hadi to the presidency.

2015, a new phase of the ongoing civil war: the Saudi quest for regional hegemony
Saudi Arabia’s aggressive “hands-on” approach to the Yemen conflict has been attributed to various factors. The ascension of new king Salman al-Saud and his son Prince Mohammad to power in the kingdom is thought to be a prime mover.

Crown Prince Mohammad

Launching Operation Decisive Storm, the coalition strategy comprised attacking Houthi targets by air, initiating a naval blockage and deploying a small ground force against the rebel forces. By April 2015 Operation Decisive Storm had given way to Operation Restoring Hope, though the earlier strategy of bombing rebel targets was continued (the US had entered the exercise full-on in the role of supplier of arms and intelligence to the Saudi armed forces). From this time through to the present, the Saudis have conducted scores of indiscriminate and disproportionate air strikes on Yemeni civilian targets (as at November 2018 officially 6,872 civilians had been killed, the majority from Saudi strikes, in the conflict according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) (‘Yemen Events of 2018’).

Saleh, “Alsyd Flip-Flop”, re-enters the scene
Former president Saleh, exhibiting all the manoeuvrable dexterity of a classic political opportunist, now entered into a formal alliance with the Houthis (confirming the suspicions of many that he had covertly conspired in the Houthis’ overthrow of Hadi). US president Barack Obama made an attempt at crisis management by trying to bring the participating parties together but it proved unsuccessful. By August 2015 the Houthis had taken charge of the whole Shabwah governorate. In 2016 UN-sponsored peace talks broke down.

Iran and Hezbollah intervention thickens the Yemeni morass
The civil war in Yemen was further internationalised with the involvement of Islamic Shi’a Iran and Hezbollah (حزب الله)✪. With both materially backing the Houthi side, drone-operated missile strikes have been launched at the Saudi capital. The civilian cost of the ongoing war in Yemen since 2015 has been incremental and devastating…thousands killed and wounded, an outbreak of cholera and a potential famine in Yemen. Ali Saleh once again did a volte-face, finally siding with the Saudis. In 2017, while fighting the Houthis in Sana’a, the former president and perennial strongman of Yemen was killed.

The consequences for ordinary Yemenis
Between January 2016 and April 2019 more than 70,000 Yemenis (including civilians◬) have died (ACLED database tracking). The country’s humanitarian crisis is in full swing…international charity Save the Children estimate that more than 50,000 children have perished as a result of cholera and famine. In June 2018 the Saudi-backed government forces attacked the key western port of Al-Hudaydah, the main entry point into Yemen for aid (Battle of Al-Hudaydah/AKA “Operation Golden Victory”). The effect of this on desperately needed food supplies for Yemenis has been catastrophic, the country’s health system is near to collapse and the UN has reported that 75% of the population was in dire need of humanitarian assistance.(Photo: www.forbes.com)

Speculating on the Saudis and the Iranians’ “skin in the game”
Regional hegemony as a motive for Saudi Arabia’s incursion in the Yemen War has long antecedents (aggressive Saudi actions against its southern neighbour can be traced back to 1934 – just two years after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was created). The Islamic Republic of Iran for its part is motivated by a desire to block any attempt the Saudis make to achieve hegemony in the region. While the conflict in Yemen at its core retains the character of a civil war, other complexities have overlayed the central conflict…as the European Council on Foreign Relations recently summarised the imbroglio, “Rather than being a single conflict, the unrest in Yemen is a mosaic of multifaceted regional, local and international power struggles, emanating from both recent and long-past events”. Iran and Saudi Arabia’s involvement is an extension of a Middle East Cold War which ebbs and flows between the two rival, oil wealthy countries, using proxies in conflicts in vulnerable states. This was also the case with Iranian and Saudi interference in the Syrian Civil War.

The extent of the Saudi regime’s commitment to the Yemen conflict, a full-scale operation reportedly costing Riyadh between five and six billion US dollars a month (MEI, December 2018), underlines the seriousness of the Saudis’ leadership ambitions in the region. Saudi power-flexing in Yemen and in other recent neighbourhood conflicts such as its 2011 incursion into Bahrain, demonstrates its imperative of wanting to counter Iranian influence and avoid its efforts to establish a foothold in the Gulf (Darwich).

Tehran’s investment in the Yemen conflict in the Houthi cause is much less substantial than the Saudis (materiel support, military advisors, possibly some military manpower but not Iran’s elite forces). Saudi Arabia has tended to overstate the degree to which the Houthis can be labelled mere proxies of the Iranians, but it constituted a convenient pretext for the peninsula kingdom to ramp up the scale of its own military involvement in the war✥.

Other secondary players
The Al-Qaeda ‘franchise’ has increased its activities in Yemen over the last eight years, providing better than nuisance value and plaguing the efforts of the Yemeni government (with US support) to regain control of the country. AQAP, as it is known, has made inroads in Yemen’s east and south and holds on to significant portions of territory in the area, which in 2011 it declared to be a AQ emirate. AQAP’s local jihadist offshoot, Ansar al-Sharia, is also an active insurgent in the south-east, waging war against the Hadi government, the US and the Houthis. In 2014, AQAP engaged in conflict with ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) which had established a presence in the south-eastern deserts of the troubled Arabian Gulf state (‘A-Q in Yemen’, Wikipedia).

AQAP’s black standard

Also active in the south are southern separatist groups, the remnants of the secessionists who unsuccessfully tried to break away from Saleh and the north in 1994. The most prominent is the Southern Movement or Al-Hirak (subsumed under the umbrella Southern Transitional Council (STC)), which engages in para-military actions, protests and civil disobedience against the Sana’a (Hadi) government (‘Mapping the Yemen Conflict (2015)’).

As the decade draws to an end, prospects for a resolution of the war in Yemen are far from sanguine. A stalemate in the campaigns suggests that there is no conceivably foreseeable military solution to the conflict. The US Congress’ attempts to freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been vetoed by President Trump who is, rhetorically at least, hell bent on wreaking some measure of punitive action on an unrepentant Iran.

The political map of Yemen in 2019 is a patch-quilt of different hues. Five different entities control separate chunks of the country◚. Tiny Yemen is very much between the proverbial rock and a hard place – without the strategic importance of either Iraq or Afghanistan it is largely ignored by the US government and poorly covered by its media. As the poorest Arab country in the Middle East, Yemen is marginalised by its predicament, politically divided, economically blockaded, critically lacking in water and facing a catastrophic famine (Schewe). The crisis drags on relentlessly with the inevitable outcome a dire worsening of the country’s growing humanitarian disaster.(Photo: www.asianews.it)

Footnote: The religious mix: Shi’a v Sunni and Shi’a v Shi’a Yemen, a predominately Arab country, is 99% Islamic in religion. According to UNHCR, 53% of the population are Sunnis and more than 45% are Shi’as, the bulk of which are adherents of the Zaydi school (‘Fivers’) – cf. the Iranian ‘Twelvers’ or Imamis sect of Shi’ism. The Zaydis mainly inhabit the northern highlands of Yemen, which also contains pockets of Isma’ilism (another sect of Shi’ism). The Salafi movement, a revivalist or reform variant of Sunni Islam, is also widespread among the Yemeni Sunnis. AQAP and Ansar-al-Sharia combatants in the south-east for instance are Salafi.
 

_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_

✽ translated as “Parisans (or Supporters) of God” – the dissident group evolved out of a youth organisation, Al-Shabab al-Muminin, (“the Believing Youth”). The Houthi movement as adherents of the Zaydi branch of Shi’ism became activists in reaction to the aggressive spread of Sunni Islam in Yemen – particularly the Salafi strain of Sunni’ism (Reynaud)

✦ a key determinant in the war re-erupting so quickly after the last truce was that the armies of the north and south had remained unintegrated after 1990

✪ Shi’a Islamist political and militant group based in Lebanon

◬ the Saudi-led coalition forces (despite their extensive US-provided firepower) have had a clear lack of success against the Houthi rebels, perhaps explaining the coalition’s tendency to strike civilian targets in the conflict (Schewe)

✥ the largest conflict in which the Saudi Army has ever been involved (Darwich/Schewe)

◚ the Supreme Political Council (Houthis); the Hadi-led government and its allies; the Southern Transitional Council; Islamic State (ISIL); and AQAP and Ansar-al-Sharia

╰╱╳╳╳╲╱╳╳╳╲╯

Reference materials consulted

‘A Timeline of the Yemen Crisis, from the 1990s to the Present’, (Marcus Montgomery), Arab Center Washington DC, 07-Dec-2017, www.arabcenterdc.org

‘Iran’s Role in Yemen and Prospects for Peace’, (Gerald M Feierstein), Middle East Institute, 06-Dec-2018, www.mei.edu

DARWICH, MAY. “The Saudi Intervention in Yemen: Struggling for Status.” Insight Turkey 20, no. 2 (2018): 125-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26390311

‘Profile: Who are Yemen’s Houthis?’, (Manuel Almeida), Al Arabia, 08-Oct-2014, www.english.alarabiya.net

‘Mapping the Yemen Conflict (2015)’, European Council on Foreign Relations, www.ecfr.eu

‘Yemen: The conflict in Saada Governorate – analysis’, (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), 24 July 2008

‘Who are Yemen’s Houthis?’, (Miriam Reynaud), The Conversation, 14-Dec-2018, www.theconversation.com

‘Humanitarian Crisis Worsens in Yemen After Attack on Port’, (Margaret Coker and Eric Schmitt), New York Times, 13-Jun-2018, www.nytimes.com

‘Why Yemen Suffers in Silence’, (Eric Schewe), JSTOR Daily, 23-Aug-2018, www.daily.jstor.org

‘The Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org

A Near Miss in Tokyo: The Would-Be Assassination of a Hollywood Screen Icon

Military history, National politics, Performing arts, Popular Culture, , , , , , , , ,

One of the many enduring urban myths that used to float around about celebrated Hollywood actor and director Charlie Chaplin was that he once entered a “Charlie Chaplin Look-alike Contest” – and lost! [‘Charlie Chaplin allegedly entered a Chaplin look-alike contest and lost’, (Domagoj Valjak), The Vintage News, 05-Jan-2017, www.thevintagenews.com].

Given the gravity of the Hollywood silent star’s experiences on a 1932 visit to Japan – a close brush with mortality – the “Little Tramp’ may have wished in hindsight that he was similarly unrecognisable on that particular perilous occasion in Tokyo.

This bizarre as it sounds episode took place during a heightened period of political tensions in Depression-hit Japan. The incumbent Japanese prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, a fan of Chaplin, invited him to Japan. Unfortunately, this occurred at a time that certain far-right cells in the Japanese military were plotting to assassinate PM Inukai and cause an international incident.

PM Inukai ⇣ The group of young reactionary officers from the Japanese Imperial Navy – including Kiyoshi Koga, one of the ringleaders – sensed an opportunity in Chaplin’s impending visit to double their intended impact (chaos, anxiety and upheaval within mainstream Nihonjin society). The conspirators’❈ purpose was straightforward – to weaken the fabric of Japanese democracy and the rule of law culminating in the supplanting of the status quo civilian national government by a military one [‘May 15 Incident’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Why Chaplin? At his trial Koga, responding to the prosecutor’s question, explained why the plan was to include Chaplin in the ‘hit’: “Chaplin is a popular figure in the United States and the darling of the capitalist class. We believed that killing him would cause a war with America, and thus we could kill two birds with a single stone” [‘No laughing matter’, (Shibley Nabhan), The Japan Times, 15-May-2005, www.japantimes.co.jp].

Why Inukai?
The perpetrators’ intent was to railroad the civilian regime in Japan, but Inukai had especially earned the ire of the clique because of his opposition to the military interventions in Manchuria and elsewhere, and it’s manipulation of the decision-making functions in the kyabinetto (キャビネット) (Japanese cabinet). The centre-right politician was planning to negotiate the Manchurian situation with the Chinese government and halt all further Japanese military activities in China – all anathema to the ultra-right militarists [‘Inukai Tsuyoshi, Prime Minister of Japan’, Britannia, www.britannia.com].

The coup attempt
Eleven young naval officers were chosen to carry out the “double strike” (known as the May 15 Incident or the ‘5.15 Incident’). They were thwarted from completing their assignment of taking out the second of their targets, owing to Charlie Chaplin’s own sudden about-face…once in Tokyo the film star lost interest in attending the reception to be held in his honour at the Japanese PM’s official residence and skipped it, instead he went to a sumo wrestling match with Inukai’s son (known as ‘Inukai Ken’), a pastime much more to his liking – this 11th hour change of mind probably saved the Hollywood cinema icon’s life!

The assassins on arrival at the prime minister’s residence or Sōri Kōtei (総理公邸)◙ (which was alarmingly short on security) duly liquidated incumbent PM Inukai as planned. The cadre of ultra-right extremists rounded out the night of terror by attacking the residence of the head of the Rikken Seiyūkai Party and tossing grenades into the Mitsubishi Bank’s Tokyo headquarters.

Chaplin meeting with the mayor of Tokyo on his trip ⇣

The Aftermath
The ensuing trial of the perpetrators was marked by a wave of public sympathy for the accused✙. Many believed that the young assassins’ actions admirably embodied the nativist Yamato (大和) spirit of Japan [‘May 15 Incident’, loc.cit.]. In such a politically charged environment, the assassins were handed extremely light sentences. The incident and its feeble handling by the establishment served to encourage conservative elements of the military to further excesses, eg, the February 26 Incident (1936), a failed putsch by a radical faction of the army with the same aim of installing a military government in Japan.

The developments in Japan in the 1930s, the isolated violent incidents by maverick cadres within the military and the incursions into Manchuria and beyond, set Japan on a path to the eventual dissolution of all political parties and the establishment of a military junta in 1940, and thus on a path to war.

Footnote: Chaplin, much later, from the sanctity of his memoirs, wrote light-heartedly of the incident: “I can imagine the assassins having carried out their plan, then discovering that I was not an American, but an Englishman – ‘Oh, so sorry!'” [Nabhan, loc.cit.].

Postscript: Japan, a dangerous environment for politicians

Assassination has been a constant in Japanese politics, a recurring feature in the nation’s political landscape. In the same year as Inukai was shot, there were two other political assassinations in Japan perpetrated by the League of Blood (the casualties a former finance minister and the head of the Mitsui Group corporation). The victims of extremist fringe violence in Japan include prime ministers or former prime ministers Prince Itō, Hara Takashi and Viscounts Saitō Makoto and Takahashi Korekiyo (these last two assassinated in the February 26 Incident). The pattern continued into the postwar era…two Japanese politicians were killed in 1960, and again in the 2000s some provincial politicians have been assassinated (these most recent killings have however tended to be the work of yakuza crime organisations).

┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳

❈ comprising the naval officers’ cell, some cadets of the Japanese Imperial Army and civilian members of the ultra-nationalist League of Blood

◙ in 2013 Shinzō Abe after regaining the prime ministership refused to move into the same presidential residence that Inukai was assassinated in, though he denied he was motivated by superstition [‘Japanese prime minister fails to move back into ‘haunted’ residence’, (Justin McCurry), The Guardian, 19-Aug-2013, www.theguardian.com]

✙ 350,000 signatures in blood were received, petitioning the court for lenient sentences for the eleven

Mengjiang: The Empire of Japan’s Other East Asian Puppet State in Inner Mongolia

Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Political geography, Regional History, Travel, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo out of a huge chunk of China’s northeastern territory in 1932 was a springboard for Japan’s nationalists and militarists to expand territorially deep into China and other parts of Eastern Asia [see preceding blog: http://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/06/27/manchukuo-an-instrument-of-imperial-expansion-for-the-puppet-masters-of-japan/].

(note how close Mengjiang’s eastern boundary came to China’s principal city Peking)

The Japanese military used Manchukuo as a base to gradually move piece by piece into Chinese Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Siberia and elsewhere in China. Or as one Western observer of the day put it: “Automatically, by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan became committed to the invasion of Mongolia”, [Lattimore, Owen. “The Phantom of Mengkukuo.” Pacific Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4, 1937, pp. 420–427. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2750626].

Demchugdongrub and his Japanese advisors ⇣

▫️▫️▫️

Demchugdongrub, Pan-Mongolism to vassal state
In Inner Mongolia, a member of the Royal House of Chahar, Prince Demchugdongrub (Te Wang 德王), was agitating in the 1930s for Mongolian autonomy from Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Republic of China. Demchugdongrub and other Mongolian nationalists harboured irredentist desires for a Pan-Mongolia (the reuniting of Inner and Outer Mongolia) [‘5. Another Manchu-kuo, the dream of the “Inner Mongolian Independence”‘, TAKESHITA, Yoshirō 1997, http://teikoku-denmo.jp/ cited in Global Security, GlobalSecurity.org)].

Mengjiang flag⇣

▫️▫️▫️

Enforced mergers and shifting nomenclature
The opportunity arose with the aggressive expansion of the Japanese military into the country. Chahar and Suiyuan provinces in Inner Mongolia were taken by Japan’s Kwantung Army and its allies. With the muscle of the occupying Japanese military behind him, Demchugdongrub in 1936 was installed as the leader of a new puppet-state regime✳️, the Mongol Military Government (sometimes also called the “Mongolian Border Land”).

In 1939 South Chahar and North Shanxi provinces (both predominately Han Chinese in population✥) were added to the ‘Mongolian’ regime, now renamed the Mengjiang✼ (or Mongol) United Autonomous Government (蒙疆聯合自治政府) (Měngjiāng Liánhé Zìzhì Zhèngfǔ Mōkyō Rengō Jichi Seifu) with its capital in Kalgan (Zhāngjiākǒu) [ibid.]. On paper Prince Demchugdongrub remained Mengjiang head of state (until 1945), his main function seems to have been to give the territorial entity the countenance of legitimacy. One manifestation of Mengjiang’s Mongolian roots was Demchugdongrub’s adoption of the historic Mongolian calendar…1936, Mengjiang’s creation year, became the year 781 to associate the regime with Genghis Khan (below) and the height of power of the Mongol Empire [John Man, The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China, (2015)]✧.

▫️▫️▫️

MUAG becomes MAF
In 1941 Mengjiang was rebranded once more, this time as the Mongolian Autonomous Federation (蒙古自治邦). At the same time the Japanese sponsored the elevation of Wang Zhao-ming. Wang, better known by his pen-name of Wang Jingwei, was put in charge of the Reorganised National Government of the Republic of China (中華民國國民政府) (RNGRC)❦. Wang had previously lost out to Chiang Kai-shek in a leadership struggle for control of both the KMT and the Chinese government.

Wang Jingwei, RNGRC president⇣

Wang’s defection to the Japanese was motivated by this and he envisioned his alternate government, RNGRC, would provide him with the power base within China he was seeking▣. With Wang’s appointment as “Chinese president”, Demchugdongrub’s MAF was subsumed under the Wang regime, but in practical terms the MAF was still autonomous of it, if not of the Japanese [‘Mengjiang’, (Military Wiki), www.military.wikia.org].

Mengjiang one yuan note⇣

▫️▫️▫️

RNGRC a ‘toothless’ regime
The RNGRC under Wang was a one-party totalitarian dictatorship, but the reality of Wang Jingwei’s regime was that it was only afforded very limited powers by it’s Japanese masters. Wang, befitting the function of a pliable puppet, was basically no more than a convenient pawn for the Japanese military to negotiate with Chiang’s government [‘Wang Jianwei regime’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. In 1944 Wang died in Japan…his successor as president mayor of Shanghai Chen Gongbo played an equally subservient role for the Kwantung (Chen in 1946 was tried as a war criminal by the Chiang government and executed).

Mongolian flag 1945⇣▫️▫️▫️

At the end of WWII, both the Mengjiang regime of Demchugdongrub and the ‘Reorganised’ Republic of China were effortlessly swept away by the invading Soviet and Mongolian armies. The Inner Mongolian territories were returned to China (along with Chinese Manchuria) and the Soviet satellite Outer Mongolia gained independence after a national plebiscite (100% yes vote!) in late 1945 (which the USSR immediately and China later recognised).

PRTT crest⇣

PostScript: Tannu Tuva, a regional curio Mengjiang (or Mengkukuo) and Manchukuo were not the only contemporary puppet states in that region of Northeastern China/Mongolia. Nestled in between Outer Mongolia and Russian Siberia, is the tiny enclave of Tannu Tuva (1944: 170,500 sq km, Pop. 95,400)…historically this land was part of Mongolia and therefore part of a client state of the Chinese Empire. The People’s Republic of Tannu Tuva (Tьʙа Arat Respuʙlik) (1921-44) was recognised only by the USSR and Mongolia. Nominally independent but in reality another satellite state of the Soviets, in late 1944 it was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast. Today, it is the Tyva Republic, a constituent member of the post-communist Russian Federation.

(map source: www.globalsecurity.org)

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

✳️ Demchugdongrub, despite his vaulting ambitions, was only ever nominally in charge of what was always transparently a Japanese-controlled puppet state

✥ exacerbating pre-existing tensions between the Mongolian and Chinese sections of the state (Lattimore, op.cit.)

✼ Mengjiang 蒙 (literally ‘fierce’ or in compound form ‘dream to act’). The entity is sometimes styled Mengkukuo 蒙古國 because of its parallels with Manchukuo

✧ the Mongolian prince’s supposed autonomy was always surface deep at best…”an autonomy administered by the Japanese for the Japanese”, (ibid.)

❦ colloquially known as the “Wang Jingwei regime“

▣ Wang’s would-be government was based in the former capital Nánjīng, however the de facto capital was Shanghai

.

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

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)

⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰

✴ 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💮

Unifying North Yemen through the Indelible Imprint of Foreign Intervention: A 1960s Civil War between Royalists and Republicans

Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yemen in 1962 was a trifurcated political entity – in the south and southwest was Britain’s eastern and western protectorates beset by tribal insurrection. In North Yemen (which borders Saudi Arabia), the ruler of the Hamid al-Din branch of the al-Qasim dynasty (of the Yemeni Mutawakkilite Kingdom) was about to face his own formidable internal challenge. In that year fighting broke out in the north when the newly elected imam (Muhammad al-Badr) was deposed by Yemeni rebel forces led by army strongman Abdullah as-Sallal.

YAR republican coup leader as-Sallal at military display in 1963 ⍗

An internal war augmented by ‘friends’ with benefits

Al-Badr escaped to Saudi Arabia where he rallied support from the northern Zaydi Shia tribes. Meanwhile the rebels declared North Yemen a republic – the Yemen Arab Republic. With the battle lines of the Civil War drawn, royalists V republicans, it immediately attracted the willing participation of competing foreign elements. Within a very short time, Egypt had entered the conflict on the republic’s side. President Nasser provided as-Sallal with bulk shipments of military supplies and a massive infusion of troops to fight the royalists. Later, the Soviet Union, after switching ‘horses’ in the conflict, contributed to the republicans’ armaments, delivering them 24 Mig-19 fighter planes.

At the same time Md al-Badr’s royalist partisans were receiving military aid from the Saudis and Jordan※, and diplomatic support from the UK – who was also bankrolling mercenaries to fight for the royalists [Stanley Sandler, Ground Warfare: The International Encyclopedia, Vol 1 (2002)]. In addition the Shah of Iran provided advisers for the royalist side, while Israel provided intelligence and its air force to airlift supplies to them.

A regional proxy war: Egypt V Saudi Arabia

There has been much written about Nasser’s motives for involving Egypt in the war (including the haste with which he committed the UAR). Nasser’s ambition to be recognised as leader of the Arab world had taken a hit in the couple of years prior to the war’s outbreak…in 1961 Nasser’s showcase creation, the United Arab Republic had unravelled when Syria, tired of the “second-class treatment” from Egypt, broke away from the UAR. By the summer of 1962 Egypt’s regional prestige had plummeted… only Algeria remained on good terms with Egypt, the UAR had lost control of the Arab League and the other major Arab states were all aligned against Nasser [Nasser’s Gamble: How the Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power, Jesse Ferris, (2012)].

Egyptian strong man GA Nasser

These Egyptian reversals of fortune and an attempt in the same year at a power play by Iraq’s dictator Qasim who threatened to annex newly-independent Kuwait✣, were a wake-up call for the Egyptian president – he was, he knew, at risk of being isolated in the Arab world. Therefore, as has been noted, the Yemen Civil War presented “a foreign policy opportunity for Nasser to become relevant again” [Asher Aviad Orkaby, ‘The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1968’, (unpublished PhD thesis, Harvard University, Mass.), April 2014]. And the involvement of the region’s leading monarchy, Saudi Arabia, in the conflict on the deposed imam’s side, was impetus for Nasser to do what he could to limit its expansion in the peninsula.

The early phases of the civil war saw initial successes by the royalists commanded by al-Badr’s uncle Prince Hassan, culminating in a drive towards Sana’a to retake the capital for the Imam. The offensive was checked only after Egypt increased its commitment to the conflict, providing essential air support for the republican troops. Estimated numbers vary but all up Nasser is thought to have injected at least 70,000 Egyptian soldiers into the war. As the war dragged on without resolution Egypt unleashed chemical warfare, a series of poison gas bombings of Yemeni villages loyal to the Royalists (1966/67).

UAR military instructors training Yemeni republican soldiers ⍗

Parallel with the ongoing prosecution of the civil war on the battlefield, international efforts, spearheaded by the UN, were being made to encourage the proxy combatants Egypt and Saudi Arabia to pull back from the domestic conflict.

Yemen, “a cage for Nasser and Arab nationalism”

With regard to the superpowers’ role in reining in the combatants through mediating the conflict, some historians have argued that, behind the scenes, the superpowers were actually not unhappy with the prospect of Egypt being tied up militarily in Yemen for so long. The US and USSR, they contend, were content to see Egypt’s military strength shunted off into the Yemeni imbroglio. Thus preoccupied, the chances of war breaking out between Israel and the UAR (which would lead to the two superpowers intervening and the risk of a dangerous confrontation between them), was headed off. Washington also saw a secondary benefit in Egypt’s preoccupation with the war in North Yemen – it would be less likely to pose a threat to the UK base in Aden and to the US base in Libya [ibid.].


⍐ The Civil War in stamps – royalist & republican

The US had a vested interest in maintaining stability in the Arabian Peninsula … preserving access to vital oil resources was high on its agenda. The Soviet Union also had its own interests in Yemen to consider – it was of geopolitical advantage, making it a potential base for the Soviets to expand into the Arabian Peninsula, as well as a jump-off point into post-colonial Africa to make Cold War gains at the expense of western interests [Orkaby, loc.cit.]. The Soviet-built port at al-Hudaydah (Hodeida) was constructed to give Moscow an influential role in international shipping through the Red Sea.

YAR stamps commemorating the Soviet-built port at Hodeida ⍗

Egypt’s folly – the Vietnam parallel

The conservative western media at the time (Time, The New Republic, etc) was quick to call out Nasser’s military engagement as a monumental blunder [Tharoor, loc.cit.]. Later historians in hindsight have labelled Yemen Egypt’s ‘Vietnam’. Historians such as Michael Oren have attributed Egypt’s abysmal performance in the 1967 Six-Day War in part to the Egyptians’ being seriously understrength owing to the massive over-commitment to the Yemen war [Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, (M Oren), (2002)].

Sana’a (old town) ⍐

The civil war reached its climax in 1967/68. The royalist forces laid siege to Sana’a to try to break the back of the republican heartland. Bolstered by the hefty Egyptian contribution this attempt was resisted by the republicans and proved the war’s turning point. Although pockets of tribal royalist resistance lingered on till 1970, the royalists and al-Badr were effectively defeated. In late 1967 the republicans replaced as-Sallah (who voluntarily went into exile in Baghdad) as president with Abdul al-Iranyi (formerly the YAR prime minister in 1962-63).

Royalist territory in red/Republican territory in black ⍗

Rapprochement

In March 1969 the warring parties – of a conflict that had claimed around 200,000 lives including civilians – held peace talks in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), from which agreement was reached to form a unified government in North Yemen. The government was to represent both royalists and republicans although it would excluded members of the Hamid al-Din family. Subsequently in 1970, Saudi Arabia recognised the Yemen Republic (YAR) [Orkaby, op.cit.].

Wash-up of the war

As suggested from the above, Egypt, despite being on the winners’ side in the civil war, was a loser in the wider, regional political contest. Nasser’s reckless foray into the Yemen adventure expended an horrendous casualty toll on Egypt’s military manpower✪ and left it woefully ill-prepared materially for the pre-emptive, surprise strike from Israel when it came in June 1967. The six-day catastrophe that followed left Egypt with long-term disadvantages, loss of key strategic territories to its enemy and forfeited the ascendency to it in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

⍗ King Faisal – Saudi ruler 1960s-70s

Though a blow to Nasser’s foreign policy ambitions and a setback to the cause of Pan-Arabism, there were nonetheless some positives for Egypt that came out of the foreign venture. The Khartoum Agreement (1967) saw Saudi king Faisal and Nasser “bury the hatchet” and agree that both withdraw their support from the two sides in the war [‘How the 1967 War dramatically re-oriented Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy’, Brookings, (Bruce Riedel), 30-May-2017, www.brookings.edu]. In material terms, Egypt benefitted from the closer ties with its wealthy neighbour – many thousands of Egyptian workers gained employment in the Saudi oil industry. Geo-strategically, the outcome in South Yemen was a plus for Egypt – the British colonials were vanquished from Aden, allowing Nasser to secure the Red Sea approach to the Suez Canal (albeit with the loss of Sinai) [Orkaby, op.cit.].

As the YAR moved to the right (recognising West Germany in return for aid), Saudi Arabia acquired itself a stable ally on its southern flank, one dependent on Saudi financial support. The Soviet Union, despite seeing the YAR moving towards alliances with the West, also benefitted in the Cold War game of “one-upmanship” from the new status quo – the emergence of a Marxist regime in South Yemen saw its influence in the region broaden. The Soviets’ new naval and military base in Aden gave Moscow a convenient haven to launch missions into Africa countries experiencing revolutionary turmoil, (especially Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Somalia) [ibid.].


Footnote: North Yemen tribal politics and coup proclivity
The coup in 1962 would not have come as a surprise to the Hamid al-Din rulers of North Yemen. There had been a history of tribal-centred coup attempts in the kingdom⊡…in 1948 al-Badr’s grandfather Imam Yahya was assassinated by the Hamid al-Din’s Sayyid rivals, the Alwaziris, who briefly assumed the imamate until Yahya’s son regained power for the family after tribal and Saudi intervention. A second coup was launched in 1955 by the Alwaziris and some military officers but was easily squashed [Peterson, J.E. “Tribes and Politics in Yemen.” Arabian Peninsula Background Note, No. APBN-007. Published on www.JEPeterson.net, December 2008].

👑 👑 👑

◰◧◳◩◲◪◱◨◰◧◳◩◲◪◱◨◰◧◳◩◲◪◱◨◰◧◳◩◲◪◱◨

※ however the Jordanians severed their material support to the royalist side in 1963 and formally recognised the YAR one year later

✣ prompting Britain and other Arab states to send troops to Kuwait to protect its sovereignty (forcing Iraq to back down)

✪ about 10,000 of which are thought to have died in the drawn-out war. Egypt also incurred massive war debts from its intervention [‘How Yemen was once Egypt’s Vietnam’, Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 28-Mar-2015, www.washingtonpost.com]

⊡ Yemen has been described as perhaps the most tribal-based society and nation in the entire Arab world (Peterson, op.cit.)

Two Competing Strands of Arab Unity During the Cold War: UAR and the Arab Federation

International Relations, Military history, Political History, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Modern Arab nationalism doesn’t begin with Gamal Abdel Nasser✲, but the charismatic Egyptian politician’s bold and assertive leadership in the 1950s provided inspiration and the impetus to give the movement a particular vigour and purpose.

Egyptian hegemony under Nasser?

In 1952 the Egyptian “Free Officers’ Corps” (with Nasser in the driver’s seat) launched a coup, deposing the Egyptian ruler, King Farouk, and installing General Mohamed Naguib as prime minister. The following year the Egyptian-Sudanese monarchy was irrevocably abolished and guided by Nasser, a republic was established. In 1954 Naguib was cast aside and Nasser assumed full control as prime minster and later president. The new Egyptian ruler (Egypt’s first leader NOT emanating from the country’s elite), with a clear nationalistic agenda was determined to rid Egypt of foreign interference, especially from the old colonial European powers.

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 Nasserist brand of Pan-Arabism  

Nasser, a passionate Pan-Arabist, had aspirations beyond Egypt’s national borders and was evolving a strategy for unifying the Arab world in a common struggle against the European colonial powers. One of the first tasks tackled by Nasser was to try to ingrain in his fellow countrymen and women a sense of their unique Arab identity. Accordingly, the national constitution was amended to state that Egypt was an Arab state (as well as a socialist state). The choice of the name “United Arab Republic” in 1958 imported this theme to countries outside of Egypt. To Nasser’s mind, an instrumental factor in unifying the Arab world was a common commitment to the liberation of Palestine [‘Arab Unity: Nasser’s Revolution’, Al Jazeera, 20-Jun-2008, www.aljeera.com].

On the home front Nasser introduced socialist policies, pursuing wide-reaching land reforms to lift Egyptians out of the depths of poverty. The Aswan Dam project was a key component of the reforms with the US committing itself (with the UK) to finance the massive enterprise. The prevailing Cold War intervened at this juncture with Washington reneging on its promise of aid for the project, citing Nasser’s dalliance with the Soviet Union as it’s reason [‘1956: United States withdraws offer of aid for Aswan Dam’, www.history.com].

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Suez Crisis

The USSR duly rushed in to fill the void left by the US, offering to provide Egypt with the required finance. Nasser’s annoyance at the sudden US pullout led to an audacious  unilateral action in retaliation…he nationalised the Suez Canal. France (owners of the Suez Canal Co) and Britain (the major shareholder) responded by invading the canal in unison with Israel. The US, outmanoeuvred, refused to join in. The ensuing action saw the combined forces inflicting a military loss on Egypt, however under US and UN pressure they were forced to withdraw by 1957. France and Britain emerged from the episode as weakened powers and US relations with the Middle East also took a hit. The diplomatic upshot was a political victory for Nasser.

The Egyptian president, having stood up to the colonial powers, emerged from the conflict with an enhanced reputation as the strongman of the Arab world. Nasser’s  example inspired Arabs in other states to act, such as the 1958 Iraqi Free Officers’ coup d’état against the Hashemite monarchy; radical elements within Lebanon taking on the status quo regime (the 1958 Civil War) [Al Jazeera, op.cit.].

Groundswell for union

During the 1950s Syria underwent an upsurge of support for Arab unity…at the national conference in 1956, Syrian political parties endorsed union with Egypt, concurring with the view that any bilateral agreement between the countries should include economic, political and cultural affairs [Palmer, M. (1966). ‘The United Arab Republic: An Assessment of Its Failure’. Middle East Journal, 20(1), 50-67. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4323954]. Observers at the time noted that the Syrian government  “made all the running” for union. Such was Nasser’s stature and charisma within the Middle East that the incumbent Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli was happy to stand aside for Nasser to be anointed president of the unified republic [T. R. L. (1958). ‘The Meaning of the United Arab Republic’. The World Today, 14(3), 93-101. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40393828].

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Nasser’s first UAR cabinet ⟰ 

For his part, Nasser was initially cool on the idea of unification, his concern was  that the two states had quite different political systems and experiences …Nasser’s preference at this time apparently was for a federation [Al Jazeera, op.cit.]. Under urging from the Syrian politicians Nasser eventually came round to the union idea☯.

28B5647E-A50F-4A6C-9A82-DD6884449219UAR Flag (1958-61) ⟰ 

On the 1st of February 1958 the United Arab Republic (UAR) was proclaimed in Cairo with due fanfare (under the banner of “one flag, one army, and one people”).  Nasser was confirmed as president of the new republic by referendum involving both Egyptians and Syrians. Nasser’s special position as primus inter pares (“first among equals”) was shown in his being given sole selection of the membership of the UAR’s joint assembly [ibid.]. In 1959 Nasser absorbed the Gaza Strip into the UAR.

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⟰ North Yemen – at the southernmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula

UAR/MKY alliance

Later in the same year as UAR formed, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen (MKY) (North Yemen) joined the Syrian-Egyptian union (which had been preceded by a defence pact between North Yemen and Egypt). The new association was called the United Arab States (UAS). The Yemeni motives for allying itself with the UAR were security concerns about it’s larger neighbour Saudi Arabia. North Yemen and Saudi Arabia had fought an war in 1934 over territory and there was still an undemarcated border situation between the two states. The UAS, a different beast to the UAR, was a loose confederation of states only, MKY retained its sovereign independence and its separate UN membership and embassies for the duration of the confederation – which in any case, like the UAR, only lasted a short period❇.

⟱ North Yemen flag

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Rivalry and suspicions: Rifts in the unitary socialist republic 

What harmony there was in the Syrian-Egyptian union at its onset, did not last long. Egypt dominated the UAR, producing a grossly unequal partnership. With Cairo chosen as the UAR capital, Damascus, Syria’s traditional capital, was downgraded to provincial status only. Syria’s leading politicians were required therefore to live in Cairo, which isolated them from what was happening back in their home country.

Syrians across the board had cause to be disgruntled with life under the lop-sided union. Those now working for the UAR government found themselves on lower salaries than they had been as Syrian government employees. The three years of the UAR saw a succession of failures of the Syrian food harvest – resulting in hikes in the price of foods for locals [Arthur Goldschmidt Jr, The Middle East: Formation of a Nation State, (2004)].

With the new administrative structure in place, many Egyptian military and civilian personnel were ‘parachuted’ into Syria, taking over the important public offices that had been filled by local (Syrian) staff. This greviance was compounded by the high-handed, imperial attitudes of many Egyptians towards the Syrian population (as typified by Nasser’s right-hand man in Syria, Abd al-Hakim Amir) [ibid.].

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⟰ A Syrian issue stamp celebrating the formation of the UAR

Another factor adding to Syrians’ dillusionment with UAR was that after three years everyone had come to the realisation that Iraq and the other oil-rich countries were not going to join the union [Goldschmidt, loc.cit.].

Nasser reshaped Syria’s political setup to mirror that of Egypt. Syria’s assortment of political parties were abolished and replaced with a single political instrument (the unicameral National Union) to match Egypt’s one-party state.

Many sectors of society found axes to grind with the new system – Nasser’s sweeping land reforms angered landlords, as his program of nationalisation did for business interests (in Egypt as well) [‘Egypt: Nasser and Arab nationalism’, The Socialist, 08-Apr-2011, www.thesocialist.org.au].

Syria formally disengaged from the UAR in September 1961…despite this Egypt however retained the union name “United Arab Republic” for itself until 1971.

Conservative Arab response to Nasser and proxy Cold War

The advent of Nasser’s left-leaning Arab union prompted an instant reaction from the conservative Hashemite monarchies of Iraq and Jordan (until 1949 Transjordan). In February 1958 King-cousins Faisal II (Iraq) and Hussein (Jordan) formed the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan (AFIJ) as a buffer against the rise of Nasserism. AFIJ, more a confederation of kingdoms than a unification, and UAR, represented two very different versions of Arab nationalism❂. At the same time the two Arab federations, sparring against each other ideologically, were also arranged as surrogates for the Cold War. Monarchist Iraq, the senior partner in AFIJ, took a position opposite Egypt with a clear orientation toward the West, aligning itself with the UK, and with Turkey, Iran and Pakistan as regional cogs in the American stratagem of trying to contain Soviet expansion. In contrast, Egypt, through the acquisition of economic and military aid and friendship agreements, was moving closer to the Soviet Bloc, while professing an orientation towards the Non-Aligned Movement [‘Arab Federation’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

248BACAB-CC21-4F94-9AA0-30D50AD352550CE3A224-D58D-4E35-AD43-7D4ABCA24201 ⟰ Arab Federation of Iraq & Jordan

The Arab Federation bound Iraq and Jordan together in defence and foreign policy while leaving the running of domestic affairs to each country. Though Iraq was clearly the ascendant party in the confederation, it didn’t repeat the Egyptian mistake of making the partnership too one-sided…there were more cabinet posts in AFIJ for Jordan and Amman was allowed to retain its status as a union capital, although Baghdad was de facto the centre of the confederation [Juan Romero (2015), ‘Arab Nationalism and the Arab Union of 1958’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42:2, 179-199, DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2014.994317].

”14th July Revolution”

As things transpired AFIJ didn’t get a chance to demonstrate if it could become an effective regional force in the Middle East. In July 1958 an Iraqi Free Officers coup led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the monarchy and executed Faisal and some of his senior ministers. The Sunni Arab coup leaders, drawing inspiration from Pan-Arabism and Nasser’s 1952 Egyptian coup, acted (they said) “to liberate the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by imperialism” (the dissidents’ perception was that the monarchy under Faisal had associated its interests too closely with Britain and the US) [1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East’, ‘This Day – 14 July’, (BBC Home) www.news.bbc.co.uk/]. The Hashemite kingdom was abolished and Iraq was declared a republic.

PostScript: Arab federation redux

In the 1970s Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tried several times to resurrect the idea of union in the region, first proposing a Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) in 1971◚. Comprising Libya, Egypt and Syria, the proposed merger was approved by referenda in all three countries, but in working through the details the “member states” couldn’t agree on the specific terms of the merger. The union was never implemented and remained effectively stillborn (however the federation was not formally revoked until 1977). The leaders, especially Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat, didn’t follow through because they thought Gaddafi was too radical in his aims [‘The Federation of Arab Republics’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

05CC3634-DF4C-42C8-8ABF-D87E2C3947D8Gaddafi refloated the concept in 1974 with the Maghreb countries to Libya’s west. Agreement (the Djerba Declaration) was reached between Libya and Tunisia to establish the Arab Islamic Republic (AIR) [‘Arab Islamic Republic ’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Tunisia’s leader Habib Bourguiba’s idea was of a confederation that retained the identity of each sovereign entity…which was at odds with Gaddafi’s notion of an seamless, homogeneous “revolutionary movement”.  Algeria and Morocco were later included in the proposed AIR but again the idea never got airborne※. 

There were a number of other Libyan-led proposed “Federations of Arab Republics” during the Seventies (with various combinations of states some of which included Sudan, Syria and Iraq), but all with the same result of not leading to anything tangible.

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Endnote: Common purposes and individual priorities 

The idea and actuality of an “Arab League” predates the rise of Nasser by some 13 years. The original such organisation, the League of Arab States was founded in 1945 with an focus on developing cooperation between Arab states re economic matters, post-colonialism, resolving disputes and coordinating political aims [‘Arab League’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This last objective has proved wholly elusive given the key different orientations of Arab nationalism of the states of the Middle East◈. Largely because of this, the various Arab federations of the 1950s to the 1970s ultimately failed to deliver on their raison d’etre as vehicles for Pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism.

Flag of the League of Arab States  ⟱7BCD96AC-E8B2-43D6-970D-FCE5ECFC9B98

 

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✲ the seeds of modern Arab nationalism were sown during the Ottoman Empire and the sentiment intensified among Arabs as the empire’s decline gathered pace in the early part of the 20th century culminating in the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI

☯ the two main status quo political groupings within Syria had their own, separate reasons – Syrian army officers of a pro-Nasserist bent naturally sought to be unified under the Egyptian president, while the rival socialist Ba’ath Party was fearful of internal communist insurgency and thought that merger with Nasser’s Egypt would head off the communists’ challenge and the same time allow them to stay in power in Syria [WL Cleveland & M Bunton, A History Of The Modern Middle East, (4th Ed, 2009)]

❇ the withdrawal of MKY from the Arab Union didn’t end Nasser’s involvement with Yemen. When civil war broke out in North Yemen in 1962 Nasser committed  over 70,000 Egyptian troops to fight with  the Yemeni republicans in the five-year long war against the monarchy

❂ the creation of the Hashemite conferation in fact intensified the Iraqi-Egyptian rivalry [Romero, loc.cit]

◚ once again Nasser was the model exemplar for an aspiring Pan-Arabist leader…Gaddafi followed the Nasser blueprint, seizing power from the enfeebled Libyan monarchy in 1969 through a “free officers’” movement. He formed a one-party Socialist Union in Libya (á la Nasser) and in public repeatedly espoused the broad objectives of Arab nationalism

※ Bourguiba wanted a regional alliance with Gaddafi (not a de facto absorption) …strategically he envisaged Libya as a buffer against potential threats posed by Egypt [‘Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, (MJ Deeb), in The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa, DE Long and B Reich (Eds.) (4th ed. 2008)]

◈ the historic, default common cause for unity among the Arab states – the need to establish a permanent Palestinian state and homeland – has only occasionally got beyond the realm of rhetoric when the vested self-interests of individual Arab countries are on the table

 

The Franco-British Union Redux …Version Deux

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The prospect of Britain and France forming a union with each other in 1940 – albeit in the most desperate throes of a world war going horribly wrong for the allies – was of itself incroyable as the French would say, unbelievable, incredible, add any other appropriate adjective. But even more of a shock perhaps was that there was to be a redux, a second go at hoisting the exotic banner of a Franco-British Union (FBU) … in 1956, sixteen years after the first attempt, there was FBU Mach II.

This one, like the plan in the early period of World War II, was born out of a dangerous international crisis, this time over control of the Suez Canal which was vital to Western oil supplies. The year was 1956, the initiative (wholly one-sided on this occasion) came from embattled French prime minister, Guy Mollet. A tentative first step towards Franco-British coordination had been taken with the setting up of the Anglo-French Task Force to take counter-action against Nasser’s sudden act of nationalising the Canal✡.

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The French Fourth Republic was confronted with a string of simultaneous, serious issues, both domestic and external to Metropolitan France. Firstly, on the home front, the country was beset with economic difficulties.

Added to these woes, France was deeply (and seemingly inextricably) mired in an increasingly toxic North African war – its colony Algeria was in a struggle with the French for independence from the colonial power – the Algerian War of Independence. And as already mentioned the Suez Crisis was on the point of escalation as France and Britain found themselves players in a deadly stand-off between Israel and its US ally on one side, and Colonel Nasser’s Egypt on the other.

⇲ The Algerian War (Source: AP)Franco-Algerian War 1960

Adding to Mollet’s Middle East anxieties, in the wake of the Suez Crisis, was a build-up of tensions on the Israeli-Jordanian Border. If that were to escalate, Mollet was worried that it might spill over into fighting between the French (allies of Israel) and Britain (allies of Jordan)…bringing London and Paris together at this time would bring a security measure against such an eventuality [When Britain and France nearly married’, (M Thomson), BBC News, 15-Jan-2007, www.bbcnews.co.uk].

In the midst of all this, Mollet, an affirmed Anglophile, made a huge call…he proposed in secret to his UK counterpart, Anthony Eden, that the two wartime allies (and erstwhile hereditary enemies) establish a political union. Mollet’s proposal entailed a common citizenship for both peoples and he ventured that French men and women would be prepared to accept Elizabeth II as their head of state. Eden and his cabinet immediately rejected Mollet’s offer out-of-hand…but there was a corollary from the French premier.

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British Prime Minister RA Eden ↸

Completely out of left field, the French prime minister made a second request to Eden, this one an even more intriguing, mind-boggling proposition that France become a member of the British Commonwealth! The British PM apparently warmed to the idea of having the French in the. Commonwealth, telling Mollet that it would receive “immediate consideration”, but nothing eventuated from the proposition❉, leaving observers to muse on the curious theoretical conundrum of  what might have been – eg, the exquisite contemplation of the British monarch adding “Queen of France“ to her list of titles! [‘Incroyable, but true … France’s 1956 bid to unite with Britain’, (Angelique Chrisafis), The Guardian, 16-Jan-2007, www.theguardian.com]. The proposal was short-lived in any case…as soon as the disastrous Anglo-French incursion floundered, Mollet abondoned the idea altogether [Thomson, loc.cit.].

The most surprising thing about this extraordinary episode is that nothing was known about it publicly until 2007! The documents relating to it in the possession of the British government were declassified in 1980 and then apparently forgotten more or less completly. They sat, gathering dust, in the National Archives in. London until discovered in 2007. The scoop was unearthed by BBC journalist Mike Thomson and the news met with amusement in the UK –  the BBC scoffed at the notion, dubbing the proposed union ‘Frangleterre’ [ibid; Thomson, loc.cit.].

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French Prime Minister G Mollet ↸

In France the disclosure precipitated an outcry. Responses were, not surprisingly, generally ascerbic. Many politicians and ex-politicians saw the revelation as outrageous, scandalous, and some even thought it amounted to an act of treason on Mollet’s part [Thomson, ibid.]. Intriguingly, a search of the French archives failed to turn up any trace of Mollet’s FBU proposal among the records.

PostScript: In the fallout of the crises, both leaders found themselves politically undone within twelve months…Eden, humiliated by the backdown over Suez, was forced out of the top job, and Mollet’s government collapsed after a public backlash at the disclosure that Mollet had approved counterterrorist tactics including torture against the Algerian rebels [‘Guy Mollet’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Epilogue: FBU: two 20th century manifestations of a desire for unification between France and the United Kingdom, one emerging in global war-time, the other out of an international crisis. In turn, the first initiated by one of the allies and subsequently rejected by the other, with the roles reversed and the same outcome in the second instance.

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✡ this was preparatory to Mollet and British PM Eden combining with Israel to launch an invasion force of Egypt

❉ one year later after the signing of the Treaty of Rome (1957), France became a founding member of the European Common Market (later EU)

The Incroyable Political Union of 1940, Part 2: Choosing Peace Without Honour and the Seeds of the Brits’ “Doing it My Way”

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At a critical junction in the escalating crisis in France, Churchill and de Gaulle met at the Carlton Club in London on 16 June 1940. With an acute recognition of just how close and tangible French annihilation by the Nazi war machine was, the two men from each side of the English Channel agreed that union of the two countries was the necessary way forward. The agreed plan was for de Gaulle to take the British offer for an “indissoluble union” back to the French Council of Ministers (henceforth FCOM) for approval.

⬇️ Charles de Gaulle

F39801CA-02D0-4EC3-8601-AF56D98AF3E4Given the broken morale of the French army, an out-weaponised “spent force” utterly helpless to stop the Nazi Germany military machine from overrunning the country, surely the cabinet, as distasteful as the notion of a merger with Britain might sound to many patriotic French men and women, would endorse the proposal for a Franco-British Union (henceforth FBU) as the only viable, rational move available?

General Weygand – ‘minister’ for the oppositionThe senior military officers back in France however were working to a different agenda. The opposition to an alliance between France and Britain was led by General Maxime Weygand. Weygand, the senior military man in France, used his influential position with members of the cabinet to intervene into the political sphere. Going beyond the limits of his (military) authority✻, Weygand made a concerted effort to undermine the case for union spearheaded by the premier Paul Reynaud.

Général d’armée 

Weygand engaged in bullying, abusing and threatening of the undecided politicians until they acquiesced and rolled over into the camp of those favouring a separate armistice with Hitler [Philip C. F. Bankwitz. (1959). Maxime Weygand and the Fall of France: A Study in Civil-Military Relations. The Journal of Modern History, 31(3), 225-242. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1875584].

⬇️ The powerbroker (Weygand)

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Weygand V ReynaudWeygand resorted to various dirty tricks to overcome Reynaud’s efforts to get FCOM to accept Churchill’s offer, such as wiretapping the French premier’s phone which allowed the general to know what Reynaud was scheming with the deliberating ministers and stay one step ahead of him. Weygand also resorted to brandishing the spectre of a communist takeover if France didn’t sue for peace with Germany [Shlaim, A. (1974). Prelude to Downfall: The British Offer of Union to France, June 1940. Journal of Contemporary History, 9(3), 27-63. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/260024].

Tactically Weygand has it all over Reynaud in their head-to-head contest to sway the minds of the ministers. He exploited French fears and mistrust of forming an alliance with the English. Weygand could also count on the support of the  vice-premier, the influential Marshal Pétain, to help defeat Reynaud’s plans. The Third Republic’s president (Albert Lebrun) was another unhelpful factor in the crisis’ equation – a stronger figurehead may have provided firm support to the government’s alliance objective, but Lebrun’s weak and ineffectual recourse was to merely try to appease all sides of the political crisis [ibid.].

Premier Reynaud for his part made a number of tactical errors that contributed to the failure of his objective. His omission in not  inviting the British PM to the key FCOM meeting, denied the wavering ministers the opportunity to hear Churchill put the British pro-union case directly to them and let them gauge how genuine he was about FBU. While Weygand was actively busy rallying ministers to his side, Reynaud prevaricated way too long without taking decisive action◈ (ie, pushing FCOM at the earliest instance to reject the armistice path). Lacking the resolve to act, he tried to “manoeuvre and temporise” rather than tackle the issue (and Weygand) head on [ibid.]. The longer the cabinet crisis went on, the more the situation tilted towards the pro-armistice party.

An accumulation of Gallic doubtsAs the military situation worsened daily in June 1940, the ministry found more and more reasons to reject the FBU route. De Gaulle detected an “extremely acute Anglophobe feeling” within the armistice collaborators, a feeling heightened by the French public’s anger at the fallout of the Dunkirk operation (viz the British abandonment of a large number of French POWs).

British motives were increasingly questioned by the French ministers …national pride was at sake for some like former PM Camille Chautemps who feared that agreeing to FBU would relegate France to the status of a British dominion, it was thought that the  scheme was a ruse to allow Britain to get its hands on France’s colonial empire [ibid.]. There was a sense among the armistice party that if France made an early request for armistice with Germany, it would enhance the republic’s chances of receiving favourable terms. The mindset was typified in the ominous words of minister of state Ybarnégaray: “…better be a Nazi province; at least we know what that means”※[ibid.].

There was also a belief within the proponents of armistice, fostered by the French military hierarchy, that Britain itself was doomed, that the island’s demise at the onslaught of the Nazi juggernaut was inevitable…as Pétain put it, union with the UK would be committing France to “fusion with a corpse”. Another key advocate of armistice and German collaboration, Pierre Laval, (later vice-premier of the Vichy state) “fear-mongered” freely – disseminating the speculation that when the eventual peace negotiations came (after the defeat of FBU), it was France that  would have to pay for the war! [ibid.].

⬇️ Marshal Pétain boards the Hitler train

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The burden of  swelling ‘defeatism’As each day passed and with France’s military defence now non-existent, a wave of defeatism descended over the French people and the government. With the pro-armistice camp holding the dominant hand, minister Chautemps’ proposal that FCOM request a separate peace with Germany was effortlessly passed. The despairing Reynaud, sensing that further efforts for FBU were futile and also concerned at the prospect of a divided republic, fell on his sword, resigning immediately. Marshal Pétain hastily assumed the reins of government, thus beginning four years of Vichy proxy rule of France on behalf of Herr Hitler [ibid.].

Footnote: The road to Brexit?When FBU failed to crystallise in 1940, Britain was left with the full realisation that it had to go it alone against Germany. To survive against such odds the UK looked west to the USA, not to Europe. Churchill and his government thereafter channeled its diplomatic energies towards enticing America into joining Britain’s war against Nazism๏.

8A0177FE-5CB6-43B2-8781-575F55B756D9Dominic Tierney has drawn a connecting line from the recent Brexit phenomena back to the events of 1940, a commonality of the impulse to go solo. Tierney sees the ‘Brexiteers’, those conservative proponents intent on exiting from Europe, as invoking the “spirit of Dunkirk” [‘When Britain and France Almost Merged Into One Country’, (Dominic Tierney), The Atlantic, 08-Aug-2017, www.theatlantic.com].

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PostScript: an alternate history of the “Anglo-French Confederation”The unfulfilled ‘destiny’ of FBU is a boon to the “what if?” school of history buffs who revel in imaginative reconstructions of past seminal events✥. Theoretical questions abound about FBU had it become a reality…eg, how would the new super-state reconcile the British monarchy with the French republic? Where would real power lie within FBU? How would the Napoleonic legal code mesh with the very different Anglo-Saxon legal system? What would the entity’s ‘indissoluble’ union (Churchill’s very problematic term) really mean in the long run? And so on and so on [‘What if Britain and France unified in 1940?’ (David Boyle), in Prime Minister Corbyn and other things that never happened, edited by Duncan Brack & Iain Dale, (2016)].

The notion of FBU, though stillborn in 1940, did raise its head yet again years later – see the following post in this series The Franco-British Union Redux …Mach II

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✻ to the point of directly and flagrantly disobeying the government’s directives, such as refusing point-blank to relocate to North Africa if a French government in exile was to be re-established there [Barkwitz, op.cit.]

◈ and the element of surprise had been lost for the FBU camp with the army tapping Reynaud’s conversations

※ in his postwar memoirs Reynaud soberly wrote: “Those who rose in indignation at the idea of union with our ally, were getting ready to bow and scrape to Hitler”

๏ later Churchill and Attlee governments both distanced themselves from the suggestion that they revisit the idea of union with France [Shlaim, op.cit.]. And the Eden government during the Suez Canal crisis flatly rebuffed a request from France for the two countries to ally

✥ the bona fide aficionado of “alt-history” salivates over the prospect of “what if happened” scenarios. There has been something of a tradition of detective novels hypothesising on different historical events, eg, Robert Harris’ Fatherland which rewrites the postwar world based on the premise that Hitler did not die and the Third Reich won the Second World War

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The Incroyable Political Union of 1940, Part 1: Questions of Pragmatic Necessity and the Remoulding of a Future Europe

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”The Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom, against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves.”

~ British offer of Anglo-French Union, June 16, 1940

[Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, Volume 365. House of Commons Official Report Eleventh Volume of Session 1939-40, (London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1940), columns 701-702.]

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I first heard of this astonishing plan to politically unify Britain and France in WWII – to make French citizens British and British citizens French – in a television documentary broadcast on SBS – Churchill’s Bodyguard (2005)✻. The thought that these two Anciens rivaux of Europe nearly became one country seems, from this vantage point looking backwards, a simply incredulous thing to contemplate❂.

⍗ WSC (Source: PA)4C91AFBC-517F-4C91-9490-61B1BB8DEB93 The catalyst for the June 1940 proposal to fuse the two European allies was France’s military debacle: Nazi Germany launched a massive offensive into France in May and French forces offered scant resistance as the German Wehrmacht steamrolled on towards Paris with alarming speed. In late May the British Expeditionary Forces were evacuated from France, however the British left some 90,000 French troops in Dunkirk, abandoned to the fate of the conquering German army.D9043121-5D58-4A3E-89A3-9CB5F240A301

Before the crisis in the UK: Laying the groundwork for a federationIn the late 1930s, with threats to European stability and democracy emerging from both the Right and the Left, federalist ideas and sentiments started to gain currency within the UK. There was a thriving literature on the subject…liberal and socialist thinkers like William Beveridge, Lord Lothian and Lionel Curtis, were disseminating federalist ideas which were supported by many prominent politicians from both sides and by members of the Anglican Church. Andrea Bosco has drawn attention to the activism of a grass-roots movement known as the Federal Union which functioned as “a catalyst for (Federalist) ideas and behaviours“, generating popular backing in GB for the federal idea. French political economist Jean Monnet, as chair of the Anglo-French Coordinating Committee based in London, had the most developed perspective of the “Pan-Europeans”. Monnet took some of his inspiration from the vibrant British federalist movement and even discussed federalism with the then UK prime minster, Neville Chamberlain (more of Monnet later). Before the war a bill✫ was drafted at Chatham House◘ anticipating the Franco-British Union (henceforth FBU) [‘Britain’s forgotten attempt to build a European Union’, (Andrea Bosco), (London School of Economics & Political Science), 20-Jan-2017, www.blogs.lse.ac.uk].

M. Monnet ⍗

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Proponents of FBU: the British British PM Churchill, though harbouring doubts about the viability of the proposed union, was in the vanguard of the initiative. Churchill and the all-party UK war cabinet were desperate to stop the French capitulating to Hitler (failing that the PM deemed it imperative that the French fleet not fall into Nazi hands) [Shlaim, A. (1974). Prelude to Downfall: The British Offer of Union to France, June 1940. Journal of Contemporary History, 9(3), 27-63. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/260024].

The British offer of union, described by Shlaim as a deus ex machina, came when it did, as an attempt to mend the deteriorating relations between GB and France. Westminster, by making a “spectacular gesture of solidarity” with the beleaguered French, was hoping to silence the criticism within France of British motives. It was also intended to shore up the position of French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, who was the key political figure on the French side most in favour of the Union. By making common cause with France, the British were trying to raise French morale to stay in the fight against Germany and to discourage the Nazis. At the same time, by securing FBU with France, it hoped to entice to its side the “weak neutrals” of the Continent, away from the pull of the Third Reich. It would be wrong to assume everyone associated with the government in Britain was on board with Churchill’s scheme to fast-track an Anglo-French union…top Whitehall civil servant Sir Orme Sargent for instance felt the UK public was not ready for a union with France and urged it be delayed to after the war [ibid.].

Proponents of FBU: the FrenchReynaud was the political face of the pro-FBU cause within the French ranks, but behind the scenes the concept was largely the brainchild of the aforementioned Jean Monnet. After the war Monnet’s untiring efforts at unification saw him identified as the “father of European integration”. In early 1940 as the war began to encroach closer and closer to France, Monnet was preoccupied with finding a way of avoiding the excesses of nationalism and militarism plaguing Europe. FBU was intended to be the “prototype of complete union” (Shlaim)…Monnet saw the surrender of national sovereignty by France and GB as the first step on the road to greater Europe’s supranational integration⌺. The incorporation of the two countries and economies was a starting point for the ultimate political unification of Europe. Monnet’s relentless advocacy of the merits of a “United States of Europe” postwar, helped to bear fruit with the creation of the Common Market and the European Community. 763A822C-5DD3-4314-A12A-F53D7B66581B

Although, for the British participants in the drama, eventual European unification was not the rationale for making FBU happen, there were some on the English side of the channel who endorsed M Monnet’s integrationist ambitions, such as Professor Arnold Toynbee and Sir Arthur Salter. Even Churchill’s private secretary at the time was eyeing off the prospect of new openings and a shifting role for the UK – even going so far as to affirm that a union with France could be a “bridge to Europe and even World Federation”  [‘When Britain and France Almost Merged Into One Country’, (Dominic Tierney), The Atlantic, 08-Aug-2017, www.theatlantic.com].

The consensus in the British block did not endorse Monnet’s visionary role for FBU, the hard-nose pragmatist view of  Westminster was that, at that time of extreme and extraordinary peril, the union was purely one of expediency. The British offer was, in Avi Shlaim’s words, “no more than a last and desperate effort to keep France in the war against the common enemy” [ibid.] – a short-term objective only.

French military leader General de Gaulle (despite like Churchill harbouring some reservations about the concept) threw his weight behind FBU, believing it represented “a grand move to change history” [ibid.]. The linchpin for the Union’s success or otherwise came to hinge on secret talks between Churchill for the British and de Gaulle for the French. It was indeed an irony that on this occasion the “two patriotic statesmen, the symbols of independence and nationalism” (of their respective nations) were in synch with each other in seeking a supranational entity (Shlaim).

Like PM Reynaud, de Gaulle (still at this stage a junior minister in the French government) advocated FBU as the sole way forward because he wanted to fight on against the German invasion forces. Unfortunately for them (and the stricken French republic), the military high command and the majority of the French cabinet had other ideas. In the second part of this blog, we will look at how the events of June 1940 planned out and discover the fate of FBU and it’s postwar reverberations for Britain and France and for contemporary Europe as a whole.

Richard (the Lionheart) Plantagenet

Postscript: Incroyable or incredible as the prospect of an Anglo-French union in 1940 might seem to us today, it would not have been without precedent. The Norman and Plantagenet monarchs in England in the 11th through 13th centuries ruled what was in reality an Anglo-French state.

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✻ based on the memoirs of Winston Churchill’s long-time bodyguard, Walter H Thompson

❂ although the idea of an Anglo-French Union didn’t simply emerge out of thin air in 1940. The military alliance between the two countries in the face of the menace of an encroaching fascism in Europe had been taking shape since 1936…which in turn had built on the 1904 Entente cordiale, agreements which formally ended centuries of on-again, off-again Franco-English conflict [Mathews, J. (1941). The Anglo-French Alliance and the War. The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 21(4), 351-359. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42865013; ‘Franco-British Union’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

✫ Act of Perpetual Association between the UK and France

◘ a London “think tank” known officially as the Royal Institute of International Affairs

⌺ M Monnet was an unapologetic Anglophile, having lived and worked in London for part of his career he admired the British welfare system and had a sincere appreciation of GB’s assistance to France in two world wars

Iceland’s “Dog-Days King”: The Nine Week Summer Republic

Biographical, International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , ,

In the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, with conflict raging in different parts of the Continent, attention switched momentarily to the North Atlantic. In 1807 the United Kingdom attacked Copenhagen, capturing or neutralising virtually the entire Danish navy. The Danish response was to join the European conflict on Napoleon’s side against Britain and its allies.

3C77B278-D979-4FD1-8EF7-09F067A692BFIceland at this time was a sovereign territory under the realm of the Danish-Norwegian real union. During the hostilities, in 1809, a British trading expedition to Iceland was mounted by London soap merchant Samuel Phelps. Accompanying Phelps on this mission was a Danish adventurer with a dodgy past, Jørgen Jørgenson whose escapades in Iceland and elsewhere were to make him one the most colourful characters of the era.

5A37D9C4-31FD-4DEC-86A5-F76C80F5DEE0Jørgenson’s coup
Despite Iceland’s citizens suffering from a shortage of provisions, the governor of the colony rebuffed Phelps’ request to trade with the locals. At this point, Phelps and especially Jørgenson, took things into their own hands. The Dane had the governor (Count FC Trampe) apprehended and his administration deposed in a “bloodless coup”. Jørgenson immediately declared Iceland a republic, free and independent of Danish-Norwegian rule.

Jørgenson’s “reform agenda” for Iceland✱
Unhesitatingly Jørgenson assumed the top spot in the new regime, adopting the title of “His Excellency, the Protector of Iceland, Commander in Chief by Sea and Land” [James Dally, ‘Jorgenson, Jorgen (1780–1841)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jorgenson-jorgen-2282/text2935, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 1 January 2019].

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The ‘protector’ set about designing a flag (above) for the ‘republic’ and built a fort which he named Fort Phelps after the merchant who financed the expedition. Jörgenson announced a series of reforms, pledging to lower taxes on the citizenry, establish price controls on grain, and to restore the Althing (Iceland’s historic parliament dating back to AD 930) [Historical Dictionary of Iceland, (Sverrir Jakobsson & Gudamundar Hálfdanarson) [1st Ed.]]. Jørgenson’s proclamations that he was acting on behalf of Icelanders to liberate them from colonial servitude have a question mark over them…in his autobiography Jørgenson hints at the fact that he had been motivated more by personal gain and glory than by any altruistic aims [‘The Convict King’ by Jørgen Jørgenson (edited by James Francis Hogan)].85E4BE72-F29C-4506-B70D-64E993BDB16B

The “nine week republic”
The English were not in favour of Jørgenson’s bold unilateral coup, the influential Sir Joseph Banks for instance decried the takeover by Jørgenson as illegal – although its interesting to note that Banks had already urged Westminster to annex Iceland (as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and turn the North Atlantic into a “British lake” [Jørgen Jørgenson’s Liberation of Icelandic – A Bicentenary’, Tasmanian Times, (Kim Peart), 31-May-2009, www.tasmaniantimes.com]. Just nine weeks after the deposition of Danish rule on the island, the HMS Talbot under Captain Alexander Jones was despatched to the capital Reikevig (Reykjavík) to take the Danish “mini-Napoleon” into custody and restore Danmark-Norge rule.

Jørgenson was taken back to London (apparently voluntarily) where was imprisoned for breaching his parole which had forbidden him from leaving England without permission. After the defeat of Denmark-Norway’s ally France in 1814, Norway was ceded to Sweden and Iceland ceded to Denmark (Treaty of Kiel). It was the not until 1944 that Iceland finally obtained full independence from the Danes and became, this time permanently, a republic.

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⟰ Stone engraving commemorating Jørgenson on the Ross Bridge, Tasmania

PostScript: Jørgen Jørgenson, opportunist adventurer 
Jørgenson’s eventful life, both before and after his brief Icelandic escapade, was a entertaining cavalcade of alternating peaks and troughs. His autobiography makes the case for Jørgenson as “man of many parts”: “Being the Life and Adventures of Jörgen Jörgensen, Monarch of Iceland, Naval Captain, Revolutionist, British Diplomatic Agent, Author, Dramatist, Preacher, Political Prisoner, Gambler, Hospital Dispenser, Continental Traveller, Explorer, Editor, Expatriated Exile, and Colonial Constable.“ [Hogan, op.cit.]. Among other things, Jørgenson had two lengthy spells in Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), involved in the early exploration of that island✥; had a number of mandatory stays at “His Majesty’s Pleasure” (the Fleet Prison, Newmarket); was for a time a spy FOR the British; and in between adventures he wasted an inordinate amount of time engaged in nonstop gambling and drinking.

☤☤  ☤ ☤ ☤☤

Note: Icelanders today refer to Jørgenson as Jörundur hundadaga-Konyngur (“Jørgen the Dog-Days King”) (Icelanders tend to characterise summer as the “dog-days”).

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✱ Jørgenson had called for the creation of a liberal constitution based both on that of the United States and on the French First Republic
✥ ‘Vandemonians’ have heaped on Jørgenson some of his more  romanticised sobriquets, such as the “Founder of the City of Hobart Town” and the “Viking of Van Diemens Land”

Marooned in the Suez Canal: Six Days of War, Eight Years of Blockade

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When the dust and sand settled after the lightning strike of the Middle East Six-Day War in 1967, there was an unanticipated outcome with profound ramifications for the Suez Canal. The upshot of that briefest of brief wars left Israel in control of the Sinai Peninsula which included the eastern bank of the Suez waterway✱. Egypt’s response to this unpalatable circumstance was swift and long-reaching.

Immediately at the cessation of hostilities each side of the Suez Canal was cordoned off, Israeli troops massing on the east (Sinai) side and Egyptian troops on the west (African) side. The Egyptian government reacted to the situation by effectively immobilising access to the canal…ships, dredges and other floating water-crafts were sunk to block both ends of the waterway, the task of blockading was completed by placing a number of sea mines in the canal to render navigation an unviable (and dangerous) option.

Aside from bringing an immediate halt to any vessels seeking to use the passage, the unilateral action had the effect of trapping existing shipping already within the canal zone. At the time of the war there was a number of foreign ships, mainly freighters and cargo carriers, steaming their way north through the international waterway. Unable to proceed, those fourteen merchant vessels gathered together in the Great Bitter Lake section of the canal (the widest portion and the midway-point of the waterway).

Great Bitter Lake (sat-map) ⇗

The Yellow Fleet
As time passed it became evident that Egypt was intending to block the canal indefinitely. The ships settled down for a long stay and the ships’ masters and owners devised a strategy to cope with the delay. The crews on the vessels were rotated, initially after three months the original crews were relieved, and then this process was repeated at periodical intervals. Over the next eight years (that’s how long the canal was blockaded and the fourteen ships were stranded in the Bitter Lake) some of the original crew members even returned for a second stint in the canal. So long were the stranded vessels exposed to the harsh elements of the region that the nickname the Yellow Fleet was ascribed to them – due to the fact that over months of remaining motionless the decks of the ships would become completely caked in windblown sand from the adjacent Sinai desert [‘The Yellow Fleet’, www.history.com].

Composition of the cargo container fleet: Vessel nationalities
The stranded Bitter Sea flotilla comprised a miniature “United Nations” of vessels – of the fourteen merchant ships, four were from the UK, two each from West Germany, Sweden, the US and Poland, and one each from Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. In addition to these fourteen entrapped vessels, one other container ship, the Canadian SS Observer, was also immobilised by the Egyptian blockage, but it was separated from the others and forced to anchor in Lake Timsah (AKA Crocodile Lake), near the city of Ismailia.

From the perspective of the ship-owners (who included large shipping companies like the Blue Star Line and Blue Funnel Line), the main priority was to protect as far as possible the valuable cargo onboard the containers. The ships, despite their anchored status needed to be maintained regularly so that they would be immediately ready to go in the event of the Egyptian government lifting the blockage [‘Meet the seafarers who were stranded in the Six-Day War’, (Simon Edge), 03-Jun-2017, www.express.co.uk/].

Despite the difficulties faced by the crews (the presence of Egyptian police guarding the vessels; being stopped from maintaining radio contact with the outside world; the frustration of being confined and entrapped in one spot), the seafarers involved made a really good fist of keeping up morale by keeping busy and engaged in fractional and social activities. Organisational skills were put to good use, in October 1967 a meeting of all officers and crews members on the British MS Melampus resulted in the formation of the Great Bitter Lake Association.

1968: Year of the parallel olympics
Given the trying working conditions that prevailed, the merchant shipmen (there was a solitary woman among all of the crews of workers, a Swedish stewardess) made the best of their time in the Suez…in 1968 with the Summer Olympics playing out in Mexico City the seamen were inspired to concoct their own version of the great quadrennial international sporting event. The GBLA ‘Mini-Olympics’ included the disciplines of sailing (naturally!), diving, soccer, shooting, archery, sprinting, high jump and weight-lifting✧. The ‘athletes’ got right into the spirit of the event, the UK newspaper the Daily Express even sponsored the games, providing kits, footballs and trophies. Overall “winner of the Olympics” was Poland, followed by West Germany [‘Stranded in the Six-Day War: the story of 14 ships trapped for eight years in the Suez Canal – by Cath Senker’, (Company of Master Mariners of Australia), www.mastermariners.org.au/]. Outside of Olympics time crew members would keep active with matches of football (soccer) on the largest of the vessels, MS Port Invercargill.

Inventiveness and ingenuity of the crews
Improvised Olympic games, football and boat races was one way of making the time pass enjoyably, another more imaginative pursuit was getting into the stamp business! The Yellow Fleet marked its prolonged confinement in the Suez by hand-making and issuing its own stamps…envelopes sent home to family and friends would bear the frank of the Great Bitter Lake Association. These labels were purely decorative, without postal validity and needed the accompanying legal issue of Egypt for delivery – however some letters did apparently make it to their destinations bearing only the GBLA frank! GBLA stamps often contained eagles and seagulls, birds of flight symbolising freedom and escape which the crews undoubtedly longed for whilst passing their days [‘Maritime Topics On Stamps: The GBL Locals!’, (Bjoern Moritz), www.shipsonstamps.org/].

The fleet also maintained its own trading system among the various vessels. The container ship crews fed themselves initially from the plentiful fresh food in the cargos. Beer, wine and other day-to-day necessities were supplied by trade with visiting Egyptian chandlers (suppliers for boats). Captain Kensett of the Port Invercargill estimated that they had to be upward of 1.5 million empty beer bottles at the bottom of the Great Bitter Lake. The food that perished after the refrigeration finally gave out also got dumped overboard [Simon Edge].

As time went on…and on, the situation needed to be rationalised of course. During 1968 the MV Agapenor‘s owner, Blue Funnel Line, considered abandoning the vessel, but the insurers vetoed that! Later on, the Agapenor was placed in the care of the nearby Czech freighter Lednice [Gordon Frickers, ‘Agapenor Manoeuvring in Bombay (Mumbai) Roads’, (Artist Gordon Frickers), 31-Mar-2009, www.frickers.co.uk]. The collection of ships were moored closer together. Consolidation continued with a view to reducing costs to the companies, by June 1969 the number of personnel maintaining and protecting the ships was scaled down to around 200, by Christmas of the same year there was just a skeletal crew of 50 present [Edge].

Egyptian president and Arab unity strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970 and gradually the government in Cairo started to soften its hard-line stance on the blockade (plus there was the worrying consideration of the ongoing lost revenue from the canal tolls that Egypt was suffering). For the last couple of years of the closure a Norwegian company took over the management of the fleet. By 1974 work had begun on the extremely onerous task of clearing the scuttled ships and sea mines before shipping in the canal could resume. American naval units and British and French minesweepers assisted the operation, with the salvage job finished by Californian company Murphy Pacific Marine Salvage. With the Suez Canal finally opened again, eleven of the remaining thirteen vessels⊟ were unable to continue their journey unaided, only the two German container ships were capable of making it back to their destination (Hamburg) under its own power.

PostScript: a ‘new’ Suez Canal?
Even by the time of the canal closure in 1967 Suez had become an inferior sea transportation route. Since the 1950s the advent of the supertanker, which is capable of carrying four to six times that of the smaller ships, has been a game-changer. The canal however has been unsuitable for supertankers being too narrow and insufficiently deep in most of the watercourse [‘A “new” Suez Canal shapes up for 1980s’, (John Pearson & Ken Anderson), Popular Mechanics, May 1975]. Accordingly the Egyptian government first mooted the prospect of a new canal in 1974. After many obstacles and delays a multi-billion dollar project was launched. Finally in 2015, a ‘new’ section of the Suez Canal was completed…increasing the canal capacity to accommodate a two–lane shipping route (ie, two commercial-scale vessels are now able to pass one another in opposite directions over a longer stretch of the canal) [‘Suez Canal Area Development Project’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
✱ along with the Golan Heights (taken from Syria) and the West Bank of Jerusalem (wrestled off the Kingdom of Jordan)

✧ oddly swimming is not listed as one of the GBLA’s ‘Olympic’ sports, especially puzzling as the MS Killara (from Sweden) had an onboard pool!

⊟ the US-owned African Glen had been hit and sunk during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The war came very close to the stranded Yellow Fleet as the Israeli counter-attack took place at the northern end of the Bitter Lake

On the Cuban Guerrillero Cultural Icon Trail: Channelling ‘Che’ in Santa Clara

Military history, Popular Culture, Regional History, Travel, , , , , , , ,

Having visited the site of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the Museum that commemorates its triumphant outcome for the Cuban people, our appetite to learn more about “The Revolution” was piqued. The city of Cienfuegos was on our itinerary and as another saga of the war to liberate Cuba from a right-wing dictatorship with US mafiosi connexions was at hand in nearby Villa Clara province, a small detour was in order.

The pueblo of Santa Clara is inextricably woven into the story of Ernesto Guevara and his victory in the decisive battle of the civil war against the Batista regime. Guevara or simply ‘Che’ – the image that launched a million T-shirts, and the man who signed many more million pesos’ worth of Cuban bank notes!✱ – is proudly remembered and commonly revered, especially in this part of Cuba, as two separate Santa Clara monuments testify.

The first is in the centre of the township itself, a monument to the final victory of the war (Battle of Santa Clara, 31st December 1958) when a Cuban battalion under Comandante Che derailed a train carrying government troops, ammunition and heavy weapons, intended to reinforce Batista’s embattled army in Havana.
A portion of the captured train still sits on the site, now part of a monument to the battle which clinched victory for Castro and the Cuban rebels. In Spanish the monument is called Monumento a la Toma del Tren Blindado (literally “Monument to the Taking of the Armoured Train”)

The other tangible tribute to the legendary Cuban revolutionary líder is more personal, not far from the city is Guevara’s sombre but impressive mausoleum (Mausoleo de Ernesto Guevara). The monument was originally conceived as a memorial to the charismatic maestro guerrillero who was executed and buried in the Bolivian jungle in 1967… thirty years later the Cuban government retrieved his exhumed body and returned it to Santa Clara. The remains of Che and 29 of his fellow guerrilla fighters are interred here in a large burial vault (in area a decent sized lounge room).

The mausoleum remains a popular place to visit for tourists as well as Cubans, there were several big tourist buses and umpteen dozen cars in the parking lot when our group visited. The immediately noticeable feature of the mausoleum building which is set down on a wide patch of land is the extra-large statue of Che. Cast in bronze, it is 22 feet high and characteristically depicts Che armed and dressed in army/militia fatigues. The statue officially goes by the somewhat ‘highfalutin’ title Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex (AKA Complejo Monumental Ernesto Che Guevara).

Security around the mausoleum entrance was pretty tight, more guards than you think might be necessary hovered around the entrance portal. We all lined up and were soon ushered in by a bevy of serious-faced officials and whisked out again fairly rapidly. There was not a lot to see inside in any case, it was dimly lit and unnervingly cold. We glanced at the photos of the 30 dead comrades on the wall and spotted a few pieces of Che paraphernalia on display – such as Che’s handgun (Czechoslovakian), his water canteen and field glasses.

There’s not much else to the complex (a lot of vacant space actually) but there is a gift shop (Tienda Artex) (opportunity to get that authentic “Che in classic Guerrillero Heroico pose” T-shirt on Che’s own turf!) and a restaurante/cantina. There’s another, official looking building close to the arched entrance to the shops but I couldn’t work out what it was used for.

The museum maintains a strict prohibition on the taking of photos within the burial vault, so I didn’t even give a thought to trying to sneak a quick ‘Polaroid’ (even if I had one) – the officials, all wearing the same “not happy Juan” face, gave the impression they meant business!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/

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✱ from when he was governor of the National Bank of Cuba and succinctly signed his nickname ‘Che’ on all legal tender

Mantanzas’ South Coast: Dive Sites, Beach Resorts, the ‘Bay of Triggerfish’ and a Monument to National Memory

International Relations, Military history, Regional History, Travel, , , , , , , , ,

From rustic Viñales we did a long trek by road (some eight hours) to the province of Mantanzas, our ultimate stop was a resort spot on the south coast called Playa Larga (Eng: ‘Long Beach’). This picturesque coastal village was the scene of the explosive Cold War incident in April 1961 when a CIA-financed and US-trained force of exiles attempted to invade Castro’s Cuba from the south (Playa Larga was one of the two beaches that the mercenaries landed at✱). Courtesy of the media and publicity at the time, westerners know this area as the Bay of Pigs…in Spanish the name is Bahía de Cochinos. ‘Cochinos’ does translate to ‘pigs’, but in Cuban Spanish ‘Cochinos’ can also mean ‘triggerfish’. Given the abundance of colourful fish (including triggerfish) we saw whilst swimming in the bay (and the visible lack of pigs at the site!), the term ‘Bay of Triggerfish’ sounds infinitely more apt!

As we came off the Autopista Nacional and headed south, passing a vast area of wilderness and swampland on our right (Parque Nacional Ciénega de Zapata). A short while later we reached Boca de Guamá (Mouth of the gulf), known for its resorts and boat rides through the massive great swampy peninsula. When we got to ‘Long Beach’ we stopped near a scuba dive-and-snorkel hire kiosk where there was an entry point into the bay to swim. To get into the water we had to cross a narrow but jagged rocky shore. Halfway across the rocky ledge, the folly of not bringing rubber-soled aquatic shoes to Playa Larga became painfully apparent to me (ouch!). The Caribbean water was a beautiful turquoise colour but I found it a bit choppy for swimming (explains why there was only a couple of other people swimming there when we visited). This didn’t seem to deter the snorkellers in our group who thoroughly enjoyed plunging under to explore the delights of the bay’s coral reefs❂.

A stopover here also offers you an alternative to swimming or snorkelling in the bay. If you cross back over the coastal road, passing the dive and snorkel kiosk and head in an inland direction, the short trail through the wilderness will land you at another aqua delight of Playa Larga, a swimming-pool size natural cénote♉! After experiencing the joys of swimming in cénotes in Southern Mexico, I had been anticipating trying out a cénote in Cuba. Unfortunately two things soured the experience – the cénote (unlike the ones in Mexico) didn’t have a cavernous limestone roof and a deep well where you had to descend down a spiralling staircase – elements contributing to a large part of both the fun and the atmosphere! Also, access to the natural pool was inhibited by the existence of a razor-sharp corridor of more jagged rocks. Although the pool looked enticing I didn’t much fancy trying to negotiate the pointy edges, so, my enthusiasm dampened, I hastily turned tail and headed back to the shore.

After spending the night in a casa particular in nearby Caletón we made for Playa Girón to re-live the Cuban regime’s most treasured moment in it’s 60-year revolutionary history. The Bay of Pigs Museum (AKA Museo Girón) in  casts a different light on a tense Cold War moment, one that narrowly skirted a global confrontation, to that portrayed at that time by the news medias of First World countries. The museum’s narrative recounting the Bay of Pigs incident describes a episode of national defence against US aggression and imperialism. The exhibits, the photos, letters, maps and diagrams are intended to celebrate the heroic efforts of Cubans, soldiers and civilians, in patriotically repelling the invasion of the homeland.

The surprisingly small museum (just two rooms) displays many black-and-white photos of the episode, various uniforms and medals, examples of the combat artillery, mortar guns and rifles used in the conflict, many of these weapons look like they’d have been considerably old even in 1961! Note: the taking of photos inside the BoP Museum is not permitted unless you pay a 1CUC fee up front at the entrance table.

Outside the museum entrance, there are a couple of props that add gravitas and dramatic colour to the museum’s “mission statement”. In pride of place, on display is a Hawker Sea Fury F-50 fighter plane (the type of British-manufactured aircraft purchased by Premier Castro and used by the Cuban forces in countering the invasion). To the right of the entrance are two Soviet era tanks, all weaponry associated with the 1961 event.

The work put into Museo Girón demonstrates how seriously the government took the incident – and still do! The minutely detailed story of how the Cuban government and people foiled a bungled American attempt to invade Cuba makes an unambiguous point about national memory…unencumbered by subtlety: both the citizens of Cuba and the outside world dare not forget La Victoria! and the country’s no pasarán resolve when it comes to repelling outside invaders. The museum revels in reminding visitors of a nadir reaching low point in US policy towards Cuba from the not-so-distant past which brought international disapproval and opprobrium down on the Kennedy administration and the CIA.

PostScript: Australia, Cuba
On the way to visit Museo Playa Girón we didn’t expect to pass a sign on the road saying ‘Australia’ but that is the name of the tiny hamlet and consejo popular (People’s Council) near the Bay of Pigs Museum. The Cuban aldea Australia has no tangible connection to Australia in the Southern Hemisphere, but was named for its relationship with the original sugar factory located there (the practice at that colonial time was to name the locomotives hauling the sugar to market after the continents of the world, hence ‘Australia’). During the 1961 invasion by the US-backed rebels, Comandante en jefe Castro based his defence headquarters in the old ‘Central Australia’ sugar mill.

↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼
✱ the other being in the cove named after 17th century French pirate Gilberto Girón, Playa Girón, 35km further south
❂ in the bay there’s a 300m long coral wall a short swim away from the shoreline
♉ a deep, natural well or sinkhole formed by surface limestone rock caving in and exposing ground water

Wall’s End: The Great Wall, Laolongtou, Hushan/Bakjak and the Goguryeo Question

Archaeology, Built Environment, Military history, , , , , , , , ,

The “Long Wall” – the world’s most famous, most myth-engendering bulwark

China’s most distinctive and enduring icon is the Great Wall of China, it is of course also sui generis as the world’s Great Wall. The Wall, Chángchéng 長城 – or as sometimes described Wan-li Ch’ang-ch’eng 萬里長城 (10,000-mile Long Wall✱), is incontrovertibly one of the wonders of both the ancient and modern worlds. Starting in the west in Gansu Province at Jiayuguan Pass, the wall(s) meander east over mountains and through passes to they reach the sea in the country’s east (a journey of over 21 thousand km). The oldest sections of the Wall date from the Warring States era (circa 214 BCE).

Laolongtou ⍗

Shanhaiguan and ‘Old Dragon’s Head’
If we follow the extravagating course of the wall east from the Badaling section (near Beijing) for about 300 kilometres, we’ll come to Shanhaiguan (literally “mountain – sea – pass”) in Liaoning Province, one of the Great Wall’s major passes (acclaimed as “the first pass under Heaven”). This section continues to Laolongtou (‘Old Dragon’s Head‘⊟), where the wall enters the sea (Gulf of Bohai) and spectacularly and abruptly terminates! The wall at Shanhaiguan and Laolongtou snaking as it does between mountains on one side and water on the other, has been strategically important to the Chinese Empire eastern defences since the 1600s.

Hushan Great Wall

The setting that greets visitors to Laolongtou Wall end-point (Estuary Stone) looks like a most appropriate setting for the eastern terminus of the Great Wall. The reality is however that the Great Wall/s are not a continuous linear structure, they are actually characterised by numerous gaps in the sections…and where the ‘Old Dragon’s Head’ ceases at the sea is one more break in the line, albeit a dramatically evocative one! Before 1989 the conventional wisdom was that Laolongtou was the most easterly point in the Walls, but in that year Chinese archaeologists excavated 600m of a hitherto undiscovered section of the Great Wall 540km east of Laolongtou. The Hushan Wall (extending over a mountain, Hushan or Tiger Mountain) lies just north of China’s eastern border city, Dandong (which eyeballs North Korea just across the Yalu River). In 2009 the Chinese government, based on Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) research, recognised the wall as the most eastern point of the Great Wall (and ie, the end-point). Beijing’s classifying of the wall (so close to the Korean border) as Chinese contradicted the North Korean view that the wall was originally Korean (the Bakjak Fortress) and provoked a hostile North Korean reaction. [‘Hushan Great Wall’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

PostScript: Dandong discovery reignites the Goguryeo controversy
The Dandong wall conflict reignited the controversy over the Goguryeo Kingdom that previously had inflamed tensions between the two countries. Background: the historic Goguryeo Kingdom (1st century BC to 7th century AD) encompassed an area comprising all but the tip of the Korean peninsula and a portion of both Russian and Chinese Manchuria. Both Koreas view the historic Goguryeo Kingdom as having been the ‘proto-Korea’ state. The Chinese perspective (which the Koreas label as revisionism) is that Goguryeo was only ever a vassal state of the ‘Middle Kingdom’, moreover one occupied largely by Tungusic people, an ethnic minority of China. The wall kerfuffle fed into this controversy, stirring up feelings of nationalism on both sides, the fallout being that Sino-Korean relations took a nosedive. Mutual distrust lingers over the matter…fears of irredentist claims on each other’s territory, and for PRC the perennial bogeyman of the spectre of Korean reunification. [‘Goguryeo controversies’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

 

(Source: Man, ‘The Great Wall)

∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸

✱ chéng in Chinese can also mean city or city wall…or more aptly to describe China’s wonder building – walls in the plural, John Man, The Great Wall (2009)

⊟ so-called because the structure’s end part (above the sea) is thought to resemble a dragon (long) resting its head (tou) on the ground

❂ the Chinese media going so far as to tag the kingdom as ‘China’s Goguryeo’ (Zhongguo Gaogouli) [Korea and China’s Clashing Histories’, (Yong Kwon), The Diplomat, 11-Jul-2014, www.thediplomat.com]

Rugby à quinze: The Vichy French Regime’s Game of Choice

Military history, Sport, Sports history, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Vichy emphasis on youth sport (Coll: Mémorial de la Shoah/CDJC)

⇑ Pro rugby


The Nazi-installed, collaborationist Vichy ‘puppet’ regime assumed power in France in 1940—jettisoning the liberté, égalité et fraternité of the democrats and socialists —and adopting in its place the new national motto of travail, famille et patrie (“work, family and fatherland”) as the official philosophy. The new government was quick to focus on sport as a platform for implementing its policies and goals. Taking a leaf from the Corporative State approach of fascist Italy (Carta della sport), Vichy envisaged sport and PhysEd as integral to the “moral education” of the French, an “instrument for constraining and indoctrinating the population in general and youth in particular”. A good illustration of its importance can be seen in the regime’s dissemination of propaganda posters extolling the virtues of physical education (from the start Vichy law made it compulsory for schoolchildren to complete seven hours of PhysEd a week)[1].

The Rugby Wars
The Vichy regime had been in existence for only a matter of months when it banned the sport of rugby league, in France known as rugby à treize, (at the same time taking no action against the amateur rugby code, rugby à quinze). The Vichy French minister for sport, family and youth announced in August 1940 that because rugby league was (according to the government) a ‘corruptor’ of French youth, it would (in his words) simply be “deleted from French sport”. The Vichy regime justified this action by claiming that it wanted to bring an end to professional sport in France, which the regime argued had a deleterious effect on French society and morale, dubiously linking the professionalism of sport to the pathetically feeble and dispirited French military showing in face of the onslaught of the German Nazi war machine. Marshal Pétain and the Vichy leadership associated rugby league with its large working class following in the south with the pre-war Popular Front Socialist government of Leon Blum[2].

Vichy also made efforts to curb professionalism in some other sports, eg, tennis and wrestling were restored to strictly amateur status. The uncompromisingly draconian approach taken to semi-professional rugby league✱ by Vichy however contrasts with its more restrained intervention in the fully professional sports of association football, boxing and cycling (see PostScript for the treatment of football)[3].

f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/image-1.jpg”> FFR: Haut coq[/capt

From two rugby codes one …
In December 1940 Vichy chief of state Pétain decreed that rugby à treize would ‘merge’ with rugby à quinze (the fifteen man-a-side rugby union game). In effect, rather than a merger, the thirteen man code of rugby ceased to exist, its funds (around 900,000 francs), its players, its stadiums, even its playing gear, were all expropriated and given to the Fédération Française de Rugby (FFR). This benevolence in favour of French rugby union was not simply the happenstance of good luck on the FFR’s part. The FFR had been at efforts to establish a cosy relationship with the Vichy regime from its inception and had actively lobbied for the elimination of its rival rugby code. This was facilitated by the regime’s choices of commissioner of sport, men with active links to the FFR: Jean Borotra, a former Wimbledon tennis champion who had extensive connexions with the French rugby establishment, and Colonel Joseph Pascot, a prominent rugby international for France in the 1920s[4]. Before I address why the FFR was hellbent on taking down the French Rugby League, I will outline some background relating to the two codes in the period leading up to the war.

http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/image-2.jpg”> Jeu de Treize[/caption

Varying fortunes of the two rugby codes
Attempts to kick-start rugby à treize as early as 1921-22 with a planned rugby league exhibition match in Paris between the touring Australian Kangaroos and Great Britain’s Lions was vetoed by the influential FFR. In the early 1930s the established sport of rugby à quinze in France experienced a setback at international level. Because of the French national team’s tendency towards violent play and the widely held perception that the FFR was making secret payments to its (amateur) players, France was kicked out of the Five Nations tournament (with the British home countries and Ireland) in 1931. The ostracised FFR responded by setting up its own European competition outside of the IRFB (world rugby board) comprising rugby lesser lights-cum-minnows like Italy, Czechoslovakia and Germany. Rugby à quinze was on the back foot. In 1932 the FFR banned a union international player named Jean Galia who was suspected (albeit with fairly sketchy evidence) of being covertly a professional⊡…Galia went on start up the breakaway code of rugby league in the south-west of France✧, initially called néo rugby by the French. By season 1934-35 there was a 14-team semi-pro domestic comp underway[5].

Through the thirties French rugby league made progress culminating in victory in the European championship in 1938-39 (on route defeating both England and Wales). Rugby à treize’s crowds were growing, it was a hit with many French spectators⊛ who were drawn to its more open, free-flowing and swashbuckling style of game, which seemed to match the French temperament better than the somewhat stop-start rugby union game. In 1939 three of the top rugby union clubs in the country defected to rugby à treize…the FFR were fully aware of the threat posed to its sport by rugby league. At this point the Vichy regime intervened dramatically to salvage rugby à quinze’s and the FFR’s traditional advantage[6].

The game that dare not speak its name!
Eventually, in late 1944, the ban on the Ligue de rugby à treize (French Rugby League) was lifted but three years later the code was split into two bodies: the Fédération française de jeu à treize (governing the amateur RL game) and a Ligue de rugby à XIII (governing the semi-professional game)[7]. Although the sport of rugby league was once again allowed to be played, the League bodies were barred from using the word ‘rugby’ to describe the code, having instead to refer to it as Jeu à Treize (Game of Thirteen). This prohibition lasted remarkably until 1991!

Puig-Aubert, the stuff of legends

World champions: rise and decline
Since its reinstatement rugby league has struggled to establish a foothold in France – despite experiencing some stellar moments in the early to mid 1950s, especially under the leadership of France’s most famous rugby XIII player, the mercurial, cigarette-smoking (during matches!!!) Puig-Aubert[8], Les Chanticleers defeated the powerful Australian side in three consecutive test series. By 1952 having won the European Championships twice and beaten Australia, France could justifiably claim to be unofficial world champs. Despite France’s rugby XIII game reaching this peak rugby à quinze and FFR remains the hegemonic rugby code and body in France, and have by far the lion’s share of coverage in the French media. Today, international results suggest the sport is still in the doldrums, however the rise of the (sole) French club side Catalans Dragons in the English Super League competition, culminating in victory in the 2018 Challenge Cup, (analogous to English football’s FA Cup) is a bright glimmer on the rugby league horizon in France.

PostScript: Vichy’s take on the ‘World Game’
Football (soccer) did not get off entirely unscathed from the pervasive tentacles of the Vichy regime. It was allowed to keep its professional status but it suffered significant modifications. Vichy restructured the French football competition to eliminate or discourage the development of “local derby” rivalries (matches between clubs in the same or neighbouring towns). Professional players were made to take up a second trade and teams were compelled to field four amateur players in games. Matches were reduced from 90 to 80 minutes duration. After the eclipse of Vichy in 1944 things reverted to the old system but the upheaval suffered over the previous four years left French football in a state of flux and chaos for a number of years post-war[9].

Footnote: To this day the FFR (French Rugby) has neither issued an apology to Fédération française de jeu à treize for its role in what happened, nor moved to recompense rugby à treize (French Rugby League) for lost finances and the expropriation of its property and equipment over three-quarters of a century ago.

◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳◰◱◲◳

✱ badminton was also outlawed but in its case because it was deemed by the authorities to be “un-French”!


⊡ FFR’s banning of Galia was intended to show the British rugby authorities that it was serious about cleaning up France’s ‘shamateurism’ [Lichfield]


✧ the south-west was and remains the heartland of rugby à treize – all of the clubs in France’s Elite One competition except one are located there, the exception Avignon is in the south-central/south-east region


⊛ followers and fans of rugby à treize were called treizistes

✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥

[1] Christophe Pécout, Le sport dans la France du gouvernement de Vichy (1940-1944)’, www.hssh.journals.yorku.co; ‘Travail, Famille, Patrie … and Sport’, (Mémorial de la Shaoh Musée), www.sportmemorialdelashaoh.org
[2] Vichy also associated it with Free French leader Charles De Gaulle and naturally enough with the United Kingdom, ‘Badge of dishonour: French rugby’s shameful secret’ (John Lichfield), The Independent, 06-Sept-2007, www.independent.co.uk; ‘Rugby league in France’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org
[3] Lichfield, op.cit.
[4] ‘When Vichy abolished rugby league’, (Mick O’Hare), The New European, 21-Nov-2017, www.theneweuropean.co.uk
[5] Lichfield, op.cit.
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘gentlemen agreement of 10th July 1947’, quoted in ‘Rugby league in France’, op.cit.
[8] the French leadership off the field was provided by Paul Barriere, postwar president of Jeu à Treize who guided French rugby league through the turbulent period and laid the groundwork for the inaugural Rugby League World Cup in France in 1954, ‘Why this trophy for winning the World Cup?’, (Steve Waddingham), Courier and Mail (Qld), 15-Jun-2008, www.couriermail.com.au
[9] ‘Inside History: How Vichy Changed French Football’, (David Gold), Inside Futbol, 06-Feb-2011, www.insidefutbol.com

El Alamein: Wandering through the War Cemeteries and Ossuaries of Egypt’s Western Desert

Military history, Regional History, Travel, , , , , ,

The drive from Alexandria to El Alamein was a pretty tedious affair, the M40 is a dry, dusty, monotonously homogeneous-looking road. On the right we gleaned glimpses of the sea interspersed with long lines of newish looking seaside villas and resorts (many appear unoccupied), which contrasted with a vista of unremitting desert wasteland on the left. One hundred and six kilometres of hum-humdrum tedium in fact!

href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-20.jpg”> Fortress-like German military cemetery, El Alamein[/
When we got to the turnoff for the El Alamein township, we continued straight on the Marsa Matrouh Road to where the military cemeteries of the Axis powers are. Unfortunately, we drove straight past the entrance to the German war cemetery and made for the Italian War Mausoleum (Ai Caduti Italiani)…this was a disappointment for me, had I have had the choice I know which I would have chosen, it would have been fascinating to see the monuments to Rommel the “Desert Fox”, the Afrika Korps, the Wehrmacht and all the Nazi trappings. Apparently we were too constrained time-wise to visit, needing to get back to Alexandria before nightfall…either that or our guide on the El Alamein tour bought entry tickets to just one of these ossuaries and he chose the Italian one! (ummm, would have been nice to have received a heads-up of what the options were).

ref=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-21.jpg”> Italian Military Cemetery, El Alamein[/ca
All that said, it shouldn’t dissuade anyone from a visit to the Italian cemetery, it has its own charms and attractions to recommend it. At the mausoleum entrance there are tangible symbols of the Italian presence in the Western Desert during the World War, an Italian armoured tank coloured-coded to blend in with both the ground and the triple-arched portal. Aesthetically the cemetery grounds are a gorgeous scene – a beautiful orange grove and verdant green garden of rose bushes, desert flowers and palm trees on either side of a stone pathway which lead up steps to a superb mausoleum standing out against the glimmering water backdrop of the Mediterranean. As we walked slowly towards the mausoleum on its raised foundation, it felt like we were the only people within cooee of the Italian site, but it turned out we were not alone…a young Bedouin girl quietly slipped up behind us and softly but animatedly started talking to my wife. There were initial ciaos and prontos followed by a burst of fluent Italian. It took us a couple of minutes to work out what the Bedouin girl wanted as she persisted in her enquiries in Italian, but eventually we twigged – she must have thought we were Italian, perhaps visiting a relative who had been in the war. She was inviting us to take a photo with her at the mausoleum – no doubt in return for some baksheesh! As she just suddenly materialised out of nowhere, I concluded that the girl must spend her days staking herself out under the cover of the rose bushes and orange trees waiting to pounce on unsuspecting, approaching tourists.

f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-22.jpg”> Interior of the Italian ossuary[/capt
Inside the white limestone mausoleum building, a high, narrow tomb, is the final resting place of more than 5,200 Italian soldiers, sailors and airmen positioned, like files in a filing cabinet, one above each other into the walls. My on-the-spot ‘guesstimation” was that up to a quarter of all those interred in the mausoleum bore no name but the singular, poignant and anonymous inscription, ‘incogniti’!

Returning from the Italian mausoleum visit, we stopped briefly at the El Alamein Military Museum. We didn’t venture inside, hanging around only long enough to pick up some lunch and an unscheduled, solo hitchhiker from Israel on his way to Libya! Bakr, our Egyptian guide, clearly uncomfortable at the arrangement, didn’t much like our giving a lift to someone Jewish (and especially an Israeli!), in an aside to me he uttered a warning that he would be trouble. Bakr however insisted that it was my call, as I was the one hiring the transport for the excursion! I didn’t feel that this solitary 65-year-old retired Israeli tourist posed a threat to our liberty or security, so I had no objections to him tagging along with us.

The next stop was the vast Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery (CWGC) which was an even more affecting sight – over 7,300 soldiers and airmen from all corners of the then British Empire✱ are buried in symmetrical formations in the sandy clay (as with the Italian ossuary, around 820 of the dead remain unidentified). The Australian section of graves stretches over a quite sizeable part of the cemetery.

Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery ▼
The memorial building, sand-blond in colour and with lavish arches, is a fitting and respectful tribute to those who fell in the desert campaign. The cost of establishing and maintaining CWGC is met by contributions from the Commonwealth countries whose soldiers took part in that theatre of war, its lawns, groves and gardens are kept in immaculate shape by a dedicated staff of Egyptian groundsmen and gardeners. After the visit to the Commonwealth graves we returned to the war museum where we dropped off the Israeli guy. As we turned the vehicle into the road that took us back to Alexandria he was last seen on the M40 getting into in some fracas with an Egyptian guard over his travel papers.

Footnote: elsewhere at El Alamein, located separately, there are two other, tiny military cemeteries commemorating combatants on different sides who lost their lives in World War II – a Greek war memorial (its portal taking the form of an ancient Greek temple) and cemetery containing the remains of that nation’s soldiers who died in the two battles of El Alamein. There is another ossuary memorial to Libyan troops who fought for Fascist Italy in the campaign. Bakr didn’t mention either of these war cemeteries and I certainly didn’t spot them on our travels.

PostScript: as I wandered off the edges of the Commonwealth Military Cemetery Bakr was quick to remind me that the vast expanses of desert was full of unpleasant surprises in the shape of unexploded land mines. These still ‘live’ explosives, estimated to number many millions all over the Western Desert, were planted during the African campaign in WWII…a strong antidote to curb anyone’s wanderlust urges (even tourists’) if ever there was one!

Ξ‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒‒-‒‒-‒-‒‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-Ξ
✱ a number of the Free French soldiers who fought with the British are also buried in the ground of the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery

Project X-Ray: Bat Raiders over Honshu, America’s Other Secret Weapon in the War against Japan

Military history, Regional History, Science and society, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Carlsbad Caverns, NM.

In December 1941 a Pennsylvanian dentist on holidays in New Mexico, was enjoying exploring the famous caves of Carlsbad Caverns. Dr Lytle S Adams was very impressed by the activity of about a million bats flying around in the dark in the caverns that were their home. He was still vacationing at Carlsbad on the evening of the 7th when news came through about the surprise Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Adams, like every patriotic American was shocked and appalled at the attack, but unlike most every other private citizen, Adams decided, more or less immediately, to actually do something about it.

The small town dentist from Irwin, Pa. devised a plan of action…within one month he submitted a seemingly preposterous proposal to the White House – Adams proposed using bats as flying incendiaries to hit back at Japan in its own cities! An apparently hare-brained notion like this from a suburban dentist could normally be expected to receive short shrift from bureaucrats and military authorities, but Dr Adams had some special connections, he was a friend of the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. This guaranteed Adams’ proposal would get a good official hearing from the Military, and eventually (through a recommendation from leading zoologist Donald Griffin) the approval of President Roosevelt.

The right bat for the operation
Adams reasoned that radar-guided “bat bombs” would wreak havoc when dropped on Japanese cities because the buildings and other structures were made largely of wood, bamboo and paper. The idea you would think, to most reasonable ears, would sound ‘batty’! Adams however can’t be accused of not doing his homework…he researched the subject of bats extensively, eventually selecting the Mexican or Brazilian Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida Brasiliensis), highly prevalent in the southern regions of the US, as the optimal candidate for the task.

Mexican F-tailed Bat-cave, Carlsbad

What made the Mexican bat an attractive choice to Adams and his team of field naturalists (and to the NDRC – National Defense Research Committee) was that it weighed only ⅓ of an ounce, but could carry three-times its weight (one ounce!) Other biological factors in favour of using bats as carriers was that they occurred in large numbers, their proclivity towards hibernation and dormancy meant that they didn’t require food or maintenance, and their capacity to fly in darkness and locate dark, secluded niches to hide in during daylight [‘Bat Bomb Video’, www.wizscience.com].

Destruction by weaponised bats – the theory
The US Military embraced Adams’ idea and developed a strategy to weaponise the bats: attaching micro-incendiary devices to thousands of captured bats…the Pentagon boffins devised canisters (each had compartments housing up to 1,000 hibernating bats) to transport the bats in. B-24 Bombers would release the canisters over Japanese industrial cities initially in the Osaka Bay area of Honshu at 1000 feet. The casings would break apart at high altitude, the now awake bats would scatter and roost in dark recesses of buildings all over the city. The bats, attached to the micro-bombs by surgical clips and some string, would bite through the string and fly off. The time-activated explosives would then cause countless fires to break out all over the targeted city [Anders Clark, ‘NAPALM BATS: the Bat Bomb!’, 3-Mar-2015, Disciplines of Flight, www.disciplesofflight.com].

B-27 Liberator flying over Carlsbad National Park

Bat bomb trial-and-error
The Military labelled the bat bombs Project X-Ray and soon got down to testing Adam’s secret weapon. The first bat test the Army conducted was in May 1943 in California. Several thousand bats collected from New Mexico were induced into hibernation and then dropped from a refrigerated aircraft using dummy bombs. Unfortunately things did not go to plan…many of the bats didn’t wake from their hibernation and merely crash-landed on California soil, while only some of them managed to fly away. The attrition rate for the Army’s test bats was accordingly high. Altogether over the Project’s lifespan around 6,000 bats were used in the Bat Bomb tests (about 3,500 of these were collected from the Carlsbad Caverns) [CV Glines, ‘The Bat Bombers’, Air Force, Oct 1990, 73(10); Clark, op.cit.]

1943: Army Bat Bomb test goes haywire!

The location got changed to an Army auxiliary airfield near Carlsbad (easier access to the seemingly inexhaustible supply of bats from the caverns). Eventually the Army loaded the bats with explosives to trial some live runs. Again the bats performed erratically as glide missile pilots but this time with unintended and negative results…an Army aircraft hangar caught fire, as did a car belonging to an Army general [Clark, op.cit.]. Disillusioned by the reverses, the Army hand-balled the Project on to the Navy and Marine corps.

The Marines and the Japanese Village
The Marine corps in particular took on the renamed “Project X-Ray” with some enthusiasm…after several encouraging tests the test site was moved to the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where a mocked-up Japanese Village had been created in 1943✱. The Dugway tests went better than the earlier ones, according to the testers “a reasonable number of fires” were successfully ignited, and a NDRC observer present commented that “It was concluded that X-Ray is an effective weapon”.

Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah

Tests at the Dugway, Utah, site continued in 1944 with the Marine corps believing that the Bat Bomb Project could be deployed against Japan by mid-1945. The Navy hierarchy however was unhappy at the prospect of a delay of another twelve months-plus and canned the project altogether. The US subsequently focused on bringing the atomic bomb to a state of readiness, and the outcome of those efforts altered the course of both the war and of postwar history.

Dentist-inventor Adams was extremely disappointed when the Military pulled the plug on the project. Adams maintained that what happened with the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been avoided if the US had stuck with his bat-delivered bombings: (would have caused) “thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously … Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life” [‘Top Secret WWII Bat and Bird Bomber Program’, 6-Dec-2006, www.historynet.com].

PostScript: Project Pigeon, BF Skinner’s birds of war
Before the idea of bat-bombing Japan briefly captured the imagination of the US defence establishment, serious consideration had already been given to weaponising pigeons to be used in warfare! The notion was first mooted by influential, pioneering US behavioural psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner in 1939. Skinner believed that the humble feral street pigeon, Columba livia domestica, had the innate attributes (excellent vision and extraordinary manoeuvrability) to be trained to guide glide missiles. The behaviourist utilised his technique of operant conditioning to train the birds by rewarding them for pecking a moving image on a screen which accurately steered the missile they were piloting towards their intended target✫ (and unfortunately also towards their own destruction!)

BF Skinner’s pigeons of war

Skinner got some backing from business and the NDRC for Project Pigeon (as it was called), and he was able to demonstrate success with trained pigeons, however the government/military was never more than at best lukewarm on the Project…ultimately by 1944 the Military abandoned the Pigeon Missile because of concern that its continuation would divert crucial funds away from the “main game”, the construction of an atomic bomb. In 1948 the Navy revived the Project, now renamed Project Orcon but in 1953 it was dumped for good when the superiority of electronic guidance systems was established [Joseph Stromberg, ‘B.F. Skinner’s Pigeon-Guided Rocket’, The Smithsonian, 18-Aug-2011, www.smithsonianmag.com; ‘Project Pigeon’, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon].

Footnote: the US Military’s experiments on bats and pigeons were classified and conducted covertly under a wartime information blackout. They would not of course have been condoned by the American Humane Society (for the welfare of animals) had the organisation known of them.

▦ See also related blog JUNE 2017 on USA/Japan conflict in World War II: Project Fu-Go: Japan’s Pacific War Balloon Counter-Offensive

∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ two mock-up enemy villages were constructed on this same site side-by-side, a Japanese one and a German one
✫ Skinner, also an inventor, devised a nose cone (attached to a explosives warhead) in which up to three pigeons could perch and pilot the missile’s trajectory

End-point of the Great Wall: Shanhaiguan and Laolongtou Great Wall or Hushan / Bakjak Great Wall?

Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Military history, National politics, Regional History, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The world’s most famous bulwark

a href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-3.jpg”> Source: Wiki Commons[
China’s most distinctive and enduring icon is its Great Wall – Chángchéng 長城 – or as it is sometimes described, Wan-li Ch’ang-ch’eng 萬里長城 (10,000-mile Long Wall). The Great Wall is of course a global icon, one of the wonders of both the ancient and modern worlds, extending 21,196.18 km in length from west to east. Sections of the Wall are around 2,300 years old, dating from the Warring States era. The western end of the Wall by consensus is Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu Province (north-central region of China), but where is the eastern end-point?(Source: Lonely Planet)

ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-4.jpg”> Source: Wiki Commons[/cap
Three hundred or so kilometres due east of Beijing is Shanhaiguan (literally “mountain – sea – pass”) in Liaoning Province, one of the Great Wall’s principal passes (popularly acclaimed in China as “the first pass under Heaven”. The Great Wall at Shanhaiguan dates from the 16th century and is 7,138m long with a central fortification, Zhendong Tower, a 4.8k square wall and barbican. The region it defends traditionally has had a strategic importance to China. The section of the Wall here stands between the Yan Mountains and the Gulf of Bohai, its location being easy to hold and hard to mount an assault against made it ideal to repel any invasions from the northern nomadic tribes of Manchuria such as the Khitan, Jurchen and the Manchus. [‘Shanhai Pass’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-5.jpg”> Laolongtou[/caption
‘Old Dragon’s Head’
Five kilometres east of central Shanhaiguan is the what is often commonly thought of as the ultimate stretch of the Great Wall, known as Laolongtou. The wall at Laolongtou (‘Old Dragon’s Head‘✱), built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty, has been a strategic defensive point for much of Chinese imperial history. To the north of Laolongtou Wall is Ninghai City, a (roughly) square fortress. It’s architectural features include Chenghai Pavilion and Jinglu Beacon Tower. The site also contains an archery field and a military-themed museum (uniforms, helmets, a sabre weighing 83 kilos). The far eastern section of the wall is known as Estuary Stone, on either side of the end section are long strips of sandy beach.

Hushan Great Wall

虎山长城; Hǔshānchángchéng
On appearances ‘Old Dragon’s Head’ seems an appropriate point to locate the end of the Wall. Here’s where the eastward march of the Wall finally hits the sea at the Bohai Gulf, enters the water and continues some 22.4 metres and then abruptly ends⊟. Laolongtou seems a poetically apt spot for the long, long wall to end, and it seems logical, right?❂ Few would have disagreed with this before 1989…in that year another section of the Great Wall was unearthed further east and further north of Laolongtou. The wall, which extends over a mountain (Hushan or Tiger Mountain) for about 1,200m, is just north of a Chinese border city, Dandong (bordering North Korea across the Yalu River). In 2009 the Chinese government, based on the research undertaken by CASS, recognised the Hushan wall as the eastern terminus of the Great Wall. [‘Hushan Great Wall’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

Hushan Wall, Dandong (Wikipedia Commons)
Hushan or Bakjak?
The Beijing recognition of the wall earned displeasure in the neighbouring ‘Democratic People’s Republic’. The North Korean authorities claim that the wall was originally a Korean one called Bakjak Fortress which the Chinese renamed Hushan to link it in as part of the historic Chinese Great Wall. Moreover North Korean academics assert that this is part of a broader Chinese agenda, one aimed at extending Chinese cultural hegemony. [‘Goguryeo controversies’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

PostScript: Goguryeo controversy
The North Korean perspective maintains that Beijing’s identification of the Hushan wall as Chinese is a continuation of its practice of undermining the historical sovereignty of Korea’s Goguryeo Kingdom (1st century BC to 7th century AD). The background to this volatile issue lies in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’s (CASS) 2002 revision of the area’s history…CASS’s North East Project concluded that Goguryeo was not an independent state, the ‘proto-Korea’ that the Koreans affirm, it was historically merely a vassal of the ‘Middle Kingdom’. Both Koreas expressed outrage at this, feelings of nationalism were stirred up and Sino-Korean relations took a nosedive. Suspicions on both sides persist…the historic Goguryeo Kingdom encompassed an area comprising the bulk of the Korean peninsula and a portion of both Russian and Chinese Manchuria, so both Korea and China harbour fears that the other may at some point pursue irredentist claims on part of its territory. [‘How an Ancient Kingdom Explains Today’s China-Korea Relations’, (Taylor Washburn) The Atlantic, 15-Apr-2013), www.theatlantic.com].

Historic map of the twin cities Dandong/Sinuiji ≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣
✱ so-called because the end part (above the sea) is thought to resemble a dragon (long) resting its head (tou) on the ground
⊟ from Laolongtou Wall’s end it is about 305km back to Beijing
❂ logical because the wall enters the sea at Bohai and the vast structure can be physically observed to end, but the issue here is that the Great Wall of China is not some unbroken, perpetually contiguous, frontier entity, it is a series of walls (sections) which meander, end then start again, right across the frontier of China

Port Chicago 1944 – A Black and White Situation: The Naval Disaster

Military history, Racial politics, Regional History, Society & Culture, , , , , , , , ,

Progressive advocates and activists for a more just and equal society in the US view the Port Chicago❈ naval disaster and mutiny in July 1944 as a crucible for the cause of civil rights. African-American seamen, the majority still in their teens, revolted against the entrenched discriminatory practices they encountered in the Navy during WWII, and although vilified and punished by White authority at the time, their stand was to be a key factor in the eventual decision to abolish segregation in the US armed forces[1].

Devastation on the PC pier after the explosion

The catalyst for the subsequent ‘mutiny’ (as the Navy and White society generally characterised it – see also the follow up blog) was a catastrophic series of explosions whilst two naval carrier vessels were being loaded at the naval dock with ammunition for transportation to the Pacific theatre of war. The mega-blast killed 320 sailors and civilians (the bulk of the sailors were African-Americans), plus a further 390 personnel were injured❧. It was the worst home front disaster of WWII (the cost included nearly $9.9m worth of damage to dock, ships and buildings). The fireball engulfing the Port could be viewed from miles away, triggering a quake felt as far away as Boulder City, Nevada. Such was the force of the explosion that one 300lb chunk of steel was ‘cannonballed’ a distance of 1.5 miles, landing in the main street of the Port township[2].

The disproportionate toll of African-American enlisted men in the disaster was the result of the Navy assigning them to the most menial, labouring jobs as stevedores, basically “pack mules” loading the munitions. The Navy made casual racist assumptions about their ‘limited’ vocational capacity, despite the fact that at the Navy boot camp the black sailors had each completed specific training for one or other of the naval rating occupations[3].

Navy double standards
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the Navy treated of the two groups of seamen involved markedly differently – the White officers and sailors were given a 30-day “survivor’s leave”, whereas all the Black sailors (despite being severely shaken and traumatised by the incident) were denied the leave – despite it being standard procedure in such instances. This proved a very sore point for the African-Americans at Port Chicago. African-American seamen enlisted in the US Navy, aside from motives of patriotism, for the promise of recognition as full American citizens – a chance to escape the South’s Jim Crow segregation policies or the North’s institutionalised “second citizenship”[4]. Unfortunately what they found, and Port Chicago was no exception to elsewhere in the military, was that they were still segregated and marginalised, despite the fact they were serving in the defence of their country.

Adding insult to injury: Compensation for African-American victims watered down
That the loss of Black lives in the Port Chicago catastrophe was of diminished importance in American society at the time was even more starkly underlined in the subject of restitution. The Navy asked for $5,000 to be paid to each of the families of the 203 dead African-American sailors. Extraordinarily, after a vigorous and forthright protest from Mississippi Democrat representative, John Rankin (a White Supremacist sympathiser) that the sum be reduced to $2,000, Congress caved in to his pressure and awarded the families $3,000 each[5] … a brazenly unequivocal acknowledgement from the authorities that Black lives in America at the time were not worth as much as White ones!

The Naval Board of Inquiry
The Inquiry into the explosion would give the surviving Black seamen (and the victims’ families) more cause for grievance. The report never established the cause of the disaster❖, but implied that an error by the enlisted men may have led to the explosions. As for the white officers and the base commander, they were all absolved of any blame for what happened[6]. The Naval Board effectively ‘white-washed’ the whole episode, choosing not to cast a critical eye over the glaring pre-conditions that contributed to the disaster. Both training and safety was lax at Port Chicago Naval Magazine. Deeply significantly, the Black assigned stevedores were not given instruction in ammunition loading. Training deficiencies were in fact common at Port Chicago – the White loading officers themselves had only minimal training in supervising enlisted personnel and in handling munitions. As well, the Port’s commander Captain Merrill Kinne himself had no training in the loading of munitions and very little experience in handling them[7].

Diagram of pier & the two cargo carriers prior to the explosion

Sowing the seeds of catastrophe
Safety requirements were not observed and unsafe practices abounded: there was a complacency about the maintenance of key operational equipment; safety regulations were not widely distributed for the staff to familiarise themselves with. The practice at Port Chicago was to force the stevedores, working around-the-clock, to load the explosive cargos[8] at a pace that would imperil safety – the rate was set at 10 short tons per hatch every hour (higher than commercial stevedores✾). Facility commander Kinne encouraged a climate of competitiveness between the different crews (which they called ‘divisions’) by keeping a tally of each crew’s hourly tonnage on a chalkboard … leading to the junior officers surreptitiously laying bets on which crew would win the “speed loading contests”[9].

PostScript: Was the explosion a nuclear detonation?
In the early 1980s investigative journalist Peter Vogel postulated the hypothesis that the explosion at Port Chicago was likely to have been a nuclear one. Vogel noted the continued secrecy surrounding the naval base site and pointed to the specific characteristics of the fireball (as described by eyewitness accounts) – a “brilliant flash of white” and the mushrooming effect of the explosion’s dispersion (ie, a Wilson condensation cloud). Vogel also asserted that the force of the actual blast was greater than the reported 1,780 tons of high explosives on board the two Liberty carriers (E.A. Bryan and Quinault)[10].

Whilst Vogel’s theory would hold obvious appeal for conspiracy theorists, it has been not gained traction among historians. Its detractors, especially nuclear historians Badash and Hewlett, point to Vogel’s lack of hard evidence to support his claim, and his inability to explain why the US Government would want to detonate a nuclear device on populated home soil. Badash and Hewlett have noted in particular the absence of any residual radioactivity and resultant harm to the local community – which suggests that only conventional weaponry was involved[11].

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❈ the town of Port Chicago, now called Concord, is located about 30 miles north of San Francisco on the Sacramento River
❧ toll for Black Navy servicemen: 203 dead, 233 injured – representing 15% of all African-American casualties for the entire war
❖ it was a bad time for the Navy, PR wise. Just two months prior to the Port Chicago disaster, another calamitous explosion at West Loch (Pearl Harbour) resulted in the death of 163 seamen and hundreds injured … and like Port Chicago the disaster remained unexplained
✾ the quota set on the main base at Mare Island for instance was only 8.7

௳௳௳ ௳௳௳. ௳௳௳

[1] President Truman’s 1948 Executive Order officially desegregating the American armed forced, United States of America Congressional Record (106th Congress), Vol 146-Part 4 (April 3, 2000 to April 25, 2000)
[2] 430 miles to the south, ‘Port Chicago Mutiny (1944)’, ; ‘Port Chicago disaster’, Wikipedia, http://Wikipedia.en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘A Chronology of African American Military Service. From WWI through WWII.’ (U.S. Army, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. History), www.redstone.army.mil/history/integrate/chron36.htm
[3] RL Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in U.S. Naval History, (1989)
[4] ibid.
[5] M Moorehead, ‘The Port a Chicago Mutiny’, (Workers World), Feb 1995, www.hartford-hwp.com
[6] Allen, op.cit.
[7] ibid.
[8] The White officers used wilful deception to gain acquiescence, lying to the Black loaders as to the inherent dangers of the work – telling them the ammunition was not live which was catastrophically wrong, I Thompson, ‘Mare Island mutiny court-martial changed Navy racial policies, Daily Republic (Solano County), 23-Feb-2014, www.dailyrepublic.com
[9] Allen, loc.cit.
[10] Vogel, P (1982). THE LAST WAVE FROM PORT CHICAGO. The Black Scholar, 13(2/3), 30-47. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41066881
[11] L Badash & RG Hewlett, cited in ‘Port Chicago disaster’, Wikipedia, op.cit.

Port Chicago 1944 – A Black and White Situation: The Naval Mutiny and its Ramifications

Military history, Racial politics, Retailing history, Society & Culture, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
San Francisco Bay

On 17th July 1944 a catastrophically massive explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California resulted in the loss of 320 lives, the majority African-American sailors. Less than four weeks after the worst wartime disaster on American home soil, the Navy, without regard for the sensitivity of the situation, instructed the surviving Black sailors to resume loading munitions onto the USS Sangay standing at the dock. 258 of them refused, contending that the conditions at the dock being still unsafe, and commenced a work stoppage. Threatened with court-martial (and a possible death penalty) 208 of the sailors eventually backed down. The navy authorities subsequently took punitive measures against these seamen (forfeiture of pay, pension entitlements curtailed) and they were eventually returned to service elsewhere[1].

The remaining 50 were charged by the Navy with mutiny. The defence counsel and the African-American men themselves denied this charge all through the proceedings, arguing that at no time were they attempting to seize control from the frontline commanders or overthrow the authority of the Navy (as argued by the prosecution team), but were refusing to work in what was clearly an unsafe environment, a protest against their being used as “guinea pigs”[2]. As Robert Allen explained, the mutiny charge was levelled against the defendants because the rightful description of what they were doing, striking against deleterious working conditions, only applied to the civilian sphere[3].

The trial of the “Port Chicago 50”
A court-martial was arraigned to be held on the Navy’s administrative facility at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The conduct of the trial was a travesty of equality before the law for the African-American servicemen involved … the accused black sailors were ridiculed as ‘primitive’ in their intellectual abilities, and “unreliable, emotional, lack(ing) capacity to understand or remember orders or instructions” (as the official ‘Finding of Facts’ stated[4]. The court hearings disintegrated into a shambles at times, eg, the judge fell asleep during the testimonies. After a six-week trial and a deliberation of only 60 minutes, a verdict was reached with unseemly haste – all 50 of the accused were found guilty of mutiny. The 50 convicted seamen were sentenced to between eight and 15 years imprisonment with hard labour as well as being on the receiving end of dishonourable discharges from the Navy[5].

Treasure Island court-martial site

One keen observer who attended the day-to-day court proceedings was NAACP❈’s Thurgood Marshall (later to become the first African-American judge on the US Supreme Court). Marshall was publicly critical of the trial, announcing: “This is not 50 men on trial for mutiny. This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy towards Negros. Negroes in the Navy don’t mind loading ammunition. They just want to know why they are the only ones doing the loading!”[6]. In 1945 the NAACP produced a pamphlet entitled ‘Mutiny? The Real Story of How the Navy Branded 50 Fear-shocked Sailors as Mutineers’. Marshall and the NAACP focussed the issue very squarely on the racial dimension … the treatment of the convicted men was symptomatic of a broader pattern of discrimination by the Navy against African-Americans – by mid-1943 there were 100,000 Black men serving in the Navy, but not a single Black officer among them[7]. Marshall organised an appeal on behalf of the 50 prisoners, however in June 1945 the original verdict was reaffirmed by the naval authorities.

Aftermath and consequences of the mutiny trial
The Port Chicago mutiny had an immediate punitive outcome for the 50 Black sailors who were prosecuted, but in the long run it was a Pyrrhic victory for scientific (sic) racists and White supremacists (covert and overt) both inside and outside the military. The whole episode served in the long run to raise national consciousness about practices of racial discrimination within the US military forces. And it was to prove a catalyst and inspiration for the postwar Civil Rights movement[8]. For the Navy the ramifications of Port Chicago made itself felt in short time. By the end of the World War the Navy had, in piecemeal fashion, initiated its own reforms of discriminatory practices, anticipating President Truman’s official decreeing of desegregation of the American armed forces – which did not come into law until 1948. With the world war over the Navy found it untenable to justify the continuing incarceration of the Port Chicago 50 … in January 1946 all of the men were released and assigned to other details overseas. Significantly though, none received pardons for their ‘crimes’, the convictions remained on the books[9].

A dangerous job – for White servicemen!

The Port Chicago episode – a closed book reopened?
As Erika Doss has noted, “for decades the full story of the Port Chicago disaster of July 1944 was declared “classified” information and rendered virtually absent from historical narratives of the “good war”, as patriotic Americans like to call WWII[10]. The egregious treatment of African-American seamen remained an inconvenient chapter in America’s war history, one best forgotten (Port Chicago’s subsequent name change seems intended to support this objective of burying the thorny facts of the episode).

By the 1990s the whole shameful business had started to become more openly addressed … in 1994 a memorial to the Port Chicago 50 was created on the former base’s site. But in the same year these good intentions were turned on their head by a fresh Navy inquiry which found (unbelievably) that “race was not a factor” in the 1944 court case – a finding that would not be out-of-place in the annals of the “Flat Earth Society”!

Port Chicago Naval Magazine

(Photo: National Park Service)

A number of the convicted African-Americans then still alive agitated for a just resolution, a reversal of the wrongs perpetrated against them. One of “the 50”, Freddie Meeks was talked into requesting a pardon which was finally granted in 1999 by President Clinton[11]. However five others including Joe Small refused to request the same, steadfastly insisting that as they had committed no criminal act, they was no question of seeking a pardon.

PostScript: High hopes for justice with Obama
The continued denial of justice for the Port Chicago 50 led it to become a cause célèbre in the US. This remains the case in 2017 despite the fact that all of the convicted African-American sailors are now dead. Their relatives were among those calling on the Black president, Barack Obama, to exonerate “the 50” and overturn their verdicts. Disappointingly, Obama’s outgoing powers of presidential pardon, recently enacted, did not include any of the Port Chicago 50 in its number – though this was more to do with the Obama administration’s inability to find a legal mechanism to make this a reality, rather than any lack of will on the part of the president[12].

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❈ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

⦽ ⦽ ⦽ ⦽ ⦽

[1] ‘Port Chicago mutiny’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[2] Joe Small, one of the survivors of the disaster and labelled as a ‘ringleader’ by the Navy, summed up the position taken by the 50 defendants,
“(we) weren’t trying to shirk work. But to go back to work under the same conditions, with no improvements, no change, the same group of officers…we thought there was a better alternative”, E Doss, “Commemorating the Port Chicago Naval Magazine Disaster of 1944: Remembering the Racial Injustices of the ‘Good War’ in Contemporary America’, American Studies Journal, Number 59 (2015), www.asjournal.org
[3] B Bergman, “War, ‘mutiny’ and civil rights: Remembering Port Chicago”, Berkeley News, 10-Jul-2014, www.berkeley.edu
[4] A Gustafson, ‘The Port Chicago Disaster: Race and the Navy in World War II’, (Turnstile Tours), 29-Aug-2014, www.turnstiletours.com
[5] Bergman, loc.cit.
[6] Marshall, quoted in NA Hamilton, ‘Rebels and Renegades: A Chronology of Social and Political Dissent in the United States’, (2002)
[7] Doss, loc.cit.
[8] ibid.
[9] US Secretary of the Navy James V Forrestal and Admiral Ernest King, working together, were instrumental in getting the wheels of integration in the Navy going forward, S Sundin, ‘Port Chicago – Desegregation of the US Navy’, (Sarah’s Blog), 28-Jul-2014, www.sarahsundin.com
[10] Doss, op.cit.
[11] C Nolte, ‘Clinton Pardons Wartime ‘Mutineer’ / Port Chicago black sailor of 50 in infamous case’, (SFGate), 24-Dec-1999, wwwsfgate.com
[12] ‘Full list: Obama pardons these 78 people, shortens 153 prisoners’ sentences’, (Pix 11), 19-Dec-2016, www.pix11.com

Project Fu-Go: Japan’s Pacific War Balloon Counter-Offensive

Military history, Regional History, , , , , , , , ,

IN the latter stages of the Second World War, Japan, under pressure from American and Allied bombing raids on its territory, devised a novel fight-back strategy against the invaders. The strategy devised by the Japanese military high command, was certainly an unorthodox one and one signifying the increasingly desperate position of Imperial Japan in the global war.

By the second half of 1944 the Japanese military situation was unravelling fast…serious Japanese army and navy reversals in the Pacific theatre, Japan had lost its aircraft carriers, the earlier submarine raids in California and Oregon had been largely ineffective, and morale at home among the Japanese citizenry was flagging[1]. As the tide of the Pacific War was turning against Japan, the US targeted key cities of the Japanese home islands – from June 1944 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945 America unleashed a systematic, strategic bombing campaign (from bases in China and Micronesia) with long-range B-29 bombers causing extensive damage and destruction in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and Kobe, as well as a host of smaller cities❈.

The Japan military command in response devised a plan, the result of Project Fu-Go – to attack North America using hydrogen gas balloons, fūsen bakudan (literally “balloon bomb”). These “fire balloons” had incendiary bomb devices attached to them, and the idea was to release them from Japan, using the jet stream to carry them the 5,000km across the Pacific Ocean and destroy towns, farmland and forests in the US and Canada[1]. The mechanism constructed was a deceptively simple but clever device to “automate the flight and release the explosives” at a given point and altitude[2].

Japanese scientists had conducted atmospheric experiments from western Japan to eastern Japan, charting the pattern of late autumn/winter jet streams. The tests revealed a particularly strong air current in the Pacific at 30,000 feet✠. The first balloon weapons were released in November 1944 (at the same time that American B-29 missions started taking a more devastating toll on the Japanese homeland). The fire balloon journey took between 30 and 60 hours to reach the west coast of North America, however it has been estimated that about only one in nine of the balloons made it to America (an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched from Japan)[3]. But the number that made the journey is very imprecise…US researchers after the war discovered or accounted for at least 342. It is believed that many more landed on the American mainland but they have not been detected yet owing to being located in remote, unpopulated parts of the country[4]. This is even more likely to be the case in the much sparser populated western Canada.

The first sightings of the strange hydrogen balloons on the American west coast were puzzling to the locals. Their origin was also a puzzle for the authorities until US geologists made tests of the sand recovered from the ballast bags which traced it back to Japan and the beaches of Honshu. Many Americans were still doubtful that the balloons had floated all the way from Japan, speculating that they had been transported by Japanese submarines and secretly unleashed on the North American west coast[5].

The American response to Fu-Go
The seemingly capricious nature (and innocuous appearance) of the fire balloons, to the American authorities, might not initially have seemed to pose much of a danger. Washington (DC) however did take it seriously…there was concern about the possibility of forest fires breaking out in the western regions of Canada and the US¤, and especially worrying to the US was the prospect of the Fu-Gos carrying biological weapons (which it knew the Japanese had been trying to develop)[6].

Once the source of the balloon weapons was established, the US government through its newly formed Office of Censorship put a watertight security blanket around the incidents. This starved the Japanese military of vital intelligence on the results of the balloon offensive, so Tokyo had no idea of whether the attacks were successful or not. US fighter pilots were engaged to intercept the incoming balloons but the results were at best marginal (one score only of the Fu-Gos were shot down)[7].

Klamath Falls, Fu-Go fatality site

⁂

The only known WWII fatalities occurring on contiguous US territory
The information blackout on the Japanese balloon attacks also extended to American civilians…this was to have a solitary tragic consequence late in the war. In May 1945 a picnicking group of adults and Sunday school children discovered one of the grounded fire balloons in countryside near Bly in southern Oregon. Their curiosity about the strange balloon led them to pick up the still live weapon…as a result a pastor’s wife Elsie Mitchell, her unborn child and five children aged 11 to 14 died instantly from a huge explosion. The seven unlucky victims were the only known American civilians killed by enemy action in the course of the war following Pearl Harbour[8]. After the fatal incident the Office of Censorship issued a public alert about the fire balloons, warning citizens to stay clear of them.
Heavily forested Southern Oregon countryside
⁂

The Bly incident was the solitary lethal attack on sovereign soil of the US mainland in the course of the World War. The only other damage from the Japanese fire bombs was to property…one Fu-Go incendiary struck a nuclear weapons plant in Hanford (Washington state), temporarily blacking out the plant which was manufacturing plutonium for use in the August 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Japan which ended the war.

Cessation of the fire balloon attacks
The uncertainty of not knowing how effective the balloon weapons were, did not inhibit the Japanese military from trying to exact propaganda value from the situation. News bulletins emanating from Tokyo broadcast a steady supply of “fake news” (as much for domestic consumption to boost morale)…announcements proclaimed that the floating incendiaries had claimed 10,000 US casualties, that the attacks had resulted in general alarm within the American population…they also issued a threat that Japanese troops were about to invade North America[9].

In April 1945 the Allied forces succeeded in blowing up two of Japan’s main hydrogen plants…this resulted in a scarcity in the ingredient needed for the fire balloons. This blow to the production of balloon weaponry, added to a growing realisation by the Japanese commanders that the attacks has not been a success relative to the resources expended, sealed the fate of the Fu-Go program[10].

PostScript 1: A balloon-scattered continential landscape
American Air Force writer Robert Mikesh described the Japanese fire balloons campaign as the “world’s first intercontinental weapons delivery system“. In six months in 1944-45 thousands of fire balloons were dispersed across the eastern Pacific and parts of North America. For most of the projectiles their fate was a watery grave but in the 70 plus years since the end of WWII the remnants of Fu-Gos have been found, strewn across the continent – as far east as Michigan and the Great Lakes, as far south as Mexico, and as far north as Alaska and Yukon.

PostScript 2: Canada’s fire balloon fields
Some of the balloon bombs were found in disparate locations like Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands, and one in British Columbia as recently as 2014. Canada in fact was as equally susceptible as the US to the latent dangers of the fire balloon attacks, much of the western coast and all of the northern part of the country comprises dry, forested land. At least 57 Fu-Gos were discovered across the Canadian west during those six months of the campaign (in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC). From the recollections of some Canadians who experienced close encounters with unexploded balloons, it is somewhat of a miracle that there were not more fatalities of the balloon weapons that the seven in Oregon[11].

Fu-Go landing sites
(Source: National Geographic) Two of the fire balloons actually drifted back westward & landed on Honshu island!

▦ See also related blog, MAY 2018 on USA/Japan conflict in World War II: Project X-Ray: Bat Raiders over Honshu, America’s Other Secret Weapon in the War against Japan

⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯
❈ the first US air raid on Japan had been in April 1942 – known as the Doolittle Raid – an isolated strike on Tokyo (primarily) intended as retaliation for Pearl Harbour four months earlier, and to probe Japan’s vulnerability to air attack
✠ this was the discovery of one particular Japanese meteorologist in the 1920s – Wasaburo Oishi
¤ a chilling recent echo of this was al-Qaida’s 2012 online urging of jihadists to plant “ember bombs” in American forests (Carroll 2014)

💣 💣 💣

[1] R Carroll, ‘How Japan’s fire balloons took the Second World War to America’s soil’, The Guardian, 31-Oct-2014, www.theguardian.com
[2] S Lehman, Japan’s Secret WWII Weapon: Exploding Balloons’, Gizmodo, 13-May-2014, www.gizmodo.com.au
[3] its purpose hoped to provide an inexpensive way to shift the war’s focus onto sovereign American territory, ‘Fire balloon’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[4] J Rizzo, ‘Japan’s Secret WWII Weapon: Balloon Bombs’, National Geographic, 27-May-2013, www.nationalgeographic.com
[5] RC Mikesh, ‘Japan’s World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America’, Smithsonian Annals of Flight, no 9 (1973), www.sil.si.edu; ‘Fire balloon, op.cit.
[6] Rizzo, loc.cit.
[7] Lehman, loc.cit.
[8] ibid.; Rizzo, loc.cit.
[9] ‘Six killed in Oregon by Japanese bomb’, (‘This Day in History’, 1945), www.history.com. Seven in fact died including Mrs Mitchell’s unborn child
[10] Mikesh, op.cit.
[11] For instance one Saskatchewan youngster in 1945 accidentally stepped on a collapsed fire balloon which failed to detonate, S Brace, ‘Japanese bombs landed in Saskatchewan 71 years ago’, (Saskat News), 11-Feb-2016, www.cba.ca

The Hawkesbury – A Not So Close Encounter with Napoleonic France

Local history, Military history, , , , , , , , ,
Hawkesbury R. at Windsor
Hawkesbury R. at Windsor

Windsor, 63 kilometres north-west of Sydney and nestling on the southern side of the winding Hawkesbury River, is one of the most historic towns of Australia’s European settlement. The first white settlers moved into Windsor in the early 1790’s giving it the name Green Hills, although it wasn’t until Lachlan Macquarie’s governorship (commencing in early 1810) that the town and environs of Green Hills (by now renamed ‘Windsor’) started to get a kick-along, progress-wise.

Plaque honouring site of Macquarie’s Govt House at Windsor

The Riverview Shopping Centre in George Street (Windsor’s high street), constructed in 2006, offers up its own acknowledgement of the suburb’s rich historical story. On the centre’s marble effect floor, positioned at regular points, there is an historical timeline, a series of banner inscriptions which identify certain events or milestones in the history of the Hawkesbury district.

Among the little snippets of local historical interest is a reference to Windsor’s own notorious colonial bushranger, George Armstrong. Armstrong – labelled “the terror of the Windsor district” – briefly threatened the safety and well-being of the township’s citizens in 1837[1] (an interesting side-note to this is that nearby Wilberforce – just across the river – was the birthplace of a far more celebrated Australian bushranger, Fred Ward, better known as Captain Thunderbolt).

However it was another historic headline on the centre floor that caught my eye – the banner read “1814 ~ Report given to Governor Macquarie of planned invasion of the Hawkesbury by Napoleon”. I was not previously aware of any reference to a supposed connection between Napoléon and Sydney’s Windsor district, and found the notion an intriguing one.

Gov. Macquarie in Thompson Square
“http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/image-8.jpg”> Gov. Macquarie in Thompson Square[/captio
At the time the Napoleonic Wars were at their height with Britain and its allies moving towards the ultimate showdown with France at Waterloo in 1815. The official who alerted Macquarie to the French danger was Earl Bathurst, Secretary of War and Colonies (Bathurst to Macquarie: 1813 correspondence). Bathurst’s letter warned of the possibility of French attack on the colony, most likely to originate by sea from Broken Bay, down the Hawkesbury River … the target was thought to be Windsor’s granary (Sydney’s “food bowl”), to cut off its supply to Sydney Town[2]. In response, Macquarie, already preoccupied with the task of making Windsor more secure, stepped up the strengthening of the military garrison and boosted the population of free men (including emancipists) in the district.

British intelligence about a planned invasion of the Sydney colony has its genesis in the period’s French maritime expeditions in the South Pacifc, particularly that of Nicolas Baudin in 1802 and 1803. Baudin’s scientific expedition visited Port Jackson in 1802 and it was the activities (and subsequent written record) of the expedition’s naturalist, François Péron, which provided the blueprint for supposed French intentions in New Holland. Whilst there, Péron, under the guise of his scientific activities, engaged in a “freelance spying” exercise[3], collecting information on the nature and defence capacity of the colony. Péron wrote down his observations in a secret report (entitled Mémoire sur les établissements anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande).

Monsieur Péron

Péron claimed to be a government agent and that the expedition’s real purpose was a political mission. The zoologist-cum-spy recommended that France attack the fledgling British colony in New Holland, speculating that the act would incite an Irish rebellion against the colony’s English overlords and elicit resistance from the indigenous population as well. The military strategy advanced by Péron also called for a takeover of the south of Tasmania. The assault on Sydney via the Hawkesbury was one of three invasion routes proposed by Péron[4].

Although Péron’s viewpoint was widely discredited at the time, his memoir has recently been translated into English (from the original) and new research on the subject at Adelaide University (UoA) has thrown up fresh evidence to support the contention of Péron that Napoléon was seriously considering such an attack. Peron’s report (and the reactions to it) demonstrates that Port Jackson/NSW was perceived as a strategic location by both Britain and its enemies. The related UOA research unearthed further evidence that the British South Pacific outpost held a strategic necessity that went beyond the mere penal colony that was stated to be Sydney’s raison d’être[5].

Isle de France 🇫🇷

The perspective of the Sydney colony proffered by Péron (and Napoléon’s later acknowledgement of his views) underscore the displeasure with which the French viewed Britain’s decision to unilaterally annex this great, southern land without consulting other European powers. The new British colony was also seen as posing a potential threat to France’s Indian Ocean island possessions, especially to the French naval base in the Isle de France (Mauritius and its dependent territories)[6].

The British colonialists in Australia did recognise and respond to the threat from France at some level. Concern over French incursions into Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) was intensified by the contemporary activity of French explorers (separate ‘scientific’ expeditions by d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Freycinet in the south) – and prompted His Majesty’s government to occupy the south of Tasmania and plant the “Union Jack” on King Island (in the Bass Strait) in fear of French designs on this part of the continent[7].

Bathurst’s “hush-hush” letter to Macquarie (based on information supplied by agents friendly to Britain) also raised the prospect of a joint naval attack by both France and the United States[8]. The plan was for the combined fleet to assemble at Two Fold Bay (Eden, NSW) and then proceed up the Pacific Coast and launch an attack on Sydney from the north (Hawkesbury River). Napoléon’s disastrous Russian campaign and the reverses suffered by the US early in the War of 1812 meant that the plan was never put into practice[9], but the episode served to underline how strategically important the remote, western Pacific colony was for Britain imperial ambitions.

₪┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅₪
[1] ‘The Notorious Bushranger George Armstrong’, Hawkesbury Historical Society, (10-Feb 2016), www.hawkesburyhistoricalsocietyblogspot.com.au
[2] ‘Windsor, New South Wales’, (Wiki), http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] described by some as an “amateur espionage project”, N Rothwell, ‘Francois Peron’s French lessons in the colonisation of Australia’, The Australian, 05-Apr 2014
[4] M Connor, ‘The secret plan to invade Sydney’, Quadrant Magazine, 01-Nov 2009, www.quadrant.org.au; ‘Napoleon’s Intention to Capture Thompson Square’, (The Battle for Windsor Bridge – Personal Stories), www.rahs.org.au
[5] R Brice, ‘Sacré bleu! French invasion plan for Sydney’, (ABC News, 11-Dec 2012), www.abc.net.au
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘Battle for Windsor Bridge’, op.cit.
[8] At the time (1813), both France and the US were engaged in (distinct but related) wars with Britain, whose navy was blockading the fleets of both countries. Attacking the important colony of Port Jackson made tactical sense to divert the British fleet away from US and French ports, ibid.
[9] ibid.

‘Fortress’ Sydney – a Colonial Paradigm of Feeble Fortifications

Local history, Military history, , , , ,

The founding of the British colony in Port Jackson in 1788, isolated from the mother country some ten-and-a-half thousand miles away, brought with it many anxieties for the new settlers. With French, Spanish, Dutch and Russian empires all vying with Britain for global supremacy, the security of Sydney was very much on the minds of Governor Phillip and his gubernatorial successors. Right from the get-go measures were put in place to shore up the vulnerable colony’s defences, both against potential external threats and internal rebellion. How secure and how effective these efforts were, we shall examine below.

What's left of the Dawes Pt battery, these days with a pretty sizeable awning!

⇧ What’s left of the Dawes Pt battery, towering above which these days is a pretty sizeable awning!

1790: “No frills” fortifications

In 1790 a battery was located in Sydney on a rocky bluff jutting out into the harbour on what was to become known as Dawes Point. The Dawes Point fortifications were chosen to be the first line of defence against enemy invaders because of its propitious location – a high, narrow, peninsula offering an excellent views straight out onto the harbour✱. Also, being very close to the main settlement at Sydney Cove, news of any sign of impending danger or threat could be quickly relayed to the townspeople. A battery was also installed on Windmill Hill (now Observatory Hill) in 1794. Ten years later work commenced on the construction of Fort Phillip on the same site, the fort was intended to be a citadel in the event of convict insurrection, however it was never completed. In the 1850s most of the fortified structure got dismantled to make way for the building of the Sydney Observatory¹.

Over the course of the first seventy years or so of settlement in Sydney the security focus gradually shifted from concentrating on the inner harbour (Dawes Point and Sydney Cove) to defending the Heads and Botany Bay. In 1801 the first gun emplacements were built in Middle Head (north of Obelisk Bay) as a response to the growing threat to Britain of France under Napoleon (in the 20th century these fortifications were overgrown by vegetation and more or less forgotten until rediscovered in the 1990s)².

Outmoded artillery on Windmill Hill
⇧ Outmoded artillery on ‘Windmill Hill‘

The threat to New South Wales, so distant from the European theatres of the Napoleonic Wars, probably seems a remote one when seen through modern eyes, but it was taken seriously at the time. Sydney was perceived as a desirable prize because of several factors – it had a strategically important harbour, the envy of navies all over the world; there was only a small population in place to defend the settlement; and later on it had huge quantities of gold bullion acquired from the goldfields³.

It seems that the adequacy of the fortifications was being called into question constantly throughout the 19th century. Criticism from prominent citizens of the colony was common (the embrasures ineffective, fragility of the fortification as a whole, etc). One of the points made by Commissioner Bigge’s Report into the colony (1820) was that in the event of another conflict between Britain and the USA (following upon the recent War of 1812) Britain’s colonies, especially New South Wales, would be very susceptible to seizure by the US⁴. In addition, the prevalence of American whaling fleets in the South Pacific made many in the colony fearful of raids on Sydney Town by Yankee privateers.

Francis Greenway was the architect commissioned to strengthen the principal fort at Dawes Point in 1819, having described (with some exaggeration) the battery’s prior state as “perfectly useless … so that any speculator of any of the nations we were at war with, might have entered our harbour, destroyed our infant town, blowed up the stores, and left us in a woeful condition⁵. Greenway was also responsible for the construction of Fort Macquarie on the tip of Bennelong Point (smack-bang where the Sydney Opera House is today!).

The strengthening of Sydney’s defences have often occurred as a reaction to security scares in the colony. The decision in 1841 to convert a convict hold in the middle of the harbour (Pinchgut Island) into Fort Denison came about after two American warships were discovered having anchored themselves in the harbour without being detected. The fortifications of Fort Denison were in any case far from swiftly constructed, not being finished until 1857, by which time the perceived external threat had shifted to Russia after the Crimean War.

South Head was fortified in the 1840s – though not equipped with artillery until the 1870s! Possessing an ideal vantage point to view vessels approaching the harbour, it was also used as a lookout and a signal station. Today a naval base, HMAS Watson, is housed on the land it occupied⁶.

Not all plans for the reform of Sydney’s coastal defences got acted on. In 1848 Lt-Colonel James Gordon proposed a definitive, systematic plan to upgrade and improve both the inner (harbour) fortifications and the outer (heads) fortifications. Gordon’s plans only ever got partially implemented by the colonial authorities who were content to “cherry-pick” what they liked⁷.

Upper Georges Heights battery
⇧ Upper Georges Heights battery

Following the Crimean War conflict, a fear that the Russian Pacific Fleet might invade the colony prompted an upgrade in defence facilities. Some fortifications were added to Bradleys Head and South Head, although nothing much really happened until Britain’s Cardwell Army Reforms came into effect (1870). One consequence was that British ‘redcoats’ were withdrawn from Australia and the colony was required to raise local units to protect itself. This proved a spur to the authorities in Sydney to construct new fortifications further north-east in Port Jackson, around Mosman. Gun emplacements were built at Middle Head, Georges Head, Bradleys Head and Lower Georges Heights.

British fears that Tsarist Russia might try to extend its empire into India via Afghanistan led to a wave of ‘Russophobia’in the 1870s and 80s8, which spread eventually to the NSW colony. Already, in 1863 a Russian corvette (the Bogatyr) had visited Sydney and Melbourne, prompting the Sydney Morning Herald to allege that it was secretly conducting topographical surveys of Port Jackson and Botany Bay to ascertain the strength of the settlement’s fortifications⁹.

Bare Island - decent sort of target!
⇧ Bare Island – a decent sort of target!

The Sydney authorities, fearing an attack from the Russian Navy and sensing that Sydney was vulnerable to an attack from its southern “back door”, built a fort in 1888 at Bare Island off La Perouse⊕ at the entrance to Botany Bay. The edifice unfortunately was composed of poor quality materials and began to crumble before completion. The islet fort was decommissioned in 1902 due in part to the state of its armaments. Though heavily-gunned its technology had quickly become outdated. The Russian Pacific Fleet never came to Bare Island but these days scuba divers flock to it as its waters are a prized diving site¹⁰.

The Jervois-Stratchley Reports (defence capability reviews) of the late 1870s emphasised the military importance of sea-ports and this led to a new phase of fort construction in Sydney and elsewhere in the Australasian colonies, eg, Bare Island, Fort Nepean (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), Fort Lytton (Brisbane) and the eponymous Fort Scratchley in Newcastle. The fortifications designed by Lieutenant Scratchley, eg, Bare Island, the 1890s cliff-top forts manned with large, anti-bombardment guns around Sydney’s eastern seaboard to protect the suburbs of Vaucluse (Signal Hill Fort), Bondi (Ben Buckler) and Clovelly/Coogee (Shark Point), were outmoded and already basically obsolete when completed¹¹.

The development of Sydney’s coastal defences has followed an irregular course since 1788. Its decidedly desultory and piecemeal trajectory can be attributed to a number of factors, principal among which is cost. Funding defensive works with all the infrastructure required (then as well as now) is an expensive business. Unsurprisingly, the resort to cost-cutting as in the Dawes Point battery, led to the use of inferior materials and rapid disintegration of the construction. Procuring the artillery was neither cheap or easy to do, and in virtually no time the weaponry became out-of-date¹². Also at times, the “tyranny of distance” possibly breed in the local authorities a degree of complacency. Being so far away from where the international action was, meant that coastal fortification often ended up a lower priority that the other, immediate needs of the colony.

Postscript: Bare Island
Bare Island, having never fired a shot in anger—perhaps fortunately so as had it seen action its location would have been terribly exposed to retaliatory hostile fire—has functioned as a museum since the early 1960s. Its infrastructure remains largely intact although its disappearing guns have indeed ‘disappeared’ for good. The nearby but remote Henry Head is today overgrown to a large extent with vegetation, predictably vandalised and also sans guns.

Old Fort Rd, Middle Head

⇧ Old Fort Rd, Middle Head

Middle Harbour fortifications
Middle Head/Georges Head (Mosman) has probably the best kept fortifications on the Sydney coast, owing in large part to the fact that this part of Middle Harbour was under military jurisdiction for over a century. The area at various times has contained, et al, a naval hospital, army camp (barracks, quarters, etc), a gunnery school and a submarine miners’ depot.

The Outer Fort's notorious
⇧ the Outer Fort’s notorious “tiger cages”

Middle Head has two forts on the headland, the larger one, the Outer Fort, is perched up on sloping ground in front of a cleared area. The fort’s emplacements contain the notorious the “tiger cages”. During the Vietnam War the cages were used by the Australian Army to train soldiers to withstand torture and interrogation. On the iron grills of some of the cages rust marks are still visible, a remnant of the water entrapment ordeals that used to be meted out! Although no shots were ever fired in anger from the Head, in the middle of last century the battery’s gunners used to practice the accuracy of their 10 and 12 inch guns on a tiny, rocky outcrop of an island in Middle Harbour – which is now fully submerged (no surprise!)

image
A 1970s ‘Indie’ film set
The smaller Inner Fort with dense vegetation surrounding it has a very different claim to fame. It was used as the bikies’ hideout in the 1974 independent cult movie Stone. The emplacements have long entrance ramps leading to circular gun enclosures and the bikies on their Harleys would tear through the bush track and along the ramps into the enclosures. The two forts and the nearby fort at Georges Head all have the same design – circular gun mounts with ancillary rooms running off them and a vast network of connecting tunnels leading to other military instalments on the promontory.

Emplacements at Middle Head
⇧ Emplacements at Middle Head

The Dawes Point battery today is non-existent, the space merely one of the historic curios of the Rocks. All that remains is the symbolism of a couple of authentic looking canons, some information boards recounting the history and architecture, and an artist’s modern, interpretative representation of the former structure … and a nice park in the shadows of the steel undergirth of the harbour bridge.

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✱ Dawes Point functioned as the centrepiece of a system of signal stations. A series of strategically positioned signal posts stretching out to the Heads would relay information on marine activity such as the approach of foreign shipping

⊕ at the same gun emplacements (with disappearing guns) were constructed at Henry Head on the most easterly part of La Perouse

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¹ ‘Colonial Powder Magazines – Fort Phillip Powder Magazine’, www.users.tpg.com

² ‘Sydney’s lost fort declared open’, 23. July 2010, www.news.com.au

³ Dean Boyce, ‘Defending colonial Sydney” Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/defending_colonial_sydney, viewed 30 March 2016

⁴ Boyce 2008; A Wayne Johnson, ‘Showdown in the Pacific: a Remote Response to European Power Struggles in the Pacific, Dawes Point Battery, Sydney, 1791-1925’, (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority), www.sha.org/uploads/files/

⁵ F Greenway, Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser, 13 September 1834

⁶ ‘Bridging the Gap’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2011

⁷ ‘Sydney’s Fortifications’ (2015), www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au

⁸ ‘Russophobia’ was evident at the time in the popularity of “Invasion scare novels” (eg, The Invasion by WH Walker, published in Sydney in 1877, an account of a fictionalised attack on Sydney by the Russian navy, Boyce 2008

⁹ A Massov, ‘The Russian Corvette “Bogatyr” in Melbourne and Sydney in 1863’, http://australiarussia.com.au

¹⁰ ‘Bare Island (New South Wales)’, Wikipedia entry

¹¹ Boyce 2008; ‘Sydney’s Fortifications’ 2015

¹² ‘Sydney’s Colonial Fortifications’, Australian Society for the History of Engineering & Technology (ASHET, Self-guided Tour, nd)