UNHOLY WAR
September 2015Vol 65 Issue 9
The failed Nazi plan to mobilise the Muslim world
New World Outcasts
From poverty in Britain to
life on the American frontier
Profits of Slavery
The cultural impact of
FROM THE EDITOR
GENOA, ‘LA SUPERBA’, the former city-state that once rivalled Venice for control of the Mediterranean, commands a magnificent, if precarious, position overlooking the harbour which brought the Black Death to medieval Europe and honed the seafaring skills of Christopher Columbus. Nowadays it is a grizzled working port with a wonderfully claustrophobic, if graffiti-ridden, baroque heart. Like all Italian cities, it has more churches and pallazi crammed with paintings – Caravaggios, Veroneses, Strozzis – than it knows what to do with; but, more than any other place in la bella Italia, it is and has long been a global city, as I found out on a visit in July.
The role of Columbus in shrinking our world, for better or worse, is well known, but the story of the 19th-century Italians who followed him to the New World – primarily from Genoa – is not. Their story is told with élan and humanity in the city’s wonderful Museo del Mare, constructed in the old docks, which have been given new life by the architect Renzo Piano, a son of Genoa. In it, one enters the booths where Italians, who remained impoverished despite reunification, were lured by the call of the shipping companies that offered them the chance of a new life, for a price, in the US, Brazil and Argentina, then a booming young country, full of promise. We follow them to the ship’s barrack-style dormitories, separated by gender, the women cramped together with their children, where disease spread rapidly among the primitive sanitation facilities. We see the tables where they ate in shifts, without knives for fear of violence. We embark with them to the coffee estates of Brazil and the slums of Buenos Aires, as well as Ellis Island, New York, from where names such as Sinatra, Scorsese, Ciccone and Coppola would resonate worldwide.
Genoa’s tale is not just one of export and emigration, but of imports and immigrants, too. Among them were the Britons attracted to the city in the 19th century, when it became an important coal station on the way to Suez. In 1893 a group of them founded the Genoa Cricket Club, which in 1896 added the word ‘Foot-ball’ to its name, becoming the first football club in Italy, a nation which has won the World Cup three times more than England. Its story is told in the portside Museo della storia del Genoa (retaining the English spelling, ‘Genova’ in Italian). To this day, Italian football managers are addressed as ‘Mister’.
Paul Lay
Publisher Andy Patterson Editor Paul Lay
Digital Manager Dean Nicholas Picture Research Mel Haselden Reviews Editor Philippa Joseph Contributing Editor Kate Wiles Editorial Assistant Rhys Griffiths Art Director Gary Cook
Subscriptions Manager Cheryl Deflorimonte Subscriptions Assistant Ava Bushell Accounts Sharon Harris
Board of Directors
Simon Biltcliffe (Chairman), Tim Preston
CONTACTS
History Today is published monthly by
History Today Ltd, 2nd Floor, 9/10 Staple Inn London WC1V 7QH. Tel: 020 3219 7810 [email protected] SUBSCRIPTIONS Tel: 020 3219 7813/4 [email protected] ADVERTISING
Lisa Martin, Portman Media
Tel: 020 7079 9361
Print managed by Webmart Ltd. 01869 321321. Printed at W. Gibbons & Sons Ltd, Willenhall, UK. Distributed by MarketForce 020 3148 3539 (UK & RoW) and Disticor 905 619 6565 (North America).
History Today (ISSN No: 0018-2753, USPS No: 246-580)
is published monthly by History Today Ltd, GBR and distributed in the USA by Asendia USA, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Periodicals postage paid New Brunswick, NJ and additional mailing offices. Post-master: send address changes to History Today, 701C Ashland Avenue, Folcroft PA 19032. Subscription records are maintained at History Today Ltd, 2nd Floor, 9/10 Staple Inn, London WC1V 7QH, UK.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Dr Simon Adams University of Strathclyde Dr John Adamson Peterhouse, Cambridge Professor Richard Bessel University of York Professor Jeremy Black University of Exeter Lord Briggs Formerly Chancellor
of the Open University
Professor Paul Dukes University of Aberdeen Professor Martin Evans University of Sussex Juliet Gardiner Historian and author Tom Holland Historian and author Gordon Marsden MP for Blackpool South Dr Roger Mettam Queen Mary,
University of London
Professor Geoffrey Parker
Ohio State University
Professor Paul Preston
London School of Economics
Professor M.C. Ricklefs
The Australian National University
Professor Ulinka Rublack
St John’s College, Cambridge
Professor Nigel Saul Royal Holloway,
University of London
Dr David Starkey
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Professor T.P. Wiseman University of Exeter Professor Chris Wrigley
University of Nottingham
All written material, unless otherwise stated, is the copyright of History Today
Total Average Net Circulation 18,556 Jan-Dec 2014
From the city to the world: the Galata Museo del Mare, Genoa.
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 3
THE NOBLE BUT DEFEATED figure treated unjustly by posterity is a recurring feature of Britain and its history, often appropriated as a tool to accomplish political or cultural goals in the contemporary world. Those who entertain a developed sense of justice want to see this side of history prevail, actively representing it as a means of preserving the cultures and princi-ples these figures fought tirelessly to defend. This fight to establish a new historical truth inevitably pits the romantic, enthusiastic, amateur histo-rian against the apparently dispassion-ate and rational historian.
The most famous example of this is perhaps Richard III, whose supporters and their quest to rehabilitate his image are well known. However, another story about a forgotten hero blends issues of historical truth with identity: the story of Prince Madoc. This Welsh prince apparently fled his war-stricken home during the 12th century and sailed west from modern Colwyn Bay to discover America, landing at Mobile, Alabama. According to legend, Prince Madoc explored the American interior and members of his party intermarried into a Native American tribe, the Mandans, bequ- eathing them both pale skins and the Welsh language. In the years since, his story has been in the possession of a bewildering number of people with different agendas and uses for it. Professional historians have often felt unwillingly dragged into the legend, tending to dismiss it as fanciful and lacking proof, and were poor value among those who gazed wistfully at the Atlantic. The most famous account of the story comes from the great left-wing historian Gwyn Williams, who used it to elaborate a wider history of Welshness that encompassed both the British Empire and exploration on the eastern seaboard of America. But
History
Matters
Forgotten Figures
•
Literate Slaves
•
Names
•
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
David Nash
The quest for justice for maligned figures in
our past forces us to question the notion of
historical truth and objectivity.
The Propaganda of
the Defeated
Williams also saw the story as double- edged with its blind assertion liable to make the Welsh a laughing stock. He felt the Madoc legend had eclipsed the history of the Welsh common people, potentially turning them into a rom- antic Celtic sideshow. This element also surfaced in Madoc’s adoption by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who erected a plaque in his honour at Mobile as a way of asserting a further connection with an intriguingly Celtic origin. Subscription
to the Madoc legend was also almost a touchstone of national identity among Welsh descendants in the New World. While professional historians hoped they had banished Madoc, or discredit-ed his legend as a skilldiscredit-ed Tudor fabrica-tion with its own purposes, they were scarcely to have things all their own way. Enthusiastic amateurs persisted, claiming they had uncovered literary evidence that predated the Tudors,
while others said they could point to suggestive archaeological evidence uncovered on both sides of the Atlantic. New ways of investigating arrived with DNA testing, championed by the Madoc International Research Association, which hoped to provide a clear and obvious link between the Welsh prince and Native Americans. Perhaps the latest attempt to take possession of Prince Madoc and his story was the campaign in his ‘home town’ of Colwyn Bay, which hosted an exhibition in his honour. This offered the twin lures of heritage tourists from both sides of the Atlantic, while bolstering Welsh independent identities during the quest for political devolution from Westminster.
Elsewhere the Montrose Society of Scotland is a comparatively recent phe-nomenon that celebrates and seeks to publicise the career of another noble figure who inspired sympathy for the manner in which he was defeated and accepted his fate. James Graham, the 1st Marquis of Montrose, was an early signatory of the Solemn League and Covenant, a pledge to gain
Subscription to the
Madoc legend was a
touchstone of national
identity among Welsh
descendants in the
New World
Gone but not forgotten: James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, by William Dobson, c.1636.
HISTORYMATTERS
Alternative Histories by Rob Murray
increasing separation from the king, Charles I, that escalated into outright war. According to the account given by the Montrose Society, the marquis was sent north with a commission to raise an army, which eventually won a series of important military victories against Covenanter armies in a period that became known as ‘the year of miracles’. However success melted away and after defeat and surrender Montrose went into exile to
be courted by the new king, Charles II, who was also negotiating with the Covenanters behind Montrose’s back. The Society states that the king knew he was sending Montrose back to Scot-land to a certain death and, perhaps inevitably, he was duly arrested and executed in Edinburgh in April 1650. This story stresses the courage of a man of gentility and learning, loyal to a cause and individuals who manifest-ly appear not to deserve such loyalty. Likewise it displays a morality tale of loyal Scottish service betrayed by the fickle and devious behaviour of successive English kings who forgot they were kings of Scotland as well. The Montrose Society has also ensured a last intriguing tinge, suggesting that he should be regarded as a champion of constitutional monarchy and a pro-totype for modern Scottish politicians who might echo the sentiments of his last words to the Scottish people from the scaffold: ‘God have mercy on this afflicted land.’
Several of these sentiments are echoed in organisations devoted to remembering the importance of the Jacobite cause. Re-enactors like the Charles Edward Stuart Society bring bekilted troops to Derby every year to commemorate the furthest point in England reached by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s troops. Alternatively the Royal Stuart Society keeps alive knowledge of the Stuart monarchy and offers itself as the defender of monarchy in opposition to republi-canism. Perhaps most interesting of
all is an organisation called the ‘Circle of Gentlemen’, claiming to have been in existence since the ‘Good Old Cause’ was driven underground after Culloden in 1745 and secretly working for the defence of Scotland ever since. As such, they also offer a counterpoint to the hybrid identities created by the modern world, suggesting that the advent of multicultural society has produced a need ‘to hold onto old values and traditions’. Perhaps such or-ganisations provide historical focus for less articulate and conscious national-ist feelings that can otherwise appear in every context in every place from popular song, to the football terrace and, most recently, the ballot box.
Being a victor in history’s great battles is no guarantee of total success or of the survival of your version of history. History always has hidden stories to tell and it is also a hitherto hidden story just how far enthusiasts and professional historians have been prepared to go in resurrecting some of these. Defeated, marginal and forgot-ten figures hold a fascination for those who believe history is about truth. But such figures are also pressed into service in the contemporary world to shore up identities under threat or to promote them in a time of potentially advantageous change.
David Nash’s book, Christian Ideals in British
Culture: Stories of Belief in the Twentieth Century, is out now, published by Palgrave MacMillan.
Being a supposed victor in
history’s great battles is no
guarantee of the survival of
your version of history
AS THE DUST settled and libertarian rhetoric became increasingly muted, the newly created United States of America emerged as a republic whose lifeblood was her educated and selfless citizenry. Amid the promise and poten-tial of the young nation, the survival of slavery stood in stark contrast to the rhetoric promoting liberty and equality to all men.
Following the ratification of the American Constitution in 1789, a pleth-ora of legislation was enacted across the United States promoting slave illiteracy and curtailing slave mobility. With an increasing awareness of slave discontentment, slaveholders targeted what they perceived as contributing to that restlessness: instruction of reading and writing. Suspicious of slave gath-erings and paranoid that literacy could ‘spoil’ a slave, they recognised that learned slaves who freed themselves from the shackles of slaveholder- imposed ignorance would be unsuited to a life of perpetual servitude.
What if a slave understood the moral arguments against their enslave-ment – would they seek vengeance against their enslavers? Would a liter-ate slave transmit knowledge or inspire discontentment among the wider slave community for whom they held special status? And was it a coincidence that the leaders of well-known slave rebel- lions, such as Toussaint L’Ouverture, Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, were literate slaves?
These were men, women and children who defied the threat of whipping, branding and even death to learn to read and write. With the odds stacked against them and slaveholder rights to reclaim their property protected by legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, most escapes ended in failure.
How did literacy encourage
slave rebelliousness after
the American War of
Independence?
Runaway
Reading
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 5
HISTORYMATTERS
When faced with punishment, division of family, a new owner or poor working conditions, hundreds of slaves chose to run from their masters every year. Slave runaway advertisements in local newspapers were used by slaveholders to try to retrieve a runaway and, although rare, advertisements for slaves who could read and/or write reveal the liberating effects of literacy for slaves and the fears of many slaveholders being realised.
The case of Prophet illustrates this point. On first impression, Prophet was a typical Georgia runaway. He was a male slave aged between 25 and 30 and the property of John Ruppert, who had purchased him from Leonard Cecil. A discontented and rebellious character, he escaped. His owner valued him worthy of a $10 reward, which was advertised in the Savannah-based Georgia Gazette on October 18th, 1792.
‘Well known in and about’ Savannah’s bustling multiracial urban environment, his daily interaction with the city’s white and black population and access to newspapers and discourse was far from the popular image of the isolated slave toiling in the field as the sun set on a rural plantation. On the contrary, he was literate and learned. He was empowered. Ruppert concluded that it was now ‘very probable that he [Prophet] will pass for a free man, as he can both read and write’.
This was an explicit acknowledgment that being able to read and write provid-ed Prophet with the skills to learn more and to transform his identity. Adopting a new ‘free’ identity, Prophet could cast aside his slave status and manipulate his surroundings for the accomplishment of freedom, like other literate slaves who ‘endeavour[ed] to pass as free men’. Assimilated into society, he was free in his own mind. Bodily freedom was the final stage of transition from slave to free man. In an attempt to preserve his reputation, Ruppert could only attempt to discredit Prophet’s likely account of his enslavement, portraying him as a ‘very smooth tongued’ runaway who could
to slaveholder authority. Conforming to the ‘artful’ slave type, a term used by slaveholders pejoratively, Hercules had developed skills that made him difficult to control and was no longer the obe-dient servant his owners desired. They placed a bounty of $10 upon his head, wanted ‘dead or alive’.
‘Artfulness’ in a slave’s character was most often attested to a literate and learned slave and was linked to excessive knowledge and transforming their iden-tities. In most cases, it was used to char-acterise slaves who could read; those who had knowledge and imagination and could interpret and subsequently adapt to the world around them. They were slaves who had developed a sense of self and forged their own identity. Rarely was ‘artfulness’ used to describe runaways who could only write, which was linked to more practical qualities, such as the forging of passes.
A successful escape required a com-bination of astuteness, adaptability and practicality. It was imperative that the slave be inconspicuous, often reinvent-ing themselves durreinvent-ing escape attempts. Their slaves having escaped, slaveholders used the advertisements to downplay the consequences of their slaves’ literacy and learning, portraying themselves as still in control. Advertisers resorted to pejorative phrases and deliberate vague-ness in their description of the act of the fugitives. Terms such as ‘artful’, ‘pretends or endeavours to be free’ or ‘acquired a pass’ deliberately masked the reality that the slave had demonstrated empower-ment, skill and agency.
Having acquired basic reading and writing skills, literate scribes embarked on learning while simultaneously moving ever further away from the state of ignorance their slaveholders desperately tried to protect. Reading and learning allowed slaves to understand the immorality of their condition and many resolved to become free. These slaves had become free in their own minds and began articulating a free identity for themselves through reading and writing which could only be realised by escaping the slave system.
Shaun Wallace is an ESRC-funded PhD student
studying slavery in the American South at the University of Stirling. Freedom in thought: the poet Phyllis Wheatley with her autograph. Woodcut, 18th century.
‘tell a very plausible story’.
In a similar fashion, Isaiah Wright and Thomas Hamilton advertised for their slave Hercules in June 1793. Regarded as a ‘notorious offender’, the proof of which ‘he carried [by] the mark of a whip on his back’, Hercules was a 24-year-old African-American, or ‘country born’,
runaway. Denied instruction, the young slave had concealed his learning. He was able to read ‘remarkably well’, which his advertisers linked to him becoming ‘very artful and impertinent’, and they believed he would attempt to ‘change his name’. Name-changing was a common sign of slave empowerment and a challenge
A successful escape
required that a slave
have a combination
of astuteness,
adaptability and
practicality
HISTORYMATTERS
James Chetwood
A Noble Stone
Gathers No Moss
What names tell us about
Anglo-Saxon England.
ALFRED THE GREAT’s illegitimate grandson, King Athelstan, became known to posterity by the epithet ‘the Glorious’, which must only be a couple of rungs below his grandfather on the ladder of kingly sobriquets.While Athelstan’s glorious nickname was only applied posthumously, his name, like most Old English names, was a compound, combining two elements – words taken from the vocabulary of everyday language. The first element Æðel- meant ‘noble’, while the second element -stan meant ‘stone’. Athelstan was, in name at least, a ‘noble rock’.
Such names were not the reserve of royalty. In fact, this sort of name was common among people of all ranks of society across Anglo-Saxon England. While the grandson of a king might rightly have expected an illustrious life, living up to the promise of his noble names, the same could surely have not been said for the multitude of future cowherds and milkmaids across the land who were given names marking them out as noble beauties (Æðelflæd), wise protectors (Eadmund) or powerful wolves (Wulfweald). Perhaps being a dear friend (Leofwine) was a more real-istic aim for most parents.
While it is hard to tell exactly how important the meaning of name elem- ents were, it seems likely that people were aware, to some extent, that names carried some kind of meaning. Indeed, one of the most famous, or infamous, Anglo-Saxons is most often known to us today as Ethelred the Unready, the king who lost his kingdom to Cnut. However, the name Ethelred signified ‘noble counsel’. So, when his contem-poraries labelled him Æðelræd Unræd they were not calling him ‘unready’, but using the meaning of his name to mock his lack of good counsel. Similarly, when Archbishop Wulfstan entitled his homily to the English people ‘Sermon of the Wolf to the English’, he was clearly doing so in the knowledge that the first part
of his name did not just sound like, but signified, ‘wolf’. Surely it cannot be coin-cidence that ‘rich’, ‘strong’ and ‘beautiful’ were used in names, where ‘poor’, ‘weak’ and ‘ugly’ were not.
A feature of this naming system was flexibility. There was a finite number of elements, but they could be combined in a multitude of ways. This meant that, in essence, a name was created for, rather than given to, each person. So, while ele-ments could be repeated to emphasise parentage and family links, there was very little repetition of full names and it would be unlikely that any two people
within a community or family would have the same name.
However, this compound naming system was not universal and unch- anging throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. There was always significant minority of simple names such as Tutta, Babba and Ælle. And Old English names rubbed shoulders with names of British and Scandinavian origin. Indeed, one of the most celebrated early Anglo-Saxon
James Chetwood is a Wolfson Postgraduate
Scholar at the University of Sheffield, studying medieval English naming.
kings, Cerdic, bore a name that is thought to be a form of the British Caradoc. In the century before the Con-quest, Scandinavian names had become so common in some areas that, not only had names such as Toki and Gyða been incorporated into the naming stock, but hybrid names had developed, creating truly Anglo-Scandinavian names, like Ælfcytel (combining Old English Ælf-, ‘elf’, and Old Norse -kettill, ‘cauldron’). Scan-dinavian patronymic suffixes were even added to perfectly Old English names to mark parenthood – at least in the case of Ælfric Wihtgarsson, and his son Wihgtar Ælfricsson. And we do not think it in the least bit strange that the last ‘Anglo-Saxon’ king of England, Harold, bore a Scandinavian name, Haraldr.
It was not only outside influence that had an impact on the English naming system. Later Anglo-Saxon society evolved and the naming system evolved with it. New name elements were introduced, such as God-, meaning ‘good’ or ‘god’, -cild, meaning ‘child’ and -sunu, meaning ‘son’, perhaps indicating a greater emphasis on religion and parentage than on glory in battle. Name elements were shortened and compound names contracted: Ælfsige became Alsi, Æðelgar became Algar and Leofwine became Lefwin. We also increasingly see names being copied and passed down in their entirety, losing some of their compound nature. This went hand in hand with an increase in popularity of a small number of names, as people appear to have become less interested in the individuality of a name and perhaps more concerned in high-lighting similarities with their friends, neighbours and notable people.
With the Norman Conquest looming large on the horizon, even more changes were to come in the English naming system. What we can say is that ‘Anglo- Saxon’ personal naming was never one static system, disconnected from the world around it. It was an an ever- evolving reflection of society, respond-ing to changes in language and culture caused as much by developments in the way English people lived their everyday lives as by foreign invasion.
It cannot be coincidence that ‘rich’,
‘strong’ and ‘beautiful’ were used
in names, where ‘poor’, ‘weak’ and
‘ugly’ were not
‘Eðelred rex’:
silver pennies bearing Ethelred the Unready’s name and portrait, 10th century.
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 7
HISTORYMATTERS
A Legacy and
a Love Story
THE FIRE AT The Glasgow School of Art in May 2014 destroyed the magnificent library, devastating dev-otees of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, particularly Glaswegians, who look on him as the ‘Father of Glasgow’. It did, however, introduce his work to a wider community, many of whom thought it was limited to jewellery and designs destined to appear on carrier bags and tea towels. In fact he did not make jewellery, except one piece, which he designed for his wife, Margaret.
What is perhaps less well known is the enduring love match of Charles and his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. They met as students at the old Glasgow School of Art in 1883. Little did they know that Charles would one day be the architect of the new Glasgow School of Art.
He was employed by the archi-tectural practice of Honeyman and Keppie which, in 1897, won a compet- ition with his design for the new Glasgow School of Art. Because he was not a partner in the firm, Honey-man and Keppie took the glory. But by then Mackintosh was already making a name for himself elsewhere.
The couple were married in 1900. Their home, which is now replicated at the Hunterian Gallery in Glasgow, was both beautiful and functional. Their collaboration in the design of the famous Willow Tea Rooms, commis-sioned by a Miss Cranston, was a work of art in itself. Meticulous attention to detail was apparent, right down to the teaspoons, china and the attire of the staff. During those heady days commissions kept them occupied and in addition to the tea rooms Mackin-tosh designed Hill House for publisher Walter Blackie. Margaret was well known for her fabric designs and paintings. By then Mackintosh had
Behind the beautiful work
of the ‘Father of Glasgow’
lay a deep and lasting love.
and there was no doubt of their endur-ing love for each other. One of his letters to her states: ‘You must remember that in all of my architectural efforts you have been the half if not three quarters of them.’
In 1927 Margaret had to return to London for six weeks for medical treatment, leaving Mackintosh alone and lonely in France. Mackintosh, who was mildly dyslexic, wrote almost daily to her, calling the letters his Chronycle, or Chronacle. The letters were never intend-ed for publication but, after their privacy was breached and in order to preserve their authenticity, they were published in their entirety in 2001. Margaret’s replies were never discovered.
From these letters we have a moving insight into the enduring love between Margaret and Charles. He tells her he misses his ‘chum’ and his ‘lover’ and his concern about her health shows that he is worried as well as lonely without her. This Chronycle seems to be full of fleeting impressions and disconnected sentences but anyone who can read their meaning would find only three words – I love you.
Money was still a problem and he writes on the thinnest paper he can find so that the postage will not be so great, injecting humour into the messages: Writing lightly so that the weight of the lead in the pencil will not cause extra postage. Tongue cancer forced him to return to London and he died in 1928, a disap-pointed and impoverished man whose early promise had not been fulfilled, partly due to the Great War and the lack of commissions during that period. Margaret died five years later and their estate was valued at £88.16s 2d. It is ironic that in 2002 the kimono-style writing desk that he designed was sold at Christie’s for £900,000 and in 2008 Margaret’s painting, The Red Rose and the White Rose, sold at auction for a sum in excess of £1,700,000.
In December 2009 a plaque was erected in Chelsea to celebrate the London years of Charles Rennie Mack-intosh. His work can be seen at venues across Glasgow and beyond.
Barbara Butcher
Barbara Butcher is the author of The Other Canal
(Troubadour, 2011).
won prizes in Italy and Vienna, where he met Gustav Klimt and other artists.
This talented couple seemed to have the world at their feet but unfortunately their work was better known on the Continent than in Britain and by 1914 commissions had dried up and they moved from Glasgow to Walberswick in Suffolk. It was there that Mackintosh executed exquisite botanical water- colours. This was during the First World War and the local folk mistrusted the man with the strange accent who received mail from Vienna. Mackin-tosh enjoyed walking along the sea front at night carrying a lantern. The locals thought he was signalling to the German fleet and reported him. He was arrested and imprisoned while his wife was away and it was only on her return that she was able to convince the authorities of their mistake.
By 1923 they were seriously impov-erished and decided to leave England to settle in France. Mackintosh’s water- colours during this time show both his love of nature and his architectural perspective. During all their trials and tribulations Margaret was by his side
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, c.1893. Below: the interior of the Glasgow School of Art before the fire.
ONE OF archaeology’s most exciting discoveries was made by four French teenagers and possibly a dog. Versions of the story differ in detail, but Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel and Simon Coencas came across a hole in the ground in woods near the village of Montignac in the Dordogne region of south-west France. Whether they had a dog called Robot with them and it chased a rabbit into the hole is uncertain. Another version has Ravidat finding the hole on September 8th and taking the other three back with him on the 12th.
There was a local story about a secret tunnel that led to buried treasure and the boys thought this might be it. After dropping stones into the hole to get an idea of how deep it was, one by one they went cautiously down into what proved to be a narrow shaft. It led down 15 metres (nearly 50ft) to a cave whose walls were covered with astonishing paintings. Marsal said later that going down the shaft was terrifying, but the paintings were ‘a cavalcade of animals larger than life’ that ‘seemed to be moving’. The boys were worried about getting back up again, but they managed it using their elbows and knees. Tremen-dously excited, they promised each other to keep their discovery a secret and explored it again the next day. After that they decided to show it to friends for a tiny admission fee.
The news quickly spread and so many people came to see the cave that the boys consulted their schoolmaster, Leon Laval, who was a member of the local prehistory society. He suspected it was a ruse to trap him in the hole, but when he went cautiously down and saw the paintings he immediately felt sure they were prehistoric and insisted that no
which had showed that, unlike other animals, the first human beings believed in religion, magic and art. They buried their dead formally with equipment for another life and they may have believed in a great mother goddess, the source of all life. They seem to have had a deep sense of the numinous, of something outside human beings that is powerful, mysterious and uncanny.
The paintings convey this. Dated to about 15,000 bc, though they may have been created over a longer period than formerly realised, they show bulls of the now extinct aurochs species, oxen, horses and stags as well as arrows and traps. Early humans were hunters and one of the purposes of the paintings may have been to bring about success-ful hunting in real life. There is a figure of a man with a bird’s head, perhaps a shaman, who carried out rituals in the cave. Recent theories link some of the paintings with constellations in the sky, including the Pleiades and Taurus, or connect them with ritual dancing, which can induce trances and cause visions.
The thousands of visitors to Lascaux did not mean to harm the paintings, but they did, simply by breathing on them. The occasional visitor fainted because the atmosphere was so thick. Condensation formed on the walls and ceilings, moisture ran down the paint-ings and lichens and mould developed. High-powered lighting added to the damage and the paintings began to fade. Lascaux was closed to the public in 1963 by the French minister of culture, André Malraux, and only experts were allowed in. A replica of the site was built close by for the public in 1983 and draws 300,000 visitors a year. Efforts to halt the damage to the original paintings are continuing. In 2009 the French ministry of culture brought close to 300 experts from many different countries together in Paris to consider ways to halt the deterioration. Their recommendations were published in 2011, but misgivings about the site have not been allayed.
Months
Past
SEPTEMBER
By Richard Cavendish
SEPTEMBER 12th 1940The Lascaux
cave paintings
discovered
Brief opening: a tourist poster for the caves, 1955.one must be allowed to touch them and they must be guarded against vandalism. The youngest of the boys, 14-year-old Marsal, persuaded his parents to let him pitch a tent near the entrance to keep guard and show visitors round. It was the start of a commitment to the paint-ings which lasted to his death in 1989.
Word of the discovery reached the Abbé Breuil, an eminent prehistorian, who vouched for the paintings’ authen- ticity. The sensational news spread through Europe and the rest of the world and in 1948 the family that owned the land organised daily tours that even-tually brought thousands of visitors every year to see for themselves.
There were more paintings in galleries that led off the main cave and they confirmed previous discoveries,
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 9
JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART, later known as the Old Pretender, was born in St James’s Palace, London in 1688. His father, James II of England and VII of Scots, was privately Roman Catholic and his mother, Mary of Modena, openly so. The next British king would clearly be raised a Catholic and a story spread among Protestants that the real baby was stillborn and another infant had been smuggled into the queen’s bed in a warming- pan. It was not a promising start.
A Protestant rebellion drove James into exile in France by the end of the year. Mary of Modena had already taken the baby there. Courtesy of Louis XIV, they lived at the Chateau de St-Germain-en-Laye while Britain was ruled by William of Orange and then by James II’s Protestant daugh-ter Anne from 1701. James II died that
year and young James, now 13, was claimed to be his rightful successor as James III and VIII. In 1708, with a French fleet, he tried to invade Scotland, but was driven away by English warships. When Anne died in 1714 Catholic claimants were barred. James knew he might succeed her if he turned Protestant, but he spurned the idea and a German Protestant, the first of the Hanoverian dynasty, was crowned as George I.
John Erskine, Earl of Mar, now took a hand. A Scottish peer, he lived in London and was secretary of state
for Scotland. Although he assured George of his loyalty he was deprived of his post. In August 1715 he got away to Scotland, allegedly disguised as a workman. Lowland Scotland was staunchly Protestant, but the situ-ation was different in the Highlands and Mar convinced a number of clan chiefs that Scotland faced enslave-ment by the English, if it did not act. At a gathering at Braemar, west of Aberdeen, he proclaimed James VIII king of Scotland, England, Ireland and France and raised the Stuart banner. Mar led a large army, but he was a useless general. He failed to defeat government forces in battle and a Jac-obite invasion of England also failed. James Stuart arrived in Scotland in December, but he was timid, indecis- ive and no leader. Mar and James scuttled off to France in February 1716, leaving their followers in the lurch. Mar accepted a bribe from George I’s government (reportedly £3,500 a year, over £1 million today) and stayed quiet until his death in 1732. Rescued by successive popes, James Stuart lived on in palatial ineffectuality in Rome until he died aged 77 in 1766.
SEPTEMBER 28th 1865 SEPTEMBER 6th 1715
The Jacobite
standard raised
at Braemar
Britain’s first
female doctor
its rules to keep women out. In 1866 Elizabeth opened the St Mary’s Dispensary for Women and Children in the Marylebone area of London, a hospital solely for women, staffed solely by women, which drew crowds of poor patients. In 1870 she ob-tained the University of Paris’s first ever MD degree for a woman and in 1872 her Marylebone dispensary became the New Hospital for Women. In 1871, aged 34, Elizabeth married James George Skelton Anderson, head of a large shipping firm, who supported her belief in independ-ence for married women. The barriers were giving way and in 1874 she helped to found the London School of Medicine for Women, where she taught for years.
Elizabeth also supported the suf-fragettes. In 1902 she and her husband retired to Aldeburgh, where she became mayor in 1908, the first woman mayor in Britain. When she died there in 1917 aged 81 her London hospital was renamed after her in her honour.
ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON was described in her time as a woman of indomitable will who did not suffer fools gladly. Her father was a prosperous businessman in Aldeburgh in Suffolk, who believed that girls should have as good an education as boys and she was educated at home with some teenage years at a boarding school for girls.
When Elizabeth decided she wanted to be a doctor, her father was support-ive but her mother was horrified. Most doctors and surgeons did not want a woman joining their ranks. Nor did medical colleges and her applications to teaching hospitals and universities were turned down. Sneaking in as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital in London failed to work and she hit on becoming a
licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, which though less prestigious than an MD, or doctorate of medicine, would entitle her to be a practising physician. The Society shrank back in alarm, but her father threatened to sue it and she passed the exams in 1865. It then revised
Highland fling: the Earl of Mar with the Stuart standard, 20th-century illustration. Medical pioneer: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, c.1888.
SLAVERY
The extent to which Britons were involved in slave-ownership has been
laid bare by a project based at University College London. One of its
researchers, Katie Donington, shows how one family profited.
T
HE LEGACIES OF British Slave-ownership projecthas been based at University College London since 2009. The project has digitised the records of the Slave Compensation Commission. The work highlighted the little-known economic process of compensation that accompanied the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean, the Cape of Good Hope (both 1834) and Mauritius (1835). As part of the measures to end slavery the government paid slave-owners £20 million in compensation. This act created a bureaucratic record of everyone who claimed property in people at the moment of abolition. Working with these records, the project has built up a biographical database of the recipients in order to try to measure their impact on the formation of Victorian
A society built
on
SLAVERY
Britain. Multiple research strands were identified – cultural, political, commercial, imperial, physical and historical – so that the project could examine the different spheres of influence that slave-based wealth infiltrated.
The database offers a unique snapshot of who the slave- owners were at the ending of slavery. There were approx-imately 46,000 claimants, although not all of them were successful in gaining compensation. Of the £20 million paid out, nearly half of the money stayed in Britain. Unsurpris-ingly, some of the funds went to wealthy absentees, but the flow of money also highlights the importance of another class of compensation recipient: the British merchant. This merchant class was a vitally important cog in the machin-ery of transatlantic slavmachin-ery and yet little is known about
The Slave Trade,
an engraving by J.R. Smith, late 18th century.
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 11
it. When it comes to the public memory of slavery, these money men have attracted hardly any scrutiny. Barry Un-sworth detailed the operations of the West India counting house in his 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. Describing the maps and ledgers and the markings in tidy columns, he remarked on the ways in which these careful dashes and figures represented the ‘violence of abstraction’. Far away from the horror of plantation life, slavery’s human face was subject to a process of geographical and psychological distancing. The suffering of enslaved men, women and children was converted into hogsheads of sugar, puncheons of rum and barrels of sticky molasses. Mercantile wealth derived from the profits of the plantation was one important way that slavery returned home to Britain.
AMONG THE thousands of entries in the database it is possible to lose sight of the human stories that underpin the records. In attempting to understand a history of the magnitude of transatlantic slavery it is sometimes useful to approach it through the individual. George Hibbert was born in 1757 to a Manchester family that had made its money as cotton manufacturers. The family supplied finished cotton goods that were then shipped from Liverpool and used to trade for enslaved people in West Africa. George’s father’s generation had become increasingly involved with the slavery business and in 1734 his uncle Thomas had left for Jamaica where he settled, making a living as a slave factor. Buying enslaved people directly from the ship and selling them on to his plantocratic clients, Thomas made a reputation for himself as ‘the most eminent Guinea factor in Kingston’. During the 1760s the family’s concerns in Jamaica expanded; they became involved in credit finance and bought sugar plantations and pens. The business was run by a close-knit network of kith and kin, a feature that was common to the most successful of the transatlantic merchant houses.
In the late 1760s George’s eldest brother Thomas returned from Jamaica, where he had learned his busi-ness from his uncle. Thomas set up a commercial house in London from which he and his partners acted as sugar merchants and plantation suppliers, as well as providing credit to their associates in the colony. The Hibberts counted some of the wealthiest men in Jamaica as their business correspondents, including the planters Simon Taylor, John Tharp and Nathaniel Phillips. George joined his brother’s
In attempting to
understand a history
of the magnitude
of transatlantic
slavery it is useful to
approach it through
the individual
George Hibbert by Thomas Lawrence, 1811.SLAVERY
A West India Sportsman, published by William Holland, 1807.firm in 1780 and quickly rose to become its senior partner. While four of his brothers served their time in Jamaica, attending to their uncle Thomas’ slave trading empire, George himself never visited the island. Instead he became a leading member of the London West India interest. He was a regular attendee and sometimes chairman of the Society of West India Planters and Merchants. He purchased the seat for the rotten borough of Seaford, in Sussex, and served as an MP between 1806 and 1812. He spoke at length in defence of the slave trade during the parliamentary debates in 1807. Eventually he achieved his lifelong ambition and was appointed Agent for Jamaica in 1812, a position he kept for nearly 20 years, only relinquishing the post when old age and infirmity forced him to retire from public life.
The extent of the Hibbert family’s involvement in slavery is evident from the sum they received in compens- ation. Twelve family members received jointly the total of approximately £103,000. As the head of the family counting house, George received the largest single sum: £63,000. The Hibberts made claims as trustees, owners-in-fee, mortgag- ees, judgement creditors, devisees in trust and executors.
Their ownership of enslaved people was based both on plantation ownership and on the complex system of credit relationships that characterised the West India trade. It shows how long the campaign for compensation took and demonstrates Hibbert’s vital role in the negotiations. George himself had supported the principle of compensa-tion from as early as 1790 when he gave evidence to the select committee tasked with examining the slave trade. He consistently argued throughout his career that investment in the slave economy was legitimate and that respectable people would be ruined without payment for their loss of ‘property’. As late as 1833, just four years before his death, he wrote to The Times newspaper to make his case.
Although Hibbert was an active member of the pro- slavery lobby in London, in order to consider the ways in which the wealth generated through the slavery business infiltrated the British economy, the following account focuses on the private world he inhabited. George Hibbert’s domestic life provides an opportunity to examine the rela-tionship between the profits of slavery and the culture of conspicuous consumption in Britain.
T
HE ASSOCIATION between Clapham, in the south-west of London, and abolitionism – particu-larly the Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, a group of social reformers who included William Wilber-force – has created a particular historical narrative and identity for the area. Many of the buildings in which the abolitionists lived, worshipped and worked proclaim their inheritance proudly with plaques which draw the casual passer-by’s attention to this history. English Heritage BlueThe extent of the Hibbert
family’s involvement in
slavery is evident from
the sum they received in
compensation
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 13
her son, Samuel Junior, who was also a member of the Hib-berts’ London West India merchant house. By 1812 George’s brother William, a partner in the family firm, who had spent time working for their uncle in Jamaica, had also moved into the area, on the South Side of the Common.
The Hibberts were not the only residents on the Common who had links to the slavery business, as a map of 1800 shows. Instantly recognisable on the map is the Wilberforce residence and living next door to it was the Wedderburn family. The Wedderburns, like the Hibberts, were a slave-owning family with interests in Jamaica, who had also set up a London West India mercantile partnership. A tutor of the young James Webster Wedderburn – John Campbell the future Lord Chancellor – described how he was bored to the point of resigning his post by the incessant talk of the West Indies within the household.
I
N EXPLAINING THE PRESENCE of slave-owning families on the Common it is important to recognise the character of the area as it stood during the period; not solely as an enclave for abolitionists but as a popular destination for London’s successful merchants and bankers, who sought to establish themselves in suburban villas on the outskirts ofthe capital. Away from the threatening and uncontrollable boisterousness of the capital, but close enough to make it accessible, Clapham provided a happy medium, combining the con-spicuous trappings of gentility with the everyday demands of a working merchant. Its draw for respectable families was summed up by the novel-ist E.M. Forster, whose great-aunt was Marianne Thornton, daughter of the abolitionist Henry Thornton. Forster wrote that:
The Clapham area had become civilised, there was no danger from highwaymen, the merchants and politicians who were beginning to settle there could leave their families in safety when they drove the four or five miles to Westminster or to the City.
That sense of security came not only in the form of physical safety but also from the moral and spiritual character of its middle-class residents.
Before their move to Clapham, George and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of Phillip Fonnereau, an MP and director of the Bank of England, had lived on Broad Street in the City. The residence was a short walk away from the Hibbert family counting house on Mincing Lane; the noise, smells and poverty of the fellow residents of the nearby courts meant the area was hardly the place for an aspiring gentleman to keep a wife or raise children. George had grown up in Manchester, where his parents lived in a dwelling house with warehouse Plaques and their forerunners, the London County Council
plaques, can be found adorning the walls of Holy Trinity Church, where the Saints worshipped, at the Pavement, which was the home of Zachary Macaulay, and at Broom-wood Road, where William Wilberforce was based.
In 2007 Britain marked the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Abolition was deemed a public history priority and numerous activities were arranged around the Clapham area. While critics of the commemorations dubbed it ‘Wilberfest’, 2007 arguably gave historians, museums, libraries, archives, galleries and community groups the time, space and, importantly, the funding to investigate their links with the history of the slave trade and its abolition. This allowed people to recover so-called ‘hidden’ histories of their local area. The links that were turned up as a result were striking in their diversity: a reminder that the local and the global were deeply enmeshed in a period when com-mercial and imperial endeavours were creating a far more interconnected world than had existed previously.
Situated in the abolitionist heartland for over 20 years following their arrival in 1793, George Hibbert’s family lived at Clapham Common Northside. George was joined in Clapham in 1800 by his brother Samuel’s widow, Mary, and
‘Perambulation of Clapham Common’, 1800, showing family residences.
SLAVERY
space adjacent to the property. His mother and the children would have been exposed to his father’s thriving business but things would be very different for his wife and young family: a reflection of the rise during the period of the notion of separate spheres. After nearly ten years of mar-riage, with six children and their seventh expected, George and Elizabeth left the City.
By this time George had attained a level of seniority within both the counting house and the West India interest and a suburban villa reflected his increased status within London’s commercial society. A detailed inventory of the house and land can be found in the 1820 advertisement for its sale. The profits from George’s lucrative engagement with the slave economy had clearly paid off; the advert de-scribed the house as a ‘capacious’ and ‘commodious’ family abode. It boasted a 170ft approach to the front as well as ‘another elevated Frontage in a most beautiful situation’ to the rear of the property, double coach houses and stabling for four horses, a gardener’s cottage, six servants’ rooms and a servants’ hall, nine family bedrooms, 12 further rooms for the family’s use and an extensive 500ft garden that
stretched down to Wandsworth Road. The family rooms give a glimpse into the comfortable existence of the young Hibbert family. The three bedchambers on the second storey were accessed via a grand double staircase on the first floor. As the family rose in the morning to prepare for the day they had the use of three dressing rooms. Their early hours might have been passed in ‘a cheerful Morning Room’.
G
EORGE WAS AN avid collector of books and he reached a degree of fame for his prized posses-sions. His collection included works printed by Aldus, a collection of books printed on vellum, a copy of the Gutenberg Bible and contemporary authors, as well as a large number of texts on the West Indies and slavery. An indication of the size and value of George’s collection can be taken from an auction of his books which took place in 1829: he sold 20,000 volumes over 27 days raising £21,753, which he then invested in remodelling his country estate. George was by no means an uninformed fashionable consumer; his library was both a home for his books and place in which he could work. His reputationBelow: Wiliam Wilberforce, by Thomas Lawrence, 1828. Right: Holy Trinity Church, Clapham.
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 15
specially commissioned frieze by Henry Howard, The Fable of
Cupid and Psyche. Classical civilisation with its vast empire
and practice of slave-holding appealed to George; he used examples from it to bolster his arguments during the slave trade debates.
Guests of the Hibberts would have been encouraged to take advantage of his extensive gardens. George was a serious amateur botanist and he spared no expense in pursu-ing his passion. The buildpursu-ing of a hothouse was testament to his horticultural ambitions. The effect was captured vividly by a friend, Dibdin:
Must I tell how the Alpine or Chinese roses, how the exotics from America or Japan have given place to the delicious performances – to flowers whose bloom is perennial – from the garden plots of Spira, Jenson and Zarotus? Shall I lead you in imagination to the Morocco (not azalea) bowers, and Russia (not orange tree) vistos, of Honorio?
George’s activities as a merchant and his involvement with shipping enabled him to collect specimens from all corners of the globe. He employed professional horticultur-ists, one of whom, James McFayden, went on to become Jamaica’s island botanist. George’s botanical knowledge and connections gave him the authority needed to be taken seriously in new scientific ventures affecting colonisation and trade; the Colonial Secretary Robert Wilmot Horton sought his advice on introducing the silk worm to Jamaica.
T
HE GARDEN reflected the needsand ambitions of its owner; it was paid for and stocked by commercial endeavour but, while it might have aspirations towards the rural idyll, it was shaped by the demands of urban fashion. George never visited the further reaches of Empire, preferring instead to remain in Europe, but he did stock his garden full of the flora and fauna of the imperial world, creating his own botanical microcosm of the Empire in his hothouse in Clapham.
George’s villa was situated in a prime location close to Holy Trinity Church, where both the Hibberts and the Saints worshipped. It was under the ministry of Henry Venn, an ardent Evangelical and founding member of the Clapham Sect, whose son John went on to become rector in 1797; he was also involved in the abolition movement. Holy Trinity constituted a sacred space for the Saints; it was their spiritual home, a place in which their beliefs were formed and enacted. While there was no bar to the Hibberts using the church as a place of worship, one must wonder how the abolitionists felt about the presence of someone who was so publicly opposed to one of their most treasured principles.
The social importance of church life can be read in a series of disputes which broke out between George and a Mr Dobree over who was the rightful claimant of a highly desirable pew; while the trustees wished to allocate the seats to George’s rival, he was able to prove his claim and the pew was duly awarded to him along with a further five seats at the back for his servants. The almost comical round of musical chairs played by the great and good of for erudition created an alternative identity to that of
slave-owner and merchant, authorising his claims, or so he might have imagined, to the cultural superiority which le-gitimised his ownership of ‘lesser’ human beings. The house then operated as familial, social and business space. In his diary George’s brother Robert made multiple references to business conversations which took place at the family home. For instance in 1801, he wrote ‘Thursday we go to Clapham and dine with George, the new co-partnership canvassed’.
The Hibberts held large dinner parties, dancing and theatrical performances. George’s brother Robert wrote in his diary about balls he attended at the home in Clapham and George’s commonplace book was filled with plays he had written for the family to perform in the house. The ‘ele-gantly fitted up drawing room’, adorned with ‘costly marble chimney-pieces’, was without doubt the centrepiece of the Hibberts’ abode. The Reverend Thomas Dibdin described the room and house in his Bibliographical Decameron, as a ‘Palace of Pleasure’, gushing ‘Oh the luxury of that abode! The felicities which his taste and his well-replenished purse impart!’ George was also an enthusiastic patron of art. His cosmopolitan taste included examples of the Old Masters, Italian, Dutch and Flemish prints and contemporary British artists. The drawing room at Clapham was dominated by a
Top: a plaque on Holy Trinity in honour of Wilberforce, who worshipped there. Above: the Hibbert almshouse, Clapham, opened in 1859.
SLAVERY
Clockwise from right: the plant Hibbertia, named after George Hibbert; Murillo’s The Marriage Feast at
Cana, c.1665-75, which belonged to him; a catalogue
SEPTEMBER 2015 HISTORY TODAY 17 Katie Donington is a Research Associate with the Antislavery Usable Past
project at the University of Nottingham.
FURTHER READING
Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave- ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge, 2010).
Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington, Rachel Lang, Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2015).
Clapham Common’s Holy Trinity Church is indicative of the importance of the family’s visibility in the religious life of the community.
Living a lifestyle which shadowed the Saints enabled George to demonstrate to the abolitionists the ways in which respectable middle-class families were supported and maintained by an engagement with the slave economy. Cultivating a genteel identity for himself was politically useful. George noted in his diary in 1816 that: ‘Mr. Wilber-force came to me in the House of Commons the other day purposely as he said to thank me for being the only one of his opponents who had treated him like a Gentleman.’
T
ANGIBLE TRACES OF THE HIBBERTS can stillbe found in Clapham: George’s first son, also George, and his brother, William are buried in the churchyard at St Paul’s in Rectory Grove. They share the graveyard with a number of African children. In 1799 Zachary Macaulay had brought the children with him when he returned home after serving as the governor of Sierra Leone. In the years following their arrival most of the children died. They were interred in the same churchyard as George’s son and brother. While the Hibberts’ grave has lasted intact for over 200 years, nothing has survived to name, mark or commemorate the African children.
Further down from St Paul’s, on Wandsworth Road, is the still operational Hibbert Almshouse. Erected by the daughters of William Hibbert, George’s brother, the building carries an inscription to the memory of their father, creating a lasting reputation for William as a benevolent philanthro-pist divorced from his involvement with slavery.
The presence of the Hibberts in Clapham acts as a reminder that slave-based wealth was not simply generated and spent in the local areas we now associate most closely with the slavery business. As the work of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project has demonstrated, the
profits of slavery infiltrated diverse geographic locations and a range of sectors of the British economy including, but by no means limited to, the cultural sphere. The house in Clapham was filled with all the trappings of mercantile gentility: luxurious furnishings, paintings and exquisite objects, a library and a garden renowned for its rare blooms. Abstracted in the elegance of the polite mercantile home, the profits from slavery were domesticated and remade as the signifiers of cultural connoisseurship, taste and status.
The traces of the history of slave-ownership can be found throughout Britain. The weight of abolitionist memory might have served to obscure that presence but it is only one facet of the story of Britain’s involvement with slavery. Clapham’s ‘hidden history’ mirrors a wider national urge to remember the celebrated role Britain played in emanci-pation, while simultaneously forgetting an uncomfortable history of domestic participation. In order to move beyond telling stories that suppress the memory of slave-ownership, as well as remembering the Clapham Saints we must also recognise the sinners. It is only through an articulation of both sides of the history that Britain can come to terms with its role as both enslaver and abolitionist.
Monument of the late Thos. Hibbert Esq, in Jamaica, by
James Hakewill, 1825.
ISLAM
The Nazis believed that Islamic forces would prove
crucial wartime allies. But, as David Motadel
shows, the Muslim world was unwilling to be
swayed by the Third Reich’s advances.
Muslims
in Hitler’s
War
T
UNIS, DECEMBER 19TH, 1942. It was the day of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice. The retreat of Rommel’s army had turned the city into a massive military camp. In the late afternoon, a German motorcade of four large cars drove at a slow, solemn pace along Tunis’ main road, the Avenue de Paris, leaving the capital in the direction of the coastal town of Hamman Lif. The convoy contained Colonel General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commander of the Wehrmacht in Tunisia, Rudolf Rahn, Hitler’s consul in Tunis and the Reich’s highest civil representative in North Africa, and some other high-rank-ing Germans. They were to visit the Bey of Tunis, Muham-mad VII al-Munsif, who had remained the nominal ruler of Tunisia, to offer him their good wishes for the sacred holiday and to show their respect for Islam. In front of the Winter Palace of Hamman Lif, hundreds of cheering people saluted the convoy; the Tunisian guard extended them an honorary welcome. In the conversations with the monarch, the Germans promised that the next Eid al-Adha, or Eidal-Kabir as it is known in Tunisia, would take place in a time
of peace and that the Wehrmacht was doing everything it could to keep the war away from the Muslim population. More important than the consultations, though, was the Germans’ public show of respect for Islam. Back in his Tunis headquarters, Rahn enthusiastically cabled Berlin, urging it to make full propagandistic use of the ‘solemn reception’ at the ‘Eid al-Kabir celebration’. In the following days, Nazi propaganda spread the news across North Africa, portraying the Third Reich as the protector of Islam.
German officers and local leaders in Cyrenaica, Libya, September, 1942.
20 HISTORY TODAY SEPTEMBER 2015
ISLAM
At the height of the Second World War, in 1941-42, as Hitler’s troops marched into Muslim-populated territories in North Africa, the Balkans, Crimea and the Caucasus and approached the Middle East and Central Asia, officials in Berlin began to see Islam as politically significant. In the following years, they made significant attempts to promote an alliance with the ‘Muslim world’ against their alleged common enemies: the British Empire, the Soviet Union, America and Jews.
Yet the reason for the Third Reich’s engagement with Islam was not only that Muslim-populated regions had become part of the warzones but also, more importantly, because at the same time, Germany’s military situation had deteriorated. In the Soviet Union, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg strategy had failed. As the Wehrmacht came under pres-sure, Berlin began to seek broader war coalitions, thereby demonstrating remarkable pragmatism. The courtship of Muslims was to pacify the occupied Muslim-populated territories and to mobilise the faithful to fight on the side of Hitler’s armies.
German officials had increasingly engaged with Islam since the late 19th century, when the kaiser ruled over sub-stantial Muslim populations in his colonies of Togo, Cam-eroon and German East Africa. Here, the Germans sought to employ religion as a tool of control. Sharia courts were recognised, Islamic endowments left untouched, madrasas kept open and religious holidays acknowledged. Colonial officials ruled through Islamic intermediaries who, in return, gave the colonial state legitimacy. In Berlin, Islam was moreover considered to offer an opportunity for exploitation in the context of Wilhelmine Weltpolitik. This became most obvious during the Middle Eastern tour of Wilhelm II in 1898 and in his dramatic speech, given after visiting the tomb of Saladin in Damascus, in which he declared himself a ‘friend’ of the world’s ‘300 million Mohammedans’ and, ultimately, in Berlin’s efforts to mobilise Muslims living in the British, French and Russian
empires during the First World War. Although all attempts to spread jihad in 1914 had failed, German strategists main-tained a strong interest in the geopolitics of Islam.
With the outbreak of the Second World War and the involvement of German troops in Muslim-populated regions, officials in Berlin began again to consider the strategic role of the Islamic world. A systematic instru-mentalisation of Islam was first proposed in late 1941 in a memorandum by the diplomat Eberhard von Stohrer, Hitler’s former ambassador in Cairo. Stohrer suggested that there should be ‘an extensive Islam program’, which would include a statement about ‘the general attitude of the Third
Top: Muslim policemen in the German colony of Cameroon, 1891. Left: a parade at the end of Ramadan, Uraza Bairam, in Kislovodsk, October 11th, 1942. The cover of Der Islam, 1941.
discrimination in the 1930s, following diplomatic interven-tions from the governments in Tehran, Ankara and Cairo. During the war the Germans showed similar pragmatism when encountering Muslims from the Balkans and the Turkic minorities of the Soviet Union. Muslims, it was clear to every German officer from the Sahara to the Caucasus, were to be treated as allies.
O
N THE GROUND in North Africa, in contact with the coastal populations, army officials tried to avoid frictions. As early as 1941, the Wehrmacht distributed the handbook Der Islam to train the troops in correct behaviour towards Muslims. In the Libyan and Egyptian desert, German authorities courted religious dignitaries, most importantly the shaykhs of the influential Sufi orders. The problem was that the most powerful reli-gious force in the Cyrenaican warzone, the Islamic Sanusi order, was the spearhead of the anti-colonial resistance against Italian rule and fought alongside Montgomery’s army against the Axis. In any case, Berlin’s promises to lib-erate the Muslims and protect Islam stood in sharp contrast to the violence and destruction that the war had brought to North Africa and the Germans ultimately failed to incite a major Muslim pro-Axis movement in the region.On the Eastern Front the situation was very different. The Muslims of Crimea and the North Caucasus had con-fronted the central state ever since the tsarist annexation in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Bolshevist takeover had worsened the situation. Under Stalin, the Muslim areas suffered unprecedented political and religious persecution. Islamic literature was censored, sharia law banned and the property of the Islamic communities expropriated. Party cadres took over mosques, painted Soviet slogans on their walls, hoisted red flags on their minarets and chased pigs through their sacred halls. Still, Islam continued to play a crucial role in shaping social and political life. After the invasion of the Caucasus and Crimea, German military authorities, eager to find local collaborators to stabilise the volatile rear areas, did not miss the opportunity to present themselves as the liberators of Islam. General Ewald von Kleist, commander of Army Group A, which occupied the Caucasus, urged his officers to respect the Muslims and to be aware of the pan-Islamic implications of the Wehr-macht’s actions: ‘Among all of the German Army Groups, Army Group A has advanced the furthest. We stand at the gates to the Islamic world. What we do, and how we behave here will radiate deep into Iraq, to India, as far as to the borders of China. We must constantly be aware of the long-range effect of our actions and inactions.’ Similar orders were issued by General Erich von Manstein in Crimea. In his infamous order of November 20th, 1941, which demanded that ‘the Jewish-Bolshevist system be exterminated once and for all’ and which became one of the key documents used by his prosecution at Nuremberg after the war, Man-stein urged his troops to treat the Muslim population well: ‘Respect for religious customs of the Mohammedan Tartars must be demanded.’
In their attempt to control the strategically sensitive rear areas, the Germans made extensive use of religious policies. They ordered the rebuilding of mosques, prayer halls and madrasas and the re-establishment of religious holidays. In the Caucasus, they staged massive celebra-tions at the end of Ramadan in 1942, of which the most Reich towards Islam’. Between late 1941 and late 1942 the
Foreign Office set up an Islam program, which included the employment of religious figures, most prominently the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, who arrived in Berlin in late 1941. On December 18th, 1942 the Nazis inaugurated the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin, which became a hub of Germany’s propaganda efforts in the Islamic world; the party organ, the Völkischer Beobachter, ran a headline prom-ising, ‘This War Could Bring Freedom to Islam!’ As the war progressed and German troops moved into Muslim areas in the Balkans and in the Soviet Union, other branches of the Nazi state followed up on these policies.
G
ERMAN OFFICIALS tended to view Muslim pop-ulations under the rubric of ‘Islam’. An advantage of using Islam rather than ethno-national catego-ries was that Berlin could avoid the thorny issue of national independence. Moreover, religion seemed to be a useful policy and propaganda tool to address ethnically, linguistically and socially heterogeneous populations. The Germans saw Islam as a source of authority that could legit-imise involvement in a conflict and even justify violence. In terms of racial barriers, the regime showed remarkable pragmatism: (Non-Jewish) Turks, Iranians and Arabs had already been explicitly exempted from any official racialGerman armoured personnel carriers in a Bosnian Muslim village, 1944.
