Bbc History 2014 Christmas

8/20/2019 Bbc History 2014 Christmas

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6 BBC History Magazine

Dominic Sandbrook highlights events that took place at Christmas in history

ANNIVERSARIES24 December 1826

Eggnog excessfuels riots

Rebellion at the United States Military Academy results in

court martials and hard labour

25 December 1066

The Conqueror is crownedWilliam of Normandy’s Westminster Abbey coronation

goes up in smoke – in more ways than one

Late on the evening of Christmas Eve1826, a group of cadets held a partyat the United States Military Academy at

West Point, New York.Two days earlier, the cadets had

smuggled in whiskey with which to makeeggnog, and now they were determinedto have some fun. By two in the morningthey were singing loudly, and at aroundfour they were severely reprimanded bytheir superior officer, Captain EthanHitchcock. But too much drink hadflowed for them to take much notice.

Indeed, by roll call on ChristmasDay, large groups of cadets, many ofthem visibly drunk, were in open revolt.Captain Hitchcock tried in vain to read

the Riot Act, but to no avail; indeed, atone stage he was besieged in his room bya detachment of cadets, one of themfiring a pistol.

Rumours spread that the officershad called for reinforcements, whichprovoked other cadets to take up armsin defence of their barracks. Only bybreakfast time, when the rest of thecadets, who were sober, succeeded incalming their fellows, did the officersmanage to restore order.

For the image of West Point, theEggnog Riot was an utter humiliation.

Some 70 men were involved inthe rebellion, 20 of whom were court-martialled, while a further miscreantwas sentenced to hard labour.

But most of the rebellious cadets soonshrugged off the stigma of the incident.Indeed, one of them later becamepresident of his country. His name wasJefferson Davis – and his country was theConfederate States of America.

On the morning of Christmas Day1066, William of Normandy rode

through the streets of Westminstertowards his coronation. His destinationwas the magnificent new abbey begun byhis distant cousin, Edward the Confessor.It was just over two months since the

battle of Hastings. Across the country,resistance still smouldered and securityaround the abbey was tight.

William’s coronation had been plannedas the ultimate propaganda coup. In asupremely symbolic moment, the invaderwas crowned king by Ealdred, Archbishopof York, previously one of the chiefsupporters of Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king. Before lowering the crownonto William’s head, Ealdred asked thecrowd – in English – if they wanted himas their king. And as had no doubt beenarranged, up went the loud cheers

of acclamation.But then came disaster. In a telling

sign of the anxiety of the day, William’s

Norman troops misunderstood the criesof the English crowd. According to thechronicler Orderic Vitalis, “the armedguard outside, hearing the tumult of the

joyful crowd in the church and the harshaccents of a foreign tongue, imagined thatsome treachery was afoot, and rashly set

fire to some of the buildings”.The fire spread, the crowd panicked,

and, Vitalis wrote, “throngs of men andwomen of every rank and conditionrushed out of the church in frantichaste. Only the bishops and a few clergyand monks remained, terrified, in thesanctuary, and with difficulty completedthe consecration of the king who wastrembling from head to foot.”

For William it was the worst possiblestart; for his new subjects, meanwhile, itwas a sign of things to come. The English,recorded Vitalis, “never again trusted the

Normans who seemed to have betrayedthem, but nursed their anger and bidedtheir time to take revenge”.

Burning ambition: the carefully planned crowning of William the Conqueror, shownhere in a 15th-century illumination, was interrupted by a fire in the abbey


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BBC History Magazine 7

Dominic Sandbrook recently presented

the series Tomorrow’s Worlds:

The Unearthly History of

Science Ficti on on BBC Two

What started as a Christmas knees-up ended in open revolt at the US Military Academy at West Point in 1826. Our illustration showscadets imbibing too much alcohol for their own good before brandishing their pistols and openly defying the reading of the Riot Act

I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y L U K E W A L L E

R


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History now / News

History-lovers gatherfor Malmesbury event

FESTIVAL

Hilary Mantel’s thoughts on writing

historical fiction and Andrew Roberts’

views on Napoleon were among thehighlights from this year’s BBC History

Magazine History Weekend, whichreturned to Malmesbury in October.

The event, now in its second year,

brought visitors from around the worldtogether for four days of lectures and

discussions. This year’s First World War

centenary meant that the conflict was a

recurring theme, with Dan Snow offeringa critical look at modern misconceptionsand David Olusoga assessing the

impact of fighting around the world.

The addition of new venues and anextra day also allowed for the explora-

tion of a huge range of topics and

historical eras. Tom Holland and HarrySidebottom offered lively takes on the

ancient world, while historian andbroadcaster Janina Ramirez closed the

event with an entertaining look at the

Hundred Years’ War through 20 objects.“This year’s History Weekend was a

great success,” said the magazine’s

publisher, Dave Musgrove. “Most ofthe sessions were jam-packed, and the

atmosphere in the venues was tremen-

dous. Our historians told me that theyparticularly enjoyed the quality of

audience questions, which is of coursewhat you’d expect from our magazine

readers. I’m now working on plans for

next year’s event, and we’ll announcedetails as soon as we have them.”

BBC History Magazine will also be

running two day-events exploring MagnaCarta and Waterloo in Bristol in March

2015. For more details, see page 62or visit historyextra.com/events. ME

A sign painted on a London shop tostop it being attacked in anti-Germanprotests, 1915. Such tension led tocamps being set up around the UK

“Families were tornapart and skilled mem-bers of society lockedaway for no other reasonthan their nationality”

of 30 in open-plan timber huts. “Familieswere separated for long periods, andbusinesses went bankrupt in the absenceof their owners,” Manz told BBC History Magazine. “A Swiss camp inspector wroteabout what he called ‘barbed wiredisease’: a combination of boredom, lackof privacy and a feeling of senselessness,

all of which led to depression.”In order to counter these negative

feelings, many internees set up voluntarywork, education and recreation groups,often reflecting interests from theircivilian lives. In Stobs, the central campin Scotland, a school taught subjectsincluding science and history; on the Isleof Man, internees made Christmas cards(such as that pictured on page nine).

Among the case studies highlighted bythe project is that of Paul Cohen-Port-heim, a German-Jewish painterand writer who was visiting friends in

Devonshire during the summer of 1914.He became an ‘enemy alien’ followingthe outbreak of the war and was interned

in May 1915, first in the Knockaloe campand then in Lofthouse camp in West

Yorkshire. He was finally forciblyrepatriated to Germany in 1918.

The study is also exploring the factorsthat led the British government to takesuch measures. “There is no suggestionthat the internment policy was born ofviciousness on the part of the Britishpeople or government,” says Manz. “Butit does demonstrate the power of fear:people were understandably concernedabout the idea of spies in their midst,especially with their men fighting at thefront. This panic spiralled out of control,leading the British government to make

a series of hasty decisions in an attemptto regain a sense of calm.”

Manz points to the sinking of theBritish passenger liner Lusitania by aGerman submarine on 7 May 1915 asa key source of this growing anxiety.The killing of over 1,000 passengerstriggered mass riots against German-owned properties throughout theBritish empire, and led the governmentto support calls for mass internment.“These camps were one of the firstexamples of civilian mass internmentand contributed to a ‘normalisation’ of

such policy in belligerent nations,” Manzsays. “Britain was both willing and ableto roll the policy out across the globevia it empire. Families were torn apart,communities wrecked, and skilledmembers of society locked away for noother reason than their nationality.”

A century on, Manz suggests that thenew research is vital to understandingthe whole story of the First World War.“Even today, the memory of these eventsis mainly confined to groups with aspecific interest, such as local historysocieties. Why is there no wider public

memorialisation? I would argue that it’sbecause explanations do not sit nicelywith publicly held perceptions of the warand, indeed, British identity.

“This type of research is valuable as itcontributes to a broader understandingof ‘remembrance’, from which minori-ties are usually excluded. The 800,000civilians held as internees in Europeduring the war constitute a critical massof victims that is consistently overlookedin ‘national’ remembrance cultures.”

74%of visitors to BBC Histor y

Magazine’s History

Weekend rated the event

9 out of 10, according

to survey results

Visitors to BBC History Magazine’sHistory Weekend event in October


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,

,

Giant Iron Ageartworks spottedfrom space

Created from huge earthenmounds and stretching

across the landscape in geomet-ric patterns, geoglyphs areamong the largest works of artever made by human hands.Now a network of previouslyunknown geoglyphs has beenfound in the central AsianRepublic of Kazakhstan usingsatellite technology – andexperts believe that it maychange our understanding ofthe Iron Age culture that

produced it.Dating from as far back as

approximately 3,000 years ago,the 50 geoglyphs are thought tobe the oldest examples of such artin the world. Almost all consistof dozens of large earthenmounds formed into geometricpatterns including giant circles,crosses and squares dissected bydiagonal lines. The mostcomplex geoglyph is made up of101 individual mounds, whilethe most unusual, comprised of

linear earthworks rather thanmounds, is in the shape of aswastika-type design – a solarsymbol in ancient times.

The scale of the artworksis staggering. Each moundmeasures between 10 and 12min diameter and may originallyhave stood at 2 or 3m high. Thelargest resulting design is a hugecross, 436m across, consisting of39 individual earthen mounds.

The method by which the siteswere found is also remarkable:scholars surveyed vast areasof land using Google Earth, anonline virtual globe that allowsusers to explore high-resolutionsatellite images of the planet’sterrain. Archaeologists fromVilnius University in Lithuaniaand Kostanay University inKazakhstan are now joiningforces with amateur archaeolo-gists to use the software tosystematically search an area of

hundreds of thousands of squaremiles over the coming years. It isthought that dozens, possiblyhundreds, of further examplesawait discovery in other areas ofthe steppes.

The experts also hope tocrack the riddle of who built thegeoglyphs and the reasons thatthey did so. Until now, it wasthought that the only majormonuments built by the IronAge nomadic peoples whoinhabited the region’s vast

grass-covered plains were the

ARCHAEOLOGY

The discovery of a network of huge

monuments dating from 3,000

years ago is causing experts to re-

think ancient life on Asia’s steppes

sented the points at whichadjacent tribal or clan territoriesor pasture lands met.

Archaeologist Dr GiedreMotuzaite Matuzeviciute ofVilnius University, one of theleaders of the survey project,told BBC History Magazine:

“Until now, we had littleindication of how sociallyorganised the prehistoricnomads of this steppeland were.Now, for the first time, we areseeing archaeological evidencethat suggests they were able tobring together and organisesubstantial numbers of peopleto create very large-scalecommunal monuments.”David Keys

mounds in which they buriedtheir dead. However, the size ofthe newly discovered geoglyphssuggests both that they hadother uses and that their creatorswere more socially and organisa-tionally advanced than previ-ously thought.

All of the geoglyphs found sofar in the current project werebuilt within an area of 70,000square miles. Archaeologistssuspect that their specificlocations suggest that themonuments would have hadreligious, economic and politicalsignificance: almost all aresituated on high groundbetween river systems, indicat-ing that they may have repre-

Signs of the times Examples of the geoglyphs discovered in Asia– a swastika-like design and a dissected square. Experts areexploring what the works tell us about the culture that made them

“Until now, wehad little indicationof how sociallyorganised theseprehistoric steppe-land nomads were”


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Robert Bickers is professorof history at Bristol University.His books include TheScramble for China: ForeignDevils in the Qing Empire1832-1914 (Penguin, 2012)

What events tell us is what we should haveknown already, which is that Hong Kong hasalways been on a different trajectory. It’s hada different education system, it’s been moreporous, its young have been able to travel, itis an uncensored environment.

What is surprising is that young HongKong people are agitating for democracy inthis particular way. Democrats have longbeen viewed as a minority, and Hong Kong

people have been caricatured as beinginterested only in enriching themselves andconsuming avidly in the scores of shoppingmalls that infest the city. But incomeinequality is rising fast, and the earnings ofmany families fall below the official povertyline. There is much to protest about.

There is, however, a long tradition of streetprotest throughout Hong Kong’s history –including under British colonial rule. Therewere riots in 1967, though that movementwas very different from what’s taking placenow. It was an offshoot of developments in

mainland China – the local Communistparty and Red Guards trying to make surethey ‘did their bit’ for the CulturalRevolution [when Chinese leader MaoZedong promoted the ‘true’ communistideology across the country]. It began as aprotest over conditions at a plastic-flowerfactory and was sustained by the insecuresocio-economic position of many residentsof Hong Kong.

But, on the whole, Hong Kong peoplesided with the colonial government in theirresponse. They knew about the bodiesfloating down the river from Canton, which

had come from killings being carried out inthe Cultural Revolution. Many were eitherrefugees themselves from China or thechildren of refugees. And the interestingthing is how students and a whole otherrange of Chinese groups formally andpublicly pledged their allegiance to the statusquo. It was better than the alternative. Butthere is a link between then and now becausethey were expressing, too, their support foran alternative to a leftist China.

Since Hong Kong was handed back to

Chinese rule in 1997 there have been otherforms of protest, often with heritage takinga key role. And that has been about HongKong’s specific identity – it’s not just anotherChinese city.

But what of the Chinese government’sresponse? The coming to power of Xi Jinpingin Beijing does mark a significant shifttowards a more hard-line rule. There’s beenno compromise with those carving out whatseemed to be acceptable public spaces forsome debate on civil society issues.

One of Xi Jinping’s first actions as premier

was to go to the National Museum of Chinain which there is this permanent displaycalled ‘the road to rejuvenation’. You gothrough 100 years of national humiliationand then you emerge into the brightly litpost-1949 world of the rule of the ChineseCommunist party, skating very quickly oversome of the dark episodes in that history.And we have documents from the leadershipsaying: we are in the midst of an ideologicalwar with western ideas, and we must strikehard wherever we find them. So if I was inHong Kong today, I would be worried.

A Red Guard member, masked against flu germs, spreads the word of Mao, 1967

China’s leadershipis saying, we are in

an ideological war withthe west. If I was in HongKong today, I would be

worriedROBERT BICKERS

BOOK

E A Modern History of Hong Kong

by Steve Tsang (IB Tauris, 2007)

DISCOVER MORE


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History now / Past notes

After the Second World War, thenewspaper column ‘Origins’

sought to explain the reason forcommon words and phrases, and in

1948 they tried to discover the root of‘a skeleton in the closet’. Their investi-gations uncovered a local legend whichrecorded that many centuries earlierthere had been a quest to find the oneperson in the world who was completelyhappy. After much searching theyfinally found a lady who fitted the bill.She lived a happy and carefree life,with a wonderful husband, and theinspectors decided their mission hadbeen a success.

However, as they were turningto leave, the lady beckoned them to

follow her upstairs, where she stoppedin front of a small cupboard. It slowlyopened and the horrified inspectorsfound themselves face to face witha human skeleton.

“I try,” the lady said, “to keep mytroubles to myself, but every night myhusband makes me kiss that skeleton!”She explained that they were the bonesof the man who had been her husband’srival in her affections, and who he hadkilled in a duel shortly before they weremarried. And so the origin of ‘askeleton in the cupboard’ was born!

News storysourced from britishnewspaper archive.co.uk and rediscoveredby Fern Riddell.Fern regularlyappears onRadio 3’sNight Waves.

OLD NEWS

The world’s happiestwife hides a

murderous secret

Western Daily Press andBristol Mirror /

2 March 1948

So, do they come from Turkey?No. They’re native to the Americas.

They got the name because when

Europeans first came across themthey incorrectly thought they were a

form of African guinea fowl which,

because they were imported intoEurope from Turkey, were commonly

known as turkey fowl.

How did turkeys come to Britain?

Britain probably obtained its first

turkeys from the Spanish, who hadbrought the birds back to Europe

after encountering them in the Aztecempire. However it’s possible that

they were introduced by William

Strickland, a Yorkshire merchantand MP who travelled to the New

World in the 16th century. He

certainly seems to have wanted topromote a link with the bird, as the

family coat of arms, which wasgranted in about 1550, has a turkey

as a crest.

When did we start eating them?

Henry VIII is the first known English

king to have eaten turkey. At thattime the bird was seen as something

of an exotic delicacy and would

have been just one of a variety offowl to be placed before the hungry

monarch. One of the reasons for

turkey’s appeal was that it was not

only large enough to make a finedisplay on the table but also had

tastier and less stringy flesh than

that other exotic royal favourite,the peacock.

For centuries the turkey was thepreserve of the well-to-do andmiddle classes and it was only after

the Second World War, when itbecame cheaper to rear, that the

turkey became the population’s

Christmas bird of choice.

What was eaten before turkey?

If a working-class family in the19th century ate a bird, it was

more likely to have been a goose,

and Christmas ‘goose clubs’were established to help them

save up for it. Note how the

poverty-stricken Bob Cratchit

in Dickens’s Christmas Carol scrapes enough money togetherto buy a goose before the reformed

Scrooge presents his family with

a massive turkey.Geese and turkeys were, and still

are, extensively reared in East

Anglia. In the 18th century, thou-sands were walked to London in

large flocks along what is now the

A12 with their feet dipped in tar toprotect them.

As 10 million homes across Britain prepare to tuck

into one, Julian Humphrys looks at the history of

the bird that will never vote for Christmas.

PAST NOTESTURKEYS

I L L U S T R A T I O N B

Y B E N J

O N E S

Land Girls on an Essex farm round up turkeys for the last time,23 December 1944. These are bound for a London market


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SOCIAL MEDIAWhat you’ve been saying

on Twitter and Facebook

WRITE TO USWe welcome your letters, whilereserving the right to edit them.We may publish your letters on ourwebsite. Please include a daytimephone number and, if emailing, a postaladdress (not for publication). Lettersshould be no longer than 250 words.

email: [email protected]

Post: Letters, BBC History Magazine,Immediate Media CompanyBristol Ltd, Tower House,Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN

the two essentially similar nations ofBritain and France, and which onlyended when we came together to defeatthe truly evil regimes of the 20th century.Colin Bullen, Kent

British heroics at the BulgeI found Peter Caddick-Adams’ version ofthe battle of the Bulge (Hitler’s FinalGamble, November) of great interest. Hegives the impression that the British onlyarrived on New Year’s Day 1945, helpingto seal the breach by mid-January.

However, some British units movedquickly to the area, and I quote from theRoyal Arti llery commemorative book forthe Second World War: “The Ardennesoffensive burst upon us and ChristmasEve found HQ 4 AGRA and two of itsregiments (of medium guns) in actionunder command of 29 ArmouredBrigade who with no infantry werecovering the crossings of the Meuse fromNamur to Givet, a distance of 40 miles– against an enemy advancing throughthick fog in formidable strength. Thegroup enjoyed a lively Boxing Day,

inflicting heavy casualties on theGerman advance guard.”

As for German soldiers in GI uniforms‘infiltrating’, it is true that we were toldverbally: “If in doubt, shoot first and askquestions later.” But we didn’t see any!GA Lines, ex Royal Signals, HQ 4 AGRA

Surrey

Peter Caddick-Adams replies: Perhaps Ishould have emphasised the impressivemove of Brigadier Roscoe Harvey’s 29

Armoured Brigade. They deployed tothe Ardennes from Brussels within36 hours of receiving orders to move, on19 December. They were first tested onthe night of 23 December when a jeepcontaining three Germans dressed asAmericans was intercepted at Dinantand its crew killed.

The drama continued into ChristmasEve, when the vanguard of 2nd PanzerDivision crept into Dinant. BritishSherman crews were so exhausted thatthey slept through the arrival of their

foes. Awoken by the clattering of tanktracks, the first Sherman opened fire,missed the leading Panzer IV, but hit anammunition truck. This ignited a fueltanker. Within minutes, the British –now fully awake – had destroyed twoPanthers and two Panzer IVs, stopping2nd Panzer in their tracks, almost onthe Meuse. The British reactionensured the panzers would getno further.

CorrectionsP On page 73 of our December issue

the Iron Age fort pictured should have

been captioned Henllys not Henylls

@HistoryExtra: “Every countryhad a responsibility for notstopping #WW1 but Germa ny +

Austria-Hungary lit the matchthat set it off,” says exp ert JayWinter. What do you think?

@ProfGSheffield Don’t agreewith 1st bit – GB tr ied v hard toprevent war. Agree w/2nd butI go much further in blamingGE & AH aggression

@kevan_webb Yes. I think thisis true, regardle ss of the reply

Serbia gave. Germa ny wantedwar to enhance their standingin the world

@lindaheap They wouldn’t have

be en a ble to l igh t th e ma tch if o the rcountries hadn’t allowed them to

@HistoryExtra: CatherineHoward’s family home is to beturned into luxury flats. Whatis your reaction?

@Neilovichi This makes me sad.Capitalism eating up our heritageagain. What w ill we have left toshare with our children?

@Bakingwonders What a shame.Such a beautiful building . A hotelmay be a better idea . Would be astunning wedding venue

@BurtEDitch Better that thanknocking it down. I’d prefer arestoration though

@wendy_uk Sad to lose so manyoriginal features but far better thanthe whole building bei ng left to decay

@HistoryExtra: I f you were ableto send a personal message to asoldier, a man who served andwas killed during #WW1 , whatwould you write?

Alison Knight There are notenough words to say “thank you”for what you did for us. You were

loved. You are loved still. You willnot be forgotten

@TeoCanales Sorry from our hearts, the march of folly to WW1 is a sin ofhistory we should never repeat

Anthony McPherson I wouldn’ttell him of what became of the worldafter his sacr ifices. It would showhim that his effort and sufferinghad been all in vain. He should beallowed to rest in peace thinkingthat he made a difference for good

Reader Colin Bullen argues that Napoleon – shown here On the Battlefield of Eylau, 9th February 1807 – was an essentially decent human being


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Commen

Michael Wood on… The Axis Age

I’m writing this in Qufu where we areshooting The Story of China. It is acharming low-rise country town with itsmedieval walls, gates and streets bustling

with cycle rickshaws and horse-drawn carriages. Theplace owes its fame to Confucius, who was born here inthe mid-sixth century BC. Though execrated by thecommunists, the Master is now thoroughly rehabili-tated. President Xi Jinping cited him recently in hiskeynote address to the Party, his statue stands at theentrance to my hotel, and copies of his Analects can befound in my room, like Gideons Bible. (This comparisonis not far-fetched: it has been said that a larger number of

people over a longer period of time have been influencedby this little book than any other in history.)

Early this morning, I visited Confucius’s tomb in itswonderfully atmospheric walled cemetery. There I founda group of Korean traditional scholars in full ceremonialrobes and black hats lighting incense and prostratingthemselves. “He is still important to all of east Asia,” onesaid, looking the very image of the man himself, “not justChina, but Korea, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. Hedefined our collective values of hard work, duty andbenevolence. In this age of individualism, his messageis still true after 2,500 years – for all the world!”

That got me thinking again about the Axis Age. It wasdescribed by German philosopher Karl Jaspers in his book

The Origin and Goal of History . Jaspers noticed that theearly Greek philosophers, Socrates, the Old Testamentprophets, the Buddha and Mahavira, Confucius and LaoTzu lived close in time. He suggested that humanity wentthrough a kind of enlightenment at this time. These days, this idea is not taken terribly seriously by historians.Jaspers spread his net rather wide – between 800 BC and200 BC – and, in such a span, it would not be hard to finddevelopments that look similar. Six hundred years is a long time in history – from the Hundred Years’ War to us.

But it still seems to me an intriguing idea: that, in themid-first millennium BC across Eurasia, something isdetectable, a way of thinking about the world, which

looks different from anything that had gone before. Andremarkably, the key figures all lived within a handful ofgenerations between the 550s and the fourth century BC.Some, like Confucius, the Buddha and some of the greatpre-Socratics, may even have been alive at the same time.

They lived in a period of history when the great BronzeAge civilisations had gone. In their place were competingcity states – in archaic Greece, the Ganges valley andWarring States-era China. All had merchants and trade,while writing had reached a wider population than justthe palace scribes and ritualists. Then, in all of them,great thinkers appear. And not the odd single genius.Think of the philosophers and scientists in Ionia:

Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and the rest. TheBuddha’s contemporaries included Jains, Ajivikas,sceptics, rationalists and atomists, all of whom werequestioning the nature of the mind and the physicaluniverse. In China, this period is known as the Age ofPhilosophers, with Daoists, Mohists and Confucius’sfollowers like Mencius, among whom there were manydifferent views about humanity and the cosmos.

Is there a connection? Well, not literal. No one thinksthis is diffusion. But it seems to me that what it lookslike is this: the common ideas, even common ways ofreasoning, suggest that these widely separated Iron Agecultures had reached a similar point of development.These were increasingly diversified societies with towns

and widening uses of literacy. People had also started toquestion humanity’s progress since the first large-scalesocieties. The old theocratic structures of thought andpower of the Bronze Age were no longer enough. Thoughall these thinkers were concerned with the spiritual life,none of them (except in Iron Age Israel) put God at thecentre. All thought humankind could use reason tounderstand its place in the world.

How exactly such fascinating cultural change begins,of course, historians cannot say, but it looks like a crucialstage in the history of humanity. As the Korean scholarstold me at the sage’s tomb, it is one that still speaks tous today.

Michael Wood

is professor of

public history at

the University of

Manchester. His

most recent TV

series was King

Alfred and the

Anglo-Saxons

“Great thinkers appeared all over.And not the odd single genius”

ILLUSTRATION BY FEMKE DE JONG


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This portrait, probablyproduced by an artist in

the workshop of courtpainter Hans Holbein,shows Edward – then

Duke of Cornwall –aged about six in 1543

“Edward was

England’s greatunfinished king –

an experiment in

Protestant monarchy”

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Edward VI

Like father, like sonEdward mirrored Henry in interests, bearing and

beliefs – even portraits emphasised the similarities

Chivalry and warBoth Henry and Edward were keenly

interested in military history andcampaigns, battles and exercises of

chivalry. Henry took part in jousts and

tournaments wearing splendid suits ofarmour, and some of the best passages of

Edward’s ‘Chronicle’ feature his

observations on mock battles and displaysof courage. Like Henry, Edward went out

with the noble companions of his privychamber to hunt and hawk. By the age of

14 he was, like his father before him, highly

proficient with the English longbow.

Music and entertainment

Henry was an accomplished musician and agreat collector of instruments including lutesand virginals. In 1546 he charged Philip van

Wilder, one of his musicians, with improving

Edward’s lute playing. Music was asimportant at Edward’s court as it had been

at Henry’s, and during his reign van Wilder

went on to direct the singing children of theprivy chamber. By 1552, some 42 musicians,

two singers, six singing children and nineminstrels were on the king’s payroll, and

Edward and his young companions played

in masques and entertainments.

Faith

After Henry’s death in 1547, Edward, though just a boy, exercised his late father’s authority

as supreme head of the churches of Englandand Ireland. Henry had felt able to determine

matters of theology, and Edward was just as

assiduous in his duties, listening to sermons

preached before him at court. In his teenageyears he confronted his much older sister,

Mary, challenging her refusal to accept a

Protestant settlement of religion and expectingher to submit to his authority as king.

CommandHenry VIII was an authoritative andmagisterial king. By the time of Edward’s

death in 1553, the young king was beginningto speak as uncompromisingly as his father

had done. Both Henry and Edward had

close friends and companions at court, buteach was keenly aware of his power. Letters

to Edward’s friends bristle with kinglybossiness; he advised one, BarnabyFitzpatrick, on how to behave at the French

court: “This I write… but to spur you on.”

PortraiturePictures of Edward were very consciously

imitations of Holbein’s Henry VIII – massive

and imperial. Henry was aware of hisphysical presence; as king, he made full

use of his size and physique, dominatinghis subjects. Edward, as a boy and a

teenager, looked less formidable than his

father, but nevertheless his portraitsproclaimed his future potential. A Latin

inscription painted on to Holbein’s portraitof Edward as a toddler carries an importanttext: “Little one, emulate your father and be

the heir of his virtue.”

of the age, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Henryand Katherine made sure that his heir andsuccessor had the best kind of Erasmianeducation: the learning of a philosopherprince and an enlightened ruler.

Edward was taught by two Cambridgescholars, Richard Cox and John Cheke, who

gave him a formidable grounding in Latin andGreek grammar. He read the books of ancientGreek and Roman orators and writers. He wastrained in rhetoric (the art in public speakingof testing and presenting an argument andentertaining and persuading an audience),mathematics, French and theology. Like the young Prince Henry, Edward spoke Frenchand Italian, and probably read some Spanish.Father and son shared a passion for astronomy.

Henry VIII found writing tedious andpainful (making an important exceptioncomposing his love letters to Anne Boleyn).Perhaps Edward disliked writing, too:

certainly, his handwriting was never as elegantor easy as his sister Princess Elizabeth’s. Still,he had no choice but to write.

Translated from their original Latin,Edward’s letters can sound formal, remote,moralistic, pompous and priggish. But this ishardly a surprise. They were really exercisesin formal composition, in which virtue –a word that appears over and over again –was deeply embedded.

Chronicle of youthProbably a much fairer guide to Edward’smind and interests is his ‘Chronicle’. He

began writing it in English soon after hebecame king, but took it up with greaterenergy in 1551, when he was 13, perhapsunder the supervision of John Cheke. The‘Chronicle’ is a magpie jumble of facts andevents in Edward’s life and in the activity ofhis royal court and government – anorganisational hotchpotch. Here, with all ofits boyish untidiness and disorder, we get asclose as we can to the real Edward.

The ‘Chronicle’ was not a kind ofconfessional. That bloodless entry recountingthe execution of the Duke of Somerset reads

as callous and cold-hearted, but as a king

Edward was expected, even in private,to hide feelings and emotions behind amask of royalty.

The political world of TudorEngland in the 1540s and 1550s was

not an easy one to navigate – not forEdward, nor for the men who governedin his name. When Henry VIII diedleaving a nine-year-old heir, it wasperfectly obvious that Edward couldnot rule for himself. But two thingsmade his royal minority particularlycontroversial. The first was thesuccessful effort of the elder of Edward’s

The stance of nine-year-oldEdward, probably painted

by Guillaume Scrots in1546, mirrors the famousportrait of Henry VIII by

Hans Holbein, of which thisis a copy (the original

burned in 1698)


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Stephen Alford is professor of early modern

British history at the University of Leeds

BOOK

E Edward VI: The Last Boy King

by Stephen Alford (Allen Lane, 2014)

DISCOVER MORE

two maternal uncles to appropriate kinglypower. This was Edward Seymour, Earl ofHertford and Duke of Somerset. He was Henry VIII’s brother-in-law – and the man whoseexecution in 1552 was so unsentimentallydescribed by Edward. The second was thestartling speed and intensity of the full-scaleProtestant Reformation that swept awayCatholic worship in Edward’s kingdom, done

in the king’s name but really the vision ofArchbishop Cranmer of Canterbury.

It is easy to see Edward as the pawn ofpowerful men. Early in his reign, certainly, hewas manipulated by Thomas Seymour (hisother uncle) in the latter’s tussle for power withthe Duke of Somerset. In a printed pamphletdirected at rebels involved in uprisings in 1549,Edward wrote: “Rule we will, because God hathwilled: it is as great a fault in us, not to rule, asin a subject not to obey.” This was a case ofsimple ventriloquism: Edward’s words werescripted for him. When Somerset’s authoritycollapsed later that same year, the duke seized

the king and used him to try to face down hisopponents in the king’s council.

But no one doubted that Edward would oneday be a king, full and complete in his powers.And all the time he was growing up. By thetime he was 14, the young king had moved astep closer to meaningful rule. He was briefedby his advisers, and he wrote papers onsubjects that interested him, such as militarycampaigns and the reform of the currency.

It would be going much too far to say thatEdward was now in charge, but the balanceof his court and government was shifting.A 14-year-old king, after all, is quite a different

proposition from a nine-year-old prince.What Edward certainly possessed by 1551

was a powerful sense of self. When his lordchancellor refused to accept a documentsigned by the king because it had not beencountersigned by his advisers, Edward’sreaction was forceful and sharp. “It should bea great impediment for me to send to all mycouncil,” he wrote, “and I should seem to be inbondage.” At 14, those words had somethingstill of fantasy about them: four years later theywould have been uncompromisingly final.There is an echo here of the magisterial Henry.

Like his father, Edward VI believed in thepowers of a king to dispose of the crown in theway he felt was necessary. In the spring monthsof 1553, when Edward was dying – from a rapidand fatal disease of the lungs – he wrote a‘Devise’ for the royal succession. This ‘Devise’is the most perplexing document of Edward’sreign: it seems like a last, confusing trick playedon historians by the elusive young king.

When Henry VIII died he had left a clearmechanism for the succession: if Edward diedwithout a legitimate heir, his elder sister,Mary, would inherit the throne. If Mary diedwithout a legitimate heir, Elizabeth would be

queen. Even in death, Henry controlled theTudor line. But his son refused to be outdone.

Edward insisted with some force that the

entire political and judicial establishmentshould sign up to the ‘Devise’, ignoring thelawful claims first of Mary and then ofElizabeth (both of whom were, in Edward’seyes, illegitimate – and one of them, Mary, aCatholic and, thus, offensive). Instead, hisproposals would place on the throne his bloodkinswoman Lady Jane Grey.

What happened on Edward’s death is one ofthe most dramatic stories of English history: inthe absence of a law passed by parliament, andfacing the forces of a surprisingly decisiveMary, Jane Grey’s supporters crumbled. One ofEdward’s legacies was disgrace and execution

for some of his closest allies and supporters.Like his father, however, Edward never letsentiment stand in the way of his kinglyauthority. Even at the age of 15, he made clearhis voice and his will – and he expected hispeople to obey him.

“What happened

on Edward’s death

is one of the mostdramatic stories ofEnglish history”

The Protestant championThis c1570 allegorical painting showsEdward VI as Henry VIII’s heir andsuccessor – and as a king presiding overthe Protestant Reformation. The pope isthrown down by the Word of God andCatholic ‘idolatry’ is smashed. Standing toEdward’s left is the Duke of Somerset.Seated next to Somerset is the king’s otheruncle, Thomas Seymour, and his godfa-ther, Archbishop Cranmer.


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BBC History Magazine

Hans Eworth paintedseveral portraits ofMary, all based on asitting in 1554, aroundthe time of her weddingto Philip of Spain. Hereshe wears the famouspearl later called LaPeregrina, given toher by Philip a monthbefore their marriage

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BBC History Magazine

MARY: QUEEN

AGAINST

THE ODDS‘Bloody Mary’ Tudor was long brandeda religious bigot and a military failure.Yet as Anna Whitelock explains, the

first woman to wear the crown of

England was a political pioneerwho redefined the monarchy

25

COVER STORY


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Cover story

Crowning glory This manuscript illumination depicts Mary’s accession, flanked by angels.Rebels who had sought to deny Mary the throne are shown being defeated in the background

Bloody Mary was a Catholicbigot, a half-Spanish tyrantwho burned nearly 300Protestant men, womenand children in one of themost ferocious periods ofpersecution in Reformation

Europe. At least that’s how subsequent(Protestant) writers painted her. John Foxe’sclassic martyrology, Actes and Monuments (popularly known as the Book of Martyrs),first published in 1563, graphically depicted“the horrible and bloudy time of QueeneMary” and dominated accounts of Mary’sreign for nearly 500 years.

In his First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, written on theeve of Mary’s death, John Knox condemnedMary both as a woman ruler and a Catholic:she was a “horrible monster Jezebel” who“compelled [Englishmen] to bow their necks

under the yoke of Satan”. Traditionally viewedthrough the prism of her religion, Mary’s five- year reign has been described as disastrous,unimaginative and ineffective, with nopositive achievements.

Yet Mary was England’s first acknowledgedqueen regnant: the first woman to wear thecrown of England. It was a situation that herfather, Henry VIII, had gone to great andinfamous lengths to avert. But Mary morethan met the challenge. In unprecedentedcircumstances she proved courageous andpolitically accomplished. Her reign redefinedthe contours of the English monarchy and

proved that queens could rule as kings.For much of her life Mary had struggled to

defend her right to the throne – and even topreserve her life. After the breakdown of themarriage between her mother, Catherine ofAragon, and Henry VIII she was demoted fromroyal princess to bastard. She was, for a time,written out of the succession by her father and,though reinstated by the 1544 Third Act ofSuccession and by Henry’s will, she remainedillegitimate. When her nine-year-old brotherEdward VI inherited the throne in 1547 andconfronted Mary’s Catholicism, she declaredthat she would rather “lay her head on a block”

than forsake her faith. Her supporters urged herto flee abroad, but Mary remained in England,determined to defend her claim to the crown.

Battle for the crown

Following her brother’s death in July 1553,Mary – against all odds – won the throne inan extraordinary coup d’état.

Edward had written Mary out of thesuccession and instead named the ProtestantLady Jane Grey as heir to the throne. Before theking’s death was made public, John Dudley, theDuke of Northumberland, had secured controlof the Tower and had the royal artillery and

mobilised a counter-coup and, in the momentof crisis, proved courageous, decisive and

politically adept. By playing down herCatholicism and proclaiming her legitimacy,Mary secured both Catholic and Protestantsupport. She also ensured that the crowncontinued along the legal line of Tudorsuccession, in doing so, defending Elizabeth’sposition as her heir (though this wasn’t madeofficial until the final weeks of her life).

Having secured the throne, Mary then hadto establish herself as a female monarch. Itwas an unprecedented position in a deeplypatriarchal society – indeed, many questionedwhether a woman could wear the crown.The monarch was understood to be God’s

coffers at his disposal. With London apparentlysecure, Lady Jane was proclaimed queen.

When Mary received a tip-off that Edward’sdeath was imminent and Northumberlandplanned to capture her, she fled across EastAnglia. One of her supporters described this asan act of “Herculean rather than of womanlydaring”. At Framlingham Castle in Suffolk,Mary raised her standard and rallied the localgentry and commons to her cause. On 19 Julyshe was proclaimed queen, and her accessionwas greeted joyously.

The scale of her achievement is oftenoverlooked. Mary had led the only successfulrevolt against central government in 16th-century England. She had eluded capture,


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Miracle worker? Mary places hands on a subject suffering from the‘king’s evil’, scrofula – believed to be cured by a monarch’s touch

representative on Earth, a figureof defence and justice – a rolepremised on military might. Thelanguage, image and expectationsof English monarchy and royalmajesty were unequivocally male,and the rights of a queen regnant

were a matter of great uncertainty.Mary’s accession had changed

the rules of the game, and thenature of this new feminisedpolitics was yet to be defined, yetin many respects Mary provedmore than equal to the task.Decisions over the details of thepractice and power of a queenregnant became precedents forthe future. In April 1554 Mary’sparliament passed the Act forRegal Power, which enshrinedin law that queens held power as

“fully, wholly and absolutely” astheir male predecessors, therebyestablishing the gender-freeauthority of the crown.

Mary’s coronation saw heraccepting the full regalia of amale monarch and assuming thesacral role that had hitherto beenconfined to kings. Previously, it hadbeen precisely the exercise of thissemi-priestly power, derived fromthe coronation, that – it was argued– precluded women from accedingto the throne. By continuing

practices undertaken by previouskings – providing the healing touchfor the ‘king’s evil’ (scrofula) andblessing rings believed to curecramp and epilepsy – Mary showedthat the office of crowned monarchwas not limited by gender.

Mary had stated a preference forremaining single but accepted theneed to marry to fulfil her publicduty to her faith and her kingdom. Everyoneagreed on the need for a husband who couldguide her in ruling, and produce a male heir,thereby securing the succession. Though it

has traditionally been argued that Mary’smarriage to Philip of Spain was unpopular, analliance with Habsburg Spain was politicallyexpedient. Certainly, the marriage treaty wasas “favourable as possible for the interest andsecurity and even the grandeur of England”,with Mary’s legal rights as queen preservedand Spanish influence kept to a minimum.

For some, though, this was not enough.In January 1554 Mary faced a Protestantrebellion led by Thomas Wyatt that aimed toprevent the match, but once again the queenrose to the occasion. Despite the urging ofher councillors she refused to leave London;

then, in a remarkable speech at the Guildhall,she attacked Wyatt as a wicked traitor,defended her religion and choice of husband,and called on Londoners to stand firm in

support. Mary stressed her defiance, courageand commitment not by claiming to have thequalities of a man but, rather, to have thesequalities as a woman. Mary’s rousing rhetoricso mobilised the people of London thatwhen Thomas Wyatt approached the Towerhe found Ludgate barred against him. Therebels were compelled to lay down their armsand sue for mercy. Mary was manifestly aneffective public speaker well before her sisterElizabeth garnered the plaudits.

Mary’s reputation has been almost entirelydefined by religion and summed up by theinfamous epithet ‘Bloody Mary’. Elizabethan

“The regime was characterised asviolently repressive, yet in many

ways Mary’s programme toconvert hearts and minds was

innovative and energetic”

Protestants, who were the firstto write the history of Mary’sreign, characterised the regimeas violently repressive, spirituallymoribund and resoundinglyunsuccessful. Yet in many waysMary’s programme to convert

hearts and minds to RomanCatholicism was innovativeand energetic. Led by CardinalReginald Pole, the programmeof recatholicisation encouragedpreaching and used the printingpress to produce homilies andcatechisms, and to foster aparochial revival of Catholicism.

Even the burnings – the acceptedpunishment for heresy at thetime – were, it has been argued,broadly effective. Laymen werefully and enthusiastically involved

in the work of detecting heretics,and by 1558 the numbers beingburned were falling. The Marianchurch was proving successful inits mission – but then Mary diedprematurely, after just five years ofrule and with no Catholic heir.

Forgotten victoryTraditional assessments of Mary’squeenship have focused heavilyon the apparent military failuresof her reign, as epitomised by theloss of Calais in the Anglo-French

war of 1557–59. Such a failurecontrasts with Elizabeth’s victoryover the Spanish Armada in 1588.While Elizabeth is popularlyremembered as a triumphantwarrior queen, Mary is pil loriedas achieving only nationalmilitary humiliation.

Certainly, the loss of Calais hascast a long shadow over Mary’s

reputation. Yet assessments of Mary’s militaryprowess should be rethought. Before theloss of Calais, she experienced successes.In August 1557, English and Spanish forces

captured St Quentin, an action in which some

3,000 French troops were killed and 7,000captured, including their commander Annede Montmorency, the constable of France.

The news was greeted in England withwidespread celebrations. London chroniclersheralded the success of “the king, our master”– Mary’s husband was now accepted. Thepolitical community was motivated for thenational war effort in King Philip’s service.But, weeks later, the English experienced thehumiliating defeat that would stamp a decisiveimprint on Mary’s reign. As the last remnantof the English claim to France, Calais had a


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symbolic value that was out of proportion toits economic and military importance.

Despite the brevity of her reign, Maryextended royal authority in the localities,managed her parliament, rebuilt thenavy, reorganised the militia and laid the

foundations for reform of the coinage and therestructuring of the economy. New marketsfor exports were developed in Guinea, theBaltic and Russia, with the latter resulting inthe formation of the Muscovy Company in1558. The government’s overhaul of the bookof rates in the same year also increased thecrown’s revenues from customs. Statuteswere passed that regulated the propermanufacture of particular wares andprovided for more efficient and systematicproduction measures. Five hospitals werere-endowed by Mary, including the SavoyHospital in London.

Mary proved to be a conscientious andhardworking queen who was determined tobe closely involved in government businessand policymaking. She would, as the Venetianambassador recorded, rise “at daybreak when,after saying her prayers and hearing massin private”, she would “transact businessincessantly until after midnight”.

Mary ruled with the full measure of royalmajesty and achieved much of what she set outto do. She won her rightful throne, marriedher Spanish prince and returned the countryto Roman Catholicism. The Spanish marriagewas a match with the most powerful ruling

house in Europe, and the highly favourablemarriage treaty ultimately won the supportof the English government. She had defeatedrebels and preserved the Tudor monarchy.Her Catholicism was influenced by herhumanist education and showed many signsof broad acceptance before she died. She wasan intelligent, politically adept and resolutemonarch – very much her own woman.

Redefining the monarchyOnce seen as weak willed and lacking inleadership qualities, Mary is now heralded as

courageous and warlike, educated for ruleand politically determined. Her early death– in the midst of disastrous harvest failuresand a flu epidemic, and soon after the loss ofCalais – ensured Mary’s reputation was fatallysealed. If she had lived longer, her initiativesin religion and finance would have come tofruition; if she had borne a child, a Catholicfuture for England would have been assured.

Nevertheless, by securing the throne, Maryensured that the crown continued along thelegal line of Tudor succession. As the firstqueen regnant of England she redefined royalritual and law, thereby establishing that a

female ruler, married or unmarried, wouldenjoy identical power and authority to malemonarchs. Mary was the Tudor trailblazer, apolitical pioneer whose reign redefined theEnglish monarchy.

Her successor had the advantage of beingthe second woman to rule. Though she wouldnever acknowledge it, Elizabeth built on thefoundations laid by her sister, and receivedfrom her an invaluable political education.After Mary’s death, the coronation robes ofEngland’s first queen were hastily refurbished– with a new bodice and sleeves – to fit its

second. This outfit was just one of many thingsElizabeth borrowed from her predecessor.

Dr Anna Whitelock is a historian and broadcaster

based at Royal Holloway, University of London,

and author of Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate

History of the Queen’s Court (Bloomsbury, 2013)

“Her early death – in the midst of disastrousharvest failures and aflu epidemic – ensuredthat Mary’s reputation was fatally sealed”

BOOKS

E Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen

by Anna Whitelock (Bloomsbury, 2010)E Mary Tudor: The First Queen by Linda

Porter (Piatkus, 2009)

DISCOVER MORE

From victory to defeat This contemporary engraving by Franz Hogenberg shows English troops and their Spanish allies besiegingSt-Quentin in 1557. They captured the town in August but, less than six months later, Calais – England’s last foothold in France – was lost


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The Norman Conquest triggered a boom

in castle building, but the process of

creating a fortress from scratch was far

from simple, as John Goodall finds out

Complements the BBC Four series Castles: Britain’s Fortified History


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Passionate about

history?We are, are you?

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to one of Japan’s imperial universitiessaw their anxiety and fatalism turn toradical opposition. But by 1945 even theyhad opted for silence or had undergone asudden ‘conversion’ of their views. Japan’s‘thought police’ were notoriously persuasive,sometimes starting out by cooking a homelymeal – “Your mother is worried about you:now eat up, stop all this nonsense, and get on

home” – and, if that didn’t work, moving onto straightforward torture and ‘accidental’deaths in custody.

For the rest, studying history or literatureoffered no more than a new, grander palettewith which to paint the dark times intowhich they had been born. By 1944 the Allieswere retaking Europe and Japan’s empirewas shrinking back towards the homeislands. Students of the past came to see theirimminent sacrifice as a part scripted for themby this and longer stretches of world history,as much as by the government in Tokyo busilychurning out red conscription papers. As one

Was a kamikaze death honourable? Was itevil – or tragic? For Japanese military and

newspaper supporters at the time, this was

a picturesque form of self-sacrifice. Theflower of the nation’s youth was prepared

to extinguish itself to keep that nation safe.

Cherry blossom, which in Japan blooms briefly and brilliantly, became a favoured

symbol for the kamikaze. Young girls waved

cherry branches laden with blossom as thepilots taxied out and some of the planes

were painted with a cherry blossom symbol.For a society raised on glorified accounts

of its own history, the legendary deaths of

loyal samurai also came readily to mind –helped by military, media and educational

establishments well versed in spinning

symbols and stories into potent propaganda.For a time after ‘9/11’, the attack on

the World Trade Center on 11 September2001, the kamikaze were thought of, in

the west at least, as early examples of

terrorist fanaticism. They had used spiritual

techniques to prepare (many practisedmeditation), they had expected to be

rewarded in the afterlife and had been

utterly intent on their goal.

Most of these parallels have proven wideof the mark, and in recent years the moodhas changed. For Japanese people, and

increasingly in the west, these deaths now

seemed a matter of military leaders refusingto admit the inevitability of defeat and

condemning young people to deaths thatwere as horrific as they were unnecessary.

Some pilots no doubt fitted the

stereotype of unreflective zeal and ayearning to become a ‘war god’ after

death. But the loneliness and desperate

search for meaning seen in kamikazewritings – by young men upon whom, as

one pilot put it, “at the height of life… the

curtain goes down” – point most powerfullyto tragedy.

Tragic deaths?

Japanese schoolgirlswave cherry blossomas they bid farewellto a kamikaze pilotheading for Okinawain April 1945


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kamikaze pilot bluntly put it: “I madea mistake being born in this century”.

In no sense that they would haverecognised were the likes of IchizoHayashi ‘committing suicide’ bysigning up for and going through withtheir kamikaze missions. Hayashi

had contemplated that step in thepast. Now, the element of choice haddisappeared. “Death is given to me,”he wrote.

Lovers of art, philosophy and nature,too, found meaningful stories to tellthemselves, discarding trite, militaristslogans in favour of more inspiring thoughts:the flowers of their hometowns, the beautyof the moon over their military trainingbases, the faces of their families, and thebetter world to come after the war. In late1943, a pilot named Hachiro Sasaki quotedapprovingly from a children’s story: “I pray

that we will see the day as soon as possiblewhen we welcome a world in which we do nothave to kill enemies whom we cannot hate.For this end, I would not mind my body beingripped innumerable times.”

Many of the pilots wrote as lyricallyabout sacrifice as they did about inevitability.They had heard about it, day in andday out, as the war gathered pace: fromparents and teachers, from religiousleaders and philosophers. Even Japan’s firstpsychotherapists became involved, lamentingthe degeneration of western individualisminto a diseased egotism and trying to help the

youth of Japan to – as they saw it – balancetheir own desires with the needs of theirfamilies and society.

By December 1943, when universitystudents were suddenly conscripted in theirthousands, a positive case for war seemed tohave become surplus to requirements. It wasas though the more hopeless Japan’s situationbecame, the more acutely the call was feltto give whatever one had: “For our nation,”one of the pilots commented, “enormouslypoor in material resources, the last [form of]capital is the body.”

Fear of deathMarched out of their classrooms and intogreat army and navy halls, these studentswere asked in front of their peers if theywished to volunteer for the kamikaze corps.For most, the great issue at stake – life ordeath – had been decided long ago, and notby them. They stepped forward.

Over the next few months, these‘volunteers’ – including the few who hadheld back, only to find their names added tothe list anyway – spent their days receivingsevere newbie beatings and a meagre pilottraining, and their nights struggling to

BOOKS

E Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of

Japanese Student Soldiers by Emiko

Ohnuki-Tierney (University of Chicago Press,2006)

E Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern

Japan by Christopher Harding et al (eds)(Routledge, 2014)

E Valley of Darkness: The Japanese

People in World War Two by ThomasHavens (University Press of America, 1986)

DISCOVER MORE

Christopher Harding (@drchrisharding) is a

lecturer in Asian history at the University of

Edinburgh. He has appeared on the BBC Radio 3

programme Free Thinking

In the end, the kamikaze strategy provednowhere near as effective as hoped.

Early attacks enjoyed the element ofsurprise, but once the Americansknew what to expect and had theirradar systems operational, heavy andbarely manoeuvrable planes made

for pitifully easy prey. Nearly 4,000pilots died, against the loss of 40 or soAmerican ships.

If anything, the missions madethings worse for Japanese at home.

Resistance on islands such as Saipanand in the skies near the mainland helped

convince the Americans that the secretweapon they were developing in the desert ofNew Mexico might be the only way to end thewar. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were amongthe cities being spared conventional bombingfor the time being, the better to assess the newweapon’s power.

No one knows how 12 April 1945 reallyended for Ichizo Hayashi. But this is how itbegan. Alongside the rising sun headbandand the pure white scarf that formed thelegendary attire of the kamikaze pilots,Hayashi stepped into his plane carrying threethings: a Bible, a copy of Søren Kierkegaard’sThe Sickness Unto Death, and a photograph ofhis mother. The two of them were Christians:the final layer of meaning – of inevitability –about the war and Hayashi’s unsought partin it was that, in his last words to his mother:“All is in God’s hands”.

“This is like a dream,” he wrote.

“Tomorrow, I am no longer alive. Thosewho went on sortie yesterday are all dead – itdoesn’t feel real. I wonder if I will be allowedto enter heaven. Mother, please pray for me.I cannot bear the thought of going to a placewhere you wil l not join me later.”

“At least one strafed

his own base…. many

kamikaze sabotaged

their planes or

deliberatelysteered them intothe sea, well short

of their targets”

Kamikaze pilots

keep their heroic romanticism intact. IchizoHayashi wrote in his diary: “It is easy to talkabout death in the abstract, as the ancientphilosophers did, but it is real death I fear.[Japanese military personnel] are killinginfants and innocent civilians in China…but there is no more time for me to escape.”

A good many pilots adopted the viewsof their new comrades and superiors, theirwritings turning from poetry and historyto stereotyped and rather unconvincing

anticipations of glorious and beautiful deaths.Few kept it up. They soon dissolved back intoconfusion and longing – for families andlovers, for release from the sheer absurdity oftheir situation.

It rapidly became too much. Pilots drankand rioted in their barracks, or took theirgood-luck sashes – each one crafted intricatelyfrom a thousand civilian stitches – and burnedthem in disgust. At least one pilot strafed hisown base shortly after taking off for his finalflight. Many kamikaze sabotaged their planesor deliberately steered them into the sea, wellshort of their targets.

Christopher Harding discusses the reluctant

kamikaze on our podcast. To listen, visit

E historyextra.com/podcasts

ON THE PODCAST

A pilot puts on his hachimaki , a bandanafeaturing Japan’s Rising Sun symbol, worn

as a symbol of patriotism and courage


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BBHX14S

BBHX14

BBHX14IT


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Despite evidence that some

women held kingly powers

during the third millennium BC,the first universally accepted

female pharaoh is Sobeknefru.

Daughter of Amenemhat III,who she succeeded in c1789

BC to rule for approximatelyfour years, Sobeknefru

appeared on official king lists

for centuries after her death.The first monarch named

after crocodile god Sobek,

symbol of pharaonic might,

Sobeknefru took the standardfive royal names of a king –Merytre Satsekhem-nebettawy

Djedetkha Sobekkare

Sobeknefru – with the epithetSon of Ra (the sun god)

amended to Daughter of Ra.

Her portraits blended male andfemale attributes, the striped

royal headcloth and male-stylekilt worn over female dress.

Sobeknefru is also depictedin the cloak associated with her

coronation. Yet a more

complete portrait was identifiedas Sobeknefru in 1993, and it’s

in this that the strong family

resemblance to her father, Amenemhat III, can be seen.

Sobeknefru created templesat the northern sites Tell Dab’a

and Herakleopolis, and also

completed her father’s pyramidcomplex at Hawara. She seems

to have built her own pyramid

at Mazghuna near Dahshur,but no trace of her burial has

been found. If she ismentioned at all in modern

histories, it is only to be

dismissed as the last resort

of an otherwise male dynasty.Yet the throne passed

smoothly to a succession ofmale kings who followed her

lead by naming themselves

after the crocodile god.Her innovations inspired the

next female pharaoh Hatshepsut(ruled c1479–1458 BC), who

adopted the same kingly regalia

and false beard. The moderntendency to cast Hatshepsut as

a cross-dresser is only possible

because her female forerunners

she was portrayed enthroned,holding a sceptre and wearing

both the royal ‘uraeus’ cobra ather brow and tie-on false beard

of kingship combined with her

traditional female dress.The tomb also revealed

Khentkawes I’s official titles in ahieroglyphic inscription, initiallytranslated as ‘King of Upper and

Lower Egypt, Mother of the Kingof Upper and Lower Egypt’

until British Egyptologist Alan

Gardiner found a “philologicallytenable” alternative translation

meaning that Khentkawes I

had only been ‘the mother oftwo kings’ rather than a king

herself. Yet in light of the newarchaeological evidence,

her ambiguous title is now

interpreted as ‘Mother of the

King of Upper and Lower Egypt,[holding office as] King of Upper

and Lower Egypt’.Khentkawes I certainly left her

mark at Giza, where memories

that a female ruler had built agreat tomb persisted for two

millennia. Yet she was by nomeans unique, for within a

couple of decades her

descendant Khentkawes IIheld the same titles, was

again portrayed with

the royal cobra at her

brow, and had her ownpyramid at the new royal

cemetery, Abusir.There was even a third such

woman whose pyramid

complex at Sakkara was solarge some Egyptologists have

suggested she had ‘anindependent reign’ at the deathof her husband, King Djedkare,

in c2375 BC. But this mysteryruler remains anonymous and

forgotten, for not only was her

name erased from her tombcomplex after her death, the

1950s excavation of her tomb

was never published and itremains the Pyramid of the

Unknown Queen.

have been played down or

ignored. Such is the case withNefertiti. She is judged almost

entirely on her beautiful bust,yet evidence suggests she

wielded the same kingly powers

as her husband and may havesucceeded him as sole ruler.

Her example was followed bythe 12th-century BC femalepharaoh Tawosret, whose titles

included Strong Bull andDaughter of Ra. She was the

last female pharaoh for almost

a thousand years, the finalmillennium BC being marked by

successive foreign invasions of

Egypt. The most successful ofthese were the Macedonian

Ptolemies, claiming descentfrom Alexander the Great and

ruling for the last three centuries

BC. Their Egyptian advisorManetho created the system of

royal dynasties we still usetoday. He named five of thefemale pharaohs, stating that “it

was decided that women might

hold the kingly office” as earlyas the second dynasty, in the

early third millennium BC.

he mother of Egypt

The splendour of Khentkawes I’stomb complex, ‘the FourthPyramid of Giza’, suggests

she was a pharaoh

Sobeknefru:Thecrocodile queen

ABOVE: A bust of Sobekne-fru, the first accepted femalepharaoh BELOW:Nefertiti’sbeauty distracts from thepossibility she ruled Egypt

Title: King of Upper and Lower Egypt

Born: c1830–1815 BC,possibly Hawara in the Fayum

Died: c1785 BC


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THE HISTORY ESSAY

AMERICA: BRAVE NEW

WORLD OR ACCIDENT?Far from being a bold project to create a nation, early settlers to the

US wanted nothing more than to survive – and to recreate England

By Malcolm Gaskill

An illustration of the burning of the English settlement of Deerfield in Massachusetts during a 1704 attack by Native Americans. It was

one of a series of conflicts, spanning many decades, between various tribes and the colonists who arrived in the 17th century

How the English Became Americans


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THE HISTORY ESSAY

lem was compounded by scepticism that occupying foreign territorywas even lawful.

In the reign of James I, pamphlets appealed to higher ideals andbetter natures using Roman law, classical history and biblical pre-cept. Land was either empty – vacuum domicilium – or occupied byNative Americans and so ‘hitherto uncultivated’ (hacentus inculta).Either way, English imperialists had the right – indeed a sacred duty– to go forth. Did bees not swarm from the overflowing hive? Hadthe Romans not saved pagan Britain from savagery? The gospels,good Protestants knew, must be spread throughout the earth beforeChrist would return. If the land was perfectible as a ‘new’ England,then its peoples might yet be civilised and Christianised.

The most famous example was Pocahontas, daugh-

ter of the Powhatan chief Wahunsonacock, who in1614 married a tobacco farmer named John Rolfe,and two years later attended the court of James I.She was an exemplar to colonial missionaries, butalso a political pawn. Her death, as she prepared toreturn to Virginia, exacerbated deteriorating An-

glo-Native American relations, culminating in the uprising of 1622in which 347 English colonists perished. Noble aspirations did notdie with them – charitable organisations funded missions through-out the 17th century – but now Englishmen felt less inhibited. Indeed,an opportunity for the guilt-free exploitation of native resources mayhave enhanced America’s appeal to adventurers, even as the VirginiaCompany fragmented and was taken over by the crown.

The Plymouth Pilgrims established a new type of colonial settle-

ment, quite unlike the straggling tobacco farms along the Jamesriver: the communitarian godly commonwealth, independent of theChurch of England. They also believed that Native Americans couldbe won for Christ. The migrants led by John Winthrop, a Suffolk gen-

tleman, in the 1630s were not separatists – at least, not openly so– but they did seek to chasten England for losing its spir-

itual way. This was an ideal famously expressed ina sermon by Winthrop that elevated the Mas-

sachusetts Bay Colony as “a city upon a hill”– an aspirational beacon to the Old World.

The company seal depicted a near-nakedNative American speaking the words:“Come over and help us.”

From the start, however, the wil-

derness got the upper hand – notso much the empty, uncultivatedland nor its hostile inhabitants, butthe wilderness the English broughtwith them: their own religious and

political differences, and the strainsimposed by economic habit. By 1650,

Virginia and Massachusetts had become

“From the start, the wilderness got the upper hand – not so much

the empty, uncultivated land nor its hostile inhabitants, but the

wilderness the English brought with them”

pealing than one of godless tobacco farmers or slave-owning sugarbarons. Yet emphasis on the Pilgrims – not least with the annualcelebration of the first Thanksgiving – is misleading. They believedthey were propelled and preserved by God’s providence: new Israel-ites seeking Canaan in the wilderness. But they did not resemble thetypical English migrant, who was probably an adolescent apprenticeon an insalubrious plantation in Virginia or Barbados. And therewas nothing divinely inexorable about the progress of colonies ortheir inhabitants.

The English were not natural colonisers. Queen Elizabeth showedlittle interest – at least, in terms of financial support – despite theefforts of Richard Hakluyt, whose Discourse Concerning WesternPlanting was written for her in 1584. In that year, the queen grant-ed Sir Walter Ralegh a charter to colonise ‘Virginia’, the idea being

not planting per se but rather the creation of a base from which toloot Spanish fleets. However, the experimental Roanoke Colonysoon came to a sticky end. Elizabeth’s successor, James VI and I, wassimilarly non-committal, but peace with Spain removed the need forpiratical outposts, while arguments for extracting commodities toreduce imports, and for creating colonial markets to increase ex-ports, became more compelling.

Yet royal coffers remained closed. The Virginia Company, formedin 1606, was a consortium dependent on private investment – invest-ment that proved hard to attract and upon which few dividends werepaid. Jamestown, the first permanent settlement, became a bywordfor factional conflict, chaos and high mortality. Promoters spoke of“Earth’s only paradise”, but English paupers preferred to take theirchances at home, and speculators looked elsewhere.

“It is a matter of great difficulty,” opined the Elizabethan histo-rian William Camden, “by the expenses of a private man to plant acolony in far distant countries.” There was never enough money, inother words – nor enough willing migrants. “We are known too wellto the world t

Bbc History 2014 Christmas

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Transcript of Bbc History 2014 Christmas