The number of

women allowed on
the floor of the
London Stock
Exchange before
Zulu people killed the rules were
during 1879’s Battle changed in 1973
of Ulundi, fought as Year in Pictures,
Britain expanded its page 36
territory across
southern Africa
Perspectives, page 74

Years that Gaudí’s masterpiece, the Sagrada

Família, has been under construction.
The church is due to be completed in 2026
Wonders of the World, page 110

Colonial subjects of the United States as it

entered the Second World War – a fact that
has often subsequently been forgotten Drug overdoses per 100,000 people in
America’s hidden empire, page 26 the United States in 2010 – over three
times more than in 1970
The war on drugs, page 80

Years since the founding of Bauhaus,

the influential German art school that
Number of alleyways that reputedly lace had a profound impact on graphic
the old medina of Fès, one of the largest design, architecture and typography
medieval walled cities in the Arab world Bauhaus in pictures, page 66
Global City, page 108

People estimated to have

The number of gold-encrusted crossed the border from
pages of a 1,200-year-old Bible Spanish Republican
seized from a suspected smuggling territories into France
gang by police in Turkey during the winter of 1938–39
History headlines, page 14 as Franco’s forces advanced
through Catalonia
The Spanish Civil
Books estimated to have been War, page 56
printed by 1500, just half a
century after the printing press
was first used in Europe
The original digital
revolution, page 46

ISSUE 15 APRIL / MAY 2019

 The Spanish Civil War: an avoidable tragedy

WorldHistories
America’s hidden empire
The United States’ imperial ambitions – and how they shape today’s world

Should museums
return their
treasures?
From the Benin
Bronzes to art looted
by the Nazis, experts
debate where global
objects really belong

“Historians should
speak truth to
those in charge”
Rutger Bregman on the power of history The first
digital
Rorke’s Drift: The Zulu view
revolution
FROM DAGGERS TO DRONES How Arabic numerals
The rise of long-distance warfare changed the world
Hidden world
The wreckage of a Second World War
American tank lies part-submerged off
the coast of Saipan, Northern Mariana
Islands. Such US territories represent
a side of American history – its imperial
ambitions – now often overlooked. We
explore why, and why it matters, on p26
WELCOME ISSUE 15

There are few more striking

examples of history becoming
political than the story of
Rutger Bregman, the Dutch
It’s telling how a lack of awareness of the quirks of
author at the centre of a history can have political repercussions in the present.
media storm earlier this year. As Daniel Immerwahr reveals on page 26, when a
His 2017 book Utopia for Realists explores how his- super typhoon hit US islands in the Pacific in 2018, it
torical political ideas could rejuvenate today’s divided received just a fraction of the media coverage devoted
world. As such, he might seem the perfect guest for to similar disasters in North America – because, he
the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, argues, of the ways in which such overseas territories
which brings together politicians, business moguls have come to be regarded. Placing them back into their
and thought-leaders in an idyllic Swiss Alpine town. full context reveals the history of the US as a history
Yet his contribution was not met with universal of empire that is interesting both in its own right and
approval. The fallout made headlines around the world, for the reasons it has come to be forgotten.
led to a memorably testy exchange between Bregman If you’re looking for diversions from the travails of
and a US TV news anchor, and catapulted the idea of the modern world, there are plenty to enjoy here. On
the ‘public historian’ back into the limelight. Bregman page 46, Violet Moller travels to seventh-century India
shares his take on the experience, and his arguments to follow the meandering journey of the numerals
for why more historians need to speak up, on page 11. that changed the world. And, on page 66, curator
Another example of the crossover between the Nina Wiedemeyer interprets some of the master-
historical and the political is the thorny issue of works of Bauhaus, the influ-
‘cultural repatriation’: the debate about whether ential art school founded
museums and other institutions should return a century ago this spring.
artefacts to the places from which they were collected. We’ll be back on 23 May
It’s a complex subject, sparking strong feelings on all with a look at, among other
sides, and you can read the thoughts of some leading things, the Stonewall Riots
experts in our Big Question feature from page 16. and D-Day. Until then,
enjoy the issue.
Matt Elton
Editor, BBC World Histories
matt.elton@immediate.co.uk

Available around Launched in 2016,

the world, BBC BBC World Histories
History Magazine complements BBC
is published History Magazine
13 times a year in and is published
print and many every two months.
Together with two regular digital editions.
titles, the BBC History Magazine Turn to page 88
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5PAGE 24
COVER ILLUSTRATION: DAVIDE BONAZZI–SALZMANART. INSIDE COVERS: GETTY IMAGES. BACK COVER: ALAMY/GETTY IMAGES.
THIS PAGE: STEVE SAYERS–THE SECRET STUDIO 3
CONTENTS Features

The cast of Oskar

Schlemmer’s Triadic
Ballet, an avant-
garde Bauhaus
dance performance,
photographed in
1927. This issue,
we explore the art
school’s influence
on a diverse range
of form and media

16 66
THE BIG QUESTION Bauhaus: design icons
Should museums return BY NINA WIEDEMEYER

their treasures? ✪ As the art school marks a century since it

What should happen to global history’s was founded, an art historian showcases six
contested artefacts? Experts share their views examples of its influence and diversity

26 80
America’s hidden empire ✪ America’s war on drugs:
BY DANIEL IMMERWAHR exporting the fight
The forgotten history of the United States’ BY BENJAMIN T SMITH
imperial ambitions, and why they still matter How President Nixon’s declaration of war on
drugs shaped anti-narcotics action around the
46 world – and why its legacy is still felt today
✪ On the
The first digital revolution ✪
BY VIOLET MOLLER
89 cover
THE LONG READ
Why the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals
enabled breakthroughs in trade and science From daggers to drones ✪
BAUHAUS-ARCHIV BERLIN

BY JAMES ROGERS
56 A history of the development of remote
The Spanish Civil War ✪ warfare – and a novel analysis of what it
BY PAUL PRESTON tells us about humanity
How one commander’s actions led to tragedy
COVER ILLUSTRATION
in the final days of this bloody conflict BY DAVIDE BONAZZI

4
 CONTRIBUTORS

THE BRIEFING Expert voices from the world of history

6 Viewpoints: Roel Sterckx on the need
Rutger Bregman
to understand China’s long history, “I think history is one of the most subversive
Kate Ravilious on a recent ice age, and sciences: it shows us that things can be different
Tim Mackintosh-Smith on Arabian politics – that there’s nothing inevitable about the way
things are right now,” says the historian and
11 The Interview: Rutger Bregman on writer. On page 11 he discusses how he ruffled
the importance of public history ✪ feathers at the World Economics Forum, and
why historians should speak truth to power.
14 History Headlines: Discoveries and
developments in the world of history Daniel Immerwahr
On page 26, the associate professor of history
CULTURE at Northwestern University, Illinois explores the
United States’ now largely forgotten imperial
96 Agenda: The latest exhibitions and films ambitions, which resulted in a scattering of
overseas territories. “Some four million people
JOURNEYS live in them,” he says, “four million people who
100 In the footsteps of… A Roman general’s can’t vote in presidential elections.”
journey to Egypt by Guy de la Bédoyère
Tiffany Jenkins
108 Global City: Fès, Morocco Arguments rage about the ‘return’ of museum
by Paul Bloomfield treasures such as the Elgin Marbles – but do
such artefacts really belong to any particular
110 Wonders of the World: Sagrada Família, time and place? As author and academic Tiffany
Jenkins argues on page 16, “Culture doesn’t
Spain by Paul Bloomfield
have a fixed nationality. It’s not like a person
who needs a passport.”
REGULARS
36 A Year in Pictures: 1973 Zareer Masani
by Richard Overy In our Museum of the World feature on
page 114, historian, author and broadcaster
54 Extraordinary People: Lata Brandisová Zareer Masani examines a depiction of the
by Richard Askwith Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place in
Amritsar in 1919. “This painting raises important
74 Perspectives: The 1879 Anglo-Zulu War
MAARTJE TER HORST/PAMELA KRAYENBUHL/ANASTASIA DITTMANN/ALAMY

questions about the massacre and its place in

by Ian Beckett ✪ Indian politics,” he says.

114 Museum of the World: A painting Nina Wiedemeyer

of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre On page 66, Nina Wiedemeyer – art historian
by Zareer Masani and curator of a new centenary exhibition about
the Bauhaus design school – introduces a sextet
of its most influential pieces, some of which
“were created as part of the school’s system of
24 Subscribe to dual apprenticeship: one part craftsmanship,
BBC World Histories one part artistic expression,” she explains.
– enjoy the latest issue
FREE with a
14-day trial digital CONTACT US (Full details on page 73)
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subscription Email bbcworldhistories@buysubscriptions.com
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Twitter twitter.com/historyextra

5
 View- Eastern intelligence
points As the global influence of Asia’s largest
superpower grows, so does the importance of
understanding the history of Chinese thinking
BY ROEL STERCKX

Expert opinions on
historical issues that
touch today’s world uring a recent outreach the Forbidden City – one had been there

D visit at a secondary school

in England, I showed
a group of 15-year-olds a
recently – but only three identified Mao
by name and were able to add only a
brief commentary in which the keyword
picture of the Gate of Heavenly Peace was ‘communism’.
that leads to the entrance of the Forbid- This lacklustre response wasn’t a
den City in Beijing. Above the portal surprise. East Asia hardly figures on
of this gate, hangs one of the most British school curricula beyond its place
widely circulated portrait images of in a narrative of imperial or Cold War
Mao Zedong. Flanked by two placards history. The well-educated secondary
saying ‘Long Live the People’s Republic school graduate in Britain might at
of China’ and ‘Long Live the Great best associate China with Opium Wars,
Unity of the World’s People’, the Great revolution, communism, Hong Kong
Helmsman stares serenely across Tian- or the Great Wall, with a few making
anmen Square. connections with the Terracotta
I asked the students if they recog- Warriors and the Second World War.
nised the scene or the gentleman While Brexit-supporting politicians
perching above the entrance. For some, enthuse about engagement with the rest
the upturned roof eaves and red lanterns of the world, and how the UK will cash
gave the game away. “It has an Asian feel in on trade deals with China or become
Have your say Share your thoughts to it,” one observed, “perhaps some- a second Singapore, the generation
on this issue’s columns by emailing us where in China or Japan”. A handful charged with turning these ideas into
at worldhistories@historyextra.com among my audience spotted that it was reality is poorly served, being taught next

6
 East Asia hardly figures
on British school curricula
beyond its place in a
narrative of imperial or
Cold War history

developments, archaeologists uncover

bamboo-slip manuscripts that have lain
hidden from view for over 2,000 years.
Legal documents from the time of the
first emperor, Qin Shi Huang (who
ruled in the late third century BC)
to nothing about the core social, political Such ancient texts inform not just reveal an institutional environment in
and philosophical values that have how people live their lives, but also the which the state already micromanaged
shaped China over centuries. The British approaches taken by those in power. the private sphere of people’s lives in
media, meanwhile, links China with a The Chinese obsession with education considerable detail.
limited set of memes: a rising, autocratic as a way to improve self and society, for Scale aside, such practices seem
superpower, threatening the west via instance, is ingrained with quasi-biblical ominously similar to the gathering of big
trade wars and industrial espionage. authority in classical texts that were data by government, or to the monitor-
Although politicians and educators required reading for any official wishing ing of citizens’ digital imprints. Both are
increasingly recognise the value of teach- to pass the civil-service examinations hardly unique to China: just substitute
ing the Chinese language, few realise until the early 20th century. government with Facebook or Google
that we may all benefit from studying Ancient China’s masters of philoso- and swap ‘citizen’ with ‘consumer’.
China beyond its very recent past and phy and their texts are quoted and I cannot fault those bright teenagers
outside the framework of Sino-Western invoked in public discourse in China for failing to identify Mao; after all,
contacts. We have started to speak just as Shakespeare or Machiavelli have some might be equally perplexed by a
Chinese but fail as yet to think Chinese. been turned into adjectives in the portrait of Oliver Cromwell or Margaret
Taking a longue dureé view of English language. The ideal of the Thatcher. But if our engagement with
Chinese history, one could argue that ‘harmonious society’, in which unity China is to be anything beyond an expe-
the ideologues of China’s 20th and 21st and cohesion prevail over individual dient, short-term economic romance, we
centuries have had a relatively minor ambition, was not invented by today’s all might benefit from introducing the
role in shaping the world view and Chinese politicians who often trumpet next generation to the basic outlines of
cultural DNA of Chinese society today. it – nor was the conviction that society Chinese thinking alongside the Greeks
Some of its foundational ideas about is best led by one monarch or leader, or and the Romans.
power, leadership and loyalty were the notion that the state is an extension
conceived during the classical age, in of the family ruled by an unyielding
the teachings of masters of philosophy, father of the people. Confucius already Roel Sterckx
some of whom lived 25 centuries before acknowledged that it is better to manage is Needham Professor
the foundation of the People’s Republic than suppress the human desire for of Chinese at
in 1949. The need for a strong work wealth, which sounds suspiciously like Cambridge University
ethic, the importance of family, respect a plea for condoning capitalism in a and the author of
for authority, parents and seniors – these socialist society. Chinese Thought: From
are the legacy of Confucius (551–479 Today, as China modernises and Confucius to Cook Ding
BC) and his followers. turns over its soil for roads and housing (Pelican, 2019) Æ

ILLUSTRATION BY KATE HAZELL 7

Post-Columbian chill
European colonisation of the Americas
sparked a global climate-change incident
with important lessons for today
BY KATE RAVILIOUS

he arrival of Christopher diseases – measles, smallpox, influenza

T Columbus in the Americas

in 1492 had huge and
irreversible consequences.
and the bubonic plague – carried to the
Americas by Europeans. This mass
dying would have resulted in fields being
History is full of ‘what if’ moments, but left untended, allowing forests to reclaim
the navigator’s first sight of the Bahamas the land – a sudden burst of plant growth
was perhaps one of the most significant that would have sucked carbon dioxide
turning points. Yet one impact of his out of the atmosphere and could have
‘discovery’ that hasn’t been explored sent global temperatures falling.
before was a prolonged period of global The long-unknown factor, though,
cooling in the 16th and 17th centuries. has been the extent of this population exhaustive literature review, using all
Though not a true ice age, the crash. Unlike in Europe and China, available data to produce a more robust
so-called Little Ice Age was a significant there are no records to determine the estimate. Their findings suggest that
chill that began in the northern size of indigenous American populations around 60 million people inhabited the
hemisphere by around 1400 and turned prior to 1492. Early accounts by Americas before Columbus arrived. By
global in roughly 1600, gripping the European colonists are likely to have 1600, the indigenous population had
world for more than a century and overestimated indigenous populations as dropped to just over six million people –
suppressing average temperatures by a way of bragging about the riches of the a fall of 90%.
around 0.5°C. In the Swiss Alps, farms newly discovered lands. Later estimates By estimating the area of agricultural
and villages were swallowed by swelling based on tax payments were made only land required to sustain one person,
glaciers. Further afield, the Little Ice after disease had ravaged the Americas, Koch and his colleagues calculated
Age is associated with the droughts and and thus almost certainly significantly that around 62 million hectares (10%
famines that led to the fall of the Ming underestimated the numbers. of the land area of the Americas) was
Dynasty in China, and brutal winters To get around this problem, Alexan- probably being farmed prior to
for the early European settlers arriving der Koch and colleagues at University Columbus’s arrival. Following the
in North America. College London (UCL) carried out an population crash, much of that land
Scientists have long debated the would have reverted to forest, causing
cause of the Little Ice Age. A spate of a rapid draw-down of atmospheric
large volcanic eruptions, low solar carbon dioxide. The new data,
activity and altered ocean currents have published in Quaternary Science
all been blamed. But researchers have This mass dying Reviews, explains the sudden drop in
always struggled to explain adequately atmospheric carbon dioxide around
how these effects, individually or would have allowed 1610 revealed by samples from Antarctic
combined, produced the deep global forests to reclaim ice cores, and matches the results of
chill of the 1600s. studies suggesting that most of that
One additional possible cause, which the land – which carbon was absorbed by terrestrial
has been hard to analyse accurately,
was the sudden crash in the populations
may have sent tem- processes rather than oceans.
This is the earliest clear example of
of indigenous peoples caused by the peratures falling anthropogenic climate change, and it

8 ILLUSTRATION BY KATE HAZELL

 Have your say Share your thoughts
on this issue’s columns by emailing us
at worldhistories@historyextra.com
The caliph’s dream
Leadership in the Arab world, once based
on the good of a community of citizens, has
become dominated by authoritarian autocrats
BY TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH

demonstrates the immense impact that ooking around the Arab siyasah in an Arabic dictionary, though,
a change in land use can have. But it
also provides a salutary warning of
the dangers of deforestation and the
L world today, one might
well despair about its
political future. With few
and the first meaning given is “the
breaking in of horses, camels” – as if
politics begins with the use of the whip,
potential results of tree planting in exceptions, it’s ruled by ruthless men – the lunge and the muzzle.
affecting climate change. Already, the autocrats who brook no dissent. It seems Siyasah, the instilling of obedience,
increased human-driven carbon dioxide that they alone can keep things together, seems a long way from ‘politics’, the
emissions have warmed the world by and only by brute force. business of living together in the polis,
1°C, and a recent Met Office study In the autocrats’ world, there is the city-state. It seems to promise little
suggests that the world is in the middle no debate. Free speech is punished respect for ‘civil’ society – for belonging
of what is likely to be the warmest ten with what has been called, since to the civitas, the community of citizens.
years since records began. pre-Islamic times, ‘the cutting of the Yet Arab politics hasn’t always been a
The UCL study indicates that the tongue’. Historically, the cutting was matter of whipping unruly subjects and
16th-century American reforestation usually metaphorical; today it can be cutting dissident tongues.
event – equivalent to planting trees cov- more literal, and far more drastic – The Qur’an portrays the ancient
ering an area the size of modern France – think bonesaws. queen of Saba, biblical Sheba, as
reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide by Political language seems to support governing through a consultative
around five parts per million; that would the autocrats. Look in an English– assembly. Inscriptions show that, in the
offset only about three years’ worth of Arabic dictionary and you’ll find first millennium BC, Saba and other
fossil fuel emissions at today’s rates. ‘politics’ translated as siyasah. Find south Arabian states were common-
And we are running out of places to wealths of semi-autonomous settled
plant trees. Dave Reay, a climate-change groups. Civil cooperation produced
scientist at Edinburgh University, has extraordinary works of hydraulic
shown that planting trees in the wrong engineering – great dams, tunnels cut
places can have the opposite effect to that through mountains – and flourishing
intended, actually releasing carbon from
the soil – and warns there is no ‘silver
Common good can agricultural economies. Nomadic Arabs,
meanwhile, were led by chiefs who were
bullet’ for tackling climate change. be found only if first among equals, not autocrats.
Unlike Columbus, we are aware of
the impact of our actions, and if we act
Arab aristocrats In the early seventh century AD,
Muhammad’s Medina – his Madinah,
fast we can still alter loosen the muzzle – his polis – guaranteed, in its earliest,
our course. History most inclusive constitution, the
will judge us harshly if they stop cutting participation not only of the people
if we don’t. tongues and, who were beginning to call themselves
Muslims but also of Jews and polytheists.
instead, allow Another two centuries on, the Arab-
Kate Ravilious
is an independent
people to voice Islamic empire at its ninth-century
height was heir not just to Muhammad’s
science journalist their own dreams Madinah and the societies of ancient Æ

9
south Arabia, but also to Greek and good.’ And I said, ‘And then what?’ And – more important – if the people
Hellenistic civilisation – a civilisation And he replied, ‘And then there is no can find a voice. After the double defeat
that, in turn, drew inspiration from more then’.” of the Arabs by Israel in 1948 and 1967,
Plato’s ideal city and Aristotle’s Politics. The caliph’s dream might itself have the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani berated
The Arab empire was a polity without been dreamed up. In any case, it soon Arab autocrats:
borders – geographical, temporal or evaporated: the empire fell apart and “O my master, O my master the sultan:
intellectual. rulers began to use pressure, not gravity, You have lost the war twice,
For its writers, politics was tempered to hold it together. Reason, law, the Because half our people have no
by civility: the siyasah madaniyyah of the people – all were forgotten. Siyasah lost tongue...”
philosopher al-Farabi, for example, its civility, and the term gained harsher That ‘half’ now looks like a rank
meant civil governance. And for its senses; it even came to mean, in some underestimate. Far fewer found their
rulers, such governance could be based contexts, “the use of torture and capital voices in the so-called Arab Spring of
– at least in theory – on more than just punishment”. 2011; those who did have now largely
brute force, as a tale attributed to an The politics of punishment is still been silenced. It may take centuries
early caliph illustrates. with us. And yet the caliph’s dream, too, more for the hundreds of millions of
One night, the early ninth-century still seems worth dreaming, never more others to feel truly able to speak out –
caliph al-Ma’mun dreamed that a man than now, and nowhere more than in if they ever do.
was sitting on his throne. “It was as if the most populous and fissile parts of For the time being, reason, law and
I were standing before him,” al-Ma’mun the defunct Arab empire – places such as the people remain in oblivion, while the
said, “and filled with awe by him. Yemen, Syria and Egypt. But can there rulers sleep their dreamless sleep.
I asked him who he was, and he said, ever be such a thing as a truly common
‘I am Aristotle.’ I was overjoyed, and good when the mass of the people in
said, ‘Great sage, may I ask you a these places is so fractured, where wars Tim Mackintosh-
question?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. So I asked him: alone are ‘civil’? Smith is a writer and
‘What is goodness?’ He replied, ‘That If there is, it can be found only if the lecturer. His latest
which reason deems good.’ And I said, autocrats loosen the muzzle and let out book is Arabs:
‘And then what?’ He replied, ‘That the lunge – if they stop cutting tongues A 3,000 Year History
which the law deems good.’ And I said, and, instead, allow the people, within of Peoples, Tribes
‘And then what?’ He replied, ‘That the bounds of reason and of reasonable and Empires (Yale
which the mass of the people deem law, to voice their own dreams. University Press, 2019)

10 ILLUSTRATION BY KATE HAZELL

 The
Inter- The historical
view
is political
Historian Talk me through how you went economic models, because it shows us
from writing your book, 2017’s what would really happen in practice.
and author Utopia for Realists, to appearing Universal basic income became a
Rutger at the Davos conference that very popular subject among people in
gained so much media attention. Silicon Valley and the tech community,
Bregman Rutger Bregman: Yeah, that’s a good and with CEOs around the globe. So
made question, and I’ve sometimes wondered I got an invitation to talk about the idea
that myself! My book is about all sorts in [the Swiss town of] Davos, where
headlines of ideas that may seem bizarre right now the World Economic Forum is held
earlier this year when a but may become reality in the future – every year. This is the place where the
just as we have a lot of ideas that are very richest people, the elites, come together:
speech he gave at a normal right now but were completely they fly there in their private jets to talk
World Economic Forum bizarre just a couple of decades or a about gender equality, climate change,
century or so ago. that kind of thing.
meeting went viral. He Think about the abolition of slavery, The first impression you get is
spoke to Matt Elton about for instance, or equal rights for men that you’re at some kind of progressive
and women: the first people arguing conference. But then, after a while,
the experience, and why for these kind of things were dismissed you start noticing that there are certain
historians must speak as radicals and idiots with completely subjects that aren’t really being talked
unrealistic ideas, but now we take them about – and I think the most important
out on current affairs for granted. one is taxes. It’s really the forbidden
The most famous of those ideas word – the ‘T word’, if you like.
right now is universal basic income, Taking a historical perspective on
which was almost completely forgotten this subject is fascinating. There’s a
five or six years ago. I wrote about its
history, and about the bizarre history
of how [US president] Richard Nixon,
nearly managed to implement a small
basic income [in the late 1960s]. It’s “History can be far
an almost completely forgotten episode
in American history.
more convincing than
The effect was that people started thousands of pages
thinking, “Hey, maybe we could
Rutger Bregman is the author of Utopia actually do this. Maybe it would actually
of economic models,
for Realists: And How We Can Get There work, because it almost happened in because it shows us
(Bloomsbury, 2017). Listen to a longer version the past.” It’s an example of the way
what would really
ALAMY

of this interview on our podcast online at in which history can be far more
historyextra.com/podcasts convincing than thousands of pages of happen in practice” Æ
11
debate going on
at the moment
about whether top
marginal tax rates should increase,
and lots of people are arguing that a
70% top marginal tax rate for the very
rich would be crazy – that it would That's a remarkable thing for
destroy our economies. But historians anyone to experience. What
can point out that, actually, we did has it felt like, as a historian, to
this in the 1950s and the 60s: under be at the centre of this massive
[Republican president] Dwight D media storm?
Eisenhower, the United States had a I’ve got mixed feelings about it. I guess
top marginal tax rate of 90%. a lot of authors must experience a similar
I pointed that out at the Davos thing: the more success you have with
conference, and said that I felt like your ideas, the less you learn, because
I was at a firefighters’ conference where you keep talking about the same things.
no one is allowed to talk about water. But the good thing is that I really
It all felt very obvious to me – but think history has a role to play in the
I guess that’s what made it a powerful public domain and in politics. I think
thing. People don’t really say the obvious history is one of the most subversive
things at conferences like these. sciences: it shows us that things can
So that went viral, and then I got “History has a role be different, that there’s nothing set
invitations to talk to a lot of different in stone about the way things are right
media organisations from all over the
to play in politics. now, that we can radically restructure
globe. I’ve been listening to myself for It’s one of the most society and economy. So I think that
weeks and weeks – it’s getting really historians should speak truth to power.
boring, actually. But it has meant that
subversive sciences, A major part of historians’ jobs
whole subject of taxes has been on the because it shows is often to spend years and years in
front pages of big, major newspapers the archives, doing research into very
around the world, which is exactly
us that things small, specialist subjects. But we also
where it needs to be. can be different” have a lot to say about what’s going on

12 ILLUSTRATION BY KATE HAZELL

 “When I turned on the TV, the
only people I saw explaining
the state of the world were
economists – and historians
have so much to teach”

right now, and we should go out there crashes, so there’s so much we can teach, instance, but it really made me think,
and teach those lessons. but there are just way too few historians which is always good. Sometimes it’s
going out there and doing that. good for historians to get out of their
Do you think that the current I taught history at university for a ivory tower and get rid of the whole
relationship between historians, while, and sometimes a student would pretence of being objective and knowing
politicians and the media is come up to me and say, “I want to write it all, and to just let people ask the right
a healthy one? about this or that”. I would ask them questions so we can have a proper debate
I’m more interested in the role that why, and every so often I would get the about these issues.
historians want to play themselves. answer: “Because it has never been done
You can always point at the media and before”. And I always thought: that is This story is so extraordinary
say, “They’re too sensationalist, they’re the worst possible answer, because if no because of the way in which
not interested in what we’re doing,” one has done it before, it probably isn’t your speech at Davos put
and so on. But I think it’s better to think interesting. Sometimes I think that history right into the headlines.
about what you can do yourself, and to historians are like that: they just want Are there any other methods
be more effective in conveying your to do something that no one has done that media historians could
message or in telling a story that people before. There’s probably a good reason use to help people understand
actually want to hear. for that, and I think historians need to history in new ways?
A few years ago, when I was trying think about what their perspective could My simple answer would be that I still
to decide whether I wanted to do a add to what's going on now. believe in books. Take Yuval Noah
PhD, I looked at all the PhDs that Harari’s wonderful, hugely popular
had recently been published by fellow Do you think that there are any Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,
historians at my university. To be dangers associated with histori- for instance: it’s so wonderfully written
honest, I thought they were really, really ans getting involved in politics? and makes you ask the big questions.
boring. With the 2008 financial crash Would you have a problem if, for I would recommend that any jealous
and the Arab Spring both going on, instance, there was a historian professional or academic historians read
it seemed to me as if the world was that started putting forward that book and ask themselves what
burning, and that there was so much to views you found politically makes it so attractive and why people
say – and there I was reading these PhD challenging? find it so interesting. [I’d argue that] it’s
theses about farmers in the Netherlands In my perfect world, there would be because, when it comes down to it,
between 1249 to 1252, but not 1253, a lot of historians and they would play historians are storytellers, and stories
because that was a very different story. different roles. Not every historian needs have this extraordinary power to change
It felt very irrelevant. to have a political or public role, either, people’s perceptions. Having a better
It was a similar story when I turned although there is plenty of room for grasp of history opens your mind and
on the television: the only people I saw more of them in the public domain. widens your world view: it makes you
explaining the state of the world, these Take a historian such as Niall see that there are so many different
big complex events such as the Arab Ferguson: I disagreed with almost possibilities out there. I want to sketch
Spring, were economists. Historians everything in his [1998 book on the different scenarios and show people
have studied revolutions and financial First World War] The Pity of War, for that nothing is inevitable.

13
THE BRIEFING History Headlines

1 NEW YORK CITY UNITED STATES

All that glitters
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has confirmed that

History it will return an ancient gilded coffin to Egypt, after

investigations revealed that it had been looted from
that country in 2011. Made in the first century BC for
Headlines the high-ranking priest Nedjemankh, the coffin was
acquired by the Met in 2017 for almost $4 million.
A spokesperson revealed that the museum had been
provided with forged provenance documents stating
that the coffin was exported legitimately in 1971.
The golden coffin of Nedjemankh
was the centrepiece of a major
Met exhibition, but has now
2 LONDON UNITED KINGDOM been identified as looted
Curating controversy
The director of the British Museum has caused controversy
by describing the removal of the Parthenon marbles
(pictured below) from Greece in the 19th century as a
“creative act”. Speaking to the Greek newspaper Ta Nea,
Hartwig Fischer stated that, despite requests to reopen
negotiations, the 2,500-
year-old sculptures will 1
not be sent back to Greece.
A British Museum statement
said: “We believe there is a
great public benefit in being
able to see these wonderful
objects in the context of
a world collection.” Read
more on the debate about
returning artefacts in our
feature on page 16.

3 POMPEII ITALY
Mirror image
A brightly coloured mural of the mythical figure Narcissus
admiring his own image has been uncovered at Pompeii.
The artwork was preserved by the volcanic explosion of
Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, and discovered in the atrium of an
ornately decorated high-status Roman villa together with
other murals depicting ancient mythological characters. 4 DIYARBAKIR PROVINCE TURKEY
Scripture smugglers

GETTY IMAGES/EPA/DREAMSTIME/METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Turkish police have recovered a rare
medieval bible from a suspected criminal
gang who were apprehended while trying
to sell the artefact. Decorated with gold-
leaf religious symbols, the 1,200-year-
old manuscript is thought to have been
smuggled across the border from Syria.
Six arrests have been made.

A 1,200-year-old,
34-page leather bible,
recently seized by
Turkish police. It is
believed to have been
A mural of Narcissus gazing at his own reflection in a pool smuggled across the
of water, recently excavated in the atrium of a Pompeii home border from Syria

14
 Gazelle bones found at the
5JORDAN Shubayqa 6 Neolithic site
Man’s best friend in Jordan exhibit signs of
having passed through
A new discovery in Jordan suggests that dogs may have
the digestive tract of
helped humans to hunt up to 11,500 years ago. Animal a carnivore
bones found at the Shubayqa 6 Neolithic settlement
site show evidence of digestion by a carnivore, but are
too big to have been eaten by humans. Archaeologists
surmise from this, and other related evidence at the
site, that the Stone Age settlement’s hunters had
developed a symbiotic hunting relationship with dogs.

3
4

6 AUSTRALIA
Decolonised dictionary
The Australian Dictionary of Biography
is being given a multimillion-dollar 7
overhaul to ‘decolonise’ its entries. The project
aims to re-examine the accuracy of existing
profiles, and to add new entries on figures
who have previously been overlooked –
most notably women and Indigenous people.
The ambitious project includes plans to add
profiles of 1,500 female figures, to boost the
12% of entries currently devoted to women. 6

7SOLOMON ISLANDS
Japanese warship
Wartime wreck Hiei in the First
GETTY IMAGES/UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

The wreck of the first Japanese warship World War. It sank

sunk during the Second World War has in 1942, killing 188
been discovered off the coast of the crew. The ship’s
Solomon Islands. Found at a depth of wreck has recently
1,000 metres, the Imperial Japanese been discovered
Navy battleship Hiei sank in November off Guadalcanal
1942 after clashes with US forces during
the first naval battle of Guadalcanal.
A large rupture in the wreck’s hull
suggests that it may have been sunk
by a large explosion in its magazine
after being shelled.

WORDS ELLIE CAWTHORNE 15

16 ILLUSTRATION BY DAVIDE BONAZZI
 THE BIG
QUESTION

Should
museums
return
their
treasures?
Amid calls for the ‘return’ of artefacts such as the
Benin Bronzes and art looted by the Nazis during the
Second World War, now held in museums far from their
places of origin, nine experts discuss the ethical and
historical aspects of the ‘restitution’ of such treasures

Æ
17
 Tiffany Jenkins Lissant Bolton

“The best way to respect “Objects help relationships

people who came before between museums and
us is to research history communities worldwide to
without judging it through be created and sustained”
the eyes of the present”
Museums should be (and are being) more
transparent about collecting histories.
In the early eighth century, monks at However, discussions about where objects
Wearmouth-Jarrow Abbey produced should be situated tend to skirt over the
three enormous bibles. Two remained complexity of shared histories and to
in Northumbria, but only fragments of ignore long-standing effective relationships
one survive. The third travelled with the between curators and heritage profession-
abbot as he set out to Rome, intending als working in partnership with museums
to present it as a gift to the shrine of and communities internationally.
Peter the Apostle. Known as the Codex The British Museum is constantly engaged in collabora-
Amiatinus, it is in astonishing condi- tions with communities who want to document, revive and
tion – and is the oldest surviving complete Latin Bible in the restore their distinct cultural heritage. Objects provide a point
world. This monumental text, one of the greatest works of of connection and opportunity that enable those relationships
Anglo-Saxon England, is now kept in the Laurentian Library to be created and sustained over time. Those relationships are
in Florence, beyond Britain’s borders – and a good thing, often also personal: they are not only about connections
too. Culture doesn’t have a fixed nationality. It’s not like a between institutions but also about connections between
person who needs a passport. Though a product of particular curators and community members at different levels. In my
time and place, as they move to new locations such artefacts own case I have worked for more than 30 years with, and at
spread knowledge about their origins, the different lives they the invitation of, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in the South
have touched and meanings they have held. Pacific, supporting the work of women who want to sustain
It’s true that some artefacts were taken in circumstances we and develop their cultural knowledge and practice.
now find unpalatable. But history is long and complicated; the Some of our most important recent collaborations have
situation is always more tangled than ‘baddies’ versus ‘goodies’. developed around our collections from the African continent.
Consider the Parthenon of ancient Athens. Many elements For many years our staff have worked with a number of
were removed from that monument in modern times, and some African museums, focusing on exhibition and research
(known as the Elgin Marbles) are now displayed in the British collaboration, collection care, infrastructure development
Museum, others in Paris and Copenhagen; activists would have and capacity building.
them returned to Greece. Yet the Parthenon itself was a display of As part of this collaboration, last year our director,
power, built mostly by slaves. Likewise, though the way British Hartwig Fischer, visited both Ghana and Nigeria to meet and
acquired the Benin Bronzes is ugly, the story of their creation, support our colleagues there. In particular, he visited Benin
seen through the eyes of the present, isn’t without taint. The City, the centre of the historic Benin empire that is strongly
glory of Benin was built on the slave trade: the contested Bronzes represented in the British Museum collections. During this
in European museums were crafted from manillas (metal visit, the Oba [ruler] of Benin talked about the value of having
bracelets used as currency in west Africa) brought by the historic collections both in Benin City and across the world
Portuguese to trade for slaves. It is not possible to repair that to act as ‘cultural ambassadors’ of Benin culture; he also
past. Nor will judging it through the eyes of the present aid an expressed his desire to have some of those collections returned
understanding of ancient Athens or the court of Benin. The to Benin City (on loan and permanent return).
best way to respect the lives of the people who came before us Working as a member of the Benin Dialogue Group –
is to research and understand history without such an agenda. along with Nigerian and other European museums – the
We should aim to live in a world where artefacts from other British Museum is supporting the development of the new
times and places are shared. We should aim to unlock the Benin Royal Museum and has confirmed that it will lend
past, not overturn it. That is what museums are for, and what objects to the new museum.
they do best. That is why they should keep their treasures.
Lissant Bolton is Keeper of the Department of Africa, Oceania and
Tiffany Jenkins is the author of Keeping Their Marbles (OUP, 2016) the Americas at The British Museum

18
 Marie Rodet

“In exhibitions that pop

up in local museums, the
history of the artefacts –
particularly their looting –
is generally invisible”
In November, an influential report on the
restitution of African cultural heritage in
France was published. A number of experts
and museum directors voiced opposition
to such restitution, in part because they
claimed it would empty French museums
of their collections. The controversy is not
new, especially in the UK, where such
discussions regularly makes the headlines.
British soldiers with looted artefacts during the punitive expedition Much less known are the African and Asian artefacts held by
to Benin City (now in southern Nigeria) of 1897. Many of these pieces, smaller provincial museums across Europe, many of which were
known as the Benin Bronzes, are held in European museums
donated by semi-public figures or private collectors who took
part in the European colonial projects in Africa and Asia in the
19th and 20th centuries. Local museums often lack the exper-
tise or even interest to deal with and preserve these collections.
Such artefacts are rarely exhibited and, if they are, their origins,
descriptions and history are often displayed inaccurately.
An interesting example of this happened couple of years ago.
The local museum in Le Havre displayed a number of artefacts
looted by the French General Louis Archinard during the
conquest of what later became the colony of French Sudan (now
Mali), and which formed part of his private collection donated
to the museum nearly a century ago. The exhibition, called
Le Havre-Dakar, was a collaboration with Senegalese muse-
ums, which lent some pieces. The focus was on the historical
and contemporary cultural relationship between France and
Senegal, but most of the African pieces exhibited were actually
from what is today Mali. Captions provided few details of their
origin, and no indication of the context of their acquisition,
except for the note ‘collection Archinard’. The exhibition as
a whole made little sense for the wider public, because the
museum lacked expertise in African studies.
Generally, in such exhibitions that pop up once in a while in
local museums, the history of the artefacts (and particularly
their looting) is invisible. In this context, the case for their
return appears even stronger, enabling appreciation by an
audience avid to learn more about their past. Those artefacts
that, in a provincial European context, may appear of little
BRIDGEMAN

value, should be returned to their countries of origin where they

can be fully appreciated as real treasures and valuable heritage.
A bronze figure of an Edo king of the Benin empire, which flourished in
what’s now Nigeria from the 15th century. Several such pieces are being Marie Rodet is senior lecturer in the history of Africa at SOAS
loaned to Nigeria by the British Museum and Paris’s Musée du Quai Branly University of London Æ
19
 Felipe Fernández-Armesto Bryony Onciul

“The heritage of human- “Arguing that repatriation

kind can’t be divvied will ruin museums
up like a lottery jackpot. obscures the fact that
Museums are among the the opposite can be true”
best places to share it”
Museums play an important role in society.
They authorise the way we understand
Call it appropriation, if you like, and ourselves in the world based on our shared
rage at it in your folly: cultural exchange histories, founding cultural concepts
is the starting point of progress. As people, and imagined futures. Museums also
objects, ideas, products and habits get reframe and challenge our assumptions by
swapped across the world, they inspire revealing hidden histories and illuminat-
new departures, launch new thoughts ing different ways of knowing and being.
and create new ways of life. Without However, many museums can also be
Renaissance Wunderkammern there would criticised as institutions built on colonial foundations.
have been no Scientific Revolution. Calls to return objects to source communities may appear to
Without museums of colonial artefacts, Picasso and Brancusi threaten collections; however, repatriation can actually create
would have gone on seeing with old-world eyes. No one opportunities to innovate, decolonise and strengthen museums.
should be ashamed of having items from elsewhere at home. Repatriation claims are not wholesale demands to empty stores
Museums are essential for research – to understand objects of treasures; rather, each is a very specific, carefully considered
and texts, you have to be able to compare and contextualise case-by-case request for a particular item that holds significance
them. Equality in education demands museums; without to a community. Though some requests come from govern-
them, only Grand Tourers would see worldwide wonders. ments, many come from indigenous peoples whose material
If you start returning works that communities claim on culture and ancestral remains were sold, taken or traded during
grounds of ethnic or national emotional investment, you can’t colonisation. The argument that repatriation will ruin muse-
fairly deny any request for repatriation. You condemn museums ums has not only been disproven, it obscures the fact that the
to pillage more destructive than anything their endowers very opposite can be true.
ever did. Pieces belong wherever they have long resided: they When culturally significant materials are returned in a
become part of the history of the British Museum, say, as sensitive, responsible manner, new relations can be forged that
much as of ancient Egypt or 19th-century Nigeria. enhance museums, collections and public understanding. For
The heritage of humankind can’t be divvied up like a lottery example, Glenbow Museum in Alberta, Canada repatriated
jackpot. Museums are among the best places for it to be widely sacred bundles to the Blackfoot First Nations. This created a
shared. International conventions, subject to a reasonable reciprocal relationship that led to the co-creation of a perma-
statute of limitations, rightly forbid museums from garnering nent museum gallery, new acquisitions donated by community
the proceeds of filching and looting. But think of Sweden members, and innovative curatorial practice.
without Christina’s dodgily gotten gains, or Constantinople Returning artefacts to source communities helps to maintain
without the goodies Constantine planted in the Hippodrome, tangible and intangible connections to ancestors and home-
or Venice without the Horses of San Marco. lands, while also potentially rebuilding cultural pride and
Spoils of long-ago wars, the cut-price acquisitions of pluto- autonomy after periods of cultural suppression. Repatriation
cratic treasure-hunters and the injudicious gifts of bygone inspires the creation of new items for public display and events
diplomatic exchange can stay where they are – where they that celebrate museum–community relationships.
have come to be part of the history not just of their places Hoarding treasures is not enriching. Responding to access
of origin, but of the world. Do you miss your marbles or and repatriation requests acknowledges our globally inter-
pine for your scrolls? Go to where they are gathered and twined histories, and creates mutually beneficial relations that
revel in the breadth of admiration on which your supposed can revitalise museums, and can deepen our understanding and
ancestors’ skills can draw. appreciation of our collective past and future.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is the author of Out of Our Minds: Bryony Onciul is senior lecturer in public history at the University
A History of What We Think and How We Think It, which will be of Exeter, and author of Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice:
published this summer by OneWorld Decolonising Engagement (Routledge, 2015)

20
 Kehinde Andrews

“This is not a
complicated issue:
the only ‘right’ to hold
these artefacts was the
dominion of empire”
The empire may have crumbled, but
British colonial arrogance towards the
former colonies certainly has not. While
colonising a quarter of the globe, Britain
stole treasures and artefacts for the British
GETTY IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN

public to marvel at in museums. There

simply is no justification for holding on
to these stolen goods.
Nigeria has been struggling for decades
to get Britain to return the Benin Bronzes, a collection of
sculptures and plaques that decorated the palace of the
Kingdom of Benin as early as the 15th century. British forces
A member of the Blackfoot community in Alberta. The repatriation of
looted the bronzes during an expedition in 1897, and British
sacred bundles by the Glenbow Museum, in the Canadian province of museums seem to think this gives them a divine right to keep
Alberta, to the Blackfoot First Nations created a reciprocal relationship hold of them. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums
and Monuments has become so frustrated that they are now
resorting to asking to borrow their own property back.
This is not the only example of the idea of loaning back
stolen goods. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is
proposing to loan back the Maqdala treasures to Ethiopia,
which were ‘acquired’ when British troops plundered the
kingdom of Emperor Tewodros II in 1868. So great was the
theft that it took 15 elephants and 200 mules to move the
loot. After refusing Ethiopia’s demands to return the items,
including a crown and a wedding dress, the V&A put them
on display in 2018 and offered the loan as a ‘compromise’.
In reality this is not a complicated issue. Britain, and other
European nations, stole treasures from across the world to
display in their museums. Their only ‘right’ to hold these arte-
facts was the dominion of empire. As much as many people
may yearn for an ‘Empire 2.0’, those days are long gone.
The continued sense of entitlement is now just a delusion,
and Britain and its European neighbours owe restitution to
their former colonies in a myriad of ways. Returning some
of the proceeds of their crimes to their rightful owners would
be a step in the right direction.

The Horses of San Marco, looted from Constantinople, at that time capital
Kehinde Andrews is professor of black studies at Birmingham City
of the Byzantine empire, in 1204. “Museums are among the best places
for heritage to be widely shared – think of Venice without the Horses of University and the author of books including Back to Black: Retelling
San Marco [for example],” writes Felipe Fernández-Armesto Black Radicalism for the 21st Century (Zed Books, 2018) Æ
21
 Olivette Otele

“Many countries in
west Africa do not have
the facilities to preserve
valuable artefacts”
In 2017, French president Emmanuel
Macron promised that African artefacts
would be returned to the continent. The
economic and political dimensions of the
decision didn’t escape observers. Europe’s
hold on Africa’s natural resources had
been under threat for decades, but the
focus on culture and art raised eyebrows.
In that context, Macron commissioned
historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese economist Felwine
Sarr to produce a report on restitution. It recommended that
a portion of the 90,000 objects originating from Sub-Saharan
Works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis, stored in Mauerbach
Africa currently held in French public collections should be re- Charterhouse, Austria, 1971. The Austrian government made very limited
turned to the nations from which they originated – including efforts to alert the pre-Third-Reich owners or their families to possible
in the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. When it claims to these works, and by 1972 very few had been returned
opened in 2006, this museum caused a storm of controversy
because its presentation of objects from African, American,
Asian and Oceanian civilisations omitted any mention of colo-
nial conquests or the way those artefacts had been acquired.
The debate did not, therefore, start with Macron. Yet
Macron’s initiative has plunged museums into difficult but
necessary discussions about the past, and about the histor-
ical roles of museums as vehicles of dominant Eurocentric
narratives. In Britain, the debate has led to other responses.
Lending objects to nations from where they originated was
seen as a way forward, but that sparked controversy when the
objects in question were obtained through looting, provok-
ing an image of a thief lending his prizes to the owner.
British museums have a staggering number of objects that
are not displayed and are unlikely to be seen by museum-
goers. Having been evaluated, these objects are now British
assets sitting in storage. On the other hand, the Savoy-Sarr
report recommended that nations ask for restitution. Many
countries in west Africa have not come forward to do so be-
cause they do not have the facilities to preserve those valuable
artefacts and protect them from theft; new funding would
need to be provided to museums already suffering from a
lack of government funding.
Nonetheless, in principle, as far as France is concerned
AKG IMAGES

these countries are entitled to restitution. In Britain, restitu-

tion is still met with resistance. It seems the debate in the UK
about decolonising museums is only about diversifying the
narrative, not the restitution of artefacts. An illustrated ‘carpet page’ from the Lindisfarne Gospels, a manuscript
produced around 700 AD and currently held in the British Library. Should
Olivette Otele is professor of history at Bath Spa University it be returned to Northumberland?

22
 Simon Jenkins Astrid Swenson

“Most of the old imperial “Despite a language of

museums are overstocked, ‘return’, restitution is
hoarding material in often about negotiating
storerooms, never to the future, not the past”
see the light of day”
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this
complex question. The vast majority of
This is not going to go away. When objects moved from their original location
someone else has something you think is to a museum have no claimants. Some,
yours, you want it back. If it was stolen though, are in museums as a result of
or otherwise illegally obtained, there is looting and other forms of violence and
no question. It is yours. coercion. The international principles that
The problem with so much museum have made wartime looting illegal and led
treasure is that its acquisition was often to the return of objects since the end of
dubious, and its emotional content often the Napoleonic wars, and following the Nazi confiscations of
significant. Over time, as countries grow art, have in the past rarely been applied to contexts of colonial
stronger and prouder, this will become ever more political. conquest and subjugation. It is high time to address this.
Newly confident nations will want to recover symbols of Historical research is a necessary part of this process, to
their past, whatever their status. determine how objects were acquired. Moreover, it can help
It is no answer for museum directors to plead rules and us comprehend and question why legal and moral ideas about
protocols. They are there to be changed. Great works of restitution have become connected to arguments about preser-
world art and archaeology belong to peoples, not to muse- vation, access, use, successorship, nationalism and universalism.
ums. That they are incarcerated, often out of context and far The history of restitution since the 19th century can also help
from ‘home’, in vast and sombre mausoleums is itself a sad- us understand that, despite a language of ‘return’, restitution is
ness. That their seclusion can only be justified by references often overwhelmingly about negotiating the future rather than
to visitor numbers or the divine right of scholarship is sadder. the past. It has often been used to rebuild communities, and
There is an increasing acceptance of the desirability of offers a way for dialogue and reconciliation.
repatriating ‘crown jewels’ and other works with a peculiar Sometimes a straightforward ‘return’ is neither possible nor
bond to their country of origin, be the artefact in question a desirable – either because an object is ‘orphaned’, as is the case
skull, a statue, a boat or a dress. It seems absurd to deny East- with some objects that belonged to Jews murdered during
er Island its evocative moai statues, which should be gazing the Holocaust, or with objects whose provenance cannot be
out over the Pacific, or Gibraltar its Neanderthal head. Why established. Sometimes there could be more than one ‘rightful
in principle should the Lindisfarne Gospels not be in Lindis- owner’. Should the sword of Grand Master Jean de Valette,
farne and the Lewis Chessmen not (all) in Lewis? acquired by Napoleon when the Knights of Malta surrendered
If international standards of conservation are agreed, there the island in 1798, belong to the Louvre, the Order of St John
is no intellectual case for these objects being held abroad, (now in Rome), or a Maltese institution?
particularly in these days of mass travel and online accessi- Recent routes to resolution show the way, through loans,
bility. Most of the old imperial museums are overstocked, co-curation, and narrative panels that make changes in context
hoarding material in basements and storerooms, never to visible, emphasising the trajectories and transculturality of
see the light of day. There is no conceivable reason for not objects and people. Solutions can allow for multiple uses – for
dispersing these collections. example, a 2000 agreement between the American Museum
The objects bequeathed us by the past belong to humanity. of Natural History and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand
At very least they belong to the people whose ancestors creat- Ronde Community of Oregon enables both scientific study and
ed them and understandably want them back. Locking them spiritual gatherings. The display of an object’s history can help
away in London, New York or Paris is no longer defensible. reveal the emotions that have become attached to objects in
Throw open the doors, and the salerooms. transit, and create dialogue about underlying losses and hopes in
DAVID HAMPTON

the search for just and fair solutions.

Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. His latest book is A Short Astrid Swenson is professor of history at Bath Spa University, and
History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin (Viking, 2018) co-editor of From Plunder to Preservation (OUP, 2013)

23
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Sale of the century
US secretary of state William
Seward (seated left) signs the
agreement to buy Alaska from
Russia in 1867. Though derided
at the time as ‘Seward’s Folly’,
the purchase proved astute

Replanting the flag

US soldiers land on Guam on
21 July 1944 at the start of the
battle to retake the Micronesian
island from Japan, which had
invaded in December 1941

GETTY IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN/SHUTTERSTOCK

26
AMERICA’S
HIDDEN
EMPIRE
From the end of the 19th century, the United States collected a roster
of overseas territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. Daniel Immerwahr
explores the story of America’s forgotten imperial expansion programme

Father figures
Men dressed as Uncle Sam and a
Spanish Conquistador wave from a
float during a US Independence Day
parade in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
People born on the island are US
citizens – but aren’t eligible to vote
in presidential elections

27
O
n 25 October 2018, a Category 5
storm ploughed into the United Whatever the country
States. With maximum sustained
winds of 180 miles per hour, it was named the United States
the most powerful storm anywhere
on Earth that year, and the strongest was, it wasn’t a union, it
in US history since 1935. It tore
roofs from houses and badly dam- wasn’t a republic, and it
aged the power grid.
Despite this damage, the superstorm barely made a dent in wasn’t limited to states
the national news cycle. It received less than 1% of the televi-
sion coverage that had been devoted to Hurricane Florence –
a storm that battered North Carolina – earlier in the year.
It was, wrote Anita Hofschneider in the Columbia Journalism which granted sovereignty to the new country, it wasn’t a union
Review, “The super typhoon American media forgot”. of states. The government had taken its westernmost lands from
That storm garnered so little attention because of where it such states as Virginia and Massachusetts and placed them
hit. Typhoon Yutu laid waste to Saipan and Tinian in the under federal supervision. Thus, the United States of America
Northern Mariana Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean. These was a collection of states and federal territories – and it has been
islands are part of the United States, and people born there are that way ever since.
US citizens – but few on the mainland seemed aware of that. For the first seven decades or so of US history, those territo-
“I’m afraid most Americans don’t know that we have overseas ries neighboured the states and were expected to join them. But
territories,” commented Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert at just three years after completing its final western annexation
Colorado State University. in 1854 – gaining a sliver of Mexico known as the Gadsden
Weather, like war, has a way of teaching geography lessons. Purchase – the United States embarked on a new phase of
In fact, the US has a number of overseas territories, including expansion overseas. It started by claiming dozens of uninhabit-
Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa, and has had more in ed islands in the Caribbean and Pacific, sources of guano, essen-
the past. On the eve of its entry into the Second World War, the tial fertiliser for nitrogen-parched farms. A deal with Russia
US empire – which also included the populous Philippines as yielded Alaska. A pivotal war with Spain in 1898 brought
well as the territories of Hawai‘i and Alaska, nearly two decades the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam into the country, and
before those latter two became states in 1959 – had some the non-Spanish lands of Hawai‘i and American Samoa were
19 million colonial subjects. At that time, if you lived in the annexed at around the same time. By 1900, the overseas territo-
US (the whole country, not just the part on ries encompassed an area nearly as large as the entire
the North American continent), you were US at its founding, and held a population number-
more likely to be colonised than you were to ing more than twice as many as that living in the
be an immigrant – indeed, there were more original land area.
colonial subjects than African-Americans. Impressed by the country’s overseas expansion,
Historians today are wrestling with these cartographers offered new maps showing the Phil-
facts. Increasingly, they are telling the history ippines, Puerto Rico and other territories alongside
of the US as the history of an empire. the states. Writers, convinced that overseas empire

T
marked a new era, reconsidered the name of the
hat history starts from day one of country. Technically, its name was the one Dick-
the nation. “The Name of this inson had given it – the ‘United States of America’
Confederacy shall be the ‘United – but in the 19th century it had most commonly
States of America’,” read John been called ‘the United States’, ‘the Union’ or ‘the
Dickinson’s draft of the Articles Republic’ for short. Yet after the great imperial
of Confederation in 1776, capturing the heady land rush, these names no longer fitted as well.
rush of political possibility in those early days. Whatever this country was, it wasn’t a union, it
The country would be a union rather than an State change wasn’t a republic, and it wasn’t limited to states.
PUBLIC DOMAIN

empire, composed of states rather than of a A poster for 1898’s Greater Various names were proposed: ‘Imperial America’,
America Exposition in Omaha.
motherland and colonies. The name ‘Greater America’
the ‘Greater Republic’, and – a phrase that
Except that the name wasn’t accurate. By the was proposed as an alternative appeared in the title of seven books published in
time Britain ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1784, to the ‘United States of America’ the decade after 1898 – ‘Greater America’.

28
 Calm after the storm
The wreckage of a house in Saipan hit by
Typhoon Yutu in October 2018. Though Yutu
wreaked devastation on the US territory, it
received little news coverage in the mainland
BRIDGEMAN/ALAMY

Foundling father
In a cartoon of 1898, a basket of babies
labelled Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hawaii and

Æ
‘Philippine’ is handed to Uncle Sam and
Columbia by ‘Manifest Destiny’

29
The United States’ global empire

Altered States
The global expansion of the US
One mooted name
appeared in the title of
seven books published Northern Mariana
in the decade after 1898: Islands
1944: US assumed government

‘Greater America’ Claimed by Spain then Germany,

and invaded by Japan during the
First World War, the islands (which
include Saipan and Tinian) were
invaded by the US in 1944. It is now
Dissatisfaction with ‘the United States’ led to a more endur- an insular area and commonwealth
ing verbal shift. Before 1898, though its people were called of the US.
‘Americans’, it was unusual to call the country ‘America’.
One could travel 5,000 miles and read 100 newspapers before
encountering that word, a British writer observed. ‘America’
appeared in none of the patriotic songs (‘Yankee Doodle’,
‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, ‘Hail, Columbia’,
‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’).
A search of speeches by presidents from the founding to 1898
yields only 11 unambiguous references to the country as ‘Amer-
ica’ – about one per decade.
Yet after 1898, things changed quickly. Theodore Roosevelt,
the first president to take office after the war with Spain, used Wake
the word ‘America’ in his first annual message and then fre- Island
quently thereafter. The name was looser, more expansive, and
implied nothing about the country being a union of states.
Every president since has used ‘America’ freely. And new an-
thems cropped up, with such titles as ‘America the Beautiful’
and ‘God Bless America’.

I
n the years after 1898, it was obvious that the United Philippines
States was an empire. Its maps showed off the colonies, 1898: ceded to the US by Spain
and powerful men in Washington voiced imperial ambi- 1946: independence
tions openly. But then something strange happened. Per- Claimed by Spain from 1521, the
haps due to the exhaustion of a violent war of pacification Philippines declared independence
in the Philippines, or perhaps due to a persistent vision of the in 1898 before being ceded to the
country as a republic, powerful people started ignoring the col- US that year. The campaign contin-
onies. Without giving them up, the US simply spoke less of ued intermittently until achieving
its goal on 4 July 1946.
them – brushing them under the rug. By the 1910s, they had
largely dropped off the maps, and they were no longer called
‘colonies’. That word, warned a federal official in 1914, “must
not be used to express the relationship that exists between our Guam
government and its dependent peoples”. 1898: ceded to the US by Spain
This cognitive dissonance around empire, it should be said, Another former Spanish
was fairly unusual. Britain wasn’t confused as to whether it had possession ceded to the US
colonies. It honoured them annually on 24 May, Empire Day, following the Spanish-American
celebrated in schools for decades and made an official holiday in War, this island in Micronesia
is now an unincorporated and
1916. The United States, as it happens, had its own patriotic
organised territory of the US.
holiday, one that also started in schools before receiving federal
30
 Alaska United States Cuba
1867: bought by US 1776: declared independence 1898: US military government
On 4 July 1776, the 13 colonies at war 1902: independence
Settled by Russian fur
trappers in the 18th century, with Great Britain declared independ- After nearly four centuries under
the territory of 586,412 square ence as the United States of America. Spanish control, Cuba came under
miles was sold by Russia to This area was expanded by the 1803 US military government after the
the United States for Louisiana Purchase, the addition of Spanish–American War of 1898,
US$7.2m. It became the 49th Florida (ceded by Spain) in 1819, then itself partly sparked by the actions
state on 3 January 1959. the annexation of Texas in 1845 and sole of the Cuban independence move-
occupation of Oregon in 1846. Much of ment. Cuba became independent
what’s now the south-west was ceded on 20 May 1902. The US lease on
by Mexico in 1848, with the final swathe Guantanamo Bay, signed in 1903,
of Arizona and New Mexico added with has no fixed expiry date.
the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.

Puerto Rico
1898: ceded to the US by Spain
Christopher Colombus landed in
Puerto Rico (‘Rich Port’) in 1493.
The Treaty of Paris that ended the
Spanish–American War in 1898
ceded the island to the US. Puerto
Ricans received US citizenship in
1917 and Puerto Rico became a US
commonwealth in 1952.
Midway
Islands

Johnston Atoll
Howland
Island Palmyra Hawai‘i
Atoll 1898: annexed by the US
Jarvis American sugar plantations
Baker Island were established in the Ha- US Virgin Islands
Island wai‘ian islands in the 1830s and, Bought by the US in 1917
after a period of instability, in The Caribbean islands of St Croix,
1893 an American-supported St John and St Thomas were bought
coup ousted the government. by the US government from
On 7 July 1898 the US annexed Denmark on 17 January 1917.
Hawai‘i, which was admitted as In 1927, their inhabitants were
the 50th state on 21 August 1959. granted American citizenship.

American Samoa Panama Canal United States Minor

1899–1904: ceded to the US Zone Outlying Islands
ROBERT HARDING/AWL/ALAMY

European explorers arrived in 1904: control taken by US Territories with no permanent

these South Pacific islands from 1979: zone abolished residents in the Pacific include
the 18th century, and US naval and A narrow zone around the Baker Island, Howland Island,
coaling stations were established Panama Canal was ceded Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll,
in the 1870s. Following the Second to the US from 1904, when it Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll
Samoan Civil War, the eastern began construction. This zone and Wake Island.
islands were ceded to the US was abolished and the land
between 1899 and 1904. returned to Panama in 1979.
Æ
31
The United States’ global empire

The US in the Pacific Wake Island

A US warship bombards Wake Island during
its occupation by Japanese forces in 1942.
This formerly uninhabited atoll in the western
Pacific was claimed by the US in 1899, and is
administered by the US Air Force

Guam
Local children watch a young American boy
play with their dog in 1955. Originally inhabited
by Chamoru people, Guam was claimed by
Spain in 1565, then by the US in 1898

Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

A US coastguard with a machine gun wears a
kimono and totes a parasol during the Second
World War. US forces took Saipan and the rest
of the archipelago from June 1944; inhabitants
subsequently voted for integration with the US

32
 This lack of attention to
the colonies particularly
mattered in the 1930s,
when Japan’s imperial
ambitions became clear

recognition in 1916. The US version was called Flag Day,

and was designed to encourage citizens to gather “in united
American Samoa demonstration of their feeling as a nation”, as President Wood-
American anthropologist Margaret Mead wearing row Wilson put it in 1916. There was no holiday for the empire.
native garb during field studies of the people of
American Samoa. Her famous book Coming of Age in Writers said little about the colonies. The most famous liter-
Samoa (1928) omits the crucial fact that those people ary engagement with them was surely Coming of Age in Samoa,
were in fact US nationals a much-read 1928 ethnography by the anthropologist Margaret
Mead. But Mead wrote of ‘Samoa’, the region, not of ‘American
Samoa’, the colony where she had lived, and she avoided men-
Philippines tion of colonies, territories and empires altogether. It’s entirely
An injured Filipino woman and her child during the possible to read Mead’s book without realising that the “brown
battle of Manila in 1945. An estimated 1.5 million Polynesian people” she describes encountering on a “South Sea
people died in the Philippines during the Second
World War – by far the bloodiest action ever to take
island” are, just like her, US nationals.
place on US soil In 1930, a representative year, the New York Times printed
more articles about Poland than about the Philippines, more
about Albania than Alaska. It ran nearly three times as many
articles about Britain’s largest territory, India, than it did about
all US territories combined – territories that held more than
10% of the US population.

T
his lack of attention to the colonies mattered.
It mattered especially in the 1930s, when Japan’s
imperial ambitions in Asia became clear. A quick
glance at the map revealed Guam, the Philippines,
Alaska, American Samoa and Hawai‘i as potential
targets – indeed, Japan did ultimately attack them all. But polls
showed little mainland interest in sending the US military to
defend such places, and military planners did little to fortify
them. As a result, the meagre defences in the Pacific territories
proved unable to repel Japan’s first attack when it eventually
came in December 1941.
That attack is usually remembered in the US simply as a
strike on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawai‘i. Yet, within a
span of hours, Japan also attacked the US territories of Midway,
Wake Island, Guam and the Philippines; the British colonies
of Malaya and Hong Kong; and the independent kingdom of
GETTY/ALAMY

Thailand. Some attacks were launched on 7 December and

some on 8 December, but only because Japan’s manoeuvre
crossed the international date line. The event, known in the US Æ
33
The United States’ global empire

Submerged memories
The USS Arizona Memorial marks the
attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December
1941. The impact of fighting in territories
that suffered far more over a longer
period – such as the Philippines – is
barely remembered in the United States

as ‘Pearl Harbor’, was in fact a near-simultaneous strike on for the dead of those islands. The carnage was, like Typhoon
various Pacific holdings of the Allies. Yutu, something that happened ‘over there’ – of limited rele-
Pearl Harbor was the first US target struck. But it wasn’t vance in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
clearly the place where the Japanese did the greatest damage; Yet empire is worth a thought or two. The Philippines is no
the US Army’s official history rates the strike on the Philippines longer a US colony, having gained its independence in 1946, and
as just as damaging. Moreover, whereas the attack on Pearl Har- Hawai’i and Alaska are now states. But the United States still
bor was just that – an individual attack, never to be repeated – has five inhabited overseas territories: Puerto Rico, American Sa-
the raid on the Philippines was followed by more assaults, then moa, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana
by invasion and conquest. The Philippines, Guam, Wake Island Islands. Some four million people live in them – four million
and the western tip of Alaska – the populations of which totalled people who can’t vote in presidential elections, aren’t protected
more than 16 million US nationals – all fell to the Japanese. by the constitution and have no role in making federal law.

T
This disenfranchisement matters. In 2017, Hurricane Maria
he US eventually recaptured its lost Pacific territo- slammed into Puerto Rico, taking out its electricity for months.
ries, but at a cost rarely acknowledged. It bombed Thousands died as a result of the storm, but it wasn’t the weath-
or shelled every major structure in Agana (now er itself that killed them directly. It was longstanding neglect,
Hagåtña), capital of Guam, in its fight to recon- followed by a lack of federal aid after the hurricane struck.
quer the island. Manila, capital of the Philippines, “Recognise that we Puerto Ricans are American citizens,”
was similarly decimated, as were many other Philippine urban came the desperate plea from the island’s governor, Ricardo
centres. “We levelled entire cities with our bombs and shell fire,” Rosselló. Yet a poll of US main-
recounted the Philippine high commissioner. In the end, he landers taken after the hurricane Daniel Immerwahr
said, “there was nothing left”. It’s been estimated that more than showed that only a slight maj- is associate professor of history
1.5 million people in the Philippines were killed during the Sec- ority – and barely one-third of at Northwestern University,
ond World War. It was easily the bloodiest event ever to take adults under 30 – were aware of Illinois. His latest book is How
place on US soil – more than twice as lethal as the Civil War. that fact. One wonders if those to Hide an Empire: A Short
ALAMY

The war in the Philippines isn’t part of national memory in numbers will be any higher when History of the Greater United
the US. The National Mall in Washington DC has no shrine the next storm hits. States (Bodley Head, 2019)

34
 A D V E R T I S E M E N T F E AT U R E

In war and
in peace
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CROSS AND RED CRESCENT SOCIETIES IS
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is a worldwide network of on-the- and beyond.

For more information about supporting the

British Red Cross with a gift in your will and
the Free Will scheme, call 0300 500 0401
or visit redcross.org.uk/freewill
A year in pictures: 1973

36
 Middle East maelstrom
Israeli armoured vehicles head for the
Golan Heights to face Syrian forces on
7 October 1973, the second day of the
Yom Kippur War – so named because it
followed the launch of surprise attacks
by a coalition of Arab states on the Jew-
ish Day of Atonement. Egypt and Syria
aimed to seize land lost in the Six-Day
War of 1967 – the Sinai Peninsula by
Egypt, and the Golan Heights on the
Syrian border. After initial Arab suc-
cesses, Israeli Defense Forces launched
operations towards Damascus and
across the Suez Canal, at great cost to
both sides. After US and Soviet inter-
vention, a ceasefire was declared in late
October, paving the way for reconcilia-
tion between Israel and Egypt.

A YEAR
IN PICTURES

1973
Architecture and
art, coups and
kidnapping
COMPLEMENTS THE BBC RADIO 4 SERIES
THE DECADE THAT INVENTED THE FUTURE: THE 1970s

Conflicts flared and ended in Asia

while architecture reached new
heights and famine ravaged Africa.
Richard Overy reviews a year also
GETTY IMAGES

marked by social upheavals and

advances in women’s rights Æ
37
A year in pictures: 1973

A kind of homecoming
An American prisoner of war salutes
a US officer in Hanoi on his release
following the signing of the Paris Peace
Accords on 27 January 1973 that heralded
the US withdrawal from Vietnam. He was
among the first group of 112 soldiers and
PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

pilots, dressed in identical grey jackets,

released. In February and March 1973,
Operation Homecoming repatriated
566 American military personnel,
some of whom had spent eight years in
confinement. The reaction in the United
States was ambivalent: some regarded these
men as heroes, others as war criminals.
38
 Trading places
A woman walks the floor of the London
Stock Exchange on 26 March 1973 – one
of the first to be admitted following years
of protest against male domination of the
finance sector. Women had been barred
from the floor since the Exchange opened
on its current site in 1802, and even in
1973 were not permitted to participate in
dealing. The first female chief executive
of the Exchange was appointed in 2001.

Calling out the coup

A poster protests the military coup launched
on 11 September 1973 by General Augusto
Pinochet against the socialist government of
Salvador Allende, who had been elected pres-
ident three years earlier. Allende committed
GETTY IMAGES

suicide in the presidential palace on the day

of the coup. By 1974 Pinochet had established
a harsh dictatorship that persecuted the
remnants of the Chilean left-wing. Æ
39
A year in pictures: 1973

A knight at the opera

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke
of Edinburgh, attend the inauguration ceremony for the
Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973. The Australian
concert hall’s radical design became a global architectural
icon – like the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben – but its genesis was
marked by controversy and long delays. The original design
– chosen from entries in a competition in January 1957 –
was by Danish architect Jørn Utzon. Construction began
in 1959 but Utzon resigned in 1966 before the interior was
completed. During her visit, the Queen was treated to a
performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Hungry for help

Children in Burkina Faso ask for food during the acute famine
that by 1973 had afflicted the Sahel region of west and central
Africa for five years, and which killed more than 100,000 people.
Weakened by starvation, many fell victim to a major cholera
outbreak – a disease almost eradicated elsewhere. In 1973, the
United Nations set up a Sudano-Sahelian Office to try to combat
famine in a region that has suffered recurrent devastating
droughts, most recently in 2012.

GETTY IMAGES/REX FEATURES–AP IMAGES–SHUTTERSTOCK

40
 Fight for the right to choose
Pro-choice protesters demonstrate at the
American Medical Association annual
convention in New York in July 1973.
In January the US Supreme Court had
ruled (in the pivotal Roe v Wade case)
that women had a constitutional right to
choose abortion, but there was still strong
opposition from sections of the medical
GETTY IMAGES

profession and the public. This was one

of the most divisive issues in the broader
women’s rights movement.
Æ
41
A year in pictures: 1973

New heights
The twin towers of the newly built World Trade Center loom over New York
City on 3 April 1973, the day before their formal dedication. They were
the tallest buildings in the world at the time: Tower 1 soared to 417 metres,
and Tower 2 was just slightly smaller at 415 metres. Designed by Minoru
Yamasaki, construction took seven years to complete. They comprised a
major landmark until two aircraft hit the towers during the terrorist attack
coordinated by Al-Qaeda on 11 September 2001; the behemoths both
collapsed less than two hours after impact.

REX FEATURES–AP IMAGES–SHUTTERSTOCK

42
 Rural revolution
A propaganda poster of c1973
depicts Mao Zedong in rural
China as the ‘Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution’ was winding
down. The ‘Great Helmsman’ had
launched the Cultural Revolution
in 1966, ostensibly as a crackdown
on so-called anti-revolutionary
deviants. Aiming to reassert
control of the Communist Party, he
encouraged acolytes – particularly
young Red Guards – to attack
‘counter-revolutionaries’. Despite
this congenial image, the Cultural
Revolution was devastating for
many in the Chinese countryside.
By the end of 1976, Mao was dead
and the violent movement had
come to an end.

Heir re-apparent
John Paul Getty III, grandson of the
American oil billionaire, leaves a police
station after his release by kidnappers on
15 December 1973 following payment of a
US$3 million ransom. Getty had been
kidnapped in Rome in July; his grandfather
initially refused to pay a ransom, relenting
only after the younger Getty’s severed ear was
sent to his family. After the ordeal he suffered
long-term mental and physical problems
including drug and alcohol dependence.

Richard Overy
is professor of history
at the University
of Exeter, and
Democracy denied
editor of The Times
Tanks roll through the centre of Athens in
Complete History of
November 1973. Greece had been ruled by
a military junta led by President Georgios the World (William
Papadopoulos since a coup d’état in April Collins, 2015)
1967, but protest against the authoritarian
‘Regime of the Colonels’ climaxed with the
DISCOVER MORE
BRIDGEMAN/GETTY/ALAMY

so-called Athens Polytechnic uprising in mid-

November 1973. Later that month Dimitrios Listen to the BBC
Ioannidis, head of the military police, ousted Radio 4 series The
Decade that Invented
Papadopoulos in another coup, and then tried
the Future: The
to suppress ‘liberalising’ elements. By August 1970s from 15 April
1974, though, popular unrest brought an end
to seven years of military rule and saw the
return of democracy. Æ
43
A year in pictures: 1973

SOURCES: WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS 2017, UNITED NATIONS DESA/POPULATION DIVISION; STATISTA (DATA: OPEC, IEA); MADDISON PROJECT DATABASE, VERSION 2018 BY JUTTA BOLT, ROBERT INKLAAR, HERMAN DE
JONG & JAN LUITEN VAN ZANDEN, LICENSED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE; CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY; ADAPTED FROM GALLUP POLL, COMPILED BY GERHARD PETERS
THE WORLD IN 1973
Global history in graphic forms

World population
The number of humans on the planet has
nearly tripled since 1950, and grew by over
80% between 1973 and 2015. It’s projected
to exceed 10 billion soon after 2050.
2015
7.3 billion
1973
4 billion
1950
2.5 billion

Price of oil Global GDP by region

Average OPEC crude oil prices (per barrel in US$) soared from Regional GDPs (as a % of global GDP) have
October 1973, when Arab oil-producing nations introduced an varied dramatically. Particularly notable is
embargo on oil exports to nations they perceived as supporting the fall in Europe’s share and the rise in
Israel in the Yom Kippur war (see p36). Asia’s since 1973.

1973 $2.70 (Crude oil by average price per barrel) Europe

1974 $11 US &

Australasia

Former
2012 USSR

Latin
America

Asia
$109.45 (record average annual price)
2018
Africa

$69.52 1700 1900 1973 2008

44
 Endangered species
On 28 December 1973, the
Endangered Species Act (ESA) was
signed into US law. One beneficiary
of this act is the whooping crane.
Following extensive hunting, in
1967 just 60 birds survived. Since
critical habitat and nest protection
measures were established after
the ESA was passed, numbers
have soared to around 600.
650
EU membership
600 In 1973, the UK, Denmark and
Ireland joined the European
550 Economic Community,
forerunner of the European
500
Union, which was estab-
WHOOPING CRANE NUMBERS

450 lished in 1957 by Belgium,

France, Italy, Luxembourg,
400 the Netherlands and West
Germany. The EU currently
350
has 28 member states.*
300
TIME OF JOINING EEC/EU
250
1957
200
1970s
150
1980s
100
1990s
50
2000s
0
2010s
1973 2015
*At the time of press, the UK is still an EU member

President Nixon’s approval rating

Approval ratings for President Richard Nixon suffered a
spectacular slide during 1973 as the Watergate scandal
unfolded. He resigned on 8 August 1974.

100% 3 November 1969

Televised announcement of gradual,
90% phased withdrawal of US combat 8 January 1973
forces from south-east Asia The trial for the Watergate 23 July 1973
80% break-in begins Nixon refuses to give
Watergate investigators
APPROVAL RATING

70% the ‘Nixon tapes’ of calls

and conversations in
60% his office

50%
40% 20 January 1973
20 January 1969 17 June 1972 Nixon inaugurated
30% Nixon inaugurated for second
Five men arrested trying to bug
as president for Democratic National Committee presidential term
20% first term headquarters at the Watergate hotel
DREAMSTIME

and office building in Washington, DC 8 August 1974

10%
Nixon resigns

1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974

45
 Number theory
Representations of digits
from (top to bottom) the ninth
century, 11th century and the
present day. The development
of Hindu-Arabic numerals led
to developments in maths,
XXXXXX

science and engineering

46
Numbers form the foundation of much of modern life – but not just
any digits: it was the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals that
revolutionised mathematics, astronomy, engineering and science.
Violet Moller traces the history of these crucial characters Æ

47
I
t is impossible today to imagine a world without
what are known as Hindu-Arabic numerals. These
Try to add LIX to VII and
nine symbols or digits (1 to 9) and zero (0) – cru-
cially, together with the system of arranging them
you’ll quickly understand
in place value – are at the very heart of so much of
modern life. Without them there would be no
why maths would not
computers and no space travel. Indeed, there would
be precious little science, technology or medicine of
have evolved far with the
any kind, to say nothing of mathematics itself.
If mathematics is the universal language of science, then
Roman numeric system
Hindu-Arabic numerals and place-value notation are what
make that language fluent and indispensable. Each of us uses
numbers all of the time, without even thinking about where
they came from or what we would do without them. So it may
come as a revelation to discover that these numerals were rela-
tively unknown in Europe until the 12th century, and then not
widely adopted until well into the 15th century.
Before that era, when Europeans needed to solve a mathe-
matical problem they usually used Roman numerals, which use nine special digits to represent the first nine numbers and,
were complicated and unwieldy. Imagine trying to add LIX (59) in around 600 AD, they began writing these characters in or-
to VII (7), and you’ll quickly understand why maths would not der, according to their value.
have evolved far as a discipline with that ancient numeric sys- The final piece of the puzzle was the zero, which is vital to
tem. The genius of the Hindu-Arabic system lies in its use of a system of positional notation based on the number 10. It
positional notation, also known as place-value notation. Each was originally written as a dot, to denote an empty value in
digit can be placed into columns of units, while the decimal a sequence of numbers. Crucially, this system was described
point (introduced in the 16th century) can be moved left or around AD 625 by an Indian mathematician named Brah-
right across columns to increase or decrease the value of a num- magupta in an elaborate astronomical treatise, written in San-
ber by the power of 10 – a system that made it possible to express skrit poetry, called the Siddhanta.
fractions with far greater accuracy. There are divergent accounts of how and when this manu-
This simple but brilliant idea means that any number can script arrived in Baghdad, the city founded in 762 by the Ab-
be written using the same nine symbols and zero, allowing for basid Caliph al-Mansur on a bend in the river Tigris as the
limitless calculations and permutations. Yet, despite this evi- capital of his burgeoning Muslim empire. One suggests that it
dent power, it was only centuries after these numerals and the was brought directly from India in 773 by a visiting scholar, but
system of positional notation were developed that they came it is possible that the Hindu-Arabic numerals were already
into widespread usage. known in Baghdad by that point. Certainly, they had reached
this part of the world some time earlier: in 662, a Syrian priest
The joy of six called Severus Sebokht wrote admiringly of the ‘nine signs’ of
Early civilisations developed complex mathematical theories us- the Indians.
ing their own systems. The Babylonians, who emerged from the By the early ninth century AD, Baghdad was a major centre
19th century BC in the Euphrates valley, developed a sexagesi- of scientific learning presided over by the irrepressibly curious
mal system (based around the number 60), the legacy of which and intelligent Caliph al-Ma’mun. It was also the largest and
survives today in the division of the clock into 60 minutes and most important city on Earth, capital of the vast Muslim empire
seconds. The ancient Greeks used aspects of that sexagesimal that stretched from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the river In-
system but wrote numbers using letters rather than special char- dus, spanning an astonishing five million square miles. People
acters and, also unlike the Babylonians, used a character to rep- came from across the empire to seek their fortune, and the city
resent zero. Ancient Greek mathematicians were mainly became a vibrant centre of learning and culture.
concerned with geometry – lengths, shapes and angles, all la- Following the lead of several enlightened caliphs, the elite
belled using letters rather than numbers – and their ideas had a poured their considerable wealth into creating libraries and
huge impact on the development of that discipline. funding learning. Scholars flocked to be part of the intellectual
In the early centuries AD, however, a different tradition of endeavour, and manuscripts were brought from across the
mathematics began to flourish in India, probably based on Middle East and beyond to be translated and the knowledge
ideas borrowed from Chinese civilisation. Scholars began to they held put to use.
48
 Weighty matters
Carvings on the basalt
‘Rassam’ obelisk, found in
Mesopotamia in 1853, show
tributes for Assyrian King
Ashurnasirpal II (ruled
883–859 BC) being weighed
using a sexagesimal
system of measures

Thirst for knowledge

The Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun (seated
right) sends an envoy to the Byzantine
Emperor Theophilos in the ninth
century. Al-Ma’mun’s capital, Baghdad,
was a major centre of learning,
attracting scholars including the
visionary mathematician al-Khwarizmi

First figures
A page from the Codex
Vigilanus, a manuscript
compiled in Spain in the
AKG/ALAMY

10th century, features the

earliest known use of Hindu-

Æ
Arabic numerals in Europe
– though without a zero

49
Hindu-Arabic numerals

Eyes to the skies

Scholars use astronomical
instruments in Constantinople,
following a tradition established
in the early centuries of
Baghdad, site of the first
observatory in the Muslim world

ALAMY/GETTY

50
 Astronomy and mathematics were two of the subjects Copies of both of al-Khwarizmi’s books were taken from
most urgently pursued, and the achievements of the scholars Baghdad to other places where they were studied and translat-
who studied them were truly astonishing. They worked out ed. By the tenth century, they had reached Spain, most of which
the Earth’s circumference correctly to within a few hundred was under Muslim rule at that time. During the 11th and
miles. They built the first observatory in the Muslim world, 12th centuries, Christian forces in the north of the Iberian pen-
where they produced data that transformed human under- insula began conquering the great cities of al-Andalus. Toledo
standing of the universe. They translated, corrected and fell in 1085, and over the following decades European scholars
improved ancient Greek scientific theories, combining them came to the city in search of Arabic books, including texts by
with those from India and with their own ideas, propelling al-Khwarizmi, which they translated into Latin.
knowledge forward. These scholars may have already been acquainted with the
forms of the numerals themselves, which were present on a
Numbers have power certain type of abacus (counting board) thought to have been
During this intellectual heyday under al-Ma’mun, there were introduced by a tenth-century monk named Gerbert (later
several impressive mathematicians in Baghdad, but the most
talented was Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. His name
suggests that his origins lay in the province of Khwarazm,
far to the north-east on the shores of the Aral Sea. If that’s
the case, then he – as with so many of the stars of the Scholars who flocked to
Baghdadi intellectual scene – was not Arab but Persian, though
he always wrote in Arabic. Baghdad worked out the
Al-Khwarizmi read Brahmagupta’s Siddhanta and realised
that the Hindu-Arabic numerals and place-value system had Earth’s circumference
much more potential than the systems currently used in the
Muslim empire, which used finger-reckoning and aspects of the correctly to within
sexagesimal system, and expressed fractions in words instead of
numbers. Al-Khwarizmi’s Book on Addition and Subtraction a couple of hundred miles
after the Method of the Indians was the first book in Arabic
explaining the Hindu-Arabic system, with a chapter on each of
the nine numerals and demonstrations of how to write numbers
using the place-value system.
Al-Khwarizmi was a visionary mathematician. Indeed, we
would now describe him as an outlier. With the exception of
a few scholarly colleagues, no one seemed very interested in
the new system of numbers he extolled, and the profound A statue of the ninth-century
paradigm shift required to adopt it wasn’t achieved for several mathematician al-Khwarizmi
centuries. Yet, when this shift finally came, his book was in Khiva, Uzbekistan, possibly
to play a key role: it was translated into Latin in the 12th the region of his birth
century, and became an important part of the European intel-
lectual tradition.
Al-Khwarizmi’s name is little known in Europe today, but it
has survived in the word algorithm, derived from the Latinised
version of his name, ‘Algorismus’. He also gave us the word
algebra, derived from al-jabr, part of the Arabic title of
his Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion
and Balancing, a practical guide to calculating writ-
ten at the request of the Caliph al-Ma’mun. In it,
al-Khwarizmi defined this discipline for the first
time by describing different kinds of quadratic
equations. Interestingly, he did this in words
rather than with the system of nota-
XXXXXX

tion used in algebra today, which

developed during the Renaissance. Æ
51
Hindu-Arabic numerals

A numbers game
A woodcut from 1503
shows an allegorical scene
of a calculation contest in
which Pythagoras, using
an abacus, is defeated by
the Roman philosopher
Boethius (left), who uses
Hindu-Arabic numerals.
From the 15th century, the
proliferation of printed
books spread the use of
that latter system

Order, order
A 14th-century codex collating the works of the Italian scholar
Fibonacci, who studied with Muslim mathematicians and later
outlined the uses of the place-value system. His work helped to
revolutionise trade and accounting in Europe and beyond

Pope Sylvester II) whose talent and passion for mathematics the brilliance of the place-value system, along with the other
took him to Spain in search of knowledge. Thus the Hindu- wonders of their mathematical tradition.
Arabic numerals and system of place-value were gradually As a teenager, Fibonacci travelled around the eastern Medi-
introduced to Europe. It was a slow process, in part because terranean with his father, thereby enjoying opportunities to
of resistance from Christians who regarded the numerals compare several systems of calculation in use at that time. He
as evil and dangerous – simply because they came from the quickly recognised the enormous potential of the Hindu-
Muslim world. Arabic system to transform learning in the west. In 1202 he
wrote a book titled Liber abbaci (Book of Calculation). In this
Calculated moves book, the first original work in Latin on the subject, he ex-
The most important figure in the transmission of plained the workings of each of the numerals and the
the Hindu-Arabic system to Europe was not method of writing numbers in order according
Spanish but Italian, and learned the numerals to their value.
not in Spain but in Africa: Leonardo of Pisa, By the 1220s, Fibonacci was back in Pisa,
known today as Fibonacci (though that and spent time at the court of Frederick II,
name was applied to him only from the Holy Roman Emperor, a man apparently
19th century). Born around 1170, he was so clever and magnificent that he was nick-
the son of a successful Pisan merchant named Stupor Mundi – ‘Wonder of the
posted to the chamber of commerce in Bou- World’. Fibonacci flourished under Freder-
gie (now called Béjaïa, in Algeria) during an ick’s patronage and in 1228 he produced
era when Pisa was one of the four major Italian a revised edition of the Liber abbaci with a
mercantile powers – the others being Amalfi, greater focus on practical application in com-
Venice and Genoa – with trade links and settle- merce. It detailed how to work out transactions
BRIDGEMAN/AKG

ments across the Mediterranean world. An 18th-century engraving in different currencies, and how to use different
of mathematician Leonardo
In Bougie, Arab mathematicians taught the systems of weights and measures – methods that
of Pisa (c1170–c1245),
young Pisan the Hindu-Arabic numerals, proba- better known today became increasingly important as Europe grew
bly using al-Khwarizmi’s works, and showed him as Fibonacci in prosperity and the mercantile world expanded
52
 Past times tables
The English natural philosopher Adelard of Bath (c1080–c1152)
teaches students using Hindu-Arabic numerals, depicted in an
illumination in a medieval manuscript. This renowned scholar
was one of the first to introduce the system to Britain

and developed. Merchants needed to be able to carry out com- Johannes Gutenberg around 1440 – transformed the world
plex calculations and record their accounts effectively – some- of knowledge. As the number of books available grew expo-
thing that was made possible by the Hindu-Arabic system of nentially, their price fell, making them accessible to many
numerals as expounded by Fibonacci. more people. It has been estimated that by 1500, just half
Fibonacci’s initial influence was the introduction of the a century after printing began in Europe, some 20 million
Hindu-Arabic numerals and the place-value system to people books had been produced. Printing also made texts more
ALAMY/ REGULE ABACI IN LEIDEN, LEIDEN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, MS. SCA 1, F. 1R.

who needed mathematics for practical purposes: merchants, standardised, helping to fix the form of the Hindu-Arabic
surveyors and architects who used them to carry out the calcu- numerals and making them widely recognised and known. At
lations needed in their working lives. The more complex as- the same time, scholars began translating mathematical texts
pects of his writings were taken up later and helped to bring into vernacular languages (Italian, German, English), bring-
about advances in theoretical mathematics. In the 15th and ing the mathematical concepts they contained into the every-
16th centuries, scholars began to use the numerals in their ex- day lives of Europeans.
ploration of algebra, especially after 1585 when the Flemish By 1550, very few people in Europe were still using the
mathematician Simon Stevin published an innovative pam- old Roman numeral system to keep their accounts. The
phlet on decimal fractions. simplicity and elegant brilliance of the Hindu-Arabic system
The introduction of the decimal point set people thinking in had finally won through, opening up astonishing new ave-
new directions about mathematics, paving the way for alterna- nues in the fields of mathematics and the sciences, forging
tive concepts such as logarithms, and negative and complex the world we inhabit today – a world that runs on infinite
numbers. As usual, there were many practical applications, too: sequences of numbers.
measurement in engineering and surveying, calculation in as- Codes, algorithms, data: these
tronomy and commerce. By this stage, algebraic problems and are the lifeblood of our shiny 21st- Violet Moller is a historian
equations were being written down using digits, symbols and century universe and the techno- and writer. Her latest book
letters, rather than words, enabling scholars to express and com- logical changes seen over the past is The Map of Knowledge:
pute extremely complex problems. three decades. It is no coincidence How Classical Ideas were Lost
From the mid-1450s, the printing press – a machine using that our name for this phenome- and Found – A History in Seven
moveable type that was invented by the German craftsman non is the ‘digital revolution’. Cities (Picador, 2019)

53
L
ata Brandisová grew up Devil’s race”, first run in 1874, often lives The Reich had sent its strongest-ever
near Prague in the dying up to its nickname. Severe injuries are team of SS and SA horsemen for the
years of the Habsburg common, and there has never yet been Grand Pardubice. Another humiliation
Austro-Hungarian empire, a year in which every runner finished. for the local cavalry officers seemed
which at the time encom- The cavalry officers who dominated inevitable – but Lata Brandisová, riding
passed Bohemia. Born Marie Immacu- the event in the 1920s claimed that a small Kinský mare called Norma,
lata, the fifth child of an impoverished they would be dishonoured if they rode had other ideas. The race was brutal
count, her assumed destiny was to against a woman. Brandisová, though, but, against the odds, the 42-year-old
marry a nobleman and bear his children. brushed aside their fury to start alongside noblewoman won. Czech celebrations
Instead she became a figurehead – for them – and finished fifth despite a series were tempestuous. So was the rage in
her gender and her people. of painful falls. The public soon warmed Berlin, voiced in virulent anti-Czech
The Brandis family lost its title, along to her; the jockeys took longer, but Bran- rhetoric in the Reichstag. It may or may
with much of its property, when the disová returned to Pardubice repeatedly, not have been a coincidence that, within
democratic First Czechoslovak Republic gradually improving her results. By the a fortnight, Hitler was stepping up his
was declared in 1918. In the aftermath of mid-1930s, even the officers considered plans for conquest.
the First World War, potential husbands her a national treasure. The 1937 Grand Pardubice was the
were scarce, but Brandisová hadn’t been By then, though, Masaryk’s liberal last edition for nearly a decade. The
keen on that plan anyway: she was more consensus was unravelling. German Munich Agreement of September 1938
at ease among horses. Her rapport with nationalists in the Czechoslovak Sude- emasculated Czechoslovakia; six months
the species seemed miraculous. She was tenland were agitating to join the Reich, later, Hitler was in Prague. Brandisová’s
also tough, athletic and brave. In short, and Hitler openly dreamed of crushing estate was among the first to be seized by
she had everything it took to be a top- the Untermensch (‘subhuman’) Slavs. the occupiers. Hungry but defiant, she
class jockey. In the fight for hearts and minds, sport aided the resistance when she could and,
Or almost everything: as a woman, was a crucial battleground: the Nazis in contrast with many other former no-
she was not allowed to race. The used equestrian events at the 1936 Berlin bles, refused to cooperate with the Nazis.
constitution of Czechoslovakia, whose Olympics for propaganda purposes. After the war, she reclaimed her prop-
founder-liberator, Tomáš Masaryk, was Pardubice offered another opportu- erty – but the Communists who seized
an eloquent champion of sexual equality, nity to advance the myth of German in- power in 1948 confiscated it again. She
prohibited discrimination based on gen- vincibility; during the 1930s, the annual spent the last 30 years of her life in a tiny
der. Yet the men who ran sport (and most steeplechase was dominated by the riders cottage without electricity or running
other things) discriminated nonetheless. of the Reich – Nazi paramilitaries, either water, hungry and poor. Her sporting
It wasn’t till 1927 that, backed by her SA ‘brownshirts’ or members of the achievements were written out of history,
influential cousin, Zdenko Radslav Kin- Equestrian SS (nucleus for the notorious and her death in 1981 was barely report-
ský, Brandisová became the first woman Waffen-SS cavalry division). ed. Yet few women have such a claim to
in Czechoslovakia to obtain a one-year The pivotal showdown came in Octo- sporting immortality. She refused to take
jockey’s licence. In the face of outraged ber 1937. By then, the Sudetenland crisis no for an answer, competed against men
protests, she mounted one of Kinský’s was worsening and the survival of dem- on equal terms – and achieved something
horses to compete in the world’s most ocratic Czechoslovakia was in doubt. In considered to be impossible.
notoriously dangerous steeplechase: the September, two million mourners had
Velká Pardubická (Grand Pardubice). packed Prague for the funeral of Tomáš Richard Askwith is the author of Unbreakable:
With vast jumps exacerbated by miles Masaryk. Now his bereaved nation was The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World’s
of stamina-sapping ploughed fields, “the poised between defiance and despair. Most Dangerous Horse Race (Yellow Jersey, 2019)

54
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF TE CZECH REPUBLIC/GETTY IMAGES/AKG/ALAMY

Rider in the storm

Lata Brandisová defied sexist attitudes in her Czechoslovak homeland to
compete in the most extreme horse race in Europe – then, in the shadow of
invasion, took to the saddle to triumph over Nazi rivals in 1937. In her moment
of victory, she recalled, “It seemed to me that never before had people been
so truly and amicably united, and that was my greatest and loveliest reward”

55
In the early months of 1939, victory
for Franco’s Nationalist forces in
the Spanish Civil War became
inevitable. The elected Republican
government began planning peace
negotiations – only for a treacherous
army commander to derail their hopes
for an end to violence. Paul Preston
reveals how Colonel Segismundo
Casado’s actions led to tragedy
COMPLEMENTS THE BBC RADIO 4 DOCUMENTARY SPAIN’S LOST GENERATIONS

56
ROBERT CAPA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF PHOTOGRAPHY - MAGNUM PHOTOS

Fleeing Franco
Laden with possessions,
residents of Barcelona
trudge north towards the
French border as
Nationalist forces bear
down on the Catalan capital
in late January 1939

Æ
57
The Spanish Civil War

Farewell to arms
Republican soldiers salute the departing
fighters of the International Brigades, the
volunteer militia recruited by the Communist
International in 1936 and disbanded in 1938

I
n the last days of January 1939, a shivering column remained a huge area – about one-third of Spain, between Ma-
of people tramped north through Catalonia to- drid and the Mediterranean – in which thousands of Republi-
wards the French border, some clutching a few cans were left to face the wrath of the ascendant Nationalists.
possessions, some carrying infants. The weather From the start of the war, Franco had waged a deliberately
was bitterly cold, with sleet and snow falling on the slow campaign to purge Spain. To guarantee the survival of his

ROBERT CAPA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF PHOTOGRAPHY - MAGNUM PHOTOS

fearful throngs. But waiting for better conditions future dictatorship he was determined to annihilate as many
was not an option: the Nationalist forces of Gener- Republicans as possible, and the occupation of each section of
al Francisco Franco were bearing down on Barce- conquered Republican territory was followed by a savage repres-
lona – and 450,000 terrified women, children, old sion. What followed the fall of Barcelona was more horrifying
men and defeated soldiers fled, in anticipation of the horrors he even than the atrocities that had gone before.
would surely visit on them. Those who could find transport This is the story of the last days of the Spanish Republic,
squeezed into any kind of vehicle imaginable, though many of the final two months of the war – and of an avoidable human-
were forced to walk 100 miles or more to the border. itarian tragedy that cost many thousands of lives and ruined
Franco’s forces took the Catalan capital on 26 January, two thousands more. Of the many protagonists in the conflict, this
and half years after the military uprising against the Republican story centres on three individuals, key players in the Republican
government that had sparked the Spanish Civil War. And cause. One, Dr Juan Negrín (see the box on page 60)– the
though the refugees undertaking this exodus later dubbed La prime minister of the Republic – tried desperately to prevent the
Retirada (‘the retreat’) posed no military threat, the defeated tragedy. The other two bore responsibility for what transpired.
masses were ruthlessly bombed and strafed by German and Ital- Professor Julián Besteiro behaved with culpable naivety,
ian aircraft in Franco’s service. while Colonel Segismundo Casado – commander of the Re-
It is impossible to calculate how many died on that horrific publican Army of the Centre – acted with a shocking combina-
journey, but those Spaniards who reached France and makeshift tion of cynicism, arrogance and selfishness.
internment camps there at least escaped the fate planned for On 5 March 1939, just over five weeks after Franco took
them by Franco. And even after his victory in the north, there Barcelona, Casado launched a military coup against Negrín’s
58
 The Spanish Civil War:
overview of a tragedy
In April 1931, following the end a period of nationalist
dictatorship, elections brought widespread urban
power to Republicans, King Alfonso XIII left Spain and
the Spanish Second Republic was established. With
a host of republican, socialist, conservative Christian
and, increasingly, fascist factions vying for power,
fragile alliances formed a series of governments.
A significant element within the rightwing movement
was the Falange, an extreme nationalist political
group calling for military rule and imperial expan-
sion, founded in 1933.
On 17 July 1936, a military uprising against the
Republican government was launched by a group
of Nationalist officers including General Francisco
Franco. The Nationalist military forces enjoyed initial
successes in the Spanish protectorate of Morocco,
Galicia, Old Castile, Navarra and parts of Andalucia.
However, large areas remained loyal to the Republi-
can government, including much of the centre and
east, notably the Basque Country and Catalonia,
which had been promised autonomy. The country
became embroiled in a vicious civil war between
broadly rightwing Nationalists and the leftists who
Spanish women cast ballots in 1933, having gained the right to vote only supported the elected Republican government.
two years earlier after the foundation of the Second Republic The Nationalist faction – which included many
different movements with a broadly rightwing,
government. Over the next 25 days, his junta engaged in a mini- anti-communist, pro-clerical slant – was backed by
civil war, botched evacuations and ensured that the Republican Nazi Germany and Italy, while the Republican cause
fight would end in disaster. was supported by the Soviet Union, Mexico and tens of
After the fall of Catalonia, Negrín knew that the Republic thousands of non-Spanish anti-fascist fighters who
was defeated. Aware that surrender would facilitate the terrible joined the International Brigades.
repression planned by Franco, he pursued a strategy based on Over the following years, the Nationalists gained
sustaining Republican resistance. His hoped-for scenario was ground, first taking the north coast and south-west,
that European war would break out and that the western Allies overwhelming Catalonia in a rapid campaign from
– which, while recognising the Republican government, had December 1938, and taking Madrid – which had been
followed a policy of non-intervention in Spain – would recog- besieged for over two years – on 28 March 1939. By the
nise that the cause of the Republic was theirs. At worst, he end of March, they controlled all territory in Spain.
planned to arrange the evacuation of those most at risk. The conflict was marked by atrocities by both sides;
after Nationalist victory, Franco launched reprisals
No surrender against his former enemies, including the use of forced
Aware that Franco would reject an armistice, Negrín refused to labour and large-scale executions of Republicans,
consider unconditional surrender. On 7 August 1938, he said to hundreds of thousands of whom fled abroad. The total
a friend: “I will not hand over hundreds of defenceless Span- death toll of the war (including executions and
iards who are fighting heroically for the Republic so that Franco bombardment as well as battle) is much debated, but
can have the pleasure of shooting them as he has done in his was probably between 500,000 and 600,000. Franco
own Galicia, in Andalucia, in the Basque country and all those ruled Spain as military dictator till his death in 1975,
places where the hooves of Attila’s horse have left their mark.” proclaiming as heir Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón,
BRIDGEMAN

The biggest problem facing Negrín was war-weariness. grandson of Alfonso XIII, who succeeded as King Juan
Ordinary people had endured incredible hardship, yet contin- Carlos and began the transition back to democracy.
ued fighting to support the Republic that had given them so Æ
59
The Spanish Civil War

General Miaja described

Casado as “four-faced”,
because to call him
‘two-faced’ would barely
reflect the reality
Nationalist leader (and later military dictator) General
Francisco Franco, pictured during the battle of the Ebro in late 1938

much in terms of women’s rights, social and educational reform geographical: they continued to serve Republican forces because
and regional autonomy. However, extreme privation was taking the Republicans happened to retain power in their location,
its toll. Families had lost their menfolk, who had been killed or rather than through political inclination, which in many cases
maimed. With each Francoist victory, tens of thousands of men opposed the ruling power. For instance, during the key battle of
were imprisoned in concentration camps, and more men – older the Ebro (25 July–16 November 1938) and the defence of Cata-
and younger than before – were being conscripted. Acute hun- lonia from late December 1938, Miaja and his chief of staff,
ger was exacerbated by the hundreds of thousands of refugees General Manuel Matallana Gómez, blocked diversionary at-
packed into Republican towns that had already become demor- tacks to impede Franco’s forces.
alised by intense bombing raids. The many fifth columnists on Casado’s staff included his
Casado exploited this widespread desperation, and garnered brother César and his personal physician, Dr Diego Medina.
the cooperation of influential socialist intellectual Julián Bestei- His adjutant, Colonel José Centaño, belonged to Franco’s secret
ro. Together with several prominent anarchists and the socialist service. Of the different promises made to the various elements
trade union leader Wenceslao Carrillo , they formed the anti- that made up his junta, the most extravagant – though he seems
Negrín National Defence Council, under the nominal presi- to have believed them himself – were those made to fellow of-
dency of the army commander-in-chief, General José Miaja . ficers that Franco would respect their pensions and possibly in-
Casado claimed that his motive was to end unnecessary slaugh- corporate them into his post-war army.
ter. To secure support, he engaged in a massive deceit, making
contradictory offers to the different groups who backed his plans. Anarchist support
At the heart of the deception lay the links of both Casado and To some socialists, Casado offered peace and the delights of hu-
Besteiro to the Francoist ‘fifth column’ – Nationalist elements miliating Negrín, whom they had never forgiven for replacing
within Republican strongholds, working to undermine the war Francisco Largo Caballero as prime minister in May 1937. The
effort through sabotage, propaganda and other tactics. In fact, most substantial support garnered by Casado, though, was
treachery and sabotage were always a long-term problem for the among the anarchists, to whom he promised a more violent war
Republic, partly because the loyalty of many officers was effort. They were blinded to the intentions of both Franco and
Casado by their resentment of the Communist Party (PCE)
and of Negrín for blocking their revolutionary ambitions and
imposing a centralised war effort. They blamed them for every
Actors in the endgame military reverse from the time of the Ebro retreat onwards,
thereby ignoring the international situation and the extent to
Six Republican political and military leaders
with key roles in the final months of the war

Dr Juan Negrín Professor Colonel Segismundo

Prime minister from May Julián Besteiro Casado López
1937, Negrín attempted
Socialist politician who, Having launched a coup to depose
but failed to obtain
hoping to bring peace, Negrín in March 1939, Casado tried
international mediation
allied with Casado to to negotiate a peace settlement
to halt the war. His plans
bring down Negrín’s with Franco; when that failed,
to negotiate a peace deal
government. his junta fled to London.
with Franco also failed.

60
 Under guard
Nationalist troops guard captured Republican
militia in September 1936. Many soldiers
(and civilians) captured by both sides in the
conflict were subjected to violent atrocities

which the war effort had been undermined by the sabotage of magnificent!”, and told the SIPM agents that he could organise
professional officers – and, indeed, by the activities of extremists the surrender of the Republican army “in about two weeks”.
within the anarchist movement. When the coup was announced on 5 March, the deceptions
Casado’s mendacity was equalled only by his egomania. He were revealed in the statements of the junta’s members who were
told Dr Medina that he would astound the world, claiming: either deluded or lying; in fact, none of Casado’s ‘cabinet’ had
“The surrender will take place in a way for which there is no the unanimous support of the organisations that they claimed
precedent in history.” Later, in exile, Casado claimed that he to represent. The defeated in Catalonia were accused of deser-
had intended to be the redentor (redeemer) of Spain. The Re- tion. It was claimed that Negrín was in France, when in fact he
public’s senior military strategist, General Vicente Rojo, com- was with his government in Alicante, trying to organise the war
mented: “He [Casado] is the most political and most crooked effort. Casado’s manifesto asserted that: “Not one of the men
and fainthearted of the career officers in the Republican ranks.” who are here will leave Spain until everyone who wants to has
Even General Miaja referred to Casado privately as “four-faced”, left, not just those who can.” Casado addressed Franco: “In your
because to call him ‘two-faced’ would barely reflect the reality. hands, not in ours, is peace or war” – and effectively ended any
On 20 February, agents of the Nationalist intelligence service possibility of a negotiated peace.
SIPM gave Casado a document listing Franco’s ‘concessions’. The first initiative taken by Casado’s fellow conspirators
GETTY IMAGES/AKG/ALAMY

“NATIONALIST SPAIN demands surrender,” it read; it did not guaranteed subsequent disaster. While fifth columnists and
offer what Casado claimed to his comrades, but instead effec- Falangists fought with Republican forces for control of the
tively outlined the imminent repression. It promised to spare the naval base at Cartagena, far south-east Spain, the head of the
lives of those who surrendered their weapons and were not guilty Republican navy, Admiral Miguel Buiza , took the fleet out
of murders or other serious crimes, but stated that they would to sea to pressure Negrín into surrendering to the junta; Buiza
be imprisoned for “the time necessary for their correction and was in cahoots with Casado, and the majority of his officers
re-education”. Casado was delighted, crowing: “Magnificent, were pro-Francoists. Æ

Wenceslao Carrillo General José Miaja Admiral Miguel

Socialist trade-union Commander of the Buiza
leader who supported Republican Army in the
Commander of the Republican
Casado in forming central zone towards the
Navy. During Casado’s coup
the anti-Negrín end of the war, Miaja
Buiza evacuated the fleet from
National Defence supported Casado’s coup
Cartagena to Tunisia, further
Council, sparking and became president of
weakening Negrín’s position.
a government rift. Casado’s junta.

61
The Spanish Civil War

Barcelona fallen
Nationalist forces drive armoured
vehicles through Barcelona
following the fall of the city to
Franco’s troops on 26 January 1939

The warships cast off at midday on 5 March, hours before

the coup was launched by Casado, who telegraphed congratula- Casado and his ministers
tions to Buiza and signed off as ‘President Casado’. Once at sea,
a majority of Buiza’s staff opposed returning to Cartagena, and
ensured their own escape
instead sailed across the Mediterranean to Bizerte, Tunisia; but did nothing to arrange
there the fleet was handed over to the French authorities, who
later surrendered it to Franco. mass evacuation
Shattered hopes
Buiza’s decision was a devastating blow for Negrín: without
the fleet there would be no security for an evacuation. Admiral
Cervera, commander of Franco’s navy, imposed a total blockade that there was no fundamental discrepancy between the junta’s
to prevent any merchant ships entering the Republic’s remain- proclaimed objectives and the government’s commitment to a
ing ports. Any hopes of an evacuation were also shattered. peace settlement without reprisals.
When Casado telephoned Negrín and announced his coup, Casado’s rejection of Negrín’s peace overtures – his offer to
the prime minister offered to negotiate and formally to hand negotiate with Franco and hand over power to Casado – opened
over power. Casado rudely dismissed the offer, and declared the way to the mini-civil war that Negrín had hoped to prevent,
the government to be illegal. However, without a formal trans- and exposed the utterly naive expectations of the conspirators. In
fer of powers, Casado’s junta would be even more illegal, contrast, Negrín was fully aware of the consequences of uncon-
and would receive no international recognition. Rejecting ditional surrender. He had witnessed the horrors experienced by
Negrín’s offer meant renouncing access both to government the defeated Republicans in France; those refugees had encoun-
funds held outside Spain and to diplomatic links with other tered humiliation, but not the trials, torture, imprisonment and
countries, and reflected Casado’s (and Besteiro’s) overriding executions planned by Franco for those who surrendered.
GETTY IMAGES

urge to humiliate Negrín. Casado then attacked the Communists in Madrid, intend-
Casado threatened to arrest and shoot the prime minister and ing to use them as bargaining chips to be offered to Franco in
his cabinet, and the devastated Negrín made the decision for the exchange for concessions. After six days of fighting (during
government to go into exile. His final declaration pointed out which Franco granted a temporary truce to facilitate Casado’s
62
 A young girl rests during the evacuation of Barcelona in the last days of People watch Nationalist aircraft during an air raid on Barcelona in
January 1939, as Franco’s forces approached the city January 1939. The city was heavily bombed

victory), the Communists were defeated. This marked the end evacuation, claiming that national wealth was needed for post-
of the Republic’s cause: the coup, the loss of the fleet and finally war reconstruction, and that Franco would treat those who
the elimination of the Communists removed the most powerful stayed behind much better for having safeguarded resources.
cards that could be used by the Republic in any negotiations Besteiro’s delusions that there was nothing to fear from Fran-
with Franco. co saw him remain in Madrid while Casado and the other mem-
Following his exile to Paris, Negrín continued to use govern- bers of the Junta left for Valencia on 28 March. There, Casado
ment resources to keep the remaining Republican-held centre told an international relief delegation that Franco had agreed to
zone supplied with food and equipment. He had chartered ships allow a period of one month in which to organise evacuation,
to evacuate the tens of thousands fleeing the Francoist advances, and that he had ships for 10,000 refugees. Later that day, he ad-
but the blockade prevented them from docking in Valencia and mitted that he had no ships and that Franco would take over in
Alicante to pick up the evacuees. three days at most. He also told the delegation that Alicante was
In contrast, Casado and his ministers ensured their own the best port from which they might organise an evacuation.
escape but did nothing to arrange mass evacuation. Much was Shortly before leaving Valencia, Casado made a radio
needed: as well as merchant ships to carry the evacuees and a broadcast at the request of the Falange – the Spanish fascist
fleet to escort them through the Francoist blockade, transport party that supplied much of the rank and file of the Nationalist
to the coast was required for those most at risk. Passports had forces – calling for calm and claiming to have secured “an hon-
to be prepared, along with arrangements for political asylum, ourable peace without bloodshed”. Meanwhile, tens of thou-
and foreign currency obtained. As the British consul in Valen- sands of desperate men, women and children fled from Madrid
cia reported to his country’s Foreign Office, the junta’s prepa- on 28 March 1939, pursued by Falangists. They headed for
rations for evacuation “were a shining example of vagueness, Valencia and Alicante, where Casado had promised there
muddle, vacillation”. would be ships. The last boats to leave were the British steamers
Julián Besteiro, who was named vice-president of the junta, Stanbrook, Maritime, Ronwyn and African Trader. They carried
had been introduced to Casado by agents of the fifth column in 5,146 passengers in total; the Stanbrook, one of the ships char-
October 1938. He swallowed the myths they fed him about tered by Negrín, left Alicante precariously overcrowded with
Franco’s clemency, and was convinced that a victorious Franco 2,638 refugees. Many smaller vessels – fishing boats and pleas-
MAGNUM

would embrace the defeated Republican masses. Accordingly, ure craft – also made the hazardous journey across the Medi-
he prevented any government resources being used to finance terranean to Algeria. Æ
63
The Spanish Civil War

Overloaded ark
The British coal ship Stanbrook
arrives in Oran, French-
administered Algeria, carrying
2,638 Republican refugees at
the end of the Spanish Civil War

In contrast, Casado and his cronies went to Gandía, about

For six days, 45,000 men 60km south of Valencia, where Franco had arranged special

VICENTE RUIZ (HIJO) -ACRACIA PUBLICATIONS WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF GRUPO CULTURAL DE ESTUDIOS
were kept virtually treatment for them. The port was in the hands of Falangists,
who provided refreshments while the junta awaited embarka-
without food or water tion on a British warship.

in Alicante, exposed to Shattered hopes

Franco’s forces could now advance unopposed, and they
the wind and rain took Madrid on 28 March. City after city fell bloodlessly. By
31 March, all of Spain was in Nationalist hands. The bravado
of anarchists who had boasted of scorched earth and suicide
Over the next few days, thousands of refugees from all over squads came to nothing.
Republican territory gathered in Valencia and Alicante. Some In privileged exile in London, working for the BBC, Casado
vessels approached the ports but, fearful of interception by the never showed any regret or remorse for the actions that had pre-
Francoist navy, their captains turned back. In Alicante, the ref- cipitated the collapse of the Republic in the worst imaginable
ugees waited in vain for three and a half days without food or circumstances. In 1961, he returned to Spain, where he was
water. Many committed suicide. Children died of exhaustion handsomely paid for memoirs published in newspapers and in
and malnutrition. book form. No mention was made of his dealings with the fifth
At the end of that time, two ships carrying Francoist troops column and Franco’s intelligence services. Negrín, though, was
arrived, and those soldiers violently separated families; any principally concerned with the
who protested were beaten or shot. Women and children were welfare of the exiles. He arranged
taken to Alicante, where they were kept for a month in a cine- for funds to help more than ten Paul Preston is Príncipe de
SOCIALES DE MELBOURNE

ma with little food and no hygiene facilities. The men were thousand Republican refugees Asturias Professor of Contem-
herded into the bullring in Alicante or in a large open field travel to and settle in Mexico. porary Spanish Studies at the
outside the town known as the Campo de Los Almendros. For When the exiles reached the port London School of Economics.
six days, 45,000 men were kept virtually without food or water, of Veracruz in Mexico, the side of His books include The Last
sleeping in mud in the open, exposed to the wind and the rain. the ship carried a huge banner Days of the Spanish Republic
They were given miniscule rations on just two occasions. that read ‘Negrín was right’. (William Collins, 2016)

64
 NEW TWO-PART DOCUMENTARY SPAIN’S LOST GENERATIONS AVAILABLE AT BBC.CO.UK/RADIO4

In search of the missing

A BBC Radio 4 series, Spain’s Lost Generations, looks
at the ongoing legacy of Spain’s civil war and dictatorship.
Matt Elton spoke to its presenter, Lucas Laursen (left)

Which groups of people does this series

deal with, and what happened to them?
Our series deals with people killed or
otherwise disappeared during the Spanish
Civil War and the subsequent dictator-
ship. More than 100,000 men and women
are still missing. One episode focuses on
people executed by Franco’s regime, and
on the families who are only in the past
decade or so recovering those remains
from mass graves. The other is about
people affected by the state-initiated theft
of babies, which started during the war
and continued through the early years of
democracy. In some cases these people
are now beginning to recover their
identities and their families.

How did you find out about their stories?

Thanks to a growing civil society move- Fate uncovered
ment that began in the early 2000s, more The remains of 22 people, killed by
Nationalists after the Spanish Civil War
Spaniards are learning where their lost
and found in a mass grave in Guadalajara,
loved ones are buried – or, in the case of
are returned to their families in 2018
some stolen babies, where they are now
living. More than 8,000 bodies have been
recovered from mass graves since the
GABRIELA LENDO/FOTOGRAFÍAS ARMH–OVERTONE PRODUCTIONS–MATORREGU

first exhumation in 2000, and we followed human toll of the Spanish Civil War
several families we met via those organ- and the subsequent dictatorship and “More than 8,000
isations through different stages of their the healing it needs are still unfinished.
journeys of recovery.
bodies have been
We recorded at a ceremony in Gua-
dalajara, during which the organisation
What do these stories tell us about
the wider legacy of the civil war?
recovered from
returned the remains of 22 people to I hope listeners will hear just how unfin- mass graves, and
living relatives. Unfortunately, I know of ished that business is. We spoke with gov-
far fewer reunions of families with stolen ernment bureaucrats and policymakers, we followed several
babies, but we tried to follow some of activists and legal experts, each with
those threads, too, and I suspect we’ll their own prescription for healing. The families through the
hear about more those in the future. generation of people doing the recovering
isn’t composed of those who survived the
journey of recovery”
Are there any cases you found war or lived under the dictatorship, but the
particularly striking or moving? generation afterwards. That taught me
The most moving moments for me came something about how slow people are to
when I met people who had lost family overcome fear, and how slow democracies
members. Some had been children dur- are to take root. Perhaps, after hearing
ing the war, while others had lost babies these voices, listeners will have their own DISCOVER MORE
at the same Madrid hospital where my ideas about what it takes to mend a rift Listen to the new two-part documentary
daughter was born. Meeting these people like Spain’s – and how important it is to Spain’s Lost Generations, now available on
in person helped me experience how the avoid them in the first place. catch-up at bbc.co.uk/radio4

65
 Sitting figure with mask, c1926
This photograph, reproduced in numerous publications and on album covers,
is a synthesis of the most important Bauhaus workshops: furniture, textiles,
metal, stage design and photography. The composition of the fashion-conscious
young woman wearing a short-skirted dress by Lis Beyer-Volger and mask by
Oskar Schlemmer, sitting in Marcel Breuer’s B3 chair, reflects the school’s style,
humour and youth. This piece, and others in this feature, will be displayed at
the centenary ‘original bauhaus’ exhibition of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum
für Gestaltung at the Berlinische Galerie.
66
 design icons As the Bauhaus school
marks its centenary,
historian and curator
Nina Wiedemeyer
introduces some of
the influential art
movement’s most
important works

COMPLEMENTS THE
BBC FOUR BAUHAUS SEASON
© DR. STEPHAN CONSEMÜLLER
BAUHAUS-ARCHIV BERLIN /
ERICH CONSEMÜLLER,

Æ
67
100 years of Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was a lively school of Infuser teapot, c1924

ideas and experiments in fine arts, crafts,
This teapot is one of seven hammered by
architecture and design. Operating between
hand by Marianne Brandt, the only female
1919 and 1933, it was located first in Weimar,
member of the Bauhaus metal workshop.
then Dessau and finally Berlin, but its ideas
They were created as part of the school’s
transcended these places and its short
system of dual apprenticeship: one part
lifespan. One of the main objectives of the
craftsmanship, one part artistic expression.
Bauhaus was to unify the fine arts, craft
Initially intended to be prototypes for
and technology. Students learned the basic
industrial production, they have instead
elements and principles of design and colour
remained unique originals, held in different
theory and experimented with a range of
collections all over the world; one is now in
materials and processes in the Vorkurs
the British Museum, London. All seven
(foundation course), before joining specialised
teapots will be on display together for the
workshops in sculpture, carpentry, printing,
first time at the ‘original bauhaus’ exhibition.
weaving, metalwork or photography.
Cosmopolitan in spirit and open to
international artistic diversity, the Bauhaus
was a magnet for the European avant-garde
under its founder-director Walter Gropius in
Weimar, but enjoyed its heyday from 1925 in
Dessau. The Weimar masters Lyonel
Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Campus postcard, 1927
László Moholy-Nagy, Georg Muche and Oskar This postcard, annotated by a proud student before
Schlemmer followed Gropius to Dessau and sending it to his mother, depicts the Bauhaus campus
moved into the Masters’ Houses that he had in Dessau. Opened in 1926 after the school moved
designed. Hannes Meyer took over as director from Weimar as a result of pressure from that city’s
in 1928, followed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe conservative regime, the building has no central
in 1930. Due to pressure from the Nazi party, entrance, meaning that there is no ‘front view’ of the
the Bauhaus moved briefly to Berlin in 1932 unconventional campus. This photograph by Lucia
and was forced to close in 1933. It continues Moholy, who extensively documented life and work
to exert a powerful influence on art, graphic at the Bauhaus, became one of the most popular views
design, architecture, interior design and of the campus. Its use on a postcard reflects the way
industrial design to this day. in which the Bauhaus school used contemporary
media to present itself as truly a modern institution.

LUCIA MOHOLY, 1925 – 1926, BAUHAUS-ARCHIV BERLIN (C) VG BILD-KUNST, BONN 2019

68
 Breuer B3 chair, c1925
Through countless
reproductions, Marcel Breuer’s
tubular steel B3 (or Wassily) chair
has become a true design classic.
Before discovering tubular steel,
which became his signature
structural material, Breuer
designed chunky expressionist
furniture made of solid wood
with carved ornaments. Tubular
steel had already been used in
furniture design – for example,
in hospital furniture, because
of its hygienic properties – but
Breuer emphasised the beauty
of the material. The high
manufacturing costs of tubular
steel proscribed mass production,
so Breuer’s original chairs remain
exclusive, rare masterpieces.
MARCEL BREUER, BAUHAUS-ARCHIV BERLIN, FOTOSTUDIO BARTSCH/ MARIANNE BRANDT, BRITISH MUSEUM © DACS 2019

69
100 years of Bauhaus

Triadic Ballet, premiered 1922

Conceived by the painter and sculptor Oskar Schlemmer
before he joined the Bauhaus, the Triadic Ballet was first
performed in 1922 and is still being reimagined today.
Schlemmer’s aesthetics, dominated by geometric forms,
BAUHAUS-ARCHIV BERLIN

broke with all traditions and inspired countless artists and

pop stars, from David Bowie to Lady Gaga. Despite its
radical innovations in costume and staging, the Triadic
Ballet is a riff on the age-old ‘boy meets girl’ story, and it
is this combination of familiar and completely novel that
makes it such a perfect source for pop culture.

70
 Triadic Ballet, structure sketch, c1926
Schlemmer’s ballet comprised a trinity of music, costume and
dance, with three acts, three dancers, three moods (cheerful
burlesque, ceremonious and solemn, and mystical fantasy).
The original version consisted of 12 dances, but after a 1926
performance, conductor Hermann Scherchen was asked to
compose a percussion piece for eight dances. For that purpose,
Schlemmer created this sketch depicting the characters and their
costumes in their various solo dances, duets and the final trio.
OSKAR SCHLEMMER, 1927, BAUHAUS-ARCHIV
BERLIN, FOTO: MARKUS HAWLIK

Æ
71
100 years of Bauhaus

Nina Wiedemeyer
is an art historian and
author, and the curator
of ‘original bauhaus’

DISCOVER MORE
original bauhaus, the
centenary exhibition of
the Bauhaus-Archiv /
FOTOSTUDIO BARTSCH, BAUHAUS-ARCHIV

Museum für Gestaltung at

the Berlinische Galerie,
Bachelor’s wardrobe on castors, 1930 runs from 6 Sept 2019
This piece by Bauhaus student Josef Pohl is a prototype multi- to 27 Jan 2020
functional, space-saving piece of furniture for a single household. bauhaus.de
He presented his design at a touring Bauhaus exhibition, but it
Look out for BBC Four’s
never progressed to the production stage. It still feels modern:
Bauhaus season
the free-standing wardrobe made of light wood veneer embodies this spring – for more
mobility and flexibility, minimalist living and simplicity. details, see page 96
This plain-looking box with skilfully arranged storage spaces
accommodated the entire wardrobe of a man of Pohl’s time,
from jackets, shirts and trousers to shoes and ties.
72
 CONTACT US Issue 15 – April/May 2019
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73
PERSPECTIVES
SEVITCEPSREP
ONE MOMENT, TWO VIEWPOINTS

Zulus and British troops

clash in South Africa
On 22 January 1879, Zulu soldiers defeated British troops at Isandlwana,
then continued to Rorke’s Drift where a tiny British contingent defended
their position against overwhelming odds. Ian Beckett explores two
views of the causes, actions and aftermath of these key battles

Originally, Britain’s key concern in black states such as that of the Zulu. protection of that province, the British
Southern Africa was safeguarding Reducing the Zulu to wage labour in the inherited an existing frontier dispute
the sea route to India, having further economic exploitation of Africa between Boer and Zulu. Previously, the
decisively seized the Cape Colony in was seen as part of a civilising process. British had supported Zulu claims but,

MAP: BATTLEFIELD DESIGNS/GETTY IMAGES

1806. Over the following decades, In seeking to crush the perceived Zulu by favouring the Boers, Frere aimed to
though, it expanded its territory, threat to Natal, however, the British demonstrate to the latter the benefits of
annexing Natal in 1843, the diamond High Commissioner in South Africa, British rule.
fields in Griqualand West in 1871 Sir Bartle Frere, began making decisions After border incidents involving Zulu
and the Transvaal in 1877. In and acting before receiving approval incursions into Natal, Frere presented
1879, though, it looked as if it had from London – a risky strategy at a time an ultimatum, on the grounds that
overstretched itself by invading when Britain was already embroiled in Cetshwayo had broken his promises:
Zululand – an act of aggression that fighting in Afghanistan, where it had the entire Zulu military system must
was met with calamitous defeat in committed substantial forces. be dissolved. Receiving no reply, and
the first battle. For Frere, the only necessity was despite not having received authorisation
finding legitimate reasons for a pre- from the British government
By the late 1870s, Benjamin Disraeli’s emptive strike against the Zulu. The to take such action, on
Conservative British government was
pursuing confederation in South Africa,
legal grounds were based on promises
of good conduct supposedly extracted
11 January 1879 a force
of around 12,000
5
Over the following
aiming to bring together British colonies from the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, in men commanded by pages we explore
and Boer states. Success in this aim 1873. The circumstances for exploiting Lieutenant-General British and Zulu
depended upon resolving the ‘native them lay in the annexation of the Lord Chelmsford views of the
question’ – the existence of independent Transvaal in 1877: by assuming the invaded Zululand. clashes…

74
Detail from The Battle of Isandlwana (c1885) by
Charles Edwin Fripp. The painting’s heroic tone
is at odds with the catastrophic nature of the
British defeat by the Zulu on 22 January 1879.
It attracted little interest when first exhibited –
but has since become the most popular image
in the National Army Museum, London

Æ
“Those returning to the battlefield
were appalled by the stench”

C
helmsford was supremely What followed was a bloody rout. survivors of the first battle. The mission
confident that British An estimated 1,350 men of the British station encompassed a hospital, and the
firepower would easily force, including 858 Europeans, died at British officers quickly realised the
prevail. By sending columns Isandlwana – the worst single day’s loss futility of attempting escape with
east into Zululand towards of British troops between Waterloo in injured and sick men.
Cetshwayo’s main homestead at 1815 and the start of the First World Instead, the small contingent of
Ulundi, he intended to entice the Zulu War in 1914. Those returning to the troops built a barrier of mealie (maize-
into attacking in the open. He assumed battlefield were appalled by the meal) sacks and barricaded tbe doors
that the Zulu impi (army) could not be overpowering stench, like “a sweet in buildings. Some 3–4,000 Zulu
kept together for long, so Cetshwayo potato that has been cooked when it is warriors attacked the outpost, which
must throw it at the advancing columns just beginning to go bad”. The most was nonetheless successfully defended
to end the war quickly. horrifying aspect was the ritual stripping by just 139 men, including 35 hospital
On 20 January, Chelmsford’s force, and disembowelling of erstwhile patients. For around 12 hours the
which comprised British regular soldiers comrades, and post-mortem stabbing of defenders held off repeated attacks until
as well as native and colonial troops, the corpses. As one private wrote: “The about 4 o’clock the following morning,
encamped at Isandlwana. There he sight at the camp was horrible. Every when the Zulu withdrew.
ignored his own field regulations by not white man that was killed or wounded Reprisals against the perceived
preparing a defensive position – there was ripped up, and their bowels torn barbarity of the Zulu warriors followed.
was no entrenchment, nor was a laager out; so there was no chance of anyone All but three of the Zulu wounded were
(defensive circling of wagons) organised. being left alive on the field.” finished off at Rorke’s Drift on the
On 22 January, a scouting party morning of its relief. Zulu heads even
discovered the large Zulu army sent by Second wave of attack appeared for sale in a taxidermist shop
Cetshwayo – but Chelmsford, confident It was claimed that the camp had fallen in Piccadilly.
in his British troops, rifles and artillery, because native auxiliaries had given way Paradoxically, views of the Zulu
had already departed in the early hours at a crucial moment; because the people changed dramatically after these
with half of his force to seek the Zulu ammunition supply to the British firing events. Queen Victoria proclaimed the
army. He left Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel line had failed; and because the senior Zulu “the finest and bravest race in
Henry Pulleine in command of the officer left in the camp had disobeyed South Africa”. The Times suggested
camp at Isandlwana, and ignored orders in leading some defenders away that: “We have often before encoun-
messages reporting the Zulu attack. into the open. In reality, the British had tered barbarian enemies, but seldom
The result was a catastrophe. At been too dispersed in face of over- enemies who united ferocity of
least 20,000 Zulu attacked the British whelming Zulu numerical superiority. barbarism with the discipline and unity
position at Isandlwana, using their Even as Chelmsford returned to which have been supposed to be
numerical superiority, knowledge of the camp at sundown, having finally real- characteristics of civilisation.”
terrain and well-drilled ‘buffalo-horns’ ised the seriousness of the situation at The respect afforded to those men
formation to overwhelm the camp. Isandlwana, a red glow could be seen in now deemed worthy opponents served
No one had expected the Zulu the sky to the west, above Rorke’s Drift. to heighten the sense of British gallantry
assault, and Chelmsford disbelieved the This was the base depot on the Natal at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. Britain
warning messages that were sent to him border from which Chelmsford had in- was soon awash with heroic song and
once it began. Many men were packing vaded Zululand 11 days previously. The verse, paintings and pictorial images.
up the camp, and too few were sent into tiny contingent there was under attack. Popular fascination led to ‘Zulu’
the firing line. The Zulu easily swept News of the defeat at Isandlwana appearing on stage, the sale of ‘Zulu’
round the back of Isandlwana and cut reached the outpost at Rorke’s Drift products such as clay pipes, and
off all routes of retreat. that same afternoon, carried by two even a touring ‘Zulu’ football team. 5
76
ALAMY

Against the odds

Detail from The Defence of Rorke’s Drift (1880) by French painter Alphonse de Neuville.
Mere hours after the massacre at Isandlwana, just 139 men held off repeated attacks on a
British outpost by thousands of Zulu warriors. Though reprisals against the Zulu were
harsh, the warriors garnered respect from such an unlikely quarter as Queen Victoria,
who declared the Zulu to be “the finest and bravest race in South Africa” Æ
77
“Despite the initial victory, Cetshwayo
was shocked by Zulu casualties”

T
he Zulu, according to Frere, to threaten (but not invade) Natal and in 1883 in a partial settlement revision,
represented a “frightful- compel the British to negotiate. but civil war ensued. He died in Febru-
ly efficient man-slaying The Zulu had firearms but most were ary 1884, the partition settlement un-
machine”. Originally a sub- old muzzle-loaders. Moreover, firearms ravelled and Zululand was annexed by
division of the Bantu Nguni did not fit Zulu concepts of masculinity. Britain in 1887. By that time, supremacy
tribes, between 1817 and 1828 the Zulu Honour demanded killing at close quar- in South Africa became defined more by
were made into a formidable military ters, especially with the short stabbing the struggle between Briton and Boer,
force by their chief, Shaka. This transfor- spears popularly known as assegai. Zulu and the Anglo-Zulu War was largely for-
mation coincided with large-scale tribal warriors clung to ingrained tactics, gotten by Britain for over 80 years. Yet it
movements over much of central, eastern notably the ‘buffalo-horns’ manoeuvre: had cost 6,000 Zulu lives, and Zululand
and southern Africa caused by prolonged younger regiments would form the disappeared as an independent entity.
drought and overpopulation. left and right horns of the impi, racing In Britain, opposition to the war
Between the ages of 14 and 18, Zulu ahead of the main body to encircle the fuelled sentiment leading up to the 1880
youths would serve for two or three years opponents’ flanks and draw them into the general election. Disraeli’s Liberal coun-
herding cattle, working fields and being ‘chest’ – a strategy that proved devastat- terpart William Gladstone intoned that
trained for war. At 18 they would form ingly effective at Isandlwana. Zulu had died “for no other offence than
a new regiment and build a homestead. The practices so abhorrent to the their attempt to defend… with their
Regiments served as army, police and British were considered necessities to the naked bodies, their hearths and homes,
(mostly) labour force until marriage Zulu. Slitting open an enemy’s stomach their wives and families”. Together with
at the age of 35 or 40, when allegiance allowed the spirit to escape, so that it British reverses in Afghanistan, the war
reverted to clans. would not haunt his slayer. Stabbing a played its part in Conservative defeat,
Having established their kingdom, the corpse denoted participation in the kill, though in the longer term it did not end
Zulu clashed with the Boers in the 1830s this “washing of the spears” extending to the imperial vision.
as the latter moved north to escape British those who shared in it by their presence. Memory of the war was revived in
rule, but when Britain annexed Natal in Despite the initial victory, Cetshwayo Britain in 1964 with the success of the
1843, agreement on frontiers was secured. was shocked by Zulu casualties at Isandl- film Zulu, starring Stanley Baker and
The Zulu king from 1872, Cetshwayo wana and Rorke’s Drift – at least 1,600 Michael Caine. The Zulu perspective
– Shaka’s half-nephew – did not want dead – and angered that commanders equally became significant in post-
war. He had sought British support had entered Natal. The Zulu had never apartheid South Africa as part of a cul-
for his succession, and promised good faced modern weapons, and the British tural and political reawakening of Zulu
conduct. In April 1878 he expelled Martini-Henry rifle inflicted horrendous identity. Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi,
missionaries but even so was surprised by wounds. Another 2,000 Zulu perished who played Cetshwayo in Zulu and who
the British ultimatum. The Zulu could during an attack at Kambula fortified founded the Inkatha Freedom Party in
not contemplate dismantling the entire camp in March 1879, and 1,500 more 1975, remarked in 2014 that the film
military system. when faced with British Gatling guns at had been “a notable piece of PR” for the
The British invasion came at the Ulundi on 4 July – the battle that broke Zulu. Inkatha regards the battlefields
end of an exceptionally dry season that the Zulu nation’s military power and as shrines to Zulu nationalism, and
depleted pasture, killed cattle and delayed marked the end of the war. tourism has bolstered the Zulu brand.
the harvest: it would be difficult to feed Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift are no
any impi for long. Cetshwayo therefore Aftermath of the Anglo-Zulu War longer forgotten.
hoped to fight a limited war, and instruct- The British had no appetite for annexa-
ed his warriors not to cross into Natal, to tion, and partitioned the Zulu kingdom Ian Beckett is professor of military history at
avoid further provocation. Victory over between chiefs. Cetshwayo, who had the University of Kent, and author of Rorke’s
Chelmsford’s column would enable him been captured in August 1879, returned Drift and Isandlwana (Oxford, 2019)

78
GETTY IMAGES

Kingdom without a king

A dozen Zulu warriors pose c1880, after ultimate defeat in the Anglo-Zulu War.
With their kingdom partitioned between chiefs and their king Cetshwayo captured and exiled,
these men were suffering the aftermath of a conflict that claimed 6,000 Zulu lives.
Yet, over eight decades later, the British film Zulu (1964) helped renew awareness
of the war and fuel a cultural and political reawakening of Zulu identity

79
 1 2

AMERICA’S WAR
EXPORTING
5 6

80
 Battles across borders
1 US President Richard Nixon reviews
a rise in drug-related arrests 1969–72
2 A tailback on a Mexico highway at the US
border caused by drug searches, c1970
3 US customs officers search a car on the
Mexican border, 1969
4 A Mexican drug enforcement agent
attacks an opium-poppy crop, 1999
5 Mexican soldiers dropped by helicopter
into an opium poppy field, 1977
6 Los Angeles police chief Daryl F Gates,
1989. He took a hardline stance on drug use
7 Police sniffer dog Lancer searches for
3 4 drugs at Boston’s Logan Airport, 1971

ON DRUGS:
THE FIGHT
7

As the 1970s dawned, efforts to control the use

and trafficking of narcotics increasingly meant
BRIDGEMAN/GETTY IMAGES

that the ‘war on drugs’ was waged both in the US

and overseas. Benjamin T Smith explores how
the impact of President Nixon’s political rhetoric
is still felt around the world, nearly 50 years later Æ
81
O
n 17 June 1971, Richard Nixon, cocaine as for those found in possession of 5,000g of the pow-
the president of the United States, dered form.) And they were expanded with the 1994 Crime Bill,
gathered a press conference to pres- with its ‘three-strikes’ provisions for repeat offenders.
ent his new strategies for combat- This system has come down hardest on the country’s
ting drug addiction. Some of his African-American people. Though the majority of illegal-drug
policies were relatively far-sighted: users and dealers are white, three-quarters of all people impris-
the launch of prevention and reha- oned for drug offences have been black or Latinx. In some plac-
bilitation campaigns, and the estab- es, the difference in incarceration rates is spectacular. In 15 states
lishment of hundreds of methadone (mostly in the south), black people have been incarcerated for
clinics for heroin addicts. But these were ignored by the gath- drug convictions at a rate between 20 and 75 times greater than
ered journalists. Instead, newspapers focused on Nixon’s head- white people. So unequal are the jail rates that US legal scholar
line claim that drug abuse was “public enemy number one”. Michelle Alexander has harked back to the era of racial segrega-
An enemy needs confronting, and within days the same tion to describe the system, terming it “the new Jim Crow”.
newspapers were announcing that the Nixon administration Over the years, the causes of these discrepancies have piled
was fighting a “war on drugs”. America’s – and, by extension, up: laws such as the 100-1 sentencing disparity have dispropor-
the world’s – longest-running unwinnable conflict had begun. tionately targeted black men, while urban policing strategies
For nearly five decades, US politicians have repeated Nixon’s have focused on street-corner sellers rather than campus ped-
combative refrain. Ronald Reagan claimed that drug abuse was dlers or Wall Street dealers. Judicial decisions have often made
a “repudiation of everything America is”. His drug tsar, Carl- reversing these imbalances virtually impossible.
ton Turner, claimed that marijuana increased vulnerability to For some in the Nixon administration, the intention was
AIDS. In 1990, Daryl F Gates, Chief of the Los Angeles Police there from the start of the ‘war’. In 1994, John Ehrlichman –
Department, suggested casual drug users “ought to be taken Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, who was convicted of criminal
out and shot”. For the current president, drug-linked crime is involvement in the Watergate affair – gave an extraordinary in-
the justification – at least, in part – for the building of a vast wall terview to writer Dan Baum, who reported it in 2016 as below:
along the US-Mexico border. Law-and-order rhetoric, after all, “You want to know what this was really all about?...
has always proved a reliable vote-winner. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House
It’s certainly true that, since the counterculture of the 1960s after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people...
invited young people to ‘get high and drop out’, narcotics addic- We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war
tion has been a major problem in the United States. Although [in Vietnam] or black, but by getting the public to associate the
the dominant drug may have changed – from heroin in the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then crimi-
1970s to crack in the 1980s, methamphetamines in the 1990s nalising both heavily, we could disrupt those communities...
and back to heroin in the 2000s – the human cost has only Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
grown. Drug overdoses per 100,000 head of population
have increased steadily since the 1970s, reaching The war on tour
12.3 in 2010. By 2018, that figure had reached If the war on drugs has transformed America, its
20 people for every 100,000. effects have been equally significant abroad.
Such political rhetoric has been Before President Nixon, the United States’
accompanied by increasingly stringent interference in overseas drug policy was
laws. This ramping-up of legislation sporadic and underpowered. Harry
began in 1973, when Nelson Rock- Anslinger, influential former head of
efeller, governor of New York State, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN,
introduced a raft of measures includ- 1930–62), undoubtedly believed that
ing lengthy mandatory sentences for drugs were a supply-side problem, but he
drug dealers. His approaches soon in- rarely had the manpower or presidential
fluenced those of other states, and were support to do more than hector UN rep-
locked into federal law with the 1986 An- resentatives and engineer a few high-profile
MAGNUM/GETTY IMAGES

ti-Drug Abuse Act, which rode the wave of – but in the end rather futile – overseas busts.
public panic about crack cocaine and intro- Under Nixon, things changed. Brash,
duced the famous 100–1 sentencing dispar- moneyed and weighed down with their own
An addict at a New York City drug
ity. (That directive – removed by Congress rehabilitation centre, c1970. Nixon’s
internal anxieties, counter-narcotics agents
as recently as 2010 – mandated the same policies included some far-sighted went international. In 1968, the FBN was
sentences for those caught with 50g of crack ideas such as rehabilitation campaigns rebranded as the Bureau of Narcotics and
82
 High times
A man smokes a joint during 1970’s ‘smoke-in’
in Washington DC. “Since 1960s counter-culture
invited young people to ‘get high and drop out’,
narcotics addiction has been a major problem
in the US,” writes Benjamin T Smith

Imprisoned faithful
Muslim inmates pray in a Texas prison,
1997. Draconian anti-drug laws
Although the
enacted since the 1960s have led to the
imprisonment of a disproportionate majority of
illegal-drug
number of African-Americans

dealers and
users in the
US are white,
three-quarters
of the people
imprisoned
for drug
offences have
been black
or Latinx Æ
83
The war on drugs

Trade and tailbacks

Vast traffic jams clog Mexican roads
in 1969 as US border checks create
long delays. The resulting disruption
to trade sparked the Mexican
government into anti-drug action

84
 Nixon announced
a rigorous stop-and- Dangerous Drugs (BNDD); in 1973 it underwent another re-
search programme boot to become the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
In under five years, staff numbers swelled from a few hundred to
on the US border. a few thousand, dragooned in from the old department as well as
from local police forces, US Customs, the Food and Drug Ad-
Portrayed as a pre- ministration and the CIA. The focus also shifted, now split
evenly between domestic and international drug threats.
ventative strategy, Among the first targets of the newly expanded DEA was
America’s principal source of marijuana and heroin: Mexico. In-
it caused eight-hour itially, US agents found Mexican authorities relatively uncon-
cerned with the drug trade. Hippy culture had little purchase
tailbacks into the south of the border, where they were derided as jipis, often arrest-
ed and shorn of their long hair; Mexican addiction rates were
Mexican desert negligible; the violence associated with the drug trade was al-
most non-existent; and, crucially, drugs provided many – politi-
cians, police chiefs, peasant growers – with a healthy income.

Imposing American policy

Three American strategies changed this. In 1969, Nixon
announced a rigorous stop-and-search campaign on the US
border, dubbed Operation Intercept. It was portrayed as a pre-
ventative strategy, designed to halt drug imports into the Unit-
ed States, but it was highly disruptive and caused hours-long
traffic jams backing up into the Mexican desert. In doing so, it
functioned as a means of extortion, and this disruption of trade
Strong arm of the law pushed the Mexican government into action. As one former FBI
Men suspected of narcotics offences are
agent later explained, “for diplomatic reasons the true purpose
restrained following large-scale raids in 1973.
New York governor Nelson Rockefeller introduced of the exercise was never revealed... it was an exercise in interna-
tough anti-drug measures that year tional extortion, pure, simple and effective, designed to bend
Mexico to our will. We figured Mexico could hold out for a
month; in fact, they caved in after two weeks, and we got what
A growing problem
we wanted.”
Mexican army troopers examine
ammunition left after an ambush The second strategy involved financial inducements. In the
by attackers presumed to be drug five years following Operation Intercept, the US government
smugglers, December 1976 donated $21 million dollars in cash and equipment to Mexico’s
Federal Judicial Police (PJF), responsible for drug enforcement.
Gifts included planes, helicopters, aerial sensory photography
equipment, portable radios, automatic weapons, night-vision
goggles, mobile radio stations and portable shooting ranges.
AP–REX FEATURES–SHUTTERSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES

The third strategy was to leak revelations designed to embar-

rass the Mexican government. In 1975, the DEA made public
details of a two-year investigation into a drug ring run by a
Cuban exile-turned-marijuana smuggler, Alberto Sicilia Falcón,
who had established his base of operations in an enormous narco-
palace in the border town of Tijuana. A flamboyant bisexual,
with friends among the Mexican establishment and a girlfriend
who had been the lover of the Mexican president, Sicilia Falcón
made a good target. Better still, one of the witnesses claimed
that Sicilia Falcón was exchanging guns for drugs with guerrilla
rebels. The drug trade – so the DEA claimed – was not only a
criminal threat, it was funding and arming a left-wing insurgen-
cy. Such accusations forced the Mexican authorities to act. They Æ
85
The war on drugs

Burning issue
Peruvian anti-narcotics police,
aided by US Drug Enforcement
agents, burn a cocaine-
processing plant in central
Peru, c1980. American anti-
drug efforts were exported
to countries elsewhere in
the world

The campaign
in Mexico was
a sign of things
to come. Over
the following
years, similar
programmes
were wheeled
out in Jamaica,
Crop rotation
Peru, Chile and, A helicopter sprays a Mexican
narcotics crop with herbicides. In the
most recently, late 1970s and early 1980s, similar
methods were deployed as part of

Afghanistan the anti-narcotics campaign

dubbed Operation Condor

86
 not only arrested Sicilia Falcón, but also gave in to US demands
for a more confrontational counter-narcotics campaign.
Together, the three strategies worked. They blended with the
aims of Mexican government, which wanted to extend direct
political control into its more remote regions. And they found
supporters among certain Mexican officials who sought to use
the war on drugs to promote their own careers – for instance,
Luis Echeverria aimed to become head of the UN on the back of
his counter-narcotics policies. Cooperation culminated with
Operation Condor, a vast multi-agency operation that from
1976 onwards targeted opium- and marijuana-growing regions
with aerial herbicide spraying, mass arrests and military incur-
sions into particularly troublesome zones.
In terms of numbers, the results were impressive. Drug ar-
rests, narcotics seizures and the acres of drug plants destroyed
increased year on year throughout the 1970s. Prisons filled
and so-called kingpins were arrested or, if necessary, shot.

Cost of the conflict Farmers harvest sap from opium poppies in Afghanistan which, despite
The costs, though, were immense. Some were the direct results long-running US operations, remains the world’s top opium producer
of the aggressive policing. Funded by the US government,
trained and legitimised by the DEA, the PJF expanded both in by accusations of brutality and torture. Most damningly, they
size and power. In many towns and cities it acted like an invad- failed to achieve any real reduction in narcotics supplies. At best,
ing army, killing suspected drug traffickers, arresting others they pushed cultivation to other, relatively peaceful areas. At
and subjecting them to savage forms of torture. One DEA agent worst, they turned trafficking groups against one another and
used to joke that a particularly unpleasant commander had sparked bloody, murderous conflicts.
“killed more Mexicans than smallpox”. Nowhere is this clearer than in the country where it all began
A team of lawyers who interviewed 400 detainees of Opera- – Mexico. Since 2006, the Mexican government has waged its
tion Condor found that most were poor peasants busted for own militarised war on drugs. It has done so with the open sup-
growing a handful of marijuana plants, and had been subjected port of the US, which has offered money ($1.5 billion at last
to multiple forms of torture, including beating, waterboarding, count), guns, telecommunications networks, on-the-ground
suffocation and rape. (The police had even invented their own assistance and, above all, legitimacy.
distinct slang for such actions: Mexican waterboarding was The results have been unerringly predictable. Just as in the
known as ‘the tehuacanazo’, after the brand of spring water that 1970s, official pressure has caused cartels to fragment, fan out,
was fired up a suspect’s nose.) These were the lucky ones: others turn on one another, and become involved with other, much
were just booted out of helicopters into the Pacific Ocean. more violent forms of crime. International pressure to investi-
Other effects were more indirect. Until the 1970s, the Mexi- gate government massacres has been negligible.
can drug trade had been marked by teamwork rather than com- Things proceed much as they always have in the US. Some
petition. The market was big enough to share, so conflicts and American governments have been more repressive than others.
murders were rare. Official pressure changed this. Faced with The Clinton and both Bush administrations embraced harsh
the prospect of torture or death, notions of cooperation and anti-drug rhetoric and stringent laws, for instance, whereas
trust disappeared, with many traffickers turning on their for- the 1970s administration of Jimmy Carter flirted with
mer allies and very consciously using the police to take out their decriminalising marijuana; more recently, Barack Obama
rivals. What had been a business turned into a war. spoke out against mass incarceration. Yet those latter two faced
The US campaign in Mexico was a sign of things to come. opposition in the legislature and the judiciary, and their actions
Over the following years, similar programmes were wheeled were predominantly symbolic; actual reductions in the prison
out in dozens of countries including Jamaica, Colombia, Peru, population were slight.
Chile, Thailand and, most recently, Afghanistan. As in Mexi- Meanwhile, the drug trade continues as before. In 2018,
GETTY IMAGES

co, these actions often tied in with domestic America suffered its highest-ever number of
state-building efforts, and regularly sucked Benjamin T Smith is reader of Latin drug overdoses. More people died from opioids
in both the local military and a newly tooled- American history at the University than gun crime or car crashes. To date, there
up police. They were almost always dogged of Warwick have been no winners in the war on drugs.
87
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 THE LONG READ

A short history
of long-distance
warfare
Dealing death from a safe distance has been
the aim of fighters since the earliest times
BY JAMES ROGERS

European melee weapons from the

15th to 17th centuries. By that time,
these close-combat arms were being
usurped by crossbows and firearms
AKG IMAGES

Æ
89
 H umans are pretty good at killing. From
sharp rocks and blunt clubs to long-
distance bombers and remote-controlled
robots, the quest to kill in new and
‘improved’ ways has long captivated
humanity’s creative capacity. Yet at the
heart of these developments is something
revealing and rather disturbing. With
each new epoch of weaponry and warfare
has come a separation of the human from the visceral heat of battle, from face-to-
face fighting, and from the very act of killing. There are exceptions, of course: in
any era of conflict, humans might still find themselves in hand-to-hand combat,
but this is most certainly not the norm. Instead, over the longue durée of human
history, countless attempts have been made to produce weapons that allow us to
become more detached from those we kill.
There is a very prosaic reason for this. We distance ourselves from killing so that
we do not incur the risk of being killed ourselves. Some may call this cowardly,
yet it is no secret that societies and states have sought to save blood and treasure by
protecting their fittest, fastest, most highly trained and brightest young fighters. If
you can kill from a distance, with superior weapons, it negates the need to risk the
sacrifice of life. This has been key to survival throughout history.
Still, is this the only reason we seek weapons that distance us from
the practice of killing? Or is there something less instinctive and
more cognitively driven that explains why we choose to develop
and then hide behind ever more advanced weapons?

L
et’s step back 10,000 years or so, to a time
around the end of the last ice age. By the fertile
and frequented shores of a lagoon in Kenya,
21 miles west of Lake Turkana, early peoples
fished, drank fresh water and, as indicated by
fragments of pottery from the area, foraged
and stored food. This was a seemingly serene
AKG IMAGES

place, but don’t be fooled: according to researchers from the

University of Cambridge, this was also the site of the world’s
earliest recorded mass killings. Down by the banks of the lagoon,
27 foragers were brutally murdered by a rival group in an attack A late Bronze/early Iron Age statue of the
dubbed the ‘Nataruk Massacre’. The history of this incident tells god Reshef bearing a mace and shield,
us a lot about the early human experience with weaponry. found at Shomron, West Bank

90
 The crossbow was a great leveller:
cheap, easy to use, powerful, accurate

The Cambridge archaeologists found the re-

mains of pregnant women with their hands bound
behind their backs, and of children whose bodies
were peppered with arrowheads made from jet-
black obsidian. They also found evidence of sharp-
force trauma caused by spear-like weapons, and
male skulls that had been smashed by blunt force,
possibly using clubs or rocks. This was the earliest
documented evidence of humanity’s dark side in
A 10,000-year-old
brutal action. A whole clan of people – a small society, with myths and customs now skull excavated at
lost – was annihilated by a ‘superior’ group, certainly one with superior weapons. Nataruk, north-
But why? It appears that the indiscriminate killing of rivals was an important west Kenya, showing
survival strategy during this period, pitting one clan against the other. Perhaps there evidence of attack
with a rock or club
was rivalry over land, food or culture. This does not sound unfamiliar to modern during the mass
ears: wars have been fought over less. And early weapons – spears, arrows and clubs slaughter of a clan
– allowed our human ancestors to commit these ‘crimes against humanity’. Those by a rival group
who had the more advanced weapons, and the preponderance of force, were able to
kill off rivals and survive. This lesson was not lost throughout human ‘progression’.

N
ow let’s jump forward to medieval Europe. Picture noble,
chivalrous knights high on horseback, decked in chain mail
and brandishing swords. Charging valiantly into chaotic,
bloody battles, safe from the brutal melee below they thrust
down and impale enemy footsoldiers. The training of
knights began young. A teenage squire would accompany a
knight into battle as a flag bearer or to hold a shield. As the
boy got older and was strong enough to hold a heavy, full-length metal sword, he
would be given the chance to prove his worth in battle. If he survived, he would be
made a knight in his own right.
During the era of the crusades, though, a new threat to this noble (often
wealthy, and usually Christian) system emerged. The crossbow had been around in
China since at least the fifth-century, when Sun Tzu’s The Art of War touched upon
the energy bound up in bow and trigger. But in the 12th century the crossbow
began to cause concern in Europe. It was likely brought to Britain during the
Norman conquest, quickly spreading across Europe to become the weapon of
choice for continental armies. The crossbow was a great leveller: it was cheap, easy
to produce, even easier to use and, most importantly, deadly powerful and accurate.
This meant that any society, even those outside Europe and deemed uncivilised,
could build large armies of crossbow-wielding ‘heathens’ and – for the first time, it
seemed – challenge the dominance of highly trained, wealthy (and expensive to
replace) elite knights in shining armour. This brought fear to those in power. Such
a weapon could not be left unregulated.
As historian Ralph Payne-Gallwey explained, the crossbow was “considered so
AFP

barbarous” that it was banned by Pope Urban II in 1096 and again by Pope

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 Innocent II during the Catholic Church’s second Lateran
Council in 1139. The punishment for using such a weapon
“hateful to God and unfit for Christians” was anathema –
excommunication by the pope. There is a key, telling caveat
here, however: it was acceptable, and even encouraged, for
Europeans to deploy the crossbow against those who weren’t
European elites (and usually not Christian).
The crossbow would be the ideal weapon for the ‘civilised’
to kill the ‘uncivilised’ at distance. Richard the Lionheart
was, for instance, an expert with the weapon, and would take
potshots at the ‘ungodly’ for sport. In 1189–91, during the
siege of Acre (on the northern Mediterranean coast of what’s
now Israel) and while suffering from a fever, the king would
“enjoy the pleasure of shooting bolts” at Turks and infidels to
cheer him up. His action were sanctioned by the pope and by
God because of the race and religion of his targets.
Perhaps, then, Europeans were not so civilised or
A 15th-century
illustration of the chivalrous. Indeed, as European nations grew stronger from the 15th century and
siege of Damascus established themselves at the centre of the self-proclaimed civilised world, it became
(1148) depicts common for distancing weapons to be used unsparingly against ‘others’, even if
a soldier using
those ‘others’ refused to take part in this sanitised, detached form of war. The rise
a crossbow – a
weapon that both of the modern gun is one example of this.
alarmed and

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appealed to
12th-century
European armies
hen describing guns in the late 16th century,
a French solider remarked that they were deployed
by those “who would not dare look in the face of
those whom they lay low with their wretched bul-
lets”. If we explore the history of firearms – from
early handguns to cannons and machine guns – it’s
clear that these weapons allowed humans to kill
with ever-greater ease and without human-to-human contact. Perhaps this is part
of the allure. Gunpowder and ‘fire lances’ (spears with pyrotechnics attached) have
caused fear in battle since their first use in China in the 10th century, allowing
armies to terrorise their enemies from distance. These warriors would even tie
fireworks and spears to animals – usually oxen – sending them in a panicked flurry
towards the enemy in an attempt to strike fear. In the 13th century, trade with
Asia along the Silk Roads brought gunpowder into European and Ottoman ranks.
Though early weapons using gunpowder were inefficient, dangerous and cum-
bersome, by the 16th century more-powerful guns were being produced, and they
replaced the bow as the most effective distance weapon.
Not everyone took kindly to such ‘advances’, however. Societies in Persia and
across Islamic north Africa did not welcome the modern guns that came flooding
in from the European continent. An example was the Mamluk sultanate, ruling
from Cairo from the 13th century. This ancient Islamic society considered guns
to be out of step with traditional ideas of a warrior’s honour. Furusiyya was the
Mamluk equivalent of the chivalry and, as historian Shihab Al-Sarraf has written,
BRIDGEMAN

it put an onus on nobility and skilled training for “close combat” and “the art of war
itself”. Killing, if necessary, was to be done face to face and as a last resort. That’s
not to say that they didn’t own both guns and cannons, but the Mamluks refrained

92
 from using them in battle. According to historian Alexander DeConde, the Mam-
luks believed the gun to be unfit for use because of the “unchivalrous and immoral
character of the weapon”.
There are those who dispute this – who claim that the Mamluks were unpre-
pared and untrained for modern war – but the fact is that in 1517 the Mamluks
placed guns and cannons on the battlefield against an invading Ottoman force, yet
still did not use them against their foes. There is a lesson here, one that we have seen
before. In time, the inability or moral refusal of the Mamluks to harness superior
weapons ultimately led to their downfall. The society that did not use the gun
would be annihilated, from distance, by stronger Ottoman forces that did. The
victors were those who embraced the disturbingly distant and easy method of
killing. Indeed, the Mamluks were just one of many states to suffer defeat during
the 16th and 17th century, in part because of their rejection of firearms. The
Iranian Safavid dynasty was reluctant to use such weapons, and were defeated in
battle by the Ottomans in the 16th century – until they themselves adopted these
weapons. And the British and French colonial campaigns in Africa – such as the
Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, in which the British used the Gatling gun (a proto
machine gun) – provide reminders of how guns have been used to wipe out foes en
masse and at distance. Yet, when it comes to weaponry, what goes around comes
around, and it was not long before the world’s victorious empires would be turning
these weapons on each other.

A
mid the trenches of the First World War, ‘no man’s land’ was
a space between opposing enemies where all humans feared
An inlaid bronze
to tread. Some chose to face execution rather than raise their
14th-century basin
shows Mamluk heads above the parapets. ‘Cowardice’ was punishable by
soldiers. The firing squad. But what made these armies stop in their tracks
Mamluks’ refusal to and dig into the earth for safety? What made soldiers lose
fire guns exposed
them to defeat by
their minds, refuse to fight, and flee the field of battle – even
enemies who did though that act would also mean death for the men involved?
use such weapons The answers were perched on the lips of trenches, surrounded by sandbags:
machine guns. Fast, accurate, and powerful, these
were ideal weapons when facing lesser and weaker
armed forces. One of the first, invented around
1884, was the Maxim gun, named for its Ameri-
can-British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim. With
a rate of fire surpassing 500 rounds per minute, it
was used to annihilate whole armies during the
British and German colonial campaigns. Yet
when these empires ultimately met each other on
the battlefields of Europe, the machine gun would
not be their saviour. Instead, it would cause the

By the 16th century, more-powerful

BRIDGEMAN

guns replaced the bow as the

most effective distance weapons
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 deaths of millions of their youngest, fittest and brightest. More than 41 million
were killed and wounded in the First World War, including more than 300,000
Americans. And in the postwar era, other rising world powers – especially the US
– looked to make war more ‘civilised’, turning to new weapons of ‘morality’,
‘distance’, and ‘sterile precision’ to help make war safer, winnable, ‘better’.

I
ntroduced in 1918, the first pilotless aerial attack weapon was developed
by the United States to mitigate the need to put its young soldiers at risk
on the battlefield. Often called an early drone or cruise missile, the
creators of the Kettering Bug referred to it as an ‘aerial torpedo’. The
intention was to provide the US military with a weapon to comply with
the ‘Over, not through’ principle that emerged after the First World War.
The idea was to bomb enemy factories with pinpoint precision, the hope
being that an enemy’s war-making capacity could be destroyed from the air without
any human having to face that foe (or its machine guns) on the battlefield.
The ‘Bug’, as it came to be known, was one part of the project to remove the
human from war. It was an unmanned device, set on rails, that would speed up
along and take off from a ramp. When its engine had gone through a pre-set number
of revolutions, the wings would detach and the Bug would plunge to earth “like a
bird of prey”. In reality, the short range and unreliability of this futuristic machine
made it of very little strategic use, but it marked the start of a search for high-tech
solutions to the risks and dilemmas of ground warfare that had been triggered by the
destructiveness of the machine gun. Such ambitions continue today within
American warfare. The modern robotic drone is simply the latest manifestation of
this drive to remove the human from harm’s way and to ‘perfect’ or sanitise warfare.
So, how does this ambition manifest itself in modern warfare? Today, when
looking to recruit new drone pilots and sensor operators, the United States Air Force
focuses on the perceived virtues and high-tech capabilities of the drone to draw in
British soldiers aim new blood. Recruits can be as young as 17 years old. Being part of the team that
a Maxim gun during
controls a state-of-the-art flying robot is badged as an exciting opportunity, but also
the First World War.
The large-scale a worthy one. The argument is that drones are ‘better’ than conventional weapons.
carnage wreaked Not only are they high-tech, futuristic and powerful but – thanks to their pin-point
by machine guns in precision missiles, ability to loiter for long periods, and sophisticated video equip-
this conflict caused
world powers to
ment – they can also distinguish between friend and foe on the ground, purportedly
seek more ‘civilised’ killing the ‘bad guys’ and saving the good.
ways of waging war What is important about the drone, of course, is that the pilot and operator are
not physically near the conflict they are involved in. They are
vital to success, and the drone itself is in the region of combat,
yet it does not have a pilot inside. Instead, the drone’s
BRIDGEMAN

controllers are usually thousands of miles away from the actual

‘battlefield’. At the end of the day they commute home. So
they are able to deploy deadly force globally without risking

In 1918, the first pilotless aerial attack

weapon was developed by the US to reduce
the need to risk soldiers on the battlefield

94
 their own lives – one of the unique selling points of the drone. US political and
military elites can choose to confront perceived threats around the world without
directly risking the lives of young Americans. Nevertheless, not everyone agrees
that this form of warfare is of benefit to humanity.
Those of conscience, such as Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape
Town, argue that armed drones undermine the moral standards and humanity
that American society holds dear. In 2013, Tutu stated in an open letter to the
editor of the New York Times that such policies are equivalent to apartheid,
emphasising the dehumanising characteristics of the weapons that kill at such
distance. Yet the robot campaigns continue apace, allowing one side in a conflict
to kill another without any risk or fear of death. Like the arrow and spear or the
crossbow and gun, they allow a dominant force to prevail and a weaker enemy to
be extinguished – all without having to uncomfortably look an adversary in the eye.
In recent years, at least 542 lethal drone strikes were launched during the
leadership of US president Barack Obama, and drone strikes are continuing under
President Trump, while also being used in new and ever-more-indiscriminate ways.
The death toll of non-combatants from US drone strikes is uncertain: official
estimates number in the hundreds, and unofficial estimates in the thousands.
But this is the point. The aim is to kill at such a distance that we cannot count
the number of those we kill, let alone know their names, their beliefs, their intent.
A worrying trend to note about the future of war is that the United States is no
longer alone in this practice of remote killing. Not only have at least 18 state actors
acquired armed drones, but the use of a drone is now open to anyone with the
ability to turn an off-the-shelf quadcopter into an airborne improvised explosive
device. As a result, we have entered a new, long-desired epoch of warfare – one in
which distancing weapons can take lives without risking that of the aggressor. Boys inspect the
wreckage of a car
Think back to the machine gun, though – surely the question we must ask is: will hit by a drone strike
such ‘advances’ come back to haunt those who first promoted their use? in Yemen, 2017. At
least 18 state actors

W
have now acquired
armed drones

hat does all this tell us

about humanity, and
about war? It is the future
that the human race has
long been building
towards: to kill, yet to
never really feel what it
is like to take a life. To remove the need for face-to-face
combat, the risk of visceral battle, from the killing loop.
Throughout history our developments in weapons
technologies have allowed us to carry out the exercise of
killing in an increasingly detached, sterile and disconnected manner.
This is not to say that killing is ever ‘clean’. For those on the receiving end, it
is always heinous and horrific. But it is easier to carry out the act at a distance as
we are disconnected from the process. With our enemy at a distance, it also makes
it easier for us to dehumanise our foe,
to believe racially inspired myths. James Rogers is assistant professor in war
And it becomes easier to conduct studies at the University of Southern Denmark
REUTERS

killings that were once only carried and visiting research fellow, Yale University.
out as a last resort and for survival. He is on Twitter: @DrJamesRogers

95
CULTURE Agenda

Agenda
EXHIBITIONS, TV,
FILMS AND
MORE

96
 EMOTIONAL
LANDSCAPES
Entitled ‘The Lonely Ones’, this 1899
print features in a major new exhibi-
tion in London of the work of Edvard
Munch. A collaboration between the
British Museum and the Munch
Museum in Oslo, the exhibition show-
cases the Norwegian artist’s depictions
of both atmospheric landscapes and
diverse emotional states, from loss and
loneliness to love and jealousy. It also
offers a chance to better understand
the complexities of Munch’s work and
his troubled personal life, expressed
in images such as his best known
and much-emulated composition
The Scream, first created in 1893.
MUNCHMUSEET

Edward Munch: Love and Angst, 11 April –

21 July at The British Museum, London
britishmuseum.org/munch
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97
TIME TRAVELLERS The smooth, clean
If you’ve read EM Forster’s 1908 novel lines of this staircase
in Germany reflect
A Room with a View, you’ll remember the ongoing influence
the varying degrees of faith that its of the Bauhaus design
characters, embarking on a tour of school, founded 1919
Florence, put in their Baedeker travel
guidebooks to Italy. A new exhibition
at the National Gallery of Ireland SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
explores early examples of the genre, Between 1919 and 1933, Germany’s biography by Fiona MacCarthy, the
including some written in the 17th and Bauhaus teemed with ideas, expressed series is online now at bbc.co.uk/sounds.
18th centuries. They are interesting via diverse media and in works that Leading Bauhaus figures also take
not only for the information they often remain startling even now, centre stage in two TV series. Bauhaus
provide about Italy’s towns and cities in a century after the school’s foundation. 100 charts the school’s evolution through
the period – complete, in some cases, (We highlight some striking examples the work of its artists, while Anni Albers:
with detailed illustrations, such as the in our feature on page 66.) To mark that A Life in Thread reveals how that artist
1773 depiction of the Colosseum above centenary, the BBC has launched a new and printmaker shifted the perception of

ALAMY/NATIONAL GALLERY IRELAND

– but also because of the choices of season of programmes chronicling the textiles from solely a craft to represent-
cultural highlights deemed worthy movement and its continued impact ing a valid form of artistic expression.
of inclusion. across the decades that followed. Albers was forced to flee to the US as the
The Voyage of Italy: 200 Years of Travel Guides, On BBC Radio 4, Walter Gropius: Nazis’ power burgeoned in Germany,
until 15 September at the National Gallery Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus explores and her story is a reminder of the violent,
of Ireland, Dublin
nationalgallery.ie
how the school director and architect dangerous era in which these iconoclastic
gathered a roster of famous names – works were created. For details of when
including Klee and Kandinsky – to create the series are set to air, see historyextra.
a new philosophy of art. Based on a new com/tvradio.

STREET SPIRIT
It’s only just left cinemas, but the acclaimed adaptation of US
writer James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk is
available for home viewing this spring. Set in 1970s Harlem, it’s
both a love story and a potent exploration of the racial, sexual
and economic politics of the era. Adapted by Barry Jenkins,
director of Moonlight (2016), it’s a similarly sympathetic look at
KiKi Layne and Stephan the ways in which its characters are shaped by wider social forces.
James in If Beale Street Could If Beale Street Could Talk, from 12 March (US), other release dates vary
Talk, set in 1970s New York bealestreet.movie

98
 Andrea del Verrocchio’s Madonna
MUSEO E REAL BOSCO DI CAPODIMONTE, INV. Q46. . ON CONCESSION OF THE MINISTERO PER I BENI E LE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI-MUSEO E REAL BOSCO DI CAPODIMONTE/ © RMN-GRAND PALAIS / ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK

and Child, painted c1470, is among

the works in a new exhibition of his
work that also explores its influence
on one of his best-known students,
famed polymath Leonardo da Vinci

SILK AND INCENSE

The statue of a ruby-eyed goddess below
was made in ancient Mesopotamia be-
tween the first century BC and the first
century AD. It’s among the objects in a
new Met Museum exhibition focusing
on cultures that sprang up in the Mid-
dle East in that era, funded by wealth
from trading routes carrying valuable
commodities such as silk and incense.
As the Roman and Parthian empires
battled for control of that network,
diverse cultural traditions emerged,
creating artefacts that are now at risk
from violence and looting in the region.
The World Between Empires: Art and Identity
in the Ancient Middle East, until 23 June
at The Met Fifth Avenue, New York
metmuseum.org/exhibitions
MASTER OF ARTS
As the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Museum. They include Madonna and
da Vinci’s death on 2 May 1519 ap- Child (above), painted c1470, and the
proaches, the Renaissance polymath celebrated statue David, on loan from
– artist, engineer, inventor – is hot the Museo del Bargello.
historical currency. But if you’re curious Of course, as one of his most famous
about the influences shaping da Vinci’s apprentices, da Vinci looms large in any
career, a new exhibition at Florence’s telling of Verrocchio’s life. As such, the
Palazzo Strozzi provides insights. exhibition also examines the early years
The exhibition chronicles the life of of Leonardo’s career, and the ways in
Andrea del Verrocchio, the 15th-century which the output of each of the two men
workshop master and pioneering artist informed the other’s work.
who trained several notable pupils, If you’re in Florence this spring,
including da Vinci. Reflecting the wide this is a great opportunity to learn
range of media in which he worked, it more about the formative years of a
gathers together a diverse array of nascent genius.
paintings, sculptures and drawings from A statuette of a standing nude goddess, made
Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo,
major institutions including the Musée at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy until 14 July from alabaster, gold and rubies, features in
du Louvre in Paris and New York’s Met palazzostrozzi.org a new look at the art of the ancient Middle East

WORDS MATT ELTON 99

 Sphinx statues line the road
linking the great temples of
Karnak and Luxor at Thebes
(now also called Luxor). In AD 19
the Roman general Germanicus
may have traversed this route,
which had been restored by
Cleopatra half a century earlier

100
 In the footsteps of…
A Roman general’s
journey to Egypt
Guy de la Bédoyère follows the first-
century AD travels of Germanicus round
the eastern Mediterranean and up the Nile
AWL IMAGES

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101
 JOURNEYS In the footsteps of a Roman general’s journey to Egypt

he monuments of pharaon- – probably sailing from Brundisium

T ic Egypt have attracted

tourists since ancient times
– indeed, Romans from the
(Brindisi) – to cross the Adriatic to visit
Germanicus’ cousin Drusus, Tiberius’s
son, then stationed in Dalmatia, roughly
Republic and early imperial eras recalled spanning what’s now Croatia.
with wonder their visits to the tombs
and temples along the Nile. One of the Greek odyssey
best-recorded journeys from that period It was probably the spring of AD 18
was made by Germanicus – celebrated before Germanicus and his family con- Germanicus:
general, senior member of the imperial tinued on to Greece. But though winter Mighty general,
family and darling of the Roman mob was behind them, his fleet encountered
– who voyaged to Egypt via the eastern fierce storms in both the Adriatic and
imperial favourite,
Mediterranean in the years AD 17–19. Ionian seas; some of his ships were badly avid tourist
His progress can be pieced together from damaged, and the fleet docked in a port
the writings of the Roman historian in north-western Greece for repairs. Ger-
Tacitus and some other broadly contem- manicus took the chance to visit the relics Germanicus (c15 BC–AD 19) was the
golden boy of the Roman imperial family.
porary surviving documents. and monuments of the great naval battle
His father was Nero Claudius Drusus,
The trade route between Italy and of Actium, victory at which had made brother of Tiberius and younger son
Egypt was one of the greatest of the Octavian the most powerful man in the of Livia, wife of Augustus, by her first
Roman era, operating in both directions. Roman world half a century earlier. marriage. His mother was Antonia Minor,
Ships poured into and out of the ports After his vessels were repaired, Ger- daughter of Augustus’s sister Octavia and
of Ostia (near Rome) and Puteoli (now manicus’s fleet continued on to Athens. Mark Antony; and his wife was Agrippina,
Pozzuoli, near Naples) year round. Some In an era before proper navigation aids, Augustus’s granddaughter. With this im-
of these had sailed from Egypt, arguably his ships were forced to hug the coast pressive lineage, Germanicus was tipped
for the top: it seems that Augustus hoped
Rome’s wealthiest province, which had as it negotiated the treacherous route
Germanicus would one day be emperor.
been seized by Octavian (later known as round the Peloponnese, where ship- He fought wars in Illyricum (a province
Augustus, who became the first Roman wreck – with little or no chance of being in the Balkans) and Germany, crushing
emperor) following his victory over rescued – was a very serious risk. By that a Roman army mutiny on the Rhine, and in
Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of time, the Mediterranean had become a AD 12 participated in Tiberius’s triumph
Actium in 31 BC. After that conquest, superhighway that made it possible for in Rome. In AD 15, he added to his fame by
Egypt supplied vast quantities of grain the Roman empire to exist – but it was recovering two of the three eagles (legion
standards) that had been lost when three
to feed Rome, but it was already a tourist still dangerous.
Roman legions were wiped out by German
destination, having attracted enthusias- Germanicus and his family were tribes in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9.
tic Romans for centuries. Germanicus, greeted by the Greeks at Athens, then His appointment to supreme command
however, took a circuitous route there. crossed to the island of Euboea (Evia) in the eastern provinces – the reason for
As the winter of AD 17 approached, and sailed across the Aegean to Lesbos, his journey in AD 17 – was his greatest
Germanicus – nephew of the emperor just off the coast of Anatolia, where his honour, giving him power over all Roman
Tiberius – set out to the eastern empire youngest daughter, Julia Livilla, was governors and military commanders in
to act as an imperial deputy, taking his born. Ever the tourist, Germanicus the region. His ignominious death in Syria
in AD 19 was followed by an outpouring
wife, Agrippina the Elder, and some of headed north-west to visit the ancient of grief: monuments and honours to him
their children. They sailed on a leisurely site of Troy, which was the mythical were voted in communities across the
route, setting off from eastern Italy home of Aeneas, ancestor of Romulus Æ empire. “Give us back Germanicus!”
shouted the Roman mob after his death –
to Tiberius’s chagrin.
Though Germanicus did not live to
become emperor, others in his family
The Mediterranean was a super- did. His son, Caligula, took the imperial
highway that made it possible for throne in AD 37, and his brother Claudius
followed after Caligula was murdered
BRIDGEMAN

the Roman empire to exist – but it in AD 41; Germanicus’s grandson Nero

was the next and final emperor of the
was still extremely dangerous Julio-Claudian dynasty.

102
 Winter AD 17
Germanicus, together
with his wife and family,
sails from eastern Italy
to Dalmatia (Croatia) to
visit his cousin Drusus

Late AD 18
AD 18 Germanicus settles a
Pausing on Lesbos, royal succession dispute
Germanicus visits the in Artaxata (Artashat),
site of ancient Troy – capital of Armenia
mythical home of Aeneas,
progenitor of the
Romans – and the
oracle at Colophon

ILLUSTRATION BY THERESA GRIEBEN

Spring AD 18
The part y continues
south to north-west
Greece, where they are
forced to put in to repair
storm-damaged ships

Early AD 19
Germanicus lands at Canopus,
and visits the great Pharos
(lighthouse) of Alexandria –
one of the seven wonders
of the ancient world

AD 19
Sailing south along the
Nile, Germanicus visits the
oasis region of Fayum,
where he probably sees the
sacred crocodile at Arsinoe

AD 19
At Thebes, Germanicus is fascinated
AD 19 by the hieroglyphics revealing the
Crossing to the West Ba
nk military might and wealth of the
of the Nile, Germanicus Pharaoh Ramesses II
visits the Colossi of Me
mnon,
perhaps hoping to hea
r the
famous sunrise ‘singin
g’

Spring AD 19
Germanicus proceeds
upstream to the temple of
Khnum on Elephantine Island
and Aswan, the southern
border of Egypt

103
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 JOURNEYS In the footsteps of a Roman general’s journey to Egypt

At Arsinoe, a
pampered crocodile
and Remus and thus progenitor of the at Giza, before delving into the desert to
Roman people. was kept in the lake, reach the Fayum.
In antiquity, a visit to the home of
an oracle was a popular element of
fed by the priests of The ‘sights’ that Germanicus, like
Memmius before him, would have
a journey. So Germanicus sailed south the cult with meat wanted to see there included the cult
down the Ionian coast to the city of of the crocodile god Sobek, known in
Colophon, to hear what the oracle of
and a honey cake Greek as Souchos, in the city of Arsinoe
Clarian Apollo had to say. The news (called Krokodeilópolis, ‘City of the
was typically ambiguous and impene- Crocodile’, in Greek). Here a pampered
trable: Germanicus would, the oracle crocodile was kept in the lake, fed by the
pronounced, make “an exit at the appro- priests of the cult with meat and a honey
priate time” – in other words, he would centuries by the Macedonian-Greek cake; on his visit, Memmius – treated as
die when it was the right time to do so. Ptolemaic dynasty. an honoured guest – was provided with
Germanicus’s primary ostensible Though few details of his itinerary titbits to feed to the spoiled crocodile.
objective on this journey was to organise survive, we can get an idea of his experi- Not far away was the astonishing
and resolve diplomatic problems in ences thanks to an earlier account Labyrinth, the mortuary temple of
Rome’s eastern provinces. He encoun- of a similar Roman tour. In 112 BC, Amenemhet III (ruled c1860–c1814
tered obstacles, notably in the form of in the days of the late Republic, a BC) near that pharaoh’s pyramid at
a senator called Piso, who had been Roman senator called Lucius Memmius Hawara, celebrated for its vast number
appointed as governor of Syria. visited Egypt – then still independent of chambers and passages; it was so tor-
Though Germanicus rescued Piso and ruled by Ptolemy IX, Cleopatra’s tuous that it could be visited only with
after his fleet was wrecked in a storm grandfather. A papyrus planning his itin- a guide. And a little to the north-west,
off Rhodes en route to his new post, erary survived, suggesting how German- Germanicus visited Lake Moeris, a nat-
the latter continued to stir up trouble. icus’s journey might have progressed. ural hollow fed by a partially artificial
Germanicus did, however, achieve We do know that Germanicus landed canal that allowed the Egyptians to
success in resolving a succession dispute in Canopus, a town founded (according control the annual Nile flood.
in Armenia, though it occupied the rest to legend) by the Spartan king Menelaus Germanicus certainly continued
of that year, which he spent largely in on his way home from the Trojan his journey upstream along the Nile
the Armenian capital Artaxata (now War, and named after his helmsman. to Thebes (now Luxor); we can date
Artashat, about 15 miles south of the He addressed the townsfolk, telling his visit with some accuracy, thanks to
modern capital, Yerevan). them how sad he was to be away from a surviving receipt of 25 January 19,
his extended family, and recounting the recording the payment required by an
Exploring Egypt difficulties of the journey. Egyptian called Phatres for some of the
In January AD 19, Germanicus – He then travelled about 15 miles Roman’s wheat.
escaping the ugly politics of Roman south-west to Alexandria, established by In Thebes, Germanicus was fasci-
government in the east – set out on a Alexander the Great after his conquest nated by the hieroglyphs inscribed on
passage to Egypt, apparently without of Egypt in 332 BC. There he visited temple walls, which he had translated
Agrippina. Strictly speaking, he was the famous 110-metre-high Pharos by a priest. He learned that “once the
acting illegally by going at all: Augustus (lighthouse), one of the seven wonders city contained 700,000 men of military
had prohibited Romans of senatorial of the ancient world, which was by then age, and with that army King Ramesses
status from entering Egypt, hoping to well over 250 years old. He also gained [II, r 1279–1213 BC], after conquering
prevent them from using the province’s popularity by opening state granaries Libya and Ethiopia, the Medes and the
wealth to blackmail Rome or mount a and reducing the cost of grain. Persians, the Bactrian and the Scyth,
bid to become emperor. Germanicus’s If Germanicus followed in Memmi- and the lands where the Syrians and
intention, though, was – like so many us’s footsteps – and he almost certainly Armenians and neighbouring Cappado-
travellers before and since – “to become did – he then journeyed to the Fayum, cians dwell, had ruled over all that lies
acquainted with antiquity”. Determined an oasis region in a depression in the between the Bithynian Sea on the one
to enjoy himself, he spent much of his Western Desert about 100 miles south- hand and the Lycian on the other.”
time without an armed escort, dressing west of Cairo. His route would have According to Tacitus, “the tribute-
in Greek garb that would have been involved sailing south through the Nile lists of the subject nations were still
familiar to a people ruled for some three delta and up the Nile, past the pyramids legible: the weight of silver and gold,

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 Ancient remains in north-west
Turkey, believed to be the famed
city of Troy. As the legendary Lake Qarun, in the Fayum
home of Aeneas, forebear of depression. Known in
Romulus and Remus, Troy was ancient times as Moeris,
a popular destination for Roman when Germanicus visited
travellers such as Germanicus Egypt it was many metres
higher, fed by the Nile via
an artificial canal probably
dug centuries earlier

Vast columns in the

Great Hypostyle Hall
at the Temple of
Karnak in Thebes (now
Luxor). Germanicus
was fascinated by the
hieroglyphics
inscribed on walls
and columns in the
temples of Thebes

The Sphinx guards the pyramid of Khafre

at Giza, south-west of Cairo. In early AD 19,
Germanicus sailed up the Nile past the
huge tombs at Giza which, in common with
other ancient Egyptian necropoli, were
built on the river’s west bank; the homes of
the living were always on the east bank
ALAMY/GETTY IMAGES/ SHUTTERSTOCK/DREAMSTIME

Æ
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 JOURNEYS In the footsteps of a Roman general’s journey to Egypt

The huge statues of Pharaoh

Amenhotep III known as the
Colossi of Memnon, one of
which was famed for ‘singing’
at dawn in Germanicus’s era
Perhaps Germanicus,
observing the faded
glory of Egypt in
Thebes, wondered
what would happen
to Rome one day

struction work ordered by Emperor Sep-

timius Severus in AD 199, the Memnon
no longer croons its eerie song.
Germanicus surely toured the ruins
of the mortuary temples of Ramesses II
and Ramesses III, some of the Tombs of
the Nobles and others in the Valley of
the Kings; certainly, surviving Graeco-
Roman graffiti prove that visitors of his
time explored the underground corridors
and chambers in tombs that were still
open in those days. We do know that
Germanicus headed upstream all the
way to Elephantine Island, home of the
the number of weapons and horses, the BC–c24 AD) as “a slight blow”, prob- ram-headed god Khnum, guardian of
temple-gifts of ivory and spices, together ably caused when the rising sun heated the source of the Nile, and visited the
with the quantities of grain and other dew within a crack, creating a whistling nearby town of Aswan, on the southern
necessaries... revenues no less imposing or groaning noise as it evaporated. border of Egypt.
than those which are now exacted by the The spectacle was described by Germanicus left Egypt some time in
might of Parthia or by Roman power.” another Roman visitor, Julia Balbilla, the spring of AD 19 to return to Syria,
Perhaps Germanicus, observing the fad- a poet who experienced it while visiting where his feud with Piso continued. He
ed glory of Egypt, wondered what would as part of the retinue of the emperor died there on 10 October, after falling
happen to Rome one day. Hadrian in AD 130. The four epigrams seriously ill (allegedly poisoned by Piso),
she inscribed in Greek on one of the and his ashes were carried back to Rome
Song of stone statues to commemorate her visit can to be interred in the Mausoleum of Au-
Next, Germanicus crossed the Nile to still be seen. They begin: gustus. His was a bright future that had
the West Bank, to see the Colossi of “Memnon the Egyptian I learned, been cut short – but before he died, he
Memnon – two vast statues of Amen- when warmed by the rays of the sun, had at least witnessed some of the great-
hotep III (ruled c1386–1349 BC) of the speaks from Theban stone. est wonders of the ancient world.
18th Dynasty, carved from quartzite When he saw Hadrian, the king of all,
sandstone. These monuments, repre- before rays of the sun, he greeted him
senting almost all that remains of the – as far as he was able.” Guy de la Bédoyère
vast mud-brick mortuary temple of Another Roman, possibly visiting is a historian and author
the pharaoh, are still among the great later that century, carved into one of its specialising in the
sights of Egypt, and look today much feet the memorable comment: Camilius, Roman world. His
as they did when Germanicus admired hora prima semis audivi Memnonii – latest book is Domina:
AWL IMAGES

them. One of the statues was famed for “At half past the first hour [of the day] The Women Who
‘singing’ at sunrise – a phenomenon de- I, Camilius, heard the Memnon.” Made Imperial Rome
scribed by Greek geographer Strabo (c64 Sadly, possibly as a result of recon- (Yale, 2018)

106
 PREVIEW ISSUE 16

D-Day
How the world
reacted to the
Normandy
landings

Manga through the ages

As a major new exhibition launches
at London’s British Museum,
we explore the long history of a
Japanese art form that has become
an international phenomenon
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The real story of how clashes at a bar in New
York forever changed global LGBTQ rights

A history of hair
Historian Emma Dabiri Saladin
discusses her new history Why the story of the 12th-
of black people’s hair, century Muslim leader can help
from precolonial Africa explain divisions in today’s world
to the Black Power era

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5PAGE 24
107
 JOURNEYS

Global City Fès Morocco

Morocco’s
spiritual
capital
The beautiful
courtyard of the
al-Qarawiyyin
Mosque and
university, founded
in the 850s

The soul of the t’s a story that’s all too fa- glimpse the tiled courtyard and shrine.

Maghreb lingers in I miliar: Muslims, suffering

the brutal aftermath of
rebellion, flee around and
Idriss II forged the character of the city
through two acts of Islamic hospitality.
First, around 817, he welcomed hundreds
the medieval walled across the Mediterranean to seek a new of Andalucian families escaping repres-
life. Such is the tale of Fès’s early years, sive Umayyad rule in Córdoba; they set-
city of the former and here these refugees provided the bed- tled on the east bank of the Oued (river)
imperial capital. rock of Islamic learning, architecture, Fès, forming al-Andalous (the Andalu-
commerce and community. cian quarter). Then, seven years later, he
Paul Bloomfield To see how these factions slotted allotted land on the west bank to refugees
together, climb to a viewpoint north fleeing persecution in Kairouan (now in
roams the labyrinthine of the medina (walled city) at dusk, as Tunisia) – the al-Qarawiyyin district.
the muezzins’ calls drift from hundreds Wealthy and pious, in 857 the latter
byways of Fès of mosques. From among the Merenid group built the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque
tombs scattered like broken teeth across and, two years later, its university –
the hillside, gaze into the valley to Fès reputedly the world’s oldest continuously
el-Bali, the oldest part of the city. operating place of higher education.
The village of Medinat Fès was found- Both are off-limits to non-Muslims, as
ed here by Moulay Idriss, a descendant are most medersas (Islamic colleges) scat-
of the Prophet Muhammad and founder tered around the medina; an exception
of the Arab state of Morocco, shortly is the Medersa Bou Inania, founded in
after his arrival in c787, having fled the 1351, which boasts glorious Moorish
Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad. But it was zellij tilework, sculpted wood and alabas-
his son, succeeding as Sultan Idriss II in ter to rival Granada’s Alhambra.
c807, who developed Fès as his capital As the Fassi saying goes, all roads lead
and the country’s spiritual heart. to the al-Qarawiyyin. A web of alleys spi-
And in the heart of his city Idriss II ders in all directions, lined with carved
lies today, under the pyramidal roof of wooden doorways set into blank walls.
Paul Bloomfield his zaouïa (tomb shrine institution). It’s Behind lie family houses; expensive and
ALAMY

is a travel and closed to non-Muslims, but wander past difficult to maintain in this congested
heritage writer its heavy wooden doors and you may warren, many have been abandoned

108
and left to decay. A number are being
Listen for warning FÈS IN EIGHT SITES
renovated, many refashioned as boutique
hotels generally called riads (strictly, a shouts of “Barak!” Bab Boujeloud
‘Blue Gate’ built by the French in 1913 to
house with an internal garden is a riad;
one with a central courtyard is a dar). from donkey drivers replace the medieval city portal
Nejjarine Museum of
Almost entirely car-free, the medina’s in the medina’s 9,400 Wooden Arts & Crafts
reputed 9,400 alleyways are thronged
with donkeys – listen for the warning narrow alleyways Housed in the wonderful restored
Nejjarine Funduq (caravanserai)
shouts of “Barak! ” from their drivers
– and studded with funduqs (caravan- Chaouwara Tanneries
Kaleidoscopic dyeing vats tinted with
serais) and souks (bazaars) where jellaba
poppy seeds, indigo and saffron
(robe)-clad shoppers barter for textiles, south-west spreads Fès el-Jdid, the ‘new’
silverware, food, perfumes and spices. city, established by Merenid conquerors Medersa Bou Inania
East of the al-Qarawiyyin, the scent of in the 13th century. Smaller and more Islamic college founded in 1351, with
spectacular zellij tilework and alabaster
herbs and spices is punctured by the reek ordered, it encompasses the royal palace
of cowhide, pigeon guano and urine from and the Mellah (Jewish quarter), now Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque & University
the Chaouwara tanneries. Enter a leather home to just a handful of Jews, most Important mosque and adjacent
shop overlooking the rainbow-hued having emigrated after Moroccan inde- university founded in the 850s
vats, hold the proffered sprig of mint to pendence in 1956. Souk al-Henna
your nose, and you’ll witness a process Beyond lies the Ville Nouvelle, One of the medina’s oldest bazaars, by a
unchanged for centuries. The tanneries developed from 1916 by the French, who 13th-century former psychiatric hospital
can be overwhelming, as can the whole moved the administrative capital to Ra- Musee Dar Batha
medina; American author Paul Bowles bat. After that the old city began to decay; Palatial 19th-century Hispano-Moorish
wrote: “Fès is full of flies and dust… It a Unesco World Heritage site since 1981, house with displays of Fassi ceramics
is quite dirty and very beautiful.” it is being patchily restored. Yet within its Ibn Danan Synagogue
To escape the melee, head west to the crumbling walls, Fès medina remains the 17th-century synagogue in the Mellah
blue-tiled Moorish gate Bab Boujeloud, most mesmerising and extensive medieval (Jewish quarter) that still holds
the western limit of Fès el-Bali. To the city in the Islamic world. centuries-old gazelle-skin Torah scrolls

ILLUSTRATION BY TONWEN JONES 109

 JOURNEYS Wonders of the World

Wonders of the World

Sagrada Família Barcelona

110
 Higher purpose
The spires of the Expiatory Temple of
the Holy Family seem to sprout from the
streets of Barcelona. The origins of the
Sagrada Família, as it is usually known,
date to 1866, when a bookseller, Josep
Maria Bocabella i Verdaguer, founded
a spiritual association to campaign for
a new church. The first stone was laid
in 1882 and a year later, after original
architect Francisco de Paula del Villar
y Lozano stepped down, Antoni Gaudí
took over the project. Eschewing the
neo-Gothic style of his predecessor, the
innovative Catalan architect created a
monumental design for a new kind of
church that, though still under construc-
tion over 135 years later, now attracts
more than four million visitors each year.
SHUTTERSTOCK

Barcelona’s
celestial
basilica
Above the Catalan capital soars
a forest of slender stems – the
spires of the Sagrada Família.
Paul Bloomfield visits Gaudí’s
soon-to-be-completed masterpiece Æ
111
 JOURNEYS Wonders of the World

Holy love
Statues of Joseph, Mary and the
baby Jesus form the centrepiece of
the Nativity Facade. The sculpture
group was created by Jaume
Busquets (1903–68), a disciple of
Gaudí, and set in place on 19 March
1958, the feast of Saint Joseph.

The angels’ share

The bell towers of the Sagrada Família
are ornately decorated right to the top.
Asked why he designed details for high
towers where people couldn’t make them
out clearly, Gaudí replied: “The angels
will see them”. His plans included 18
great towers, representing the 12
apostles, four evangelists, the Virgin
Mary and Christ himself – the tallest
central spire, which will top 172 metres.

Start of the story

The religious figures populating the
Nativity Facade, begun in 1892, are
surrounded by tendrils, branches and
GETTY IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK

leaves, an organic style of decoration

that distinguished Gaudí’s work. Indeed,
he explained that: “I capture the purest
and most pleasurable images from
nature, the nature that is always my
teacher”. His ideas reflected the ethos
of the Modernista school of design that
sprang from the Renaixença (Catalan
cultural Renaissance) from the 1830s.

112
GETTY IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK

Master at rest
Gaudí’s tomb is the focal point of the
Chapel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Passion project
the crypt. By 1923, Gaudí had produced
Though Gaudí produced drawings for
the final designs for the naves and
the Passion Facade, work hadn’t
roofs – 40 years after he had started
begun before his death, and in July
work on the project – but three years
1936 – at the outbreak of the Spanish
later, on 7 June 1926, he was hit by a
Civil War – anarchists destroyed his
tram, and died three days later.
drawings, plans and models. Work
on that facade began in 1954, and in
1986 Catalan sculptor Josep Maria
Subirachs was commissioned to
create statues for the facade,
producing some 100 sculptures in
his distinctively angular style. The
facade was completed in 2018.

\ Heavens above
The ceiling of the Sagrada Família
resembles a star-spangled sky glimpsed
through a forest canopy, sparking a sense
of wonder and a journey to spiritual truth
that Gaudí aimed to inspire. The basilica
was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI
in November 2010, and construction
is scheduled for completion in 2026, a
century after the death of its visionary
architect, Antoni Gaudí.

Paul Bloomfield is a travel and heritage writer

and photographer, co-author of Lonely Planet’s
Where to Go When (Lonely Planet, 2016)

113
 MUSEUM OF THE WORLD Global history’s finest objects, curated by experts

“The troops firing look European – which

raises important questions about the
massacre and its place in Indian politics”

The Jallianwala Today, it’s hard to believe that this is

the place depicted in the painting. The
over-enthusiastic nationalist before the
protective glass was installed.
Bagh Massacre ornamental gardens are thronged with
cheerful families taking selfies alongside The painting doesn’t adequately convey
Created by: Unknown artist, bullet holes obligingly highlighted in the the fact that the firing squad was tiny
20th century surrounding walls. In the painting there compared with the crowd it confronted.
are no walls, no sense of an enclosed General Dyer later advanced these
Now at: Central Sikh Museum, space. Yet the fact that the gardens are numerical odds as a reason for opening
enclosed was a major factor in the fire with no warning within 30 seconds of
Amritsar, India fatalities: there were only three narrow entering the Bagh, and for continuing to
Chosen by: Zareer Masani exits from the Bagh, through which a fire for perhaps up to 10 minutes until the
crowd estimated at between 5,000 and entire crowd had either fled or fallen.
30,000 tried to flee. The anonymity of the commanding
officer leaves us with no clue to his
In the centre of Amritsar, northern India, Another striking feature of the painting character, which has to be gleaned from
is a small museum. Among portraits of is that, though the dead are clearly other sources. What’s revealed is a
various Indian nationalist luminaries is a dark-skinned Indians, the troops firing at complex individual, racked with insecuri-
large painting behind glass, which the them look unmistakably European. This ties. Dyer was second-generation Indian-
museum’s keeper proudly displayed to me raises important questions about the born and bred, fluent in Hindustani and
when I visited. It depicts a massacre, with massacre and its place in Indian politics. popular with his troops, but also a bit of a
troops shown mowing down a crowd with In fact, rather than being solely Europe- loner, with a chip on his shoulder among
bullets, and victims strewn across what an, the 50-strong firing squad comprised his more aristocratic British colleagues.
looks like a battlefield. mostly Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Pathan and
The platform from which the soldiers Baluch Muslims, who fired obediently on Dyer’s actions made him a hero to some,
shot is just alongside the museum. It was their own countrymen. not only Anglo-Indians – who hailed him
on this spot a century ago, on 13 April The officer commanding them, as “the saviour of the Punjab” – but also
1919, that British Indian Army troops fired Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, was to many conservative Indians alarmed by
at a crowd of many thousands gathered in certainly European. Yet his face has been the spiralling public disorder on which he
the Jallianwala Bagh gardens. erased from the painting – the act of an cracked down.
Amritsar also witnessed the extraor-
dinary spectacle – not portrayed in this
museum or anywhere else – of Dyer being
felicitated by the priests of the Sikh
Golden Temple, an event that took place
just a few days after the massacre. The
priests even proclaimed him an honorary
Sikh, though he refused to grow his hair,
wear a turban or give up smoking. In
history as in this painting, what has been
omitted from the story is as important and
fascinating as what it actually portrays.

Zareer Masani is a historian, author

and broadcaster

DISCOVER MORE
AKG IMAGES

Listen to Zareer Masani’s documentary

Amritsar 1919: Remembering a
British Massacre on 10 April on BBC Radio 4,
or online at bbc.co.uk/radio4

114