BOC#049

4 MINUTE MUNCH

‘Livingstone, I presume?’ — The Story Behind the Origin of the Phrase.

Physician, prospector, missionary and explorer David Livingstone is renowned for his exploration of Africa, but perhaps more so for his famed disappearance while in search of the Nile’s source in 1866. His time in Africa saw him make the ‘first’ crossing of the Kalahari Desert, ‘discover’ Victoria Falls, and open the continent to the Church and Western commerce.

Beginning in the early 1840s, Livingstone preached the gospel, denounced slavery, and became the first white man to cross Africa from coast to coast. But while pre-occupied searching for the source of the Nile, seeking slave-traders and discovering the undiscovered, Livingstone went missing, and was presumed dead.

In 1869 a journalist by the name of Henry Morton Stanley would find himself summoned to Paris on ‘important business.’ Upon meeting publisher James Gordon Bennett at the Grand Hotel, Stanley’s mission quickly became apparent; “FIND LIVINGSTONE, ” he was told — or so Stanley tells us in his first book, How I Found Livingstone.

Who Was Stanley?

As a six-year-old, Stanley was an inmate at the Welsh St.Asaph Union Workhouse, a place he’d leave in pursuit of relatives when he was fifteen. At seventeen, while staying with an uncle in Liverpool, Stanley worked as a butchers delivery boy, and in 1859, while delivering meat to an American merchant ship at the nearby docks, was invited to join the crew on a voyage that would eventually dock at New Orleans where he would jump ship.

Stanley would join the Confederate Army and fight with the Arkansas Volunteers at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in 1862, but soon found himself in a crowded typhus-ridden POW camp outside of Chicago. The only way out, it seemed, was to join the Union Army, which he did. Having later received a medical discharge, he joined the Union Navy in 1854 where he became a ship’s clerk aboard the Minnesota before deserting in 1865.

His next career path saw him serve as a war reporter covering the Indian Wars of 1867. New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr hired Stanley to cover British exploits against the Emperor of Abyssinia, and while on his way to war, Stanley bribed the chief telegraph operator, ensuring his reports were first out. By 27, he was named permanent foreign correspondent for The New York Herald.

As the Scramble for Africa took center-stage, so did the advent of the African explorer. Richard Francis Burton and John Speke were two notable African explorers discussed previously (BOC#029 link below), but most pertinent to this story, was the aforementioned David Livingstone.

Upon being instructed to “find Livingstone,” Stanley set off for Africa where he planned on exploring Tanzania’s Rufiji River. In 1871. Joined by a dog named Omar, armed guards, an interpreter, cooks and an American flag carrying guide, Stanley marched in search of Livingstone. Following an eight month trek amidst swamps, crocodiles and deadly diseases, he finally found Livingstone and uttered the famous words that have since become a staple of English catchphrases: “Livingstone, I presume?” — or so the legend goes.

According to Stanley, he and Livingstone became friends and travelled together for several months. Upon their parting, Livingstone remained in Africa where he would soon die. This gave Stanley a blank canvas upon which to paint his narrative. Tales of chiefs, sultans and servants would fill the pages of his writing, making him the “progenitor of all the subsequent professional travel writers.”

When the Royal Geographical Society belatedly sent an expedition to find Livingstone, they were appalled to cross paths with a returning Stanley who was smugly boarding a ship having achieved something comparable to Hannibal’s and Napoleon’s crossing the Alps — he’d found Livingstone.

Read More on African Exploration:

ON THIS DAY: 8th DECEMBER

• The President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, declared war on Japan on this day in 1941; a day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

• In 1854 Pope Pius IX declared that the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, was preserved from all sin, a doctrine that is now binding on all Roman Catholics.

• The former member of the rock band The Beatles, John Lennon, was fatally shot by Mark David Chapman on this day in 1980 in New York City. Chapman, who had asked for Lennon’s autograph earlier that day, dispatched five shots as the former Beatle walked into his apartment.

• The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was signed on this day in 1987. The agreement between the U.S (Reagan) and the U.S.S.R (Gorbachev) would see the dismantlement and abandonment of thousands of mid-range ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km.

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BOOK QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The world turns, that’s all. You can hold on and turn with it, or stand up to protest and be spun right off.”
― Stephen King, The Green Mile

HISTORIC PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Two women stood in front of a bathing-machine, once used to protect female modesty while at the beach. Invented in 1753 by Benjamin Beale in Margate, England, bathing-machines were wooden carts about 6 feet high and 8 feet wide with a peaked roof and a door or (canvas cover) on either side. They were invented to hide the user until they were submerged and therefore covered by the water. Swimming costumes were not yet common at the time (18th-20th Century).

DID YOU KNOW?

South London’s Crystal Palace was built for ‘The Great Exhibition’ of 1851 in Hyde Park, London. It featured artifacts and inventions like printing machines, a 50kg lump of gold, folding pianos, rare diamonds and jewels. In 1852 the palace, designed by Joseph Paxton, was dismantled and moved to Sydenham where it was expanded to become the largest building in the world. At about 7pm on the 30th November 1936, the structure caught fire; a disaster of which could be seen for miles. The legacy of Crystal Palace lives on in the form of a football club and a park.

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BOC#048

6 MINUTE MUNCH

Vitus Bering and the Great Northern Expedition.

From Beringia, to the Bering Glacier, Bering Island and the Bering Sea, Vitus Bering is seldom forgotten in the cold uncompromising waters of the North Pacific. But who was Bering, and how did an Island come to bear his name?

Vitus Bering was a Danish explorer who first entered the sphere of Russian exploration during the ambitious reign of Peter the Great. Having already made a name for himself on the aptly named first Kamchatka expedition, and having fared the seas as far as India as a child, a life at sea was written in the stars.

When a second Great Northern Expedition was approved by Russian Empress Anna Ivanovna in 1732, Bering was to command the St.Peter; one of two ships destined to sail their way into the annals of maritime exploration. Neither of the ship’s crews had any idea what cunning the bitterly cold waters of the North Pacific had in store for them; but many were never to return.

The expedition was an extension of Russian exploration and expansion as inspired by Peter the Great in the years before his death in 1725 — read here. Bering had already sailed the Archangel Gabriel around the coast of Kamchatka, exploring the cold Siberian waters of the North Pacific, but this expedition was far more ambitious. Bering and his men set off from St.Petersburg in April 1733, arriving at Yakutsk in 1734, reaching Okhotsk by 1737.

The St.Peter and the St.Paul had been built by 1740, and set sail from Kamchatka on 4th June 1741 in an effort to explore the west coast of America. On the 20th June, while in search of Gamma land, the two ships were separated by unfavorable weather conditions, forcing Bering and his crew to push on alone.

The St.Peter would ultimately find its way to Kayak Island off the coast of North America, and later encounter the native people of the Aleutian archipelago.

By November 1741, however, the crew found themselves suffering from Scurvy before encountering a brutal storm that catapulted their ship into the bay of an uninhabited, uncharted island. While some of the men thought they’d landed back at Kamchatka, the crew had little idea as to where they really were. With the ship damaged and trapped between a bay and a shallow reef, all bets were off. The unfortunate victims of scurvy were thrown overboard while the remaining survivors shifted their focus to the arduous tasks of survival.

Numerous men had by now succumb to scurvy with Bering himself knocking at death’s door. The surviving crew set up camp to the groans of dying men. Naturalist Georg-Wilhelm Steller became both doctor and minister, helping save what remained of the men’s departing souls with his vitamin C rich broths and Crakeberry (Crowberry) herbal teas.

The marooned explorers began enlarging burrows that they supported with driftwood and sheltered with fox hides and sails. The brazen Arctic foxes had other ideas, however, littering the camp, stealing tools, utensils and corpses.

At 5am on December 8th 1741, sixty-year-old Bering, who’d been laying weak, dispirited, and partly buried in sand, passed away. His corpse was folded into a makeshift coffin too small for his body, and buried beneath a wooden cross. The remaining men quickly reorganized, and turned their attention back to the tasks at hand.

In January, a large whale washed up on the shore providing the men with a blessing of blubber. They’d also managed to butcher a sea lion on the beach; a beast whose flesh was noticeably more appetizing than the sea otters they’d long been consuming, and far more palatable than fox flesh.

Thirty-one of the seventy-seven crew had died of scurvy prior to the introduction of Stellars broths and teas, only fourteen of whom were offered burials. Some of the less fortunate had been gnawed on by brazen Arctic foxes, or had been washed away.

In spite of the foul weather and difficulty hunting, 1742 arrived with a newfound optimism. With scurvy under control, and the arrival of longer days, a party of men took on the task of inspecting the wreck. They found it buried in eight-foot of water and sand with no anchors, a damaged rudder, hull and keel.

With no available timber on the barren island, the men decided to cannibalise the unseaworthy St.Peter, and having surveyed their environment, signed a document entitled “Decision Made on Determination That Land is an Island.” On the basis that the St.Peter couldn’t be floated or repaired, they began the laborious task of building a new ship from its components. Each man was allocated a role with Stellar turning his attention to the study of local animals and fauna — the reason he’d joined the expedition to begin with.

At the end of May, the ocean rewarded their efforts with the generous offering of a one-hundred-foot whale; a delight that filled their bellies for several months. Additionally, on May 21st they brutally hunted and devoured a Sea Cow, and devoted much time to food preparation ahead of the uncertain voyage home.

A dispute ensued as Stellar tried to load his specimens onto the already crammed ship, but on 13th August 1742 the men said their goodbyes to Bering and the deceased, and named the island in his honor.

On 25th August 1742 the crew sailed their makeshift vessel into Avacha Bay, Kamchatka — after ten years away, they were finally home.

In August 1991, a joint Danish-Russian archaeological expedition exhumed Bering’s grave. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t show any signs of scurvy on his teeth, so may have recovered from the disease prior to his death. It’s now thought that he died of heart failure.

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ON THIS DAY: 1st DECEMBER

• In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty was signed by the U.S, USSR, Britain, France, Belgium, Australia, Argentina, Japan and others promising to preserve the landmass for peaceful scientific research.

• The first World AIDS Day, an international day dedicated to raising awareness of the disease, was held on this day in 1988.

• Pope John Paul II met with Mikhail Gorbachev at the Vatican on this day in 1989. It was the first time a Catholic pope had met with a leader of the Soviet Union ending 70 years of mutual hostility between the USSR and the Vatican.

• The two halves of the Channel Tunnel were joined under the sea today in 1990. Construction teams from England and France broke through to meet in the middle.

• Slavery was fully abolished in the British Cape Colony of South Africa on this day in 1838. The move which was part of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833-34 outraged the Dutch-speaking Boer farmers who threatened to rebel.

BOOK PASSAGE OF THE WEEK

“Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person -- sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty -- and you get to pick three of those things. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all those things. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life. Don’t you see it’s a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

HISTORIC CARTOON OF THE WEEK

Cartoon by Stanley Franklin from the Daily Mirror, 5th June 1968. As the mini-skirt took off in the 1960s, popularised by Jackie Kennedy’s wearing of a white Valentino ‘mini-skirt’ to her wedding to Aristotle Onassis, not everyone approved.

DID YOU KNOW?

On 19th November 1977, President Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian President to touchdown in Israel. He went on to address the Knesset, seeking peace with a long time enemy. His presence in Israel broke an Arab policy of not dealing publicly with the Jewish state. Talks eventually led to the Camp David agreement in March 1979.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: Frankenstein. The Story Behind the Story..

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BOC#047

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: MARY SHELLEY & THE ORIGINS OF FRANKENSTEIN

With an all new Frankenstein movie trending on Netflix this week, what do we really know about its creator? Not Victor the mad scientist, rather, Mary Shelley, author and creator of both Victor Frankenstein and the conglomerate monstrosity we’ve all come to know and…love?

The story behind the story is almost as bizarre as the fiction itself. Caught between life, death and tragedy in the unforgiving clutches of 18th England, a few dissenting women confronted the hardships of daily life, while weathering the tribulations of the many social disparities that defined their place in the world.

Frankenstein author Mary Shelley was the daughter of the famed women’s rights campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft, often considered the mother of feminism. Wollstonecraft was born on April 27th 1759, one of seven siblings born to poor Irish parents. She found herself moving around England and Ireland frequently owing to her father’s failed financial ventures.

Her father, Edward Wollstonecraft, was an alcoholic who is said to have once hung the family dog in a fit of rage, and is accused of raping his wife, Elizabeth Dickson, an act whose criminality wouldn’t be detailed until 20031. It’s little wonder Mary Wollstonecraft spent her days thinking and writing about the “tyranny of men.”

Her political writings were published by radical London based publisher Joseph Johnson, a dissenter described by Daisy Hay as “a bookseller and a maker of books in an age when books appeared to have the potential to change the world.”2

Wollstonecraft rose to fame following a string of articles in Johnson’s literary magazine the Analytical Review, and most notably, following her 1790 title, A Vindication of the Rights of Men. This would be followed by her most famous book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. Mary’s interest in the French Revolution and its implications for women’s rights was reflected in her writing, and saw her travel to Paris where she met American businessman and diplomat Gilbert Imlay. While the couple weren’t married, Mary gave birth to Fanny Imlay, and would soon find herself single and back in England. Somewhat distraught, she would attempt to commit suicide twice.

In 1776, however, Mary met William Godwin at a meeting arranged by her publisher and famed friend and author Thomas Paine. Having fallen pregnant once more, and in spite of vowing never to marry when she was just fifteen, Mary and William Godwin tied the knot in 1797, though they kept their residences separate. Their daughter, Mary Godwin, would later go on to marry the great English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Godwin Shelley, or Mary Shelley for short, was thus born.

Wollstonecraft would die from an infection 11 days after giving birth, however; a parcel of guilt that would haunt Shelley for the rest of her days. Shelley herself would later lose a baby daughter born out of wedlock. Some critics have suggested that this maternal guilt helped shape the story of Frankenstein. Whatever the case, having had writers for parents, and a poet for a husband, Shelley was destined to join the ranks of the literary greats.

Shelley penned her gothic novel Frankenstein in 1816 at the fruitful age of eighteen, a story born of a competition between herself, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley while on a trip to Geneva, the same trip that produced The Vampyre, a precursor to Dracula as imagined by Lord Byron’s companion John Polidori.

The storytelling competition was suggested by Lord Byron as an activity by which to occupy the sedentary companions as they faced a summer of disastrous weather. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia bore what became known as the year without summer, seeing the group’s planned activities called-off.

Frankenstein wouldn’t be published until 1818 when Mary was twenty. The novel was revised thirteen years later in an attempt to make the story more acceptable to a wider audience. One of the most notable revisions included the removal of Victor’s incesteral relationship with Elizabeth who, in the revised edition, would become the family’s adopted sister.

While Mary was off galavanting around Europe with Percy, Percy’s first wife, twenty-one year old Harriet (to whom he was still married) drowned herself in the Serpentine at Hyde Park, yet another burden for Mary to digest. As if that wasn’t traumatic enough, Mary’s half sister, Fanny Imlay who we met earlier, also committed suicide. It is thought she, too, was in love with Percy.

Percy Shelley would die in a shipwreck in 1822, leaving his only surviving son with Mary fatherless. Mary Shelley’s days ended with panic attacks and psychosomatic illness before dying from paralysis in her sleep in 1851, often attributed to a brain tumor. She was laid to rest in Bournemouth on the English southern coast.

Frankenstein was only the tip of a disconcerting iceberg; a horror that reflected the traumas of Mary’s own life. An extension, one might argue, of the realities that permeated the very fabric of her world. Her life was a canvas of trauma, hardship and loss; a stark resemblance to the life of the beast she created decades earlier.

ON THIS DAY: 24th NOVEMBER

• On this day in 1991, Freddie Mercury died of AIDS at the young age of 45. He’d announced his diagnosis one day prior.

• Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed killer of President J.F. Kennedy, was shot and killed while being transferred by police. His Killer was named as Jack Leon Ruby (born Jacob Leon Rubenstein).

• Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” was published today in 1859. It would go on to revolutionise the way we think about biodiversity and speciation on Earth. While he was the first to publish the theory, the idea was simultaneously thought up by Alfred Russel Wallace.

• The Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman sighted the west coast of Tasmania on this day in 1642, he originally named it Van Diemen’s Land, it was later changed to Tasmania in his honor.

BOOK PASSAGE OF THE WEEK

“Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”
― Malorie Blackman, Noughts & Crosses.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Photographed by Mr. John H. Harris in May, 1904. A father stares at the decapitated hand and foot of his five year old daughter — all that remained of a cannibal feast by armed rubber sentries under the regime of Belgian King Leopold. Such was the penalty for missed rubber quotas.

DID YOU KNOW?

It is thought that the name Caesar meant ‘hairy,’ coming from the Latin word caesaries, meaning “head of hair.” The sobriquet was used in jest to mock Julius Caesar on account of his baldness. The nickname went on to become a term of majesty in the form of Kaiser, Tsar, and Kayser-i Rum (a title of the Ottoman sultans).

CONSIDERATION OF THE WEEK

“Do we exist without our memory?”
― Martin Scorsese

Scorsese, director of Taxi Driver, Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, and Goodfellas turned 82 this month.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: THE TRUTH ABOUT NAT TURNER.

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BOC#046

6 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER

The 1831 Nat Turner rebellion is arguably one of the most infamous slave revolts in the history of human bondage. So significant is this sorrowful episode of history, that it was the subject of a 2016 drama, Birth of a Nation, as well as a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by William Styron. More on this later.

The revolt itself was the by-product of the abhorrent institution of slavery which reduced men like Nat to the mere vestiges of worthless property. It was in this context that the frustrated slaves of Nat Turner’s band rose up in revolt, killing Joseph Turner, his family, and several other whites in the process. The slaves marched from farm to farm striking the off-guard slave owners of rural Southampton, Virginia, in August of 1831. Following the band’s vengeful killing spree, Nat was pursued by the authorities, and having spent the next six weeks on the run, was tried and hung on 11th November of the same year. Needless to say, the revolt resulted in hundreds of deaths across the board.

History has since repeatedly re-tried and re-sentenced Turner, painting him as both a revolutionary champion of African-American liberation on the one hand, and a murderous madman on the other; his name has thus sparked both controversy and conversation.

While much of what we know today is fragmented, disjointed and tarnished, one of the most captivating sources we have comes in the form of The Confessions of Nat Turner.

The day before he was hung, lawyer Thomas R. Gray, visited Turner’s jail cell where he penned a thirty-something page confession purported to be the very words of Turner himself. The trouble with The Confessions of Nat Turner, however, remains that the dictated words were likely influenced by the man whose hand conducted the pen. Historian Prof. Vincent Harding explains; “It is very clear…that we cannot take Nat Turner’s confessions at face value, but it also very clear that we cannot cast it aside.”

In The Confessions, Nat appears to speak openly, and somewhat proudly of the events that unfolded that sombre day. The book has Nat as having narrated explicit passages like:

I entered my master’s chamber, it being dark, I could not give a death blow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it was his last word, Will laid him dead, with a blow of his axe, and Mrs. Travis shared the same fate, as she lay in bed.

And…

I struck her several blows over the head, but not being able to kill her, as the sword was dull. Will turning around and discovering it, dispatched her also.

Each remorseless killing is articulated in cold blood. Either Nat was a proud of what he did, or the scribe was propagandising the narrative to meet some alternative agenda — both are likely. Many scholars believe the language used is unusual, and unlike that of a slave. As author Mary Kemp Davis exclaims, “I do not believe for a moment that Nat Turner talked that way.”

The motive behind Nat Turner’s revolt as depicted by Gray’s Confessions characterises Turner as a mentally unstable sociopath. In one such passage, he allegedly calls on prophetic visions, saying:

...and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven—and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood—and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me...

Outside of the purported Confessions of Nat Turner, there have been other retellings of the revolt including a 1935 theatre production by educator and playwright, Randolph Edmonds. But the most controversial retelling has been the fictionalisation of Turner in a book of the familiar title, The Confessions of Nat Turner by author William Styron.

It’s worth noting that although the novel was highly acclaimed, it received a lot of backlash from the black community. The controversy was born of the white author’s first person narrative in which he describes Turner as having engaged in a relationship with a young girl he would go on to kill. One of the contentious passages reads:

I was oblivious of her words. The place where her breast had met my arm was like an incandescence, tingling; again I was smothered by remorseless desire. Insanely, I found myself measuring the risk. Take her, a voice said. Take her here on this bank by this quiet brook. Spend upon her all afternoon a backed-up lifetime of passion. Without mercy take your pleasure upon her innocent round young body until she is half mad with fright and pain. Forget your great mission. Abandon all for these hours of terror and bliss … —The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron.

Styron’s defence was that his novel was mere fiction, and that he “had a right to make a relationship…a kind of centerpiece of the book.” He was after all writing a “novel…not a work of historiography.” That being said, Styron also held the opinion that Nat Turner was a “crazy lunatic.”

This fictionalised depiction of Turner as a conflicted and troubled individual is a stark contrast to the way he is portrayed in the 2016 movie, The Birth of a Nation. In the film played and directed by Nate Parker, Nat Turner is portrayed as an honourable, upstanding man of faith with a deep sense of justice.

Travelling from farmstead to farmstead preaching the Gospel, Turner witnesses the heartbreaking treatment of African-Americans at the hands of despicable white slave-owners. As a loyal husband and advocate of social justice, a defiant Turner leads a revolt in retaliation, something one might consider quite rational considering the circumstances. Some of the scenes in the movie capture the horrors of slave treatment, inviting the audience to empathise with Turner.

In this light, the events of 1831 might be thought of as a justifiably violent revolt against an equally cruel and violent institution.

The truth about Nat Turner, then, is that very little is actually known about the man beyond speculation and bias. His legacy, too, has mostly been constructed by those writing after the fact.

A rebellion like that of 1831 is best summarized by Mary Kemp Davis who says: “Slavery itself was such an abomination that I could see how it would drive men and women to do desperate things, and a slave revolt by its nature, to me, is a pretty desperate act.”

What are your thoughts?

ON THIS DAY: 17th NOVEMBER

• The Suez Canal, the waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, was officially opened on this day in 1869, reducing the 11,200 mile London-Bombay sea route to a significantly shorter 6,300 miles. Developed by French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, canal construction began in April 1859 with a workforce of men and camels before being replaced by steam shovels.

• England’s first queen, Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon dies after five years on the throne in 1558.

• Russian Empress Catherine the Great died of a stroke in this day in 1796. Her expansionist policies made Russia a force to be reckoned with in Europe. She was 67.

• The unmanned Soviet Luna 17 spaceship landed on the moon on this day in 1970. It can still be seen at Mare Imbrium on NASA’s high resolution images of the moon.

BOOK PASSAGE OF THE WEEK

“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”
― George Orwell, 1984.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

This photograph capturing the expressions of Georgia cotton mill workers was taken by sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine in 1909. The children who worked mills, mines and factories and were often injured or killed. Lewis Hine was hired by the National Child Labour Committee to travel around taking pictures of exploited child workers. His photographs influenced legislation over a 35 year period.

DID YOU KNOW?

On 14th November 1963, Iceland got itself a whole new island thanks to ongoing volcanic activity around her shores. The new island of Surtsey disrupted air travel for days owing to an 8km high ash cloud. Volcanic eruptions didn’t officially end until 1967.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not” — Hilaire Belloc The Modern Traveller (1898)

Read about the Maxim Guns invention here.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: FEMINISM Vs BIG BEER

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BOC#045

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: HOW WOMEN DROVE TEMPERANCE

Following the 18th amendment in 1919, alcohol was banned in one of the world’s most intoxicated nations for what promised to be a perilous thirteen years of speakeasies and dubious homebrewing. From January 1920, U.S society would, for all intents and purposes, endure over a decade of sobriety. But what was the driving force behind this unprecedented historical anomaly, and how did the wrath of women have such a profound effect on America’s social landscape?

Prohibition is arguably one of the most intriguing exhibitions of social and moral regulation in the history of humanity. To have severed the flow of booze from an intoxicated society of working men whose rituals were firmly enshrined in saloon culture was incredibly ambitious. As one might imagine, destroying the kegs would require much more than the simple passing of an unpopular piece of legislation. With the inevitability of a new vacuum being filled by illegal activity, the authorities would have to pull out all the stops.

The traditional, and somewhat mythical take on prohibition has it that a small group of anti-alcohol conservatives decided that a ban on liquor would be a good idea. This in turn led to the immediate creation of underground drinking institutions, the rise of Al Capone, and the desperate consumption of medicinal and sacramental alcohol. Prohibition, so the popular narrative goes, was later concluded as an example of American stupidity, and was abruptly repealed in 1933. This makes for good revisionist history, but the reality, however, was somewhat different. In actual fact, Prohibition was very much a feminist driven movement, spearheaded by bands of frustrated housewives in a world in which the female voice was yet to be heard.

American men would spend much of their time in saloons, squandering their time and money, only to return home at an untimely hour with a clenched fist and a foul mouth, or so the story went. Women, who had yet to receive the right to vote, weren’t allowed into saloons in an effort to preserve their dignity and respect — they were too delicate to drink, after all. In a world where few labour laws meant that men worked long hours for little pay, drinking was a vice employed by men as a coping mechanism.

The saloon had long been part of American culture, but Irish and German immigrants were thought to have contributed more than their fair share having brought their wet ways over from Europe. Temperance movements often targeted immigration as a result.

The first of these movements was the the Women’s Christian Temperance League formed in 1874. The organisation would represent the first step in women’s activism against the saloon, paving the way for the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) in 1893. The common denominator wasn’t alcohol itself, but the familial and social impact of saloon frequenting men. Alcoholism didn’t only deprive families of husbands, but resulted in venereal disease, premature death and aggravated poverty.

Frustrated, some more radical women took the law into their own hands. Most notably, Carrie ‘Hatchet Granny’ Nation (below), who was arrested no less than thirty times, actively entered and destroyed saloons with her axe.

Bans on alcohol had been making waves since the short lived Maine prohibition of 1851. More states would follow suit, and by the turn of the century, much of the nation would face restrictions on booze. With the advent of the First World War, the ban would accelerate as the government attempted to preserve vital grain and other essential resources needed in the national war-effort.

In spite of the Big Beer’s efforts to campaign against women’s suffrage, the female vote would eventually find its way into mainstream politics. This monumental shift in the ballot would go on to play a pivotal role in the passing of the saloon indicting 18th amendment. Women against the saloon would ultimately vote this revolutionary piece of legislation into existence.

The void left by the ban gave way to the inevitable opening of underground taverns in which thirsty customers were required to ‘speak easy’ as to avoid discovery. These illicit establishments ultimately became known as speakeasies. Not all women supported prohibition, and with changes in women’s social standing pending, and no official rules beyond ‘speaking easy,’ women too, began frequenting these new establishments. It was here that newly liberated ladies could be found clasping bootlegged beverages made from low quality, poor tasting alcohol diluted with more palatable mixers like ginger beer, tonic water and Coca-Cola.

As the Great Depression took hold of the U.S economy, Prohibition was dismantled. The state no longer had the luxury of banning business, and besides, women had achieved their goal of seeing that the saloon was well and truly extinct. By December 1933, it was all over. Mississippi didn’t repeal prohibition until 1966, however, and today some southern counties still ban the sale of alcohol.

ON THIS DAY: 10th NOVEMBER

• Following the dismantling of apartheid, the South African cricket team played its first international match since 1970 on this day in 1991.

• The U.S Marine Corps (Continental Marines) was founded on this day in 1775. Intended as a seaborne unit by which to fight the British during the American Revolutionary Wars, the battalion was commissioned by the second Continental Congress (the provisional government of the thirteen colonies).

• 27 year old Emperor Hirohito takes the Japanese throne on this day in 1928. In 1941, he would approve the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor leading to war between Japan and the United States. Below: A casual General MacArthur stood next to a stiff Emperor Hirohito in 1945. While MacArthur thought Hirohito should be tried for war crimes, it was thought more effective to keep him in power. Hirohito would “renounce” his divinity, and back a new U.S drafted constitution. The 2012 film The Emperor tells the story of MacArthur in post war Japan.

PHRASE ORIGIN OF THE WEEK: “TARRED WITH THE SAME BRUSH”

This phrase is thought to go back to the tarring of the area around sheep sores. Applying tar to the area around sores and wounds would function as a mild antiseptic and keep insects away. The idea was to only use the brush on affected sheep, but not on the entire flock for fear that infection might spread. If the brush was used on the entire flock, the sheep were said to have been “tarred with the same brush.”

Tarring may have also been used in marking sheep for identification and ownership purposes.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

In 1967 Kathrine Switzer attempted to become the first woman to run the Boston marathon. The organisers had other ideas as they tried to stop her from doing so.

DID YOU KNOW?

The word tattoo is derived from the Polynesian word ‘Tatau’ which means to strike or mark, and was introduced to the english language by Captain James Cook.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.” — Stanley Kubrick, American film director 1963.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: A BRIEF HISTORY OF 1965

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BOC#044

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: BRITAIN IN 1965…

1965 is often thought of as the year old Britain died, and a new, supersonic, Britain was born. It was the year the Concorde was being pieced together in Bristol, as the Ranger VIII robotic lunar probe was intentionally crash landed on the moon in search of new high resolution images of the Moon’s surface. But it wasn’t only technological progress that shook the nation, it was a year of significant social and cultural change too.

Albert Johanneson became the first black man to play in an FA Cup Final just months before the 1965 Race Relations Act was introduced in an attempt to prohibit racial discrimination in public places. Racism was rife in the 60s, so much so that prior to the game, the South African born Leeds United winger spent much of his time vomiting in the dressing room, only to be approached by somebody in the tunnel saying: “You’ve got no chance looking like you do. Our fans will murder you.” Johanneson pleaded with then manager, Don Revie, to be dropped, but he was refused. His performance was ultimately not enough as his side lost 2-1 to Liverpool. Johanneson would eventually see out his career at fourth division York City whom he joined in 1970.

1965 was a year of landmark shifts in legislation with the inauguration of drink-driving laws and the fixation of a new national speed limit. The limit was initiated as part of a four month trial instigated by several accidents caused by speeding in foggy conditions. The 30mph limit that’s being phased out of many residential areas today had already been in place since 1935.

As for drink driving? Well, it had been an offence to operate a horse and carriage under the influence of alcohol as far back as 1872 as per the Licensing Act of the same year. The act also prohibited firearm use and stream engine operation while intoxicated. But with faster roads and a series of failed drink driving campaigns, the 1965 Act was ultimately passed. It took a further two years for the roadside breathalyser to be introduced, and while the fixture of front seat belts became a legal requirement in 1965, their mandatory use wouldn’t come into force until 1983.

1965 was the year that the Kray twins were arrested for their involvement in the running of a protection racket in London, and the death penalty, too, was abolished. The last men to be hung were Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans in 1964 following the murder of 53-year old John Alan West who they stabbed to death at his Cumbria home.

Cigarette advertisements were also being banned from national television as Kenneth Tynan exercised his right to use the word ‘fuck’ for the first time during a live broadcast; an act that resulted in a formal apology by the BBC, and inspired the Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse to write that he “ought to have his bottom smacked.”

But all of this was to unfold in the shadow of a mourning nation.

A mere three weeks into the new year, Britain’s most cherished icon, Winston Churchill, died. The former Prime Minister became the first non-royal to receive a state funeral since William Gladstone in 1898. As a matter of fact, Churchill was towed in the very same naval gun carriage that had been used for Queen Victoria, ushered by sailors instead of horses, a tradition that harkens back Victoria’s 1901 funeral (more on this later). Prior to Churchill’s St. Paul’s farewell ceremony, his catafalque lay at Westminster hall where it was visited by some 300,000 people; a true testament to national sentiment and reverence for the man who saved Britain from the wrath of Hitler.

The mid-sixties saw the nationwide creation of new motorways as more people ditched their bicycles in favour of roaring combustion engines. Between 1961 and 1965, there was a staggering 40% decline in cyclist miles as more people abandoned their saddles in favor of a more comfortable Ford Cortinas. To quote Marshall McLuhan, the car had ‘become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete in the urban compound.’ These urban compounds in which we buisied ourselves were beginning to cause disquietude, however. On 11th September 1965, The British Medical Journal expressed its concern for the collective hearing of the nation which was being impaired by the increasing ‘ambient noise in cities’ caused by the largest changes to our rural landscape since the introduction of the canal network and the industrial revolution.

While motorways tied the nation together, the landscape abroad was a little different.

With the war in Vietnam entering its tenth year, and nuclear escalation having been considered on more than one occasion by the Americans, a certain Harold Wilson rang U.S President L.B Johnson in the early hours of a cold February morning hoping to arrange a visit to Washington. Johnson’s response to the British Prime Minister was as snappy and frustrated as was the situation on the ground. ‘If you want to help us some in Vietnam’, he said, ‘send us some men.’ But in 1965, British troops were already stretched by their presence in Rhodesia and the Malaysian jungles of Borneo.

The year wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. The Beatles joined the Queen at Buckingham Palace in which they were honoured with MBEs just months after the release of their fifth studio album ‘Ticket to Ride’/‘Yes It Is,’ while Bob Dylan was touring the UK with the release of the longest single yet heard, ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’

1965 also saw Tomorrow’s world air for the first time on the BBC, becoming one of the longest running shows on the network. The inaugural episode featured new advances in kidney dialysis machines, a Dutch flood defence system and the Mariner 4 space probe’s search for life on Mars.

1965 was a year of change, modernity and most significantly, cultural evolution. Britain was stamping its technological and cultural footprint across the landscape of progress and popular culture. A great year to be alive? What do you think?

Leave a comment.

ON THIS DAY: 3rd NOVEMBER

• In 1957, Laika the dog was shot into space aboard Soviet satellite Sputnik 2, making her the first animal to orbit Earth. She was sealed along with her fate in a cylindrical cabin with food, an air conditioner and several measuring devices.

• The first Act of Supremacy was passed by the Parliament of England on this day in 1534, making Henry VIII and all subsequent monarchs the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

• In 1903, in a move supported militarily by the U.S, Panama proclaimed its independence from Columbia. The new Panamanian government, led by Manuel Amador Guerrero, would go on to accept a canal treaty with the U.S.

• Two French agents, Major Alain Mafart and Captain Dominique Prieur, pled guilty to the sinking of the Greenpeace Ship The Rainbow on this day in 1985. Read More Here.

PHRASE ORIGIN OF THE WEEK: ‘TAKEN ABACK’

The phrase to be “taken aback” is nautical in origin. ‘Aback’ refers to a sudden change in the wind such that a ship’s sails flatten against its mast. Such sudden changes in the wind would have slowed a ship down, or may have even driven it backwards. The correct maritime phrase used to describe a ship in such circumstances is ‘taken aback’.

Today we use it to suggest someone has been taken truly by surprise and stopped in their tracks.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK:

Following the New York Stock Market crash of 1929, an investor sells his Chrysler Imperial 75 Roadster for a fraction of the price. While the photo may have been staged, it nonetheless tells the story of one of the biggest crises in U.S financial history.

The financial crash was the final straw that triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s.

DID YOU KNOW?

The Royal Navy gun carriage that has carried the coffin of Churchill, as well as the last five monarchs including Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V, and George VI, and most recently, Queen Elizabeth II, is a tradition that began following an incident at the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901. During Victoria’s funeral, the cold horses were spooked, leaving the Royal Navy sailors with the task of commandeering the regal carriage for the remainder of the procession. The tradition has remained ever since.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: THE WEALTHIEST BLACK MAN IN PHILADELPHIA

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BOC#043

4 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: PHILADELPHIA’S BLACK BEACON

Born on September 2nd 1766, James Forten was the son of free African-American parents in Philadelphia. His father Thomas had been a carpenter, and most notably, a sail-maker; a skill that would go on to make his son James one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest men. In a world of prejudice, racism and widespread slavery, James would break through the low ceiling of discrimination and go on to become a respected visionary, businessman and social reformer.

At the young age of fourteen, James became a privateer aboard the Royal Louis during the American Revolution. The ship was ultimately captured by the British, with James being held as a prisoner of war aboard the infamous floating jailhouse HMS Jersey. Upon his return to the bustling dry docks of Philadelphia, he found work as an apprentice sailmaker, eventually becoming a master of the trade. Under the guidance of Robert Bridges, he learned to measure, cut, design and fit sails based on a ship’s specific needs. To be a sailmaker in the 18th century was to be a semiconductor maker today — an essential and lucrative business fuelling trade, logistics and exploration. Philadelphia was just the place for it, too, with near enough 1,000 ships entering its port in 1800 alone.

When Forten’s boss Robert Bridges was ready to retire in 1798, he looked to hand the reins to Forten, his colleague of thirteen years. Filled with innovation, hustle, and leadership, Forten transformed the business, integrating both black and white workers in a single diverse workforce in spite of the prejudice, distrust and resentment his presence invited. Through his sailmaking efforts, James became one of the wealthiest African-Americans of his day, but with the wind in his sails, he wouldn’t stop there.

Having had nine children with his partner and wife Charlotte Vandine, James turned his attentions to abolition. His efforts saw him join forces with abolitionist and owner of anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison, amongst others. One of his most notable contributions to the advancement of black people was his participation in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society’s legal team; an organisation that saw him help numerous slaves acquire freedom. His vision for a better world extended beyond abolition into the realms of civil rights and voting advocacy at a time when the state were launching a pernicious attack on the African-American right to vote.

Forten was as active as an activist could be, organizing meetings, joining political campaigns, writing letters to newspapers, and funding schools for African-American children by way of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and the Augustine Education Society formed in 1818. One such school was renamed the James Forten Elementary School in 1892.

His opposition to the American Colonisation Society’s plans to export African-Americans back to Africa (Liberia) was staunch. Having once considered the idea plausible he later believed that African-Americans deserved equal rights at home, a cause he fought for until his death.

Funding his social endeavours was possible thanks to his excellent business acumen. Beyond sails, Forten issued loans to help people buy businesses and homes, and purchased rental properties and stocks. Taken as a cross section, Forten’s life could be said to have forged change in Pennsylvania as is captured by the shift in black success in Philadelphia during the years of his activism. In 1811, the Philadelphia directory had listed a mere 81 Black business owners, but by 1816, that number has risen to 180.

Forten’s legacy is one of change, progress and activism. His wealth was channeled into causes of social empowerment and equality, while his legacy was further decorated by the works of his wife and three daughters who established the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) in 1833.

James Forten passed away in 1842 at the age of 72, leaving the sail-making business to two of his sons.

DID YOU KNOW…

In 1818, Philadelphia based Francis Johnson became the first African American composer to have his compositions published as sheet music. His band was the first black-led band to visit Europe where he is said to have played for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace in 1837.

ON THIS DAY: 27th OCTOBER

• Black Saturday: On this day in 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis reached its climax as a nuclear catastrophe was narrowly avoided. It’s considered one of the most dangerous days in human history.

• Turkmenistan Independence Day: Officially known as the Republic of Turkmenistan, the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union on this day in 1991.

• Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the Thai billionaire owner of the Premier League football club Leicester City, died in a helicopter crash near the stadium on this day in 2018.

COVER OF THE WEEK…

The illustrated Sunday issue of the daily Parisian newspaper, Le Petit Journal, from 25th August 1912. The illustration depicts the signing of the Treaty of Fez which saw Morocco become a French protectorate. Rudi Matthee, Professor of History at the University of Delaware writes:

“Morocco came under French supervisory rule in 1912, when the country’s last independent Alaouite ruler, Moulay ‘Abd al-Hafiz, a traditional boozer who used water only for his ablutions, agreed to abdicate while under the influence.” - Angels Tapping at the Wine-­Shop’s Door.

ADVERT OF THE WEEK: THE BAGHDAD TIMES 1922

An advert for Asahi featured in the Baghdad Times dating back to 1922. The ad reads ‘Offices behind the Serai Mosque’.

IN MEMORY OF…

Yesterday marked the death of Hattie McDaniel in 1952, the first African American actress to win an Oscar. Having won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Gone with the Wind, she was prevented from sitting with her co-stars at the Ambassador Hotel venu due to her race.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: THE TRIBAND, MARCUS GARVEY, AND ETHIOPIA.

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BOC#042

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: 5 THINGS SUMER DID FIRST

The ancient civilization of Sumeria occupied the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, or what we might think of as modern day Iraq for the sake of geographical convenience. Their civilization is considered one of the earliest in recorded history, dating back some 5,000 years, and has long been an area of archeological excitement amongst Sumeriologists and historians alike. While Sumeria often brings the invention of the wheel, the plough and writing to mind, there’s an awful lot to thank the Sumerians for, as Henry Freeman writes in his book, Sumerians: A History From Beginning to End: “So many aspects of our daily lives can be traced back thousands of years to the cradle of civilization in the Middle East where the Sumerians lived…” So without further ado, this week, we take a brief look at 5 things the Sumerians did first.

1. THE FIRST LAW CODE:

   Sumeria produced the first recorded code of law known to man. The Code of Ur-Nammu (2050 b.c), as it is known, is a small, sun-baked tablet divided into eight columns which sets out the laws of the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu, founder of the third dynasty of Ur. Discovered in 1952, the tablet precedes the better known Code of Hammurabi by some three-hundred years. The laws include the regulation of weights and measures, and ensures that the “orphan does not fall a prey to the wealthy,” that “the widow did not fall a prey to the powerful,” and that “the man of one shekel did not fall a prey to the man of one mina (sixty shekels)”.

2. THE FIRST PHARMACOPOEIA:

   The oldest medical handbook, or the ‘Nippur Old Drugstore’ lay buried in the 4,000 year old ruins of Nippur (modern day Iraq), and contains over a dozen of the Sumerian physicians’ favorite medicinal remedies. The 16 x 9.5 cm tablet mentions salt (sodium chloride), saltpeter (sodium nitrate), as well as vegetation such as cassia, myrtle, asafoetida, and thyme. Fig, pear, willow and the date are also mentioned as remedies. The salves and filtrates produced may have been consumed externally or internally, some of which were ground into a powder and mixed with beer. Considering the age and geography of the cuneiform tablet, the physician does not refer to spells, incantations, gods or demons in this particular artifact. Quantities and disease specificity are both omitted, though there is mention of alkali being mixed with substances high in natural fat which is thought to be an instruction in soap making.

3. PROVERBS & SAYINGS:

   While it was once thought that the Hebrew book of Proverbs was the oldest book of maxims and sayings, it has since been discovered that the Sumerians were partial to a good phrase themselves, with hundreds having been found in the form of tablets and fragments predating the book of Proverbs. Sayings such as “We are doomed to die, let us spend; we will live long let us save,” and “you can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector,” are amongst the idioms to have been deciphered.

   There are also some more humorous phrases attributed to marriage and family life such as “Who has not supported a wife or child, his nose has not borne a leash,” and “My wife is at the shrine, my mother is down by the river, and here I am starving of hunger.” Sumerian wisdom is extensive with more enduring phrases like “Friendship lasts a day, kinship endures forever,” and “who builds like a lord lives like a slave, and who builds like a slave, lives like a lord” reflecting today’s principle of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

4. THE FIRST SCHOOLS:

   In the early 1900s in the ancient city of Shuruppak, a notable number of school ‘textbooks’ were unearthed. Dated to the first half of the second millenium b.c. Sumeriologists stumbled upon hundreds of practice tablets filled with exercises featuring cuneiform script of all abilities — from the most novice to more advanced.

   In corroboration with these discoveries are writings from the teachers themselves in which they describe school life. The teachers, it is understood, were funded by way of tuition fees, meaning it was often the wealthy who benefitted from the non-obligatory education on offer. The schools themselves are thought to have begun as appendages to temples, eventually becoming more secular institutions, and ultimately becoming centers for learning and culture in Sumer. The head of a school was called a “school father” while the pupils were known as “school sons”. While several possible school buildings have been unearthed, one particular site stands out. Excavated by the French in 1934-5, the excavation site west of Nippur revealed a room containing rows of baked-brick benches. Unlike some of the other excavations in Nippur, Ur and Sippar, no tablets were found.

5. THE FIRST BEER BREWING:

   The earliest evidence of brewing beer dates back 5,000 years to a time when the Sumerians brewed a forebear of beer known as kash; a porridge thick beverage that made people feel “exhilarated, wonderful and blissful.” They enjoyed the process of beer making so much that they even had a hymn dedicated to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing, which also served as a drinking song and the first known recipe for making beer.

Want to learn more? Read: History Begins at Sumer by Samuel Noah Kramer. (Amazon Affiliate).

DID YOU KNOW…

The phrase ‘less is more’ is often attributed to the German furniture designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 - 1969). A pioneer in modern architecture, Ludwig used modern materials like steel and plate glass to produce what he called ‘skin and bone designing’.

Examples of his work includes the Crown Hall in Chicago Illinois (1956), and the German Pavilion created for the Barcelona Exposition in Spain.

Following a lengthy battle with esophageal cancer, Mies died on August 17, 1969, in his adopted hometown of Chicago.

ON THIS DAY: 20th OCTOBER

• The much-delayed and massively over-budget Sydney Opera House, one of the most iconic buildings of the 20th century, was opened by Queen Elizabeth on this day in 1973. The first performance at the venue was in fact 13 years before it even opened, and was Ol’ Man River sung by Paul Robeson for the construction workers. Watch here.

• The Chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on this day in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen the relationship between West Germany and Eastern Europe. He is also known for his line of economic demarcation which is discussed here.

• American comedian Richard Pryor won the inaugural Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on this day in 1998.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK…

An escaped slave having his shackle removed by a Royal Navy sailor in October 1907 off the coast of Oman aboard HMS Sphinx. One of the escaped slaves had been on the run for three years with his manacle still attached. A party of marines were sent ashore in pursuit of the slave traders who were eventually caught.

BOOK QUOTE:

“‘Life’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: THE TRIBAND, MARCUS GARVEY, AND ETHIOPIA.

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BOC#041 - BLACK HISTORY MONTH (U.K)

4 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: GARVEY, ETHIOPIA, AND THE TRIBAND

With the U.K celebrating Black History Month this October, you’ll have noticed the red, green and black triband on public display everywhere from libraries to book shops, to schools and offices. But what do these symbolic colours stand for, and how did they come to represent pan-Africanism?

Beyond being a representation of black independence and freedom, the red, green, black and yellow (or gold) bands are in fact an extension of the Ethiopian flag, the only African nation to have avoided colonialism, despite the best efforts of the Italians as early as 1895 (and as late as 1935).

To be clear, while Ethiopia had successfully defeated the Italians in 1895-6, for a period of five years commencing 1936, the Italians did in fact have a foot in Ethiopia (then Abyssinia), but as Ethiopia was a member of the League of Nations, its occupation was never recognized and is thus seen as an aberration of history with the Italians having been driven out in 1941.

The original Ethiopian flag was commissioned by Emperor Menelik II in 1897 and is considered by many to be the first flag of an African nation state. Until the marxist revolution of 1974, the imperial coat of arms showing the ‘Conquering Lion of Judah’ holding a staff flying the national colours was featured on the flag to indicate Ethiopia’s royal ancestry. The modern flag features an encircled radiating pentagram reflecting the unity of Ethiopia’s various people; a symbol that was introduced in 1996 following the nation’s new constitution.

While colonial efforts were unfolding in east Africa, Marcus Mosiah Garvey was in the process of developing what’s best described as the ‘Back to Africa’ concept, successfully migrating his ideas from Jamaica to New York in the form of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1916. Garvey was a proponent of pan-Africanism in which he called for the repatriation of the black diaspora to their ancestral African homelands. He went on to set up a shipping company called Black Star Line with the intention of developing black economic prosperity and commerce, but his plans didn’t quite manifest. Following his politically motivated imprisonment in 1925, having served less than half of his five year sentence, he was sent back to Jamaica.

Before his extradition, however, Garvey commissioned a flag of pan-Africanism as part of his struggle against colonialism, and black economic dependence. The red, black and green triband was revealed at a conference in New York in 1920.

Garvey’s desire for a flag was a response to a 1900s song which was still in circulation in which the lyric ‘Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon’ was sung. ‘They can’t say that now,’ he announced.

According to the UNIA Universal Negro Catechism, the triband colours are said to represent ‘…the color of the blood which men must shed for their redemption and liberty.” The black is said to be “the color of the noble and distinguished race to which we belong,” while the “green is the luxuriant vegetation of our Motherland.” Garvey was undoubtedly influenced by Ethiopian independence following the defeat of the Italians in 1895-6, something which became apparent in the UNIA anthem which begins ‘Ethiopia, thou land of our father…’

Garvey is considered a prophet in Rastafarianism, a Jamaican born movement of the 1930s. In 1920, he famously said ‘Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is at hand’. Ten years later, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia was crowned. Garvey died in London in 1940, and is today buried in Jamaica.

DID YOU KNOW…

Born in 1905 in Jamaica, Una Marson became the first black broadcaster at the BBC with her weekly feature, Caribbean Voices, airing during the war years. She was a journalist, editor, playwright and poet committed to advancing Black people’s rights and building the literary tradition in the Caribbean. Her role in anti-colonial politics saw her become secretary to Haile Selassie during his exile in Geneva following the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, as well as a temporary stint as secretary to Marcus Garvey. Una lived in Peckham, and today a Southwark library is named after her. She died in 1965.

ON THIS DAY: 13th OCTOBER

• Construction of the White House began on this day in 1792. On the same day in 1775, the U.S Navy was founded.

• Margaret Thatcher, also known as the “Iron Lady,” who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, was born on this day in 1925. On 12th October, the IRA attempted to kill her and her cabinet by bombing her Brighton hotel. While she escaped, five others were killed. Before entering politics, she was a chemist and later retrained as a barrister. She became the MP for Finchley in 1959.

• Today is International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.

• The Copiapó mining accident ended on this day in 2010, with all 33 miners rescued after being trapped in the San Jose gold and copper mine for 69 days. The incident was caused by a gargantuan piece of rock breaking away from the mountain which caused a chain reaction that ultimately saw the mountain collapse above them. Chile is the world’s leading copper producing country.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: GUION BLUFORD IN SPACE

On August 30 1983, Guion Bluford made history by becoming the first African-American to be launched into low Earth orbit by way of the Space Shuttle Challenger. He would go on to amass 688 hours in space on three further Space Shuttle missions.

Before becoming an Astronaut, Bluford flew as a pilot in the U.S Air Force where he flew 144 missions during the Vietnam war. In 1974 he earned his master’s degree in aerospace engineering, followed by a doctorate in 1978.

BOOK QUOTE: ERASURE BY PERCIVAL EVERETT

The 2023 feature film American Fiction was based on the novel Erasure and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Percival won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2025.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: Scurvy at Sea

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BOC#040

4 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: FINDING A CURE FOR SCURVY…

Today we know that scurvy is a deficiency disease caused by a lack of vitamin C and the subsequent breakdown of our body’s natural glue, known as collagen. This knowledge would take centuries to enter the folios of medicine, however, with life at sea endlessly plagued by that cruel and indiscriminate killer of captain and sailor alike.

On long seafaring voyages fresh fruit and vegetables were all but absent, resulting in a deficiency that saw the body’s connective tissue degenerate. From bone to cartilage to blood vessels, the body essentially starts falling apart. As cells break down and the nervous system stops working, joints swell up and teeth fall out.

For much of history, scurvy was a sailor’s worst nightmare, and was indirectly responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, combat, shipwrecks, and all other diseases combined. As a matter of fact, many a shipwreck were caused by sailor’s inability to haul ropes and climb rigging due to weakness caused by the debilitating disease.

The infamous explorer Vitus Bering (See: Bering & Peter the Great see also: Alaska) fell victim to scurvy while at sea, and while it was once believed that he died from the disease, it is now believed that he in fact died of heart failure.

Scurvy affected the voyages of some of the most famous explorers in the age of seafaring such as that of Jacques Cartier, Vasco da Gama, Francis Drake, Ferdinand Magellan, and Louis-Antoine.

Captain James Cook is famed for his strict cleanliness regime and the forbidding of sailors from drinking boiling broth of fat from the top of copper cooking pans. When the fat came into contact with the copper, it caused stomach upset and reduced the sailors ability to absorb vital vitamins. During his circumnavigation of the world (1768–1771), nobody aboard Cook’s ship is known to have died from scurvy.

Many a physician committed to exploring the causes of scurvy postulating a range of causes from foul vapors, dampness, an excess of black bile laziness, copper poisoning, heredity, and blocked perspiration. These were based on humoral theory which was yet to be displaced by the likes of germ theory and other more accurate scientific advances over the decades. Cures for balancing the humors included purging with saltwater, bloodletting, putting hydrochloric acid in drinking water, smearing mercury paste on open sores, drinking dealcoholized beer, and other ineffectual but politically palatable or economically feasible solutions. The earliest meaningful antidote came in 1601 when James Lancaster began prescribing lemon juice.

In Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed writes:

In 1601, Captain James Lancaster, an English sailor, performed an experiment on the prevention of scurvy, one of the biggest killers at sea. On one of four ships bound for India, he prescribed three teaspoons of lemon juice a day for the crew. By the halfway point 110 men out of 278 had died on the other three ships. On the lemon-supplied ship, however, everyone survived.

Lancaster’s work didn’t quite catch on, however, and it would take another 300 years for the virtues of vitamin C to be understood. While Captain Cook and James Lancaster were able to reduce cases of scurvy aboard their vessels, it wasn’t until the 18th century that naval surgeon James Lind carried out the first controlled experiments in which he put the lime hypothesis to the test.

Having published his findings in 1753, they wouldn’t be actioned until 1795.

During the Napoleonic Wars in the 1790s the physician Sir Gilbert Blane, a supporter of Linds work, convinced the Royal Navy to introduce a daily dose of lime juice to all British mariners mixed in with their rum. This newly introduced systematic consumption of lime juice seemed to have resolved outbreaks of scurvy aboard the Royal Navy’s fleets. British sailors have since been known as ‘Limeys’.

DID YOU KNOW

The Origins of ‘Hear Hear’

‘Hear Hear’ is often used in political circles to agree with something being said (you’ve probably heard it plenty while watching PMQs on a wednesday afternoon).

Originally, any disagreement with a speaker, either in the House Commons or the House of Lords, would be expressed by loud humming from those with opposing views in an attempt to drown out a speech being made. But members in favour of the speaker would call for those humming to listen by shouting ‘hear him, hear him’. This phrase eventually evolved into ‘hear hear’ over the years.

ON THIS DAY: 6th OCTOBER

• Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit the White House on this day in 1979. Two other popes followed suit; Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, and Pope Francis in 2015.

• The notorious Reno Gang carried out the first known peacetime train robbery on this day in 1866. The gang broke into the express car, grabbed the messenger, bashing him savagely before throwing him off the train (he later died). The thieves then broke into all the safes on board, emptying them of gold, cash and bonds. They got away with more than $90,000, the biggest train robbery at the time.

• Setting off in 1994, the English explorer Jason Lewis completed Expedition 360 on this day in 2007, becoming the first person to circumnavigate the globe using human propulsion alone i.e. Bicycles, in-line skates, kayaks, swimming, rowing, walking and a unique pedal-powered boat.

PHOTOS OF THE WEEK:

Madagascar’s last Queen, Ranavalona III, who was dethroned by the French and exiled to Algiers in 1897.

1954: A De Beers diamond mine worker being X-rayed for diamonds at the end of his shift at the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa. Read about how the De Beers company was formed here.

BOOK PASSAGE: TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS BY CHERYL STRAYED.

“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ: Who Was Ibn Taymiyyah?

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BOC#039

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: FROM BOOKS TO JIHAD, HOW IBN TAYMIYYAH INFLUENCED GENERATIONS…

Ask any devout Muslim to name a classical scholar whose work has most influenced the Islamic creed, and they’ll most likely point to Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah. While his notoriety in Islamic circles has long been cemented, he’s seldom recognized by the secular laity. His reach and influence has, knowingly or unknowingly, touched the lives of millions of Muslims across the globe. He is so revered, in fact, that he carries the honorous yet cumbersome title of Shaykh al-Islam (roughly translated as Master of Islam), and is cited by almost all modern jurists when considering rulings and verdicts on religious matters.

Born in 1263, the Muslim theologian and legal scholar is said to have penned eighty pages of religious commentary a day, accumulating an archive of some five-hundred volumes of work. While his writing went on to inspire the ideas of Mohammed Ibn Abdul-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement in the 18th century, his contributions to Islamic thought and theology remain highly revered amongst the vast majority of Sunni Muslims worldwide. That being said, as Jon Hoover of Nottingham University points out, his work has also been cited by the likes of Osama Bin Laden.

Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah was born into a family of Hanbali scholars in the ancient town of Harran in what was Syria. To be a Hanbali meant that one subscribed to the creed of the early Muslim jurist Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, the smallest of the four Sunni legal schools of thought.

Ibn Hanbal was a religious purist of the Abbasid-era who “took a bulldog stand against the primacy and sufficiency of reason…[he] favored the most literal reading of the Qur’an and the most literalist methods for applying it, for the most part rejecting even analogical reasoning as a way of expanding the doctrines, and so did Ibn Taymiyyah.”1

A common thread of strict orthodoxy could thus be said to have passed from Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (780-855), through Ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328), and on to Abdul-Wahhab (1703- 1792); three giants of Islamic orthodox scholarship.

Ibn Taymiyyah grew up during the Mamluk-Mongol wars, a period marked by the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258; an attack that saw Hulagu’s army perpetrate a genocide against hundreds of thousands of Baghdadi citizens, as well as the destruction of schools, libraries and hospitals. At the age of seven, with his books in tow, his family slipped away from the oft attacked town of Harran and headed for Damascus. Ahmad’s intelligence, memory, speed of perception and debating skills were notable at this young age, and in 1284, he succeeded his father as a teacher at a madrasa. But this didn’t keep him out of trouble.

Being the zealot he was, his religious fervor was roused in 1294 when he led a throng of men demanding the execution of a christian scribe who’d insulted the Prophet Mohammed. The Christian would eventually convert in an attempt to avoid punishment, and Ibn Taymiyyah would soon find himself behind bars; a theme that would follow him until his death in 1328.

Ibn Taymiyya’s school of thought relied on the uncompromising texts of the Quran and a rigorous reliance on the life of the Prophet Mohammed as preserved by the pious forebears that passed on the torch of Islamic orthodoxy. His distaste for the ‘cult of saints’, the practice of asking the dead for intercession led him to hone in on a pure form of Islamic monotheism that was to become his trademark. This monotheistic zeal would be supported by his famed loyal student Ibn al-Qayyim, and was later reinforced by Abdul-Wahhab who would join forces with Ibn Saud to unite the Arab tribes under a single Wahabi-Saudi banner that would give birth to modern day Saudi Arabia.

To begin with, Taymiyyah’s strict orthodox code only attracted a moderate following as the hoi polloi didn’t much fancy his admonition of folk practices such as the excessive praise of ‘great men’, and the visiting of shrines, both of which were deemed to be a distortion of the purest forms of Islamic theological doctrine i.e. Shirk; the practice of associating partners with God.

During his time in an Alexandrian jail, he penned one of his most important works, The Refutation of the Logicians, which would be abridged two-hundred years later. The title of the book is itself testament to his distaste for the application of philosophy and logic in the interpretation of scripture. Taymiyyah believed that logic was an infestation that diluted the religious sciences.

Ibn Taymiyyah was no stranger to the rulers, occasionally doing their bidding. But in 1309 when five-hundred sufis marched on the Mamluk citadel in Cairo in protest of his criticisms of their leaders, he was tried and imprisoned yet again. Sufism instigated the wrath of Taymiyyah due to their insistence in parting with classical interpretations of God’s divinity and nature.

With Mongol invasions increasing at the turn of the fourteenth century, Ibn Taymiyyah called for Jihad in the form of three famous fatwas (legal rulings). The first of these fatwas was issued around the time of the first Mongol invasion, the second was during the second or third invasion (1300-1303), and the last of the three fatwas was issued during a later invasion (1312-1313). Although the Mongols were Muslim, he argued that they were fair game due to their refusal to uphold the obligations of Islam.

In the late 1970s, an Egyptian by the name of Abdul Salam Faraj would go on to cite Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwas against the Mongols in reference to the Egyptian government. President Anwar Sadat was to be overthrown, he argued, because like the Mongols, he failed to uphold and implement the obligations of Islam.

In 2015, Ibn Taymiyyah’s books were being prevented from entering Egypt and Jordan due their uncompromising calls for Islamic orthodoxy and association with jihad. One of his most frequently sold books today remains Al-Aqidah Al-Waasitiyyah, a treatise on the Islamic creed with a focus on the attributes of God.

Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah died in a Damascus prison on 26th September 1328, but his work and influence continues to shape and Islamic theology, jurisprudence and politics to this day.

DID YOU KNOW…

“In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king (William III). In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them….in effect, to circulate or “monetize” the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers (they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it), but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist.” - Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

ON THIS DAY: 29th SEPTEMBER

• British Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was fatally wounded during his famous victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, was born on this day in 1758. Nelson’s Column at Trafalgar Square (named after the Battle of Trafalgar) was constructed in his honour in 1840. The 52m tall structure was completed with the addition of four Barbary lions at its base in 1867.

• CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, was formed on this day in 1954. The organizations Large Hadron Collider which is located on the Franco-Swiss border is 27 km in circumference and collides particles at the speed of light in an attempt to recreate the conditions of the early universe.

• The cruise ferry MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea on 28th September 1994. Rescue efforts and reports continued into the 29th. Over 850 people lost their lives in what is now considered one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. It was caused by a faulty bow door.

  

PHOTO OF THE WEEK:

1922 in Washington: Police Officer Bill Norton measures women’s bathing suits in conjunction with Modesty Laws.

WORD OF THE WEEK

MODUS VIVENDI:

(Latin) Frequently interpreted literally as ‘way of life’, some of the more conservative authorities insist that its application should be limited to the arrangements following a truce between two disputing parties. i.e. The two neighboring nations developed a modus vivendi to avoid conflict while they awaited final negotiations for a peace treaty.

WANT MORE? READ: The Man Who Wired The Atlantic

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BOC#038

5 MINUTE MUNCH

READ PART 1 HERE

TITLE PIECE: PART 2: THE MAN WHO WIRED THE ATLANTIC

Last week we explored the fascinating story of Cyrus Field and his ultra-ambitious plan to link North America to Europe by way of an extensive telegraph cable laid across two thousand miles of seabed. In 1858, after three failed attempts, the first transatlantic messages were finally transmitted between Newfoundland and Ireland, leading to celebrations and delight on both sides of the Atlantic.

The project’s success had thus far seen 366 readable messages transmitted across the Atlantic in a single month. But having only enjoyed the bounties of their enduring efforts for a number of weeks, on 1 September 1858, the cable fell silent….

1859 - 1865

With communications down and Civil War looming in the United States, the British government did what they do best. They commissioned a committee of experts, engineers and scientists to investigate what had gone wrong while temporarily halting their support for the project.

By July 1863, the committee had concluded an optimistic outlook for the project with a series of suggested improvements that would promise prolonged success going forward. With a newfound optimism, Cyrus Field left the Civil War behind and returned to England where he’d set out to secure new investment. Having struck a deal with the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company as well as the railway tycoon Thomas Brassey, the project was almost ready to resume.

All that was needed now was a new ship which came in the form of the SS Great Eastern; a huge vessel built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The ship offered more than five times the displacement tonnage of any other ship of the day (it would take another forty years for a bigger ship to be built).

By 1865, she was loaded and ready to set sail. 500 crew, 7,000 tonnes of cable, 2,000 tonnes of water tanks and 1,500 tonnes of coal departed on June 24 1865.

As might be expected by now, the ship ran into trouble almost immediately as a scrambling crew hastened to investigate a noise resembling a thunderbolt. Having frustratingly retraced much mileage, copious painstaking hours of cable retrieval ensued.

On 2 August, things suddenly took a turn for the worse yet again as a sudden change in course saw an iron protrusion on deck sever the cable while the ship was just six hundred miles away from Newfoundland’s shores. The crew would spend the next nine-days trying to recover the cable using a grapnel anchor, but, you guessed it, the grapnel snapped and the mission had to be aborted once more.

After so many failed attempts, Cyrus feared his British counterparts would seek to terminate the project, but he needn’t have worried. His investors, seeing how close the project was to success, pushed on with unwavering enthusiasm. Terms were renewed ahead of yet another voyage the following summer.

1866

On July 13 1866 the SS Great Eastern once again departed Valentia Island for Newfoundland, and without much ado, arrived at Heart’s Content on July 27 with the cable having been successfully laid. As before, Cyrus coupled the cable and eagerly rowed to shore where he sent an initial message to his wife which read: ‘All well. Thank God the cable is laid and is in perfect working order’.

Celebrations once again ensued as messages were exchanged between President Andrew Johnson and Queen Victoria.

Following this great feat, Field and his crew retraced their previous failed voyage fishing up old cable and feeding it back to Nova Scotia. The joy of two successful voyages after much perseverance led Cyrus to enter his cabin, lock the door, and cry ‘like a child…full of gratitude to God’.

Their progress had been gargantuan. Initial messages sent in 1858 had taken sixteen hours to transmit, but by 1866, the same messages were carried in seven minutes. Transmission rates eventually rose to 7.36 words a minute, delivering some 1,000 messages a month.

In 1866 Paul Julius Reuter went on to lay more cable, connecting Germany to England, and France to the U.S in 1869. Between 1870 and 1900 the world would shrink thanks to the rapid unravelling of communications cables between Europe, Asia, and South America.

Needless to say, Cyrus made a healthy profit and went on to buy newspapers, a skyscraper and some Manhattan real estate to name but a few of his investments. But with New York’s economic bust looming in 1881, all began to fall apart. As if financial hardship wasn’t enough, his daughter was institutionalized having suffered with mental illness, and in 1891 his wife would pass away. A year later, Cyrus himself would drifted in his sleep at the age of seventy-two.

He is remembered for his insatiable thirst for success, the expansion of what is aptly referred to as the ‘Victorian internet’, and, as his tombstone reads, courage, energy and perseverance.

DID YOU KNOW…

If you go to Friesland, a province by the North Sea in the Netherlands, you’ll hear a language that experts believe sounds closest to what became ancestral English. Having once shared a common Anglo-Frisian ancestor, entire sentences may sound familiar to the English ear.

Examples: ‘Laam’ (lamb), ‘goes’ (goose), ‘bûter’ (butter), ‘brea’ (bread), ‘tsiis’ (cheese), ‘see’ (sea), ‘stoarm’ (storm), ‘boat’ (boat), ‘rein’ (rain) and ‘snie’ (snow), ‘miel’ (meal) and ‘sliepe’ (sleep).

ON THIS DAY: 22ND SEPTEMBER

• Following the BBC’s long monopoly on British television starting on November 2nd 1936, the Television Act of 1954 saw the introduction of the Independent Television Network (ITV) mark the start of commercial television in 1955. Its first broadcast was a 5 minute introductory film, followed by an evening of entertainment and an advert for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

• Having denied it for over two months, on this day in 1985 the French government finally admitted that its agents sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior on the night of 10 July 1985. The blasts of two mines placed on the ship’s hull by French secret agents sank the vessel which was in the Pacific to protest French nuclear testing in the area.

  

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: 1899: A double-exposed photograph showing Nikola Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory next to his "Magnifying Transmitter."

Nikola Tesla was born around midnight, between July 9 and July 10, 1856 during a fierce lightning storm. According to family legend, midway through the birth, the midwife wrung her hands and declared the lightning a bad omen. “This child will be a child of darkness”, she said, to which his mother replied: “No. He will be a child of light.” - PBS.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE WEEK: FROM MEDITATIONS BY MARCUS AURELIUS.

WANT MORE? READ: Henry the Navigator and the Siege of Ceuta

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BOC#037

7 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: PART 1: THE ‘CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS OF AMERICA‘

During the mid 1800s, the U.S was beginning to follow in the footsteps of Europe’s industrial revolution starting with New York’s Erie Canal in 1825, the steam engine, and the railroad in the 1840s. The telegraph was the latest tech of the day seeing the U.S expand from a single working telegraph line in 1846 to 24,000 miles of the stuff by 1852. Even in light of such progress, its full potential lay dormantly awaiting the gargantuan ambitions of a few special men.

It’s true that the east and west coasts of the United States had already been linked by telegraph cables by 1840. It’s also true that several underwater cables had linked England to France and Ireland, and Corsica to Sardinia by the 1850s. But what hadn’t yet been achieved was the ambitious unification of Europe and North America by way of a lengthy transatlantic communications cable. The task of laying cables in an ocean whose depths had yet to be comprehensively surveyed, and whose topography was yet to be mapped was no mean feat. The proposed cables would need to be two hundred times longer than anything yet known, not to mention significantly stronger. The ships required would also need to be much larger.

Cyrus Field, a thirty-four year old retired tycoon was just the man to take things to the next level. In 1854, Cyrus was introduced to Canadian engineer Frederick Newton Gisborne. Grisborne was actively seeking funds to lay a cable from New York to Newfoundland (Canada). Although this didn’t quite resonate with Cyrus at the time, it was later detailed at a meeting held at his Manhattan mansion. Gisborne went on to explain that ships from Europe were able to arrive at Newfoundland sooner than they were able to arrive at New York. If news from ships could be telegraphed across Newfound and down to New York, it would save ships three or four days at sea — things were beginning to make sense. But following a glance at his map, Cyrus began to wonder if it would be possible to link not only New York to Canada, but also Canada to Ireland.

This was to become an obsession for Cyrus Field.

The next question, then, was if the topography of the ocean floor was fit for the laying of cables, and whether two thousand mile long cables could carry an impulse strong enough for transmission. Leading Oceanographer, Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, head of the Naval Observatory in Washington, and Samuel Morse who invented the telegraph in the U.S, both advised Cyrus that the plan was indeed actionable; in theory at least.

Cyrus then set about acquiring investors such as Peter Cooper who’d made his fortune in steel and telegraph cables. Peter was sold, but told Cyrus that he’d only partake as long as he could recruit a few more investors with whom to share the risk. With a handful of investors onboard, including a one Marshall Roberts, himself a shipbuilder, the required sum was on the table. On 10th March 1854 the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company was born.

Cyrus Field began laying the overland portion of the line setting off from the Newfoundland capital at St. John, through inhospitable vegetation to the southern tip at Channel Port aux Basques. Delays caused by the laying of underwater cables between Newfoundland and the Canadian mainland meant that the telegram between Newfoundland and New York didn’t open until 1856 leaving a huge dent in the company’s budget. With a third of its capital depleted, the company needed to raise more funds, and so Cyrus decided it was time to lobby the British government. The British obliged, but the law required Cyrus to set up a company that would be owned primarily by Englishmen. The British owned Atlantic Telegraph Company was thus born out of this necessity, and provided the financial resources needed to see the project through its next decade.

Ships large enough to carry and lay submarine cables were now needed. The British supplied the project with HMS Agamemnon, and the U.S offered the largest ship of the day, USS Niagara. With the prospect of competition approaching the corridors of Washington, Cyrus sourced the cables, and hastened to work. The two ships set off for Newfoundland from Valentia Island in Ireland with whom they’d stay in touch throughout the voyage. Niagara laid the first stretch of cable as they departed with a celebratory send-off.

All was going well until the crew lost contact with Valentia island on August 11 1857. After two and a half hours of panic, relief ensued as they regained communications, but it wasn’t to last long. At 3.45am, Field was awoken by shouts from the deck. The cable had snapped, lost to the depths of the Atlantic. The attempt was subsequently aborted, but having returned home with a calm demeanour, Cyrus Field managed to retain the support of the British and the Americans, and scheduled a second attempt for the following year.

In June 1858 the two ships agreed to rendezvous in the middle of the Atlantic where they’d splice the two cables. This time they’d both head in different directions laying cable as they sailed toward opposite shores. A storm threatened to sink Agamemnon, but they eventually got underway with the British ship headed for Ireland, and the American ship for Newfoundland. After three miles of sailing, the cable snapped! Having rejoined and fixed the splice, both ships set out once again, but within 24 hours, the cable snapped yet again! A third attempt couldn’t have failed, surely. But it did. The cable had now snapped three times in four days. Fortunately, amidst all the pessimism back on dry land, Field was to be allowed one final attempt.

On 29 July 1858, the ships reunited in the middle of the Atlantic. This time the cable didn’t snap, but it certainly wasn’t plain sailing. Field was tested by the prospect of Agamemnon running out of fuel, and the Niagara drifting off course. As if this wasn’t enough, the crew was yet again spooked by a temporary pause in communications. On this occasion, however, luck appeared to have come to their rescue.

With the Newfoundland coast in sight, Cyrus excitedly rowed to shore at 1.45am, before rushing fifteen miles on foot to the nearest transmission point. With a little assistance, he began transmitting the first successful messages, the first of which was to his wife, Mary.

The public awoke to jubilation with businesses on both sides of the Atlantic closing to celebrate and partake in prayer. It was as though the Atlantic had ‘dried up’ according to the Times.

Cyrus was likened to Christopher Columbus for his achievements in connecting the ‘old’ and ‘new’ worlds. Upon his return to New York, he was received with a one-hundred-gun salute, parades, fireworks and pomp. The age of information had been born.

Or had it?

On 1 September 1858, the cable once again fell silent….

Part 2 next week.

DID YOU KNOW…

Medical cannibalism, the practice of eating human body parts for their healing properties has been practiced throughout human history. From consuming the blood of Gladiators as a remedy for epilepsy, to the consumption of ancient egyptian mummies by the Victorians as a remedy for headaches to heart attacks, medical cannibalism has found its way into the annals of medicinal history. The consumption of Egyptian mummies began in the middle ages with European exposure to the Islamic world by way of the crusades. Europeans mistranslated what was in fact an asphalt used in the embalming process thought to have medicinal properties, leading them to consume a substance found on the mummified bodies, and eventually the bodies themselves.

This wasn’t the first time the Crusaders would embrace cannibalism, as Tamim Ansari writes:

“Once the Crusaders made it into Ma’ara, they did more than slaughter. They went on a frightening rampage that included boiling adult Muslims up for soup and skewering Muslim children on spits, grilling them over open fires, and eating them.” - Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (Amazon Affiliate link)

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ON THIS DAY: 15th SEPTEMBER

• Google.com was registered today in 1997. Happy Birthday, Google?

• Onboard HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin reached the Galápagos Islands today in 1835. Check out BOCN#026 for more.

• The Sun, one of the largest tabloids in the U.K was published for the first time today in 1964.

• The Act of Independence of Central America was signed in Guatemala City today in 1821. It proclaimed the independence of Central America from the Spanish Empire and included countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: On 10th September 1977, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian agricultural worker, was beheaded by guillotine in Marseille, France. Having been found guilty of the murder of his girlfriend, he became the last person to be executed in France. The guillotine and the death penalty were officially abolished in France in 1981.

Read: Origins of the Guillotine

FROM THE AUTHORS MOUTH…

The English author Agatha Christie, whose works included Murder on the Orient Express and The Mousetrap, was born today in 1890 in Devon.

MISSED LAST WEEK? Read Here: Hitler's Pope — How Pope Pius XII aided Hitler

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BOC#036

4 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: HOW PORTUGAL CONQUERED CEUTA:

In 1415, having won independence from Castile (modern day spain), Portugal found itself enduring a period of prolonged peace. With the Portuguese princes sat idle, the search for a new project sizzled in the cauldrons of imperial ambition. Ceuta, a small mediterranean port on the Moroccan coast appeared to be the perfect target. The fortified port-city had served as a trading hub that funneled the shipments of Moroccan wheat destined for Europe, as well as gold, silver, ivory and slaves from the Muslim kingdoms of the Sahel (Africa).

Seizing Ceuta would promise the Portuguese crown control of key trading routes, as well as a point of launch for a crusade by which to vanquish the ‘Muslim infidels’ that lurked across the Mediterranean. For several years in the run up to 1415, King John of Portugal set about building a fleet capable of the ambitious maritime exploits that would see Portugal compete for its place as a global economic powerhouse.

With the possibility of Castile (Spain) coming to the aid of Ceuta, and the financial strain of the Portuguese war for independence still overshadowing Portugal’s potential exploits abroad, the king’s advisors knew the plan was somewhat ambitious. King John of Portugal’s third surviving son, Prince Henry, was in favour of an invasion; after all, he knew that he’d never inherit the Portuguese throne, and saw the prospect of occupying a Muslim port as an opportunity for fame and fortune.

Henry did well to convince his father to allow him to prepare and execute the coming invasion in spite of the many concerns that he was ‘too young’ and ‘lacked the necessary experience’.

Alas, Henry managed to raise the largest flotilla Portugal had ever known. Estimates suggest the inclusion of 59 war galleys, 63 transport vessels, and 120 other craft carrying some 19,000 men.

On July 26 1415, the expedition set sail for Lisbon where King John unveiled the otherwise secret plan to sail for Ceuta. Their approach didn’t go unnoticed, and as they approached the Moroccan coast, the alarm was soon raised. Ceuta’s governor Salah bin Salah turned to his kingdoms for reinforcements, but having seen the Portuguese turn away owing to stormy weather conditions, Salah soon dismissed his reinforcements. Predictably, this turned out to be a costly blunder for the Muslims as the Portuguese returned in full force once the weather had cleared.

Henry led the raid, but his enthusiasm only drove him into the abyss. He found himself lost for several hours, but soon returned to play a key role in the assault. A mere thirteen hours later, the conquest was over with the corpses of Ceuta’s defender’s piled up in mounds. By contrast, the Portuguese invading forces lost a mere eight lives.

It didn’t take long before Henry’s men seized the city’s mosques, most notably the Great Mosque of Ceuta which was converted into a church, and later demolished to make way for a cathedral.

The invasion saw the looting of jewelry, tapestries, silks, brass, spices, gold, silver and a multitude of other riches that the Portuguese deemed worthy of pillaging. King John subsequently claimed Ceuta for Portugal, posting a troop of 2,500 men to preserve his newly acquired asset. The newly appointed governor of Ceuta was Pedro de Menezes who reported directly to Henry himself. Henry it seemed, had made a name for himself, becoming the head of a new Portuguese territory abroad.

Ceuta thus became Portugal’s first acquisition on the road to building an empire that would go on to span from Brazil to Africa, and on to the Far East.

Henry the Navigator, as he became known, was the first cousin of the English king, Henry V, who in October of the same year, won the infamous battle of Agincourt that saw the English defeat the French in a battle that would go on to be immortalized by Shakespeare in his play Henry V.

Henry the Navigator was a key figure in the early expansion of the Portuguese empire, and following the conquest of Ceuta, turned his sights to the Atlantic where he went on to discover Madeira. The island had in fact previously been discovered by the Italians who saw no value in it, but the Portuguese saw the trees for the wood. So dense were the islands forests that the island was subsequently called ‘Madeira,’ meaning wood in Portuguese. The sap of the island’s dragon tree was extracted for use in dyes and medicines, while grapes and sugarcane were transplanted from Crete and Sicily which saw the island become a major exporter of wine, sugar and wood, and a valuable cog in the Portuguese economy.

Henry’s exploits also saw the Portuguese go on to claim and populate the islands of the Azores, and further explore the Atlantic and the west coast of Africa.

DID YOU KNOW…

🇮🇪 The green of the Irish tricolour signifies Ireland’s Catholics, the Republican cause and revolution, orange represents Ireland’s Protestants, and the white separating the two colours hope for peace between them.

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ON THIS DAY: 8TH SEPTEMBER:

• London was hit by its first V-2 missile today in 1944. Launched by Nazi Germany, it was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The weapon was the brainchild of Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun who surrendered to the Americans in the Austrian Alps in 1945. He spent the next 15 years working for the U.S. Army’s guided missile programme, and eventually became the director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center where he was chief architect for the superbooster that would send men to the moon.

• The Oprah Winfrey Show aired for the first time today in 1986. It ran until May 2011.

• The English Football League (EFL) began today in 1888. Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers all played 6 matches across northern England. Preston North End became the very first winners of the league.

Photo: On Sunday 3rd September 1967 Sweden switched from driving on the left hand side to the right-hand side, a day known as Dagen H (H-Day). Some 350,000 road signs had to be replaced. Swedes began driving on the right-hand side of roads at precisely 5am following a radio countdown.

WORD OF THE WEEK:

Kuchisabishii

口寂しい

A Japanese word that describes the feeling of eating something not because you're hungry, but because your mouth feels empty or bored.

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BOC#035

6 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: POPE PIUS XII AND HITLER; AN UNLIKELY ALLIANCE.

According to John Cornwell’s book, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII*, Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), later to become Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), played a key role in throning one of the 20th century’s most despised national leaders. But how, and indeed why would such a senior spiritual leader have anything to do with one of the 20th century’s ugliest atrocities?

The term “Hitler’s Pope” may strike readers as oxymoronic, and rightly so. It’s worth mentioning that there have been some efforts to redeem the reputation of Pope Pius XII in light of Cornwell’s devastating case against him, but I’ll leave that to you to investigate at your own leisure. The purpose of this post is to explore the idea expounded by John Cornwell that the Pope was not only complicit in Hitler’s rise, but played a key role, turning a blind eye to the tragedies of Nazi concentration camps.

The claims suppose that Hitler feared the power of the Catholic Church, and thus knew that he needed to neutralize its authority in order to attain the dictatorial power he sought. Between 1919 and 1933 at least five Catholic Center Party members became chancellors in ten cabinets, leaving little political scope for Nazi traction. Hitler understood this well enough, and sought to build an alliance with the Church. But what was in it for the Pope? Well, control of Germany’s schools at a time when Catholic schools had long been persecuted, particularly in countries like France where in 1904 Emile Combes boasted that he’d closed 13,904 Catholic schools.

The Catholic plight was one thing, but as we know, the Jews had long been persecuted in Europe.

In the early days of Berlin, Jews were the only national group required to pay the same tariffs as animals upon entering the city. This of course wasn’t the first time the Jews had been compared to animals. During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews who faked their conversion to Christianity were called “Marranos” which translates as pigs, and following the Fourth Lateran Council convened by Pope Innocent III in 1215, Jews were required to wear distinguishing headgear. They were denied social equality and were banned from owning land. Additionally, they were excluded from most forms of public office and trade. With no available alternative, Jews were forced to engage in money-lending to earn a living. In his book, John Cornwell elaborates on the fanciful anti-semitic ideas held in medieval England:

But the Middle Ages were also marked by the insidious development that was later to be known as the “blood libel.” Starting in England in the twelfth century, the belief spread rapidly that Jews tortured and sacrificed Christian children. There was an associated myth that Jews stole consecrated Hosts, the Communion bread that had become the “body and blood” of Christ in the Mass, in order to perform abominable rites. At the same time, allegations of ritual murder, human sacrifice, and Host desecration gave impetus to a belief that Judaism involved the performance of magic aimed at undermining and ultimately destroying Christendom.

John Cornwell. Hitler's Pope, John Cornwell (p. 41).

The idea that an openly anti-semitic political party would rise to power in Europe was therefore frightening for the Jewish community. What made it even more frightening, however, was the complicity and collaboration of the Vatican.

Pacelli’s Involvement…

As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli turned against his own spiritual brethren to help crush the Catholic Center Party which consisted of loyal Catholics. He thus supported Hitler as Chancellor over the Catholic Democrat Heinrich Brüning.

Both the Catholic Church and the Nazi Party found a common enemy in Socialism and Communism. The feeling was of course mutual. Hitler wrote an article in “Völkischer Beobachter” in February 1929 saying “The fact that the Catholic Church had come to an agreement with Fascist Italy, proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity than those of Jewish Liberalism or even atheistic Marxism.”1

Hitler’s ideal strategy of collaborating with the Catholic Church was to integrate the Church’s political activity into the Nazi Party itself. This allowed the Papacy to pull political strings while remaining free from culpability so far as any civic authority was concerned. In other words, the Holocaust could take place without the Church being held accountable. The Enabling Act of 1933 which saw dictatorial power passed to Hitler was supported by Pacelli, who in turn called on a certain Ludwig Kaas who pressured the Center Party to agree to the act.

Pachelli understood the importance of relations between church and state in achieving his vision for Catholic influence in Nazi Germany, so as Secretary of State, he played a key role in the agreements between the Holy See and the German state known as the Reich Concordat of 1933. Cornwell writes:

The negotiations were conducted exclusively by Pacelli on behalf of the Pope over the heads of the faithful, the clergy, and the German bishops. (When Hitler became Pacelli’s partner in negotiations, the concordat thus became the supreme act of two authoritarians, while the supposed beneficiaries were correspondingly weakened, undermined, and neutralized)…For centuries, Vatican concordats had enshrined a variety of agreements between the Holy See and secular governments, securing rights to define doctrine; conditions of bestowing sacraments; rights to worship and education; laws concerning property, seminaries, clerical and episcopal appointments and salaries; marriage and annulment law.

John Cornwell. Hitler's Pope, John Cornwell (p. 99).

As previously mentioned, it was Ludwig Kaas, an expert in canon law with two PhDs, one in Theology and one in Philosophy, and a close friend of Pacelli who would be appointed chief influencer in the conspiracy to dismantle the Catholic Center Party, and build constructive relations with Hitler. Kaas became chairman of the Center Party in 1928, incidentally becoming the first priest to hold the title in the Party’s long history.

With the Nazis in control of Rome by 1943, SS Major Herbert Kappler was ordered to round up Italian Jews as had been done elsewhere, but Kappler had other ideas. Finding no threat from the Italian Jewry, he thought they might be better used to penetrate the ‘international Jewish financial conspiracy,” and instead turned to the threat of deportation as a tool by which to raise a ransom. Kappler ordered fifty kilograms of gold to be coughed up within thirty-six hours to help fund arms purchases. While the Vatican did authorise a loan that was to ‘be paid back’, ‘not an ounce of Vatican gold was donated or loaned” in aid of the Italian Jews. It’s also noted that Pacelli never publicly condemned the Holocaust by name.

Pacelli, by now Pope Pius XII, was very aware of the Jews being rounded up and sent to concentration camps, after all, his denunciations of mass murder were publicly broadcast over Vatican radio. The Nazi’s were persecuting Jews right under the Vatican window, so to speak.

While Cornwell’s book is extensive, I hope to have provided a brief synopsis of the overarching claims against Pacelli. Once more, I’ll leave it to the reader to investigate these profound claims further.

In conclusion, while we’ve only scratched the surface, it’s a fascinating bit of history to think about. This post is in no way intended to criticise or discredit the faithful, but rather, to understand what Lord Palmerston once said of great powers; that there are “no eternal friends or eternal enemies, there are only eternal interests”.

DID YOU KNOW…

Ernst Gräfenberg, the German gynaecologist who fled Nazi Germany for America developed an intrauterine device first known as the Gräfenberg ring. The ring was a pregnancy control measure that worked on the principle of placing a foreign object in the uterus, triggering an immunological response that would prevent fertilization. As one might expect, the device had its issues.

In 1944 Gräfenberg identified an erogenous spot on the wall of the vagina called the Gräfenberg or ‘G’ spot.

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ON THIS DAY: 1st SEPTEMBER

• The wreck of the RMS Titanic, unseen for 73 years, was finally located off the coast of Newfoundland today in 1985.

• Germany invaded Poland today in 1939, marking the beginning of World War II.

• The Welsh footballer Gareth Bale, left Tottenham to sign for Real Madrid today in 2013 for a record breaking 100 million euros (£85 million).

• And; the Spring Temple Buddha in China, the tallest statue in the world for 10 years until it was beaten by the Statue of Unity in India, was completed today in 2008.

Taken by NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966, this is the first photo of Earth from the moon's orbit.

FROM THE AUTHORS MOUTH:

“Edgar Rice Burroughs, born today in 1875 was an American writer, recognised for his prolific output in the adventure, science fiction, and fantasy genres. Best known for creating the characters Tarzan and John Carter, he also wrote the Pellucidar series, the Amtor series, and the Caspak trilogy. - Wikipedia

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BOC#034

7 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: THE ARGENTINIAN DICTATOR WHO RETIRED IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE.

While visiting the Southern Pampas region of Argentina, Charles Darwin encountered and engaged with one of South America’s most brutal dictators. A man whose ties with England would see him spend his remaining years under the protection of the Hampshire countryside courtesy of the British taxpayer.

Juan Manuel De Rosas, as he was known, was on campaign against the native Indians on the temperate grasslands of Argentina when the Beagle arrived at the southern tip of the continent in 1833. Darwin’s impressions were such that he called Rosas:

“…a man of extraordinary character, and has a most predominant influence in the country, which it seems probable he will use to its prosperity and advancement…He first gained his celebrity by his laws for his own estancias, and by disciplining several hundred men, so as to resist with success the attacks of Indians.”

- Lynch, John. Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas.

But the side of Rosas Darwin likely didn’t see was one of violence, despotism and murder. Rosismo, as his premiership came to be known, was built on the accumulation and promise of land. John Lynch writes:

Who was Rosas? A landowner. What did he accumulate? Land. What did he give to his supporters? Land. What did he take from his enemies? Land.

- Lynch, John. Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas.

In 1810 the Spanish were kicked out of Argentina in what is known as the ‘May Revolution’. Rosas who preferred the order of colonial rule was disgusted by the execution of the former viceroy, counter-revolutionary, and royalist, Santiago Liniers. He saw Spanish colonialism as an era of prosperity and social order.

Rosas had two tenures as the governor of Buenos Aires, once from 1829 to 1832 and another from 1835 to 1852. The legacy of his first premiership was one of stability and tranquility. He strengthened the army, protected the church, silenced critics and ‘muzzled the press’. He neglected education, improved the financial credit of the government, and kept exports flowing. This, so it would seem, was enough to see him return to power for a second term.

During his second term he was repeatedly voted in by the House of Representatives, 60 percent of whom were landowners, or were connected to the land by way of occupation. One such man, Nicolás Anchorena, was the greatest landowner in the province having accumulated 1,836,000 acres by the end of Rosismo in 1852. An emphasis on land thus became a predictable and successful formula for the procurement of political support.

Being the expansionist that he was, Rosas led campaigns into the southern ‘Indian’ territories advancing and settling. Two of his most significant estancias (ranches) were Los Cerrillos and San Martín, in the Guardía del Monte on the Río Salado up against the Indian frontier. When Darwin visited Los Cerrillos he wrote that it was:

“…one of the great estancias of General Rosas. It was fortified and of such an extent, that arriving in the dark I thought it was a town and fortress. In the morning we saw immense herds of cattle, the general here having seventy-four leagues of land.”

In 1832, the Rosas government granted land to war veterans and ranchers who’d been affected by a recent drought. In one year, Rosas’ desert campaigns saw thousands of square miles west towards the Andes and south beyond the river Negro added to Buenos Aires, granting him the title ‘conquistador del desierto’ (conqueror of the desert). In a message to his troops he is recorded as having said: “The fine territories, which extend from the Andes to the coast and down to the Magellan Straits are now wide open for our children.”

Land eventually became a means of rewarding loyalty, paying soldier’s salaries, and issuing pensions. This emphasis on land polarized Argentinian society as an upper class of landowners marginalized the poorer lower classes. Rosas treated the countryside as a vast estancia, administering it with the appointment of feudal lords known as a Justices of the Peace.

Rosas was a proponent of slavery, deeming it necessary to supply labor for the estancias, industries, and households. It comes as no surprise, then, that he was also a supporter of lashing slaves to preserve obedience and social order. While the British had pressed for a ban on slavery, Rosas resisted until he required British support against a French blockade in 1838, that was. An anti-slave trade treaty was signed on May 24, 1839, although slavery wasn’t fully abolished in the whole of Argentina until the constitution of 1853.

Rosas was obsessed with obedience and order, and divided society into those who commanded and those who obeyed. Argentina was divided by the two opposing ideas of Unitarianism and Federalism, the latter of which preferred a decentralized system of regional powers as opposed to a centralized, unified state. Rosas was a federalist who despised Unitarians, seeing them as liberal enemies of Jesus who believed in the secular values of humanism and progress. John Lynch writes:

People were obliged to dress in a kind of uniform and to use the federalist color, red. Women were expected to wear red ribbons in their hair, men to have a fierce and hirsute look and wear red silk badges bearing the inscription “Long live the Argentine Confederation. Death to the Savage Unitarians.”

The justice system was under the strict ordinance of Rosas himself, interpreting, changing, and applying the law. He took the time to read many cases himself, marking their files with judgements like “shoot him,” “fine him,” “imprison him,” or “to the army.” He also used the church to his advantage, treating the clergy as a branch of the bureaucracy, appointing federalists to church positions while keeping papal jurisdiction out of Argentina.

His perception of sovereignty was one of immunity from criticism, punishment, and dissent, with the added function of power over life itself. He believed that the right to wage war, impose taxes, and to prescribe the law were all components of his authority.

Rosismo was defined by state sponsored terrorism whereby the preferred method of executing his Unitarian opponents were shooting, a thrust of the lance, or throat cutting; the latter being his personal favorite.

In October 1940 when state terrorism was at its peak, a period known as ‘The Great Terror’, headless bodies could be found in the streets every morning, often displayed on poles erect in public squares. Rosas’ security agency, the Sociedad Popular Restaurador would gather intelligence while the Mazorca arm would carry out the actual acts of terror. The Mazorca was oftentimes considered more brutal than Rosas himself, executing with a degree of semi-autonomy, like an unleashed beast he couldn’t control.

A second period of terror began in 1842. John Lynch writes:

In the last days of March each morning at dawn, corpses were found with their throats cut in various parts of the capital, and this carnage continued into April. Many of these killings were surrounded by mystery and committed at night. Others took place during the day. Two or three men would walk up to a victim in the street or in his house and shoot him at point-blank range or seize him and cut his throat; they would then leave unmolested while those nearby averted their faces. Assassins operated with impunity at dances, in homes and offices, and on public thoroughfares.

Rosas has since gone down as one of history’s cruelest dictators thanks to his Hobbesian belief that fear was crucial to any functioning society. As good looking and good natured as Rosas was considered to have been in private, his intellectual decline took a turn for the worst in 1848. Harry Thompson writes:

Rosas, like so many of his ilk, eventually pushed his military adventures a step too far. Eager to increase his territory, he attempted to invade both Brazil and Uruguay at the same time. It was a vicious and senseless war: at one point, he ordered the execution in cold blood of five hundred Uruguayan prisoners-of-war (of Indian extraction, naturally). But Rosas had bitten off more than he could chew, and his armies were eventually defeated at the battle of Caseros. Where did the fallen dictator go? Why, to England, of course, where this most brutal of mass-murderers was received by the British government with open arms. He was treated as a dignitary and given a luxurious retirement home at Swaythling, Hampshire, funded by the taxpayer, where he peacefully ended his days in 1884. - This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thompson.

So, in 1852 he boarded the steamship HMS Conflict, disembarking at Plymouth, England on April 26th taking quarters at Moorshead’s Royal Hotel, Devonport. He was greeted by a twenty-one gun salute, and having passed through a reception of dignitaries, was briskly cleared through customs. One Times reporter wrote:

“Marvellous has been the eagerness of English gentlemen, high in military and naval authority, to grasp his bloodstained hand.” - Lynch, John. Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Questions were asked in the House of Lords, to which the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Malmesbury replied that he was:

“…no common refugee, but one who had shown great distinction and kindness to the British merchants who had traded with his country, and one with whom the late Government had carried on negotiations of an important character, and had even signed a Treaty in 1849.”1

Following years of oppression, slavery, murder, and despotism, Rosas settled in England, beginning his exile first in Southampton, then on a small farm at Swaythling, some three miles beyond the town. He died in 1877.

DID YOU KNOW…

Altogether, your private load of microbes weighs roughly three pounds, about the same as your brain.

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ON THIS DAY: 25th AUGUST:

• The Oriental Republic of Uruguay declared its independence from Brazil today in 1825.

• Voyager 1, the space probe launched by NASA in 1977, became the first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium today in 2012.

• Today, it’s National Kiss and Make Up Day - Sort it out!

Bob Minor's 1925 cartoon predicts the fall of Western imperialism as China, India, Africa, and Russia rise, shifting global power away from U.S. and British dominance.

STENTORIAN:

In Greek mythology, Stentor had a particularly loud voice, described in Homer's Iliad as having a voice as loud as fifty men combined. Sentorian is thus applied to any loud voice or sound. You might express your views in a stentorian tone, or ring a doorbell in a stentorian manner.

FROM THE ACTORS MOUTH:

The Scottish actor and producer Sean Connery, CBE, who starred as James Bond 7 times, was born today in 1930 in Edinburgh.

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BOC#033

7 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: HOW MAYER ROTHSCHILD BUILT THE MOST POWERFUL BANK IN THE WORLD

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in the eighteenth-century German ghetto of Judengasse in Frankfurt in 1744. One of ten surviving children, Mayer’s father traded coins and silk in order to fund their dingy nine hundred square foot home overlooking a narrow ghetto alley.

The ghetto’s streets were so narrow that horse-drawn-wagons had difficulty turning around, and Mayer often walked down the street’s center in order to avoid the raw sewage that flowed down the sides. While Mayer would receive a typical elementary Judengasse education in Jewish scripture, literature and tradition hosted by the local synagogue, he would eventually go on to shatter ghetto expectations by founding and building one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.

Frankfurt was a key port on the river Main which flowed into the Rhine, and was under the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire. The Vienna ruled city hosted semiannual trade fairs which connected traders, bankers, princes and dukes from far-off lands.

When Mayer’s parents died of smallpox while he was still only twelve, he was sent to become an apprentice with Wolf Oppenheimer, a prominent Hanoverian Jewish banking house where Mayer’s father likely had connections. It was here the Mayer learned about the rare historic coins of Rome, Persia and Byzantium. During his time at Wolf Oppenheimer, the young Rothschild made acquaintances with an array of wealthy princes and collectors, and was prepared for life as a Court Jew.

A Court Jew was an honourable post whereby a Jew would advise and counsel powerful men on financial affairs, often calling on family connections in the Jewish Diaspora across Europe and the Muslim world. They became prominent players in the management of state finances raising funds for armies and navies.

By the time Mayer was twenty, he set up his own business trading rare coins, medals, stones, and antiques, bringing him into contact with the wealthy elite. His prestige eventually escalated seeing him take on the role of occasional trading agent for Prince William, son of King Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel. Rothschild later convinced William to make him the court agent which would give him increased influence and clout in royal circles. At twenty-six, Mayer married Gutle Schnapper who would bear him nineteen children, ten of whom survived. Of these ten, five would go on the found the future House of Rothschild.

Mayer worked his way into the financial mechanisms that saw Prince William rent conscripts to the British during the American Revolution. Having persuaded treasury star Carl Friedrich Bederus to lobby William on his behalf, Mayer gained a role in redeeming British notes on William’s behalf. With no branches outside England, British notes had to be redeemed at British banks. The middlemen who redeemed the notes, exchanging them for German currencies, made a profit on the spread. Mayer monopolised this role, squeezing his rivals by accepting smaller profits. When William succeeded his father as king, Mayer looked to Carl Friedrich Bederus for greater influence.

Mayer’s exploits didn’t end here. He became a merchant of English wools, cottons, coffee and sugar, to the extent that he bypassed English middlemen by sending his son Nathan to establish an in-house Rothschild operation that oversaw the transportation of textiles from Manchester directly to the family’s operations in Frankfurt. Nathan caught the attention of Levy Barent Cohen, one of England’s richest Jews, marrying his daughter in 1806. This saw his wealth skyrocket (tripling his capital in three years) and aided the building of valuable diplomatic ties.

In light of the European wars and diplomatic struggles to redraw borders, Rothschild saw ample opportunity to help governments raise money for armies, refinance war debts, and manage trade embargoes. He and his five sons began employing financial strategy to world politics which extended much beyond his original Prussian client, William. The Rothschilds were becoming masters at playing all sides.

With French armies approaching, Rothschild helped fund the defence of his hometown of Frankfurt in 1792, and when Prince William opted to support England against France for a subsidy of £100,000, it was Mayer who bought the British IOUs.

With William forced to flee Hesse-Kassel, and fearing for the abandoned fortunes of William, the Rothschilds had a degree of control over his gold, silver, bonds, titles, deeds and rare coins via Carl Friedrich Bederus. It was during this time that the Rothschilds built William’s fortunes, transferring much of it (£550,000) to British bullion and securities by way of his son Nathan. They eventually became major creditors in Europe by using his assets anonymously.

The French tried to confiscate William’s fortunes while he was in hiding, but Mayer was able to convince (or bribe) French general Lagrange to let most of it escape. Buderus was eventually arrested and quizzed about William and the Rothschild’s whereabouts. William moved to Vienna under the protection of the Austrian emperor who had hoped for a Rothschild loan. The Rothschilds tried to broker a deal but to no avail. In 1800 Mayer and his son Amschel were made official agents of the Austrian court, yet another feather in their hats.

During a French blockade of English goods entering the French Confederation of the Rhine which had been set up by Napoleon in 1806, the Rothschilds ran an elaborate smuggling operation moving contraband into the area behind Napoleon’s back. The French kept a close eye on the Rothschilds, intercepting their correspondences, but it proved to be challenging feat.

In 1814, with British forces stranded behind enemy lines on the Iberian peninsula, Nathan Rothschild smuggled gold on behalf of the British government. They bought the gold from the East India Company, overseeing its transportation to Frankfurt or Vienna before moving it to General Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) who was commanding British troops in Spain. Some of the gold was deposited in Portuguese and Spanish banks who had by now built good relations with the Rothschilds. Wellesley was then able to draw on this gold in local currencies. Through this move, the Rothschilds went on to become heroes in London.

The House of Rothschild had become an influential power broker and a pioneer in the realm of international payments. The trust and connections the family went on to amass made them one of the first international banks in the world.

The five brothers would go on to operate five interconnected branches across the continent, allowing them to communicate with an unrivalled level of efficacy. The House continued to innovate, and led the development of an international bonds market. They upgraded their international courier services by employing stagecoaches, pigeons, and a private fleet of ships which sailed in even the most violent of storms. They posted market updates using colour coded envelopes so they could send messengers to peer into postal bins and read the news ahead of time. They also kept information secret by writing messages using a system of german words written with Hebrew letters.

The Rothschild dominion went on to reach as far afield as Russia and Latin America, and even saw them bail out the Bank of England in 1825, and the Bank of France in 1855. Their role in international politics and government funding was such that they facilitated loans to Prussia, and underwrote the independence of Belgium when it was carved out of the Netherlands.

Nathan Rothschild died as the richest man in Britain in 1836, and the funeral of James, the last of the five brothers to die, was said to have been like that of an emperor.

The Rothschilds thus rose out of the slum-like ghetto of Frankfurt, and went on to become one of the most powerful and influential families in the world.

SEE ALSO: THE ROTHSCHILDS, THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA, AND THE MAXIM GUN.

DID YOU KNOW…

In August 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre by Italian petty criminal Vincenzo Peruggia who had moved to Paris in 1908. He’d worked at the Louvre, allowing him to slip the painting from its frame while the museum was closed. Peruggia hid the painting in his Paris apartment, and managed to hide his scent with a convincing display of calm and cooperation, eliminating suspicion.

Peruggia is said to have believed that the painting was stolen from Italy by Napoleon, and was simply doing his duty by returning it home. He received a short sentence of one-year and fifteen days.

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ON THIS DAY: 18th AUGUST

• South Africa was banned from taking part in the Olympic Games today in 1964 owing to their continued of policy of apartheid.

• The Pendle Witch Trials started today in 1612 in England. 10 of the 12 accused of murder by way of witchcraft were found guilty and hanged.

• Manchester United was sold to property tycoon Michael Knighton for 20 million pounds today in 1989.

“It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

PHOTO OF THE WEEK:

Mr Cig distributing free cigarettes at a hospital in the 1940s.

FROM THE AUTHORS MOUTH:

Animal Farm, the allegorical novella by George Orwell, was first published in England yesterday in 1945.

MISSED LAST WEEK? READ HERE: SHIPS, BEARDS, AND RUSSIAN PROGRESS.

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BOC#032

7 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: SHIPS, BEARDS, AND RUSSIAN PROGRESS…

Peter the Great who ruled Russia 1682 - 1725 is remembered for his policy of modernisation and transformation; a self-imposed mission to align Russia with the best of Europe. In BOC#023 we mentioned that he imposed a tax on beards, a policy designed to capture the very essence of his transformational vision for a more culturally up-to-date Russia. But it was his incognito tour of Europe and technical apprenticeships at the shipyards of the mighty European wharfs that seemed to transcend his autocratic leadership style.

Fuelled by a desire for empire, his obsession with ships would take him on a journey of maritime education and expansion rivalling some of the best maritime projects of his day.

In 1687 at the age of 15, Peter, who was fascinated by the military traditions of western Europe, met a young Dutch merchant by the name of Franz Timmerman. While out walking one day, the pair came across a storehouse that had been locked for twenty years. Peter asked to look inside, only to discover the decaying remains of what Timmerman identified as “an English boat”. It was like no boat Peter had ever seen before. His fascination with shipbuilding was thus born.

Peter went on to spend much of 1687 building a boatyard on the shores of Lake Pleschev, and much later in 1696, he would go on to employ the English and Dutch shipwrights who would help him fulfil his vision for a great fleet to be built along the River Voronezh. While these ships were never used for their intended purpose of winning the city of Kirch which had been under Ottoman control, Peter’s Foreign Minister Emilian Ukraintsev, would one day be sent to Constantinople in a brand new forty-six-gun frigate named The Fortress, escorted by twelve other Russian ships in a persuasive show of force. His Grand Tour of Europe had much to thank for this great maritime achievement.

The so called ‘Grand Embassy’ of 1697 exposed Peter to the true extent to which Russia was lagging behind the likes of Germany, England, and the Netherlands, all of whom considered Russia to be somewhat of a cultural backwater with medieval political institutions and an outdated social belief system. Peter would thus go on to drive a much needed cultural revolution in the beloved nation he called home.

From obsolete gowns to antiquated beards, Peter sought to bring Russia into the enlightened orbit of European success. So zealous was Peter’s endeavour that in addition to the ban on beards, he banned the wearing of traditional curved knives at the waist, and ordered guards to cut the old-style robes off anyone entering the city. By 1700, men were required to wear the waistcoat and breeches of their European counterparts; women were to wear bonnets, dresses, and petticoats. It was time to bring an end to the symbolism of antiquity.

The beard had long been associated with the religious orthodoxy of the church who declared the cutting of the beard a mortal sin. Shaving, which had once been a crime under Ivan the Terrible, was now a duty.

Peter’s Great Embassy of 1697 made him the first Russian Tsar to have travelled so far afield in peacetime. To his mother’s dismay, he was also the first Tsar to have embarked on the 1000 mile saltwater voyage to Russia’s only port at Archangel.

His journey to western Europe took him overland through the Swedish controlled territories of Finland, Estonia and Latvia, paying particular attention to the strategic maritime city of Riga. This fortified city was of particular interest to Peter’s father’s who’d failed to seize it forty years earlier. Peter took it upon himself to sketch and measure the very fortifications that had been built to ward off Russian meddling. According to one story, a Swedish soldier had threatened to shoot the ‘unknown foreigner’ who was so audacious as to take such brazen measurements and observations. Peter found this all rather rude, and three years later, referenced the experience as an excuse to attack the city in the opening gambit of the Great Northern War.

Peter was otherwise received well in Europe. His humor and charm made him popular amongst the German laity. His experience of western Europe was one of technological progress and unrelenting modernity. From clocks and chronometers to compasses and barometers, the fields of cartography and navigation were as impressive as the commodity markets that saw tea, sugar and spices arrive in droves thanks to the maritime exploits of the British and Dutch East India and West India Companies.

The Dutch Golden Age was well under way, seeing the Netherlands rank as one of the most advanced nations in 17th century Europe. The Dutch were spearheading developments in the arts and sciences, from painting, sculpture, architecture, and drama, philosophy, law, mathematics, and publishing.

Peter found work at a Dutch shipyard belonging to the Dutch East India Company, spending four months working and touring the Dutch Republic. It was during this time that he learnt the art of shipbuilding, ship anatomy, repair and naval architecture. Along with a selection ten Russian companions, he participated in the construction of 100 ft frigate that the Company called ‘The Apostles Peter and Paul’ in his honour. When he wasn’t working on ships, he studied under leading Dutch experts in the fields of architecture, drawing and engraving, engineering, book printing, anatomy, medicine, and surgery. He studied microscopes, barometers, wind dials, coins, cadaver and dental pliers, as well as artillery.

Upon his return, Peter set about enforcing a series of changes to Russian society. He was now convinced that ‘the roots of Western technological achievement lay in the freeing of men’s minds.’

Tobacco, which had once carried the death penalty, was legalised, the Orthodox Church had its powers clipped, the army was expanded, coinage was standardised, and the start of the year was moved from September 1st to January 1st to name but a few revolutionary changes.

In 1703 Peter founded the great city of St. Petersburg which would become the new capital of the Russian empire; home to the shipyards of Lake Ladoga. The city, which began as a fortress at the mouth of the Neva was the Russian answer to Amsterdam, London and Venice. It wasn’t the attractive destination of today, however, leaving Peter to employ his autocratic powers, forcing Muscovites to populate the new city.

In the early 1720s, Peter had dreamed up a ‘Great Northern Expedition’ that would see the Danish mariner Vitus Bering lead a party of some three thousand men and resources across Siberia to Okhotsk where they were to build ships and set sail for Japan and the Kuril Islands. They were then to build two more ships, sail to Kamchatka, form an outpost, and sail east across the Pacific where they would explore the west coast of America. The mission was certainly as ambitious as it sounds, and the crews encountered several challenges, but that’ll be the topic of another post. The expedition was yet another display maritime power that promised to put Russia on the map.

Unfortunately, Peter died before the Great Expedition could fully manifest, but his wife Catherine, having become the new Empress, continued to support her husband’s dream.

Peter had been suffering from bladder problems for a few years, and eventually came down with a high fever in January 1725. An infection had so far developed that Gangrene was found in his bladder. There was nothing that could be done, and after three weeks of suffering, Peter lost consciousness and died. As he drifted off, he murmured “I hope God will forgive me my many sins because of the good I have tried to do for my people.”

His legacy is best captured by his appendage, ‘the great’. With a passion for ships just as vigorous as his vision for a progressive Russia, Peter undertook a voyage of progress and development that made Russia the respectable nation he’d long dreamt it to be.

DID YOU KNOW…

The Bering land bridge which once connected Russia to Alaska was no mere bridge. Named after Vitus Bering, and existing during the last ice age (11,000 -36,000 years ago), it covered the approximate distance from Paris to Copenhagen. It was four times wider than most of Central America from ocean to ocean, and if a man stood in the middle, he would think of himself on a substantial part of a continent. The land bridge is thought to have been the primary route of human migration from Asia to the Americas during the last ice age.

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ON THIS DAY: 11th AUGUST

• The first batch of 137 prisoners arrived at Alcatraz prison today in 1934. In June 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin would cause embarrassment by escaping the high security prison. They were never to be found. The FBI closed the case in 1979, although the prison was shut down in 1963.

• The London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who were sentenced to life in 1969, were escorted to attend their mother’s funeral today in 1982.

• Airbnb was officially launched today in 2008.

• Comedian and actor Robin Williams died today in 2014 aged 63, he had committed suicide.

“I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after.”
― Oscar Wilde

RABELAISIAN:

From Francois Rabelais, the French satirist who created the sixteenth century fictional giant Gargantua from whence we get the word gargantuan. Francois’ works are bawdy, earthy, full of farting, overeating, and gross robust humor which defines the adjective derived from his name; Rabelaisian.

FROM THE AUTHORS MOUTH:

The English children’s writer Enid Mary Blyton, author of The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Noddy, was born today in 1897 in London.

Enid was once a teacher, and published her first book of poems in 1922. She went on to publish a staggering 30 books a year, with her titles having been translated into some 90 languages. She died in 1968.

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BOC#031

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE PIECE: ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT

Alexander the great established several cities, the most famous of which was of course the Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria. Just eight years after laying the cities foundations, Alexander died in Babylon at the young age of thirty-two. While he founded Alexandria, it was in fact Ptolemy I Soter who transformed it into the centre of commerce and culture it went on to become. Here are seven things you probably didn’t know about this great Egyptian city.

1. RAQOTE BECOMES ALEXANDRIA

Sometime before the creation of Alexandria the locals referred to the area as Raqote (or Rhacotis). The name Alexandria certainly didn’t catch on immediately. Egyptians were reluctant to accept the new name as they thought it might erase their heritage and signify a shift in power and ownership. It would take a new generation and the arrival of non-Egyptians for the new name to be more widely accepted. The city was intended to be a megapolis to rival the likes of Athens and Carthage.

2. WITH WINDS IN MIND

In his writing, Aristotle discusses the principles of an ideal city inspired by Hippodamus of Miletus. One of the founding ideas he discusses is the Hippodamian grid system, and the angling of the roads in order to benefit from the sea breeze while simultaneously sheltering citizens from strong winds; both of which were employed during the building of Alexandria. These ideas were influenced by Alexander’s own architect and technical director, Deinocrates who was himself inspired by the Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus a century earlier. The Alexandrian coast lay low, so by linking the Pharos lighthouse to the mainland they were able to create two large ports helping to shelter the city from the wind. Upon his arrival, Alexander connected the island of Pharos to the coast by building a causeway. The great lighthouse at Alexandria (the first of its kind and one of the wonders of the ancient world) stood as a beacon on the island and became known as Pharos.

3. BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES ARRIVE

Buddhist monks arrived in Alexandria as early as the third century BCE. Inscribed edicts from the time of the Indian emperor Ashoka (268 to 232 BCE) indicate that emissaries were sent to the Mediterranean with medicinal plants, naming Ptolemy II as the recipient. It is likely that these emissaries developed a religious community and even started families in Alexandria, becoming a part of the city’s early makeup.

4. CITIZENSHIP

Not everyone who lived in Alexandria was an ‘Alexandrian.’ As had once been the case in Athens, the benefits of being a ‘free citizen’ of Alexandria were substantial and followed Aristotle’s notion that a citizen isn’t just someone who administers the law and rules, but upholds the law and submits to rule. The Ptolemies permitted both men and women to be citizens. An Alexandrian paid less tax, was better protected, and sometimes received financial gifts from the government. They could also participate in the Olympic Games. To become a citizen, both a person’s mother and father had to have been Alexandrian citizens.

5. KOINE GREEK

Alexandrians communicated using an ‘Alexandrian’ dialect of Greek that came to be known as Koine Greek. The dialect is thought to have begun in Alexander’s armies and morphed as different Egyptian and Hebrew speakers tried to communicate in the new official language. Koine Greek went on to become the language of the Bible and spread to the Greek mainland in the post-classical period, when scholars like Plutarch used it.

6. THE GREAT BOOK RUSH

The written word was significant and considered to be divine in Egypt. In fact, in Egyptian, ‘writing’, or medu netjer, meant ‘god’s words’. The Ptolemaic translation of the term ‘hieroglyphics’, means ‘holy carvings’.

The Great Library of Alexandria was intended to be a Greek-language institution, although the books came from every known culture. Anyone entering or docking at the city ports had to hand their books over to the authorities for inspection. They were then rushed to the library where it was decided whether the book would be returned or confiscated. Copies of the confiscated books would often be returned with monetary compensation. On one occasion, Ptolemy III sought to borrow the Athenian tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides from the Athenian governors. Having deposited gold and silver worth £300,000 by today’s standards, he took the liberty of keeping the originals, returning only copies. It is estimated that there were between 700,000 and a million books in the library by the first century BCE.

7. THE GREAT MINDS OF ALEXANDRIA

While we’re often taught that it was Copernicus who first came up with the heliocentric model of the solar system, it was in fact an Alexandrian by the name of Aristarchus of Samos who we discussed in BOC#003. The famous mathematician Euclid whose geometry we learn at school was an Alexandrian, as was the surgeon Zopyrus who invented an antidote to poison that he’d hoped to test on criminals. Other notable Alexandrians include Aristophanes who laid the foundations for the punctuation we use today, and Eratosthenes who calculated the Earth’s circumference and developed a calendar that would go on to inspire the Julian calendar. The Polymath Claudius Ptolemy, and Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria who invented a steam engine known as an aeolipile also deserve a notable mention.

Further reading: Check out Islam Issa’s incredible book below! 👇

DID YOU KNOW…

Kandahar, the Taliban capital in Afghanistan was originally called “Iskandar,” which is how “Alexander” was pronounced in the east. The “Is” dropped away, and “Kandar” became “Kandahar.

Egypt’s Alexandria is known as Iskandariya in Arabic.

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ON THIS DAY: 4th AUGUST

• Britain entered the First World War today in 1914, declaring war on the German Empire.

• The Greenwich Foot Tunnel opened today in 1902. It crosses beneath the River Thames and connects Greenwich on the south bank with Millwall on the north bank.

• The album Purple Rain, by singer-songwriter Prince, hit Number 1 on the Billboard 200 today in 1984, staying there for 24 weeks.

• The British Red Cross formed today in 1870. It was the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War.

“Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.” — Paul Terry

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
― Jerome K. Jerome

WORD OF THE WEEK: SYCOPHANTIC:

To be grovelling and flattering to someone with influence in an attempt to gain favour.

FROM THE AUTHORS MOUTH:

Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, was born today in 1961.

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BOC#030

5 MINUTE MUNCH

TITLE STORY: THE RISE OF ROBERT CLIVE

The East India Company consisted of four classes: Senior merchants, junior merchants, traders, and servile clerks. Robert Clive occupied the lowest of these mercantile rungs, seeing him take care of bills, receipts, and Company inventory. In spite of his banal role at the Company, he kept his faculties intact by spending his evenings at the governor’s mansion library where he read the likes of Bacon, Descartes, Confucius, Hobbs, and Machiavelli.

Born to a lower-middle-class english family, Clive is said to have had trouble getting on with fellow students at school. He, like Richard Francis Burton who we met last week, was somewhat of a ruffian who caused undue panic having climbed a church steeple, and it didn't end there. As a teenager, he led a gang that threatened to smash shop windows should the owners fail to pay ‘protection money’. Being the delinquent that he was, then, joining the East India Company at 17 was probably just what a boy of his unruly nature was in need of.

He didn’t enjoy his time at the Company initially, and found himself indebted to the captain of the ship that had delivered him to India. With no return correspondence from his family and likely bouts of depression, Clive pressed his pistol against his temple and pulled the trigger twice. Neither shot fired, and the timely arrival of a friend brought the sorry episode to an abrupt, albeit telling end.

Clive, now a depressed, suicidal, indebted, young clerk surrounded by the temptation of opium and alcohol abuse, paired with the ever present threats of fevers and diarrhea, went on to become one of the highest ranking officers in the East India Company, not to mention, one of England’s richest men.

FROM RAGS TO RICHES…

Clive arrived in Madras in 1744 to a backdrop of British and French competition for the subcontinent. Upon his arrival, the Company was a fragmented trading operation. By the time he left India in 1767, he had transformed it into a territorial power with its own military force. The Company came to account for 20% of all imports to Britain, and had only failed to pay dividends to shareholders twice between the years of 1709 and 1748.

Clive was once amongst a party of captured Brits who were paraded through the town square following a successful French attack on Fort St. George, Madras, in 1746. A few nights later, with the help of some locals, he escaped capture dressed in Indian garments wearing dark face paint so as to appear native. The escapees then travelled fifty miles to the British outpost of Fort St. David. Enthused by this experience, Clive spent the next year studying the art of soldiering under Major Stringer Lawrence, and eventually led a platoon that fought off a string of French attacks that saw him rise to the rank of lieutenant. Over the next decade, Clive continued to engage the French in a continuum of skirmishes, the most famous of which was his victory at the Battle of Arcot during the Second Carnatic war of 1751.

In 1753 Clive and his wife Margaret Maskelyne decided to return to London, but were back aboard a ship headed for Madras two years later. Clive, who had now been made a lieutenant colonel, was sent back with the goal of ridding central India of the French. It was during this second tour that Clive led the Company to a further infamous victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The British thus emerged as the rulers of Bengal, with Clive administering the wealthiest province of India, home to forty million people. The Company’s London based directors named him governor of the Calcutta branch of the East India Company. This also made him governor of Calcutta, political proconsul of Bengal, and supreme military commander of both. Following the Battle of Plassey, Prime Minister William Pitt the elder said of Clive:

‘We had lost our glory, honour, and reputation everywhere but India: there the country had a heaven-born general, who had never learned the art of war, nor was his name enrolled among the great officers who had for many years received their country’s pay; yet was he not afraid to attack a numerous army with a handful of men.’

Clive had established British dominance in India, and was honored with the title of ‘Flower of the Empire, Defender of the Country, the Brave, Firm in War’ by Mir Jafar entitling him to a salary for life. The lifelong revenue he would go on to receive ruffled Company feathers, however, as the funds themselves were the monies paid by the Company on land in Calcutta. In short, Clive had essentially become the Company’s landlord. On his return to England in 1760, he received an audience with King George II, collected an honorary degree from Oxford, and was elected to Parliament. He was subsequently known as ‘Clive of India.’

In 1764 as Clive neared forty, the Company sent him back to India to ‘clean things up’. He set about restructuring the way things were done, and introduced a regular postal system helping to establish better departmental connections.

In 1772 a Parliament driven inquest reviewed Company practices in India with a special spotlight on Clive. While he was exonerated, his reputation was tarnished. In 1774 he took his own life.

DID YOU KNOW…

The East India Company, founded by a group of British entrepreneurs, was establish as ‘the Company of Merchants of London Trading in the East Indies’. It was officially established by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, but it was King Charles II who gave the Company rights beyond just trade. He permitted ‘the Company’ to acquire territory, mint money, raise armies, and exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction over its personnel. It’s aims were to dominate global economic competition. It’s goals were best described by Elizabethan statesman Sir Walter Raleigh who said:

"For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself."

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ON THIS DAY: 28th JULY

• The United Kingdom announced that it would start using postal codes today in 1959, Norwich was the first city to trial them.

• The devastating Great Tangshan earthquake of China occurred today in 1976, almost a quarter of a million people, possibly 3 times more, lost their lives.

• Today in 1914, Austro-Hungarian Franz Joseph signed an official declaration of war against Serbia, triggering the First World War.

• Today is National Milk Chocolate Day in the U.S - Behave yourselves!

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

FROWSTY VS FROWZY

The first means musty or stale. The second means untidy or dingy.

FROM THE AUTHORS MOUTH:

The English author Beatrix Potter, best known for the children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was born today in 1866 in London. Did you Know Beatrix didn’t go to school, but was privately educated at home. Being the conservationist that she was, Potter left some 4,000 acres of land and 15 farms to the National Trust when she died in 1943.

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