Oundle History 2019

OUNDLE HISTORY 2019

Introduction One of the great joys of studying History is the subject’s ability to draw one beyond the confines of the syllabus and into new areas of interest. Great events, significant individuals and intriguing themes all hold their sway upon historians, whether studying in the classroom or researching at the highest academic levels. This journal offers a selection of writings from current Oundle historians, drawn from within and beyond the school curriculum. Research and written argument are two of the key pillars upon which the subject – and these essays – rest, but so too is enthusiasm for the events and people of the past and this is a common theme running through the following pieces.

I hope that they provide an interesting and illuminating insight into the world of Oundle’s historians.

With thanks to Polly Brown, Molly Mihell, Liana Snape and Yifei Zheng for editing this edition of the Journal.

Mr J M Allard, Head of History

Cover Image: Courtyard of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, 1653 - Emanuel de Witte 2

Oundle History 2019

Contents How Important Were Gardens to Urban Landscapes in the Ancient Near East?

Danila Mikhaylov (C U6th) �����������������������������������������������������������4

The Negro and the New Deal Desmund Hui (Sc U6th)����������������������������������������������������������������8

Did Historians in Antiquity Have any Interest in the Lives and Experiences of Women?

George Brettle (B U6th) �������������������������������������������������������������12

More than Just a Coin George Brettle (B U6th) �������������������������������������������������������������14

The Dutch Republic and the Birth of Capitalism Henry Worsley (Ldr L6th)�����������������������������������������������������������15

The Korean War was the Main Reason for Worsening Relations Between the Superpowers in the 1950s. How Far do You Agree?

Izzy Ludlam (D 5th)���������������������������������������������������������������������17

What Caused the ‘Golden Age of Conservatism’?

Joseph Meisner (L 5th)���������������������������������������������������������������18

Review of the Wider Earth: A Play by David Morton The National History Museum (October 24th 2018) Joseph Pickering (Sco 1st) ���������������������������������������������������������20

Lenin’s Actions and how They Affected the October Revolution Joseph White (L 4th) ������������������������������������������������������������������21

How did Catherine the Great, Born a German Princess with no Russian Ancestry, Become One of the Most Revered of all Romanov Rulers?

Polly Brown (K L6th) �������������������������������������������������������������������23

“The British were Primarily Responsible for the Breakdown in Relations with Their American Colonies in the Period 1763-5.” Do you Agree?

Sienna Rushton (Ldr L6th)����������������������������������������������������������25

How Far Can Marxism Explain the Failures of Presidential Reconstruction?

Yifei Zheng (Sc L6th)�������������������������������������������������������������������27

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How Important Were Gardens to Urban Landscapes in the Ancient Near East?

Danila Mikhaylov (C U6th) With the discovery of irrigation agriculture in sixth millennium BC and its subsequent widespread adoption in the arid region of Near East, the first gardens were set up, gradually making their way into both the vocabulary and the cultures of the people living there� This essay shall explain how important those gardens were to urban landscapes in the Ancient Near East by examining their religious and ideological significance as well as their socioeconomic value to contemporaneous society� For the purposes of this study, urban landscapes are henceforth defined not as an exclusively physical but also a mental construct, i�e� including the inhabitants and their culture, whilst the region of Near East is taken to mean the territories of the Fertile Crescent, Syria-Palestine and the easternmost parts of Anatolia� Lastly, the term ancient hereafter refers to the period from the emergence of first city-states in Mesopotamia to the collapse of the Assyrian Empire in 608 BC� Although there is evidence to suggest that gardens were a valuable spiritual asset to this region’s urban communities, it is indisputable that various social and economic benefits brought about by garden construction bore greater significance. However, their ideological purpose was arguably of uppermost importance to urban landscapes in the Ancient Near East� One reason why gardens were important to urban landscapes in this geographical area is their role in the religious life of communities. This is because, the garden, as a concept, was widely considered an epitome and, therefore, a symbol of land’s fertility as well as an unparalleled source of delight.

This made gardens regular complements to temples, most commonly, as a bounteous ambience, where the deity was believed to roam. In contemporaneous perceptions, the divine power and order manifested in gardens also represented an antithesis to the mythical concept of uncultivated wilderness, where chaotic malice was considered to reside. Since gardens were seen as interpretations of paradisiac prosperity, royal residences of Mesopotamian monarchs, such as, the Babylonian palace of Nebuchadnezzar II (604-592 BC), included similar motifs in their palatial décor, namely the palm tree – a metonym for the divine and fruitful monarchic rule. Moreover, the quality of the temple garden therefore directly reflected on the status of the deity and the community of worshippers, which thus came to constitute a crucial element of the entire temple complex� Gardens also served as outdoor ritual sites, and several gardens, in fact, acted as mortuary gardens� One

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finds proof of this in the Old Testament (Isaiah 1:29; 65:3; 66:17), despite its rather critical attitude towards the use and association of gardens with sacrificial cult-ceremonies. Like the ancient Israeli gardens, their Ugaritic counterparts were also home to sacrifices to the local deity, Reshef, whereas in Babylonia, there are additional references to ritual gardens, such as, Inanna’s bringing the huluppu-tree there� With regard to Assyria, Sennacherib (705-681 BC) mentions his luxurious akitu house, i.e. house dedicated to ceremonial celebration of the akitu festival, which included a garden by the river where he would perform certain rituals� The Garden of Uzza in Jerusalem, on the other hand, became utilized as a royal burial ground, albeit presented in a controversial light in the Old Testament, and this proposal finds support in the gospel of John that claims Jesus’ body was laid in a garden tomb (19, 41) and that Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener (20, 15)� The significance of the garden as a burial site receives further support from the archaeological findings in Ashurnasirpal II’s (883-859 BC) Northwest Palace in Nimrud, which encompassed repeated scenes of the sacred tree used as decorations of the marbled palace walls. In one of the rooms, this motif appears exactly 96 times, leading to speculation that the number of trees matches with the number of dead kings listed in contemporary recensions of the Assyrian King List� Therefore, one could deduce that a tree was a muchrevered object in Mesopotamian society, given its role as an allegorical substitute for the royal tombs left behind in former capital cities. Likewise, the fact that gardens were imbued with substantial religious importance to have iconographic copies of them in palaces of monarchs, perhaps to imitate their divine vis-à-vis depicted dwelling in lush gardens and by doing so, reinforce their authority� In short, it is possible to perceive gardens as important to Near Eastern urban landscapes since they functioned as congregational loci for various ceremonies, as alternative to necropolises, and as examples of the land’s fertility. Yet it is equally worth noticing that in all those circumstances gardens solely acted as companions to temples or palaces, and given that absence of the former would have rendered gardens’ spiritual significance meaningless, gardens were not that important to urban landscapes for religious reasons� One must perceive gardens to be of significant value because of the considerable benefits their construction and exploitation often brought to the local urban society.

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Drawing on various horticultural advancements, decorative palatial gardens, first mentioned in the context of the reign of the Kassite Babylonian monarch Adad-shuma-usur (1218-1189 BC), were absorbed into Assyrian culture, and acquired prominence in Tiglath-Pileser I’s (1114-1076 BC) Assyria. Introduction of the hanging gardens at Nineveh and Babylon that Strabo so munificently labelled one of the Seven Wonders of the World were yet another breakthrough in this field. Adoption of this technology was arguably extensive throughout the region, since gardens employing similar features to those of the Ninevite and Babylonian hanging gardens, could be found elsewhere, particularly, in the North Maru and in the Central Palace of Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC) in Amarna� However, the importance of gardens from an aesthetic viewpoint was far from being limited to the manner in which they happened to be constructed� On the contrary, botany, one could argue, was really the apotheosis of design and garden management in that historical period� Sennacherib’s (705-681 BC) royal garden at Nineveh, for instance, was devoted to a whole myriad of aromatic and fruit-bearing trees, that is “trees bearing wool” (possibly, cotton plants) and “fruit-bearing trees of the hills and all lands, all the aromatics of Syria” alongside “ox-eyed sunflowers, lilies, pomegranates, mandrakes, and roses.”

This seems to resonate well with the Sargon II’s (722–705 BC) impression of the gardens at Ulhu in Urartu, which highlights his sincere amazement at “fruit and bunches of grapes”, cultivated in this “pleasant feature of the city”. The latter part is perhaps even more relevant to our question, for there appears to exist a clear connection in the mindset of a person from that epoch between gardens and urban architecture in general. However, it is also worth mentioning that gardens were not the only decorative element of a monarch’s palace.

In the case of the Carchemish royal residence of Assyrian kings, there are records of black and white stone tiles alternated in construction of the Long Wall and the Herald’s Wall for decorative purposes. Sennacherib’s (705-681 BC) palace included textiles and apotropaic figures, namely winged sphinxes at gateways and bronze lions supporting lofty columns, and this tendency is applicable to other Assyrian palaces as well� Evidently, gardens, albeit rather important, did not comprise the only somewhat embellishing aspect of the standard Near Eastern palace at the time, but gardens also brought several economic benefits with them.

They created job opportunities for the local population, whether directly as gardeners, who were employed both privately and by the monarch, and were often supplied with rations by the garden’s owner in return for their work, as in the case of the Judean gardener at Nebuchadnezzar II’s (604-592 BC) court, or indirectly� Members of the local elite, high court officials and important visitors, frequented gardens and this provided additional working spaces for guards and workers� Strabo, for instance, records how workers in Babylonian gardens operated tools to lift the water Oundle History 2019

for irrigation from Euphrates up to the gardens themselves.

Although it remains largely unclear whether rulers tended to hold legal office in the garden, one Sumerian literary text regarding the legendary king Lugalbanda mentions how “he takes office in the outer courtyard.” Likewise, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) acknowledges receiving envoys from twelve countries there during inauguration festivities. The produce of the gardens was also put to use in the perfume industry, medicine, construction (the wood supplies of Sennacherib’s garden at Nineveh were sufficient, and Nehemiah 2:8 refers to royal parklands in Syria large enough to provide timber for the building of the gates of Jerusalem) and food production.

Two examples of the latter include Marduk-apla-iddina II’s (722-710, 703-702 BC) garden at Babylon, which had plots of four to six vegetables (67 in total) grouped together, and Ashurnasirpal II’s (883-859 BC) palatial garden at Nimrud, which on the occasion of its inauguration, served as one of the food sources for some 70,000 people for the duration of ten days. Another social function of a garden was serving as an incomparable source of pleasure, because there kings often engaged in animal hunting or feasted in the company of other members of the royal family, subject to various kinds of entertainment� In fact, several Assyrian emperors, namely Tiglath-Pileser I (1114-1076 BC) and Sargon II (722–705 BC), refer to their gardens as “built for his pleasure” and for his “lordly pleasure”� Moreover, Sargon II’s (722-705 BC) reign sees the introduction of the term kirimahu, used specifically to denote a so-called pleasure garden, attached to the palace.

However, its value as a place of delectation and leisurely pastimes completely relied on another edifice, be it a royal palace or a private house, and particularly its inhabitants actually to perform those activities there. Despite the fact that this clearly reveals the strong connection that existed between the city’s inhabitants, who could afford to maintain a pleasure garden, and the garden itself, this simultaneously implies that the garden was not extremely important on its own to urban landscapes for the reason that it accompanied another architectural site� However, this is not to anyhow undermine its economic significance and its being a rather valuable aesthetic asset to the owner. Therefore, as the evidence suggests, the concept of a garden with a delightful, artistic allure and certain economic benefits as well as a place for leisurely pastimes, though in tandem with and relying on the palace, was nonetheless remarkably important to urban landscapes of the region� Undoubtedly, gardens would have been far less valuable to urban landscapes without their being a powerful tool to project a certain ideological message because local figures of authority, be they kings or governors, were able to shape gardens both architecturally and aesthetically to suit their political demands. Botanical predilections of monarchs frequently corresponded with their territorial

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claims as appears evident from Ashurnasirpal II’s (883-859 BC) records of retrieving exotic trees, cuttings and seeds on his military campaigns and planting them in his garden in Nimrud. Likewise, Syro-Hittite, Urartan and Mannean campaigns of Sargon II (722-705 BC) are echoed in his planting the “largest possible range of botanical specimens” in his garden, where there “stood every tree of the Hittite land” and “the plants of every mountain” (most likely, referring to the Zagros mountain range)� This, together with the introduction of new types of column bases from Syria in his elevated garden pavilions, certainly served as a means to emphasize the recent extension of Assyrian kingly rule to the west of Euphrates and Media, which is now modern-day Iran� However, his and other rulers’ ambitions were not limited in representation to just the floral and faunal diversity of their respective gardens, since aesthetic and technological innovations were also of major importance in making a powerful political statement.

Evidence of this could also be found in Sargon II’s (722705 BC) construction programs at Khorsabad that, as his son and successor Sennacherib (705-681 BC) records with rather some delight, accomplished a lot in terms of both captive breeding and hydraulic engineering. The Amarna palace of Akhenaten (1353 -1336 BC) also employed such modifications as sunken gardens, in order to recreate “a true microcosm of the universe”, which would in turn convey his inviolable authority over his realm. Correlative gardens, albeit somewhat less well preserved nowadays, also existed in two of the courtyards of the roughly contemporaneous palace at Ugarit, whereas Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC), Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC) and Sennacherib (705-681 BC) all constructed viewing terraces or platforms in the gardens, in order to underline their imperial status through architecture� Gardens certainly appear to possess ideological value as is evident from the records of a veritable horticultural “arms race” that occurred between Neo-Assyrian kings, in which Sennacherib’s (705-681 BC) “Palace Without a Rival” as its name clearly suggests emerged as the unexcelled victor� A prime exhibit of the forefront engineering achievements of the time, his garden pavilion greatly elevated above other buildings received its own water supply from an artificially constructed source, a tall stone aqueduct in lieu of a less pompous and, coincidentally, more common river or canal, and revolutionarily employed bronze castings for column bases� Nebuchadnezzar II’s (604-592 BC) Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which also saw many novel ideas being implemented, would have undeniably served to propagandize how remarkably successful of a statesman he was, as well� Demonstrating superiority also developed via gardens’ geographic location. Thus, citadels usually characterized by the artificial segregation of the royal complex and houses of aristocracy from the dwelling quarters of the city, and their higher elevation than the city itself, originated in the Hittite culture, becoming an essential attribute of the so-called 6

“late Hittite” style, which may be seen in Aramean towns of Sam’al, Carchemish and Guzana. Borrowed from the Hittites

by Assyrians, these appeared extensively in Mesopotamian cities, most notably, in Nimrud, since they were useful to create an image of public buildings as elevated above both the city’s fortifications and the public areas. This increased the visual distance between the two and, therefore, emphasized the almost supernatural position of the monarch in the Assyrian society� In fact, since the king de-jure also served as the main priest and thus, representative of the god Ashur on Earth, it is entirely feasible that monarch did enjoy such a status, and therefore, lifting the garden above the general urban landscape was deliberate and important� Although gardens distinctly come across as rather valuable to contemporary Near Eastern societies, this, one might argue, could be written off as a by-product of being part of a citadel and the buildings that actually needed to be elevated above the ground (temples, palaces), meaning that gardens were hence dependent on citadels� However, the use of flora and fauna contained within the garden as some sort of a political statement, though extremely prevalent in the Neo-Assyrian era, was already in existence at the time of the founding of the previous capitals of the empire, KarTukulti-Ninurta and Dar-Sharukken, where landscaped parks, horticultural gardens and menageries were constructed.

Moreover, creating a prosperous garden in those areas was particularly important for the status of the king because those two capitals were originally desert, virgin ground� Therefore, a monarch’s ability to convert something wild and natural into something fertile and urban, and perhaps make the nature subordinate to monarchic rule through maintain a garden reflected on his superior, sacrosanct status in the eyes of the ordinary populace� The fact that many monarchs representing different centuries, dynasties and states, employed such tactics and this horticultural rivalry escalated further into what one would now define as an “arms race” between several generations of Neo-Assyrian kings, demonstrates that gardens were important to urban landscapes� In short, a garden was a prime expression of prosperity and power as could be seen in the variety of ways it was manipulated by the kings to carry a powerful political message: its flora and fauna, its elevation above public buildings and the wide-ranging use of cutting edge technology in its construction. Therefore, both an effective and the most visually appealing way to reinforce the state ideology, which inevitably would have echoed in the lives of the ordinary people, the concept of gardens was of major importance to urban landscapes in the Ancient Near East� In conclusion, it seems obvious, from the evidence discussed anteriorly, that gardens were of major importance to urban landscapes in the Ancient Near East, in other words in Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine and the Hittite Anatolia,

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because of their religious, socioeconomic and political significance. There exists a good deal of evidence to suggest that their role in various aspects of religious life of the city, specifically their service as areas for ceremonial worship and as mortuaries, is worth consideration. Despite this, their appearance in quotidian affairs of the people and their elegant image that certainly echoed in the overall presentation of the city, the economic benefits withal, arguably, represent greater factors as to why garden had become such an important element of urban landscapes and society in the Ancient Near East� However, in both of these cases, gardens operated in tandem with either temples or residences of the high class at the time, and although their short-term importance heavily relied on this co-operation, the long-term role as a platform for projecting a convincing

political message appears to be of greatest importance. This is because it draws on both the religious and the social, or the socioeconomic, significance of the garden, as a concept, and makes great use from available technology, location and diversity of flora and fauna to proclaim the owner’s or the founder’s ambitions, as well as to reinforce their status in the society� The diversity of sources of evidence certainly support this view, if one applies to aforementioned definition of urban landscapes as both something physical and mental, for a political statement made via horticulture and architecture in relation to a garden, assuredly influenced both. Therefore, gardens were very important to urban landscapes in the Ancient Near East, predominantly for their ideological, or political, significance.

1� Although excluded from consideration in this essay, traditions of horticulture in Achaemenid Persia are worth a brief mention because they largely developed from Mesopotamian history and experiences of garden management (segregation from the public, use of technology etc.) In Pasargadae under Cyrus the Great (550–530 BC), in Persepolis under Artaxerxes II (404-358 BC) and in several satrapal estates on the relative periphery of the empire, e.g. in Sardis, luxurious gardens, following specific geometrical patterns were constructed. Commentators speculate over their significance, with some suggesting that the four plots of Cyrus’ garden symbolized “the four quarters of the world” brought under the Persian control, using the trilingual texts from Apadana, in which the Persian Empire is defined as a “four-cornered entity”. Such prominence of gardens in Persia perhaps hints also at their importance to earlier societies in the Near East.

e.g. the six-rayed stars and rosettes alluding to Ishtar, whereas the floral quatrefoils – to Shamash. As for other types of decorations, Ashurnasirpal II’s Banquet Stele mentions the decoration of his palace with glazed brick and with bronze door bands.

2� Stronach, David. “The Garden as a Political Statement: Some Case Studies from the Near East in the First Millennium B�C�” Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, 4 (1990): 171 3� Stavrakopoulou, Francesca� “Exploring the Garden of Uzza: Death, Burial and Ideologies of Kingship�” Biblica 87, no� 1 (2006): 5-6 4� Winter, Irene J� “”Seat of Kingship”/”A Wonder to Behold”: The Palace as Construct in the Ancient near East�” Ars Orientalis 23 (1993): 32-33 5� Wiseman, D� J� “Mesopotamian Gardens�” Anatolian Studies 33 (1983): 143-144 6� Wiseman, D� J�, 139 7� Stavrakopoulou, Francesca, 21; This seems a secondary function of what originally was a royal pleasure garden� Currently, there is no consensus amongst commentators over reasons for this conversion, though some suggest it was designed to take the “overspill from the palace tombs” or to appease the temple priests, concerted with the threatened purity of their place of worship� Equally, it is perfectly feasible that a garden was, in fact, the most appropriate location for the interment of local kings.

8� Stavrakopoulou, Francesca, 17-18 9� Stronach, David, 171; Novák, Mirko� “From Ashur to Nineveh: The Assyrian TownPlanning Programme�” Iraq 66 (2004): 181 10� Foster, Karen Polinger� “The Hanging Gardens of Nineveh�” Iraq 66 (2004): 209 11� Records mention how public gardens, upon their establishment, were provided with cuttings and seeds from the royal establishments, issuing up to 1,200 saplings of fruit trees, consisting of 350 pomegranate, 400 fig and 450 medlar ones, one at a time.

A royal garden of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud was also home to cedar, cypress, box, myrtle, almond, date palm, ebony, sissoo, tamarind, oak, terebinth, nut trees, willow, fir, pear, quince, grapevine, acacia and frankincense.

12� Wiseman, D�J�, 137 13� Winter, Irene J�, 35 14� Decorative textiles constituted fundamental aspects of royal iconography approximately from the reign of the Middle Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243-1207 BC) from the existing records. Specific patterns could have been royal prerogatives,

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15� Wiseman, D�J�, 143 16� Winter, Irene J�, 30 17� Wiseman, D�J�, 140 18� Winter, Irene J�, 37 19� Wiseman, D� J�, 141-143 20� Wiseman D. J., 142-143; Winter, Irene J�, 36 21� Stronach, David, 179 22� Winter, Irene J�, 34 23� Wiseman, D.J., 137; Dr Adolf L� Oppenheim considers this a unique feature that replaced the earlier tradition of primarily botanical gardens (kiru) - an innovation influenced upon Mesopotamia by their encounters with territories west of Euphrates, Syria and Anatolia, just as in the case of the bit hilani buildings� These denoted smaller residences, originally characteristic of city-states of northern Syria and Anatolia, and they happened to be considerably smaller in scale than their Assyrian or Babylonian analogues, since they primarily fulfilled residential purposes. A number of Assyrian monarch, such as, Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BC) and Sargon II (722-705 BC) claim to have assembled such palaces in their domain, surrounding them with vast parklands� 24� Stronach, David, 171-172 25� Foster, Karen Polinger, 214 26� Foster, Karen Polinger, 209; Novak, Mirko, 180-182 27� Winter, Irene J., 37; Stronach, David, 174 28� Novak, Mirko, 181 29� Novak, Mirko, 184 30� One factor that definitely encouraged Assyrian kings to engage in numerous construction projects was the expansion of their realm. The old capital, Ashur, albeit an important trading centre, was disadvantageous to contemporaneous rulers due to scarcity of fertile land suitable for agriculture in that area. Northward Assyrian conquests annexed some fertile territories near the future Assyrian capital of Nineveh, which pressured the monarchs to leave the seat of their national god, practically located on her periphery. The first large-scale construction program was undertaken just a few kilometres to the north of Ashur, founding the city of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. As a site erected close to the river, it enabled Assyrians to apply mathematical knowledge to the layout of the city, enclosed by a rectangular system of fortifications. Like at Ashur, public buildings remained close to the river, and thus, visible from outside the city, however, this area was then fortified and segregated from the rest of city� 31� Novak, Mirko, 178; 184 32� Stronach, David, 174

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The Negro and the New Deal Desmund Hui (Sc U6th) In January 1937, as Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation in front of the white house for his second inaugural speech, he consistently made appeals to those most victimised by the on-going Great Depression� He promised that the New Deal – a term used to collectively describe the economic reform programs he pioneered – would deliver “a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence�” Roosevelt, however, was conspicuously silent on specifying which group of people had “too little”, and was thus most in need of the New Deal – all he could mention was ‘the people’� From the speech alone one could be led to believe that Depression was indiscriminate and equal in its destruction. Yet, only a cursory glance at the squalor of Black Harlem – the “bitter blossom of poverty” as Roi Ottley and William Weatherby would label it – would reveal this to be far from the case� Here ten thousand African American families, almost all unemployed, lived in rat-infested cellars and basements� Even more strikingly, in Harlem Hospital, twice as many people died as compared to Bellevue Hospital, which was located located in the white neighbourhood downtown� Using Roosevelt’s own metric, analysing the New Deal’s efforts to improve the lives of these African Americans – undoubtedly the group that suffered most during the Depression – would be the greatest ‘test of progress’� However, such an analysis would also reveal an uncomfortable truth, namely that, despite all the good it did, the New Deal failed the Negro during the Depression� Even before the start of the Depression, the position of African Americans was already the worst out of all Americans� Socially, they were perpetually reminded of their perceived inferiority through Southern segregation laws and daily mistreatment, while they also lived in a climate of intimidation, fear and violence, especially in the lead up to the Depression: the KKK’s membership peaked at 6 million in 1924, and between 1918 and 1927, 405 men and 11 black women, 3 of them pregnant, were brutally lynched� It was in terms of economic status, however, that the systemic inequality and poverty that faced blacks was most obvious� In the South, conditions for black sharecroppers “were

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little better than slavery with black tenant farmers held on the plantations as debt slaves and black convicts rented out to white farmers to do as they liked with�” Moreover, unemployment rates that were far higher than their white counterparts were a permanent feature of African American life: the dictum white businesses followed with respect to black workers was always ‘first fired and last hired’.

Discriminated against, un-unionised in an era of horrendous labour violations, and faced with mass unemployed, “The Negro”, as put succinctly by Clifford Burke, a black man who lived through the Depression, “was born in depression� It only became official when it hit the white man.”

However, as once as the Depression “hit the white man” it became evident that the already precarious position of the Negro in American society could sink even lower� Thousands of blacks were flung into unemployment with no means of sustaining themselves; by 1932, as compared to the aggregate rate of 25%, black unemployment was approximately 50% nationwide. Even the ‘lucky’ workers that were able to keep their jobs in the face of the economic collapse suffered tremendously. Compounding this were the efforts of white Americans, themselves destroyed by the Depression, though not to the same level as African Americans, to persecute blacks – the historic scapegoats for economic hardships� The slogan adopted by a group of whites in Atlanta – “No Jobs for Niggers Until Every White Man Has a Job” – was representative of large segments of the white working class who had suffered. Furthermore, where economic distress was greatest, lynching reared its ugly head: as a New Republic article reported in 1931, “Ku Klux practices were being resumed in the certainty that dead men not only tell no tales but create vacancies�” These massive problems were all in the background when the New Deal was born upon Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933, when he declared his commitment to the “Forgotten Man.” Yet New Deal programs were woefully inadequate to help individuals of either race, with blacks suffering more from their initial situation. The National Recovery Administration, for instance, did far from “provide enough for those who have too little”, at least where blacks were concerned. Indeed, the organisation had its own version of Jim Crow laws, complete with what one NAACP official called the “grandfather clause of the NRA” – blacks continued to receive unequal wages.

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Discrimination was so prevalent that it became a joke among black newspapers that the initials NRA in reality stood for “Negroes Rarely Allowed.” Additionally, the Agricultural Adjustment Act “served mainly to reduce [black] incomes (which they could stand much less than could their large landholding white neighbours), and force black landowners into tenancy, tenants into sharecropping, and many blacks off the land entirely.” Despite laws prohibiting it, local leaders of public spending organisations such as the Public Works Administration refused to employ most black workers with ones in Arthurdale and the Tennessee Valley Authority, allowing only whites to join. Even the unemployment benefits introduced early in the New Deal, which should have been the most egalitarian program of all, were biased against blacks� Corruption was rife due to the power of enforcement resting with individual states – average monthly relief payments to blacks in Atlanta stood at $19�29, as compared to the average of $32�66 to whites� The universally agreed greatest failure of the New Deal with respect to African American rights, however, was its failure to produce even a single piece of anti-lynching legislation.

As mentioned previously, lynchings and race-violence had been prevalent long before the Depression occurred, but the economic hardship that accompanied the slump had bred even higher levels of racial tension� Yet, despite Roosevelt’s humanitarian rhetoric about how “Every man has a right to life”, the New Deal virtually ignored the issue of lynching� A striking illustration of Roosevelt Administration’s determined refusal to address lynching, and the serious effects of such a policy, comes in the case of the murder of Claude Neal, a young black man, in 1932� Neal had been accused of the rape and murder of a white woman and was being transported to jail in Alabama when he was kidnapped by a mob of white men� He was then subject to well-publicised “unspeakable barbarities”, which included being branded with irons and castrated, before his mutilated body was paraded behind a car in front of 2,000 – 3,000 people. The NAACP attempted to prosecute those responsible under a federal kidnapping law, but Roosevelt’s attorney general Homer Cummings claimed that because profit had not been involved in the kidnapping, no federal crime had been committed – a clear act of political cowardice� Roosevelt himself went no further than claiming he was “wholly in favour of decent discussion” of lynching� It was clear that the Roosevelt Administration, even in the midst of grand speeches about social justice for the poor, would leave the poorest of the poor were out to dry� Though the New Deal failed to significantly aid blacks at virtually every turn, one should not be misled by this fact into believing that the intent of New Deal organisers was the oppression of blacks� Rather than any racist behaviour, the impotence of the New Deal in regards to civil rights was

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motivated by the need for political coalition building and compromise during the Depression� FDR, as with most of his cabinet members, was personally sympathetic to the plight of the blacks, but his party and Southern constituency was absolutely opposed to it; by the 1930s the Democrats were still very much the party of the white supremacist South and Reconstruction ‘Redeemers’. Thus, to preserve votes for his critical pieces of economic legislation, Roosevelt turned a blind eye to all the aforementioned injustices – a small price to pay for saving capitalism� As he said himself to Walter White, the first black national secretary of the NAACP, “If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, [Southern politicians] will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing� I just can’t take that risk�” However, any analysis of the New Deal’s effects on African Americans that simply ends here, at the New Deal’s technical end, is woefully incomplete� The New Deal may have failed the Negro during the Great Depression, but it would support them after the Depression had passed. As McElvaine notes, “the civil rights revolution that reached fruition in the 1960s had its origins in the Depression�” One cannot accurately evaluate the New Deal without taking its role in the success of the Civil Rights Movement into account� The means by which the New Deal sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights are varied� Firstly, it gave blacks economic stability: while the New Deal for the most part was far from ideal with respect to economically aiding African Americans, they nonetheless benefitted from such programs. Many African Americans would have starved had no relief, instead of a meagre amount, been provided� In fact, even with the discrimination practiced by the programs, blacks experienced notable material improvements; illiteracy, for instance, fell from 16�4% to 11�5% over the New Deal period� Moreover, while Roosevelt was restricted by the political climate in using his powers to improve the lives of African Americans, he still did sometimes act directly in favour of blacks, though such actions were “obviously severely limited.” For instance, he issued Executive Order 7046 in May 1935, which banned discrimination in the newly created Works Progress Administration, a massive public spending agency even whose minimum wages of $12 a week were twice what most blacks had been earning previously� Thus, while African Americans emerged from the New Deal still at the bottom economic rung of society, they could have fallen even further without it� This consequently gave them relatively stable footing to make demands in the future� Moreover, the New Deal also witnessed a significant expansion of black participation in political life, which gave blacks the experience and ambition for future political organisation. Roosevelt, following in the footsteps of 9

his cousin’s efforts to establish relations with the black community, organised a group of black leaders – his “Black Cabinet” as the press called them – to act as his advisors.

These leaders had no real political power, but even in an advisory role they went far beyond what previous presidents had permitted. Similarly, black leadership in the culturally focused ‘Federal One’ programs and the National Youth Administration, while minor programs, were also unprecedented in the recognition they gave to African Americans. Even the aforementioned AAA, though causing great economic pain to black southern farmers, introduced the concept of black political participation: “Millions of farmers voted in AAA crop referendums, including thousands of southern Negroes who had never before cast a ballot�” The New Deal’s elevation of blacks within the federal government not only provided legitimacy for future calls for civil rights by increasing the community’s reputation, but it also fuelled ambitions to pursue even greater positions of power, and ultimately equality. Finally, Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement, and its relative success in procuring anti-discrimination legislation, would signify the importance of public demonstration in achieving civil rights goals – a lesson taken to heart by Martin Luther King Jr. The New Deal’s greatest achievement was arguably altering American values to ones related to civil rights and thus allowing the movement to succeed� Because of the New Deal and the experience of the Great Depression, liberty as most Americans defined it changed subtly. No longer did freedom describe a states’ rights against federal tyranny, nor laissez faire capitalism – such a definition seemed vapid to those who had starved in a breadline. Rather, after the New Deal it meant the “right to life… a right to make a comfortable living”, and freedom from want and insecurity� Eleanor Roosevelt’s campaigning for black rights during the Depression, while not accomplishing anything major in terms of legislation, was also vital for promoting these values of social justice. As a result, the federal government was now seen to have a responsibility to the poor and downtrodden, whether white or black. Harold Ickes, a major New Deal figure who ran the early Public Works Administration, publicly stated the philosophy that the New Deal gave birth to, with its unique justification for racial equality: “Under our new conception of democracy, the Negro will be given the chance to which he is entitled – not because he will be singled out for special consideration but because he pre-eminently belongs to the class that the new democracy is designed especially to aid�” So it was that, after the New Deal, a man as racist and vulgar as Lyndon B� Johnson would be willing to pass major civil

10

rights legislation; poverty was poverty, whether its victims were black or white, and had to be alleviated� This change in values supported the civil rights movement in two ways� It not only convinced liberal whites who have otherwise been indifferent to racial issues to sympathise with blacks to support the movement. But it also motivated blacks to take over state power as a means to achieve civil rights – after the New Deal the federal government had both the power and perceived responsibility for poor blacks� Without the cultural change the New Deal precipitated, the Civil Rights Movement certainly would have faced even greater challenges in achieving political change.

In sum, the history of African Americans during the New Deal was ultimately not solely one of repression and squalor. The New Deal failed the Negro while it was alive, but it supported the Negro in death – it provided blacks with the opportunity to claim civil rights and eventually realise the goal of an equal and prosperous society that the New Deal was founded on� As summarised by McElvaine, “the rebirth of that dream of true racial equality, which had been crushed with the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, was the real achievement of the New Deal years in race relations.”

In closing this analysis of African American history during the New Deal, it seems apt to leave some personal comments on how the experience of African Americans during the Depression has been treated in modern histories� Of course, I am no professional historian, and lack a perfect grasp on the historiography of the Great Depression. Yet the little research I have done on New Deal historiography seems to reveal a disquieting trend: the experiences of African Americans during the Great Depression are practically ignored. The most prominent and recent one-volume history of the New Deal, Amity Schlae’s revisionist The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, for instance, while willing to criticise virtually all New Deal policies and wax rhetoric on the woes of the American businessman, is silent on how such policies specifically failed the African Americans they should have helped most� Even William Leuchtenburg’s seminal Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal has only brief comments on the state of African Americans, which illuminate but a sliver of the trials the community underwent� This lack of emphasis in academic work has leaked into popular discussion, where African Americans are virtually never mentioned in relation to the New Deal. Part of the reason for this state of affairs is the ease by which the suffering of African Americans can seemingly be merely treated as an extension of the general national suffering when discussing the Depression, as Roosevelt did in his second inauguration speech, so that no special attention has to be paid to them. There is also that

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discomfort felt by those who revere Roosevelt as a national hero and champion of the poor when the contradiction between such an image and the New Deal’s inability to aid African Americans is revealed� Nonetheless, simply because a phenomenon can be explained does not mean that it is justifiable. By failing to appreciate the experience of African Americans during the New Deal, we not only lose practical

historical knowledge of how the origins of the Civil Rights Movement can be found in the period, but also betray the ideals of justice that inspired the New Deal in the first place. It is only right that New Deal history should be about, as much as the New Deal was for, “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid�”

1�

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 404�

9�

2�

John Newsinger, Fighting Back: The American Working Class in the 1930s, 35 - 38�

10� Ibid, 188�

3�

John Newsinger, Fighting Back: The American Working Class in the 1930s, 35�

11� Robert S� McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929 – 1941, 193�

4�

Studs, Terkel, An Oral History of the Great Depression�

12� William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 85�

5�

Robert S� McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929 – 1941, 187�

13� Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought, 45 – 52.

Robert S� McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929 – 1941, 189

6�

Ibid�

14� Ibid, 340�

7�

Robert S� McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929 – 1941, 189�

15� Robert S� McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929 – 1941, 195�

8�

Ibid, 190�

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11

Did Historians in Antiquity Have any Interest in the Lives and Experiences of Women?

George Brettle (B U6th) Women in antiquity are a fascinating area of research for both classicists and historians� Much like anything in antiquity we are finding more and more about it with each excavation. However what is equally interesting is what the historians in antiquity thought of about women. There is a great deal of debate surrounding this topic, partly because, as Helen King writes, “almost all information about women in antiquity comes to use from male sources”. This is does not mean to say that there were no erudite women in antiquity.

For example there was Hypatia, an early philosopher, and Corinna, an ancient Greek lyric poet� However did the historians both in Greece and Athens have any interest in the lives and experiences of women? For this essay antiquity can be defined as the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. The way to explore this is by examining whether the society first had an interest and then into whether the historians had any interest� Although there is evidence to suggest that historians had an interest, the bulk of the evidence suggests that they did not� However the evidence also suggests that it does not matter that they ignored the roles of women as it reflected the society that the women were a part of� To begin it is important to examine the role of women in Greece and more specifically Athens. However before examining Athens, let us examine the role of women in the Greek creation story. Talked about by the poet Hesiod, the beginnings of mankind is about the gods, titans and the like, but when the first woman comes on the scene it is Pandora; a woman who is to let out all the evil in the world.

This perhaps, although not a historically accurate poem, is nevertheless a fine indication of the role and perception of women in society� The reason why Athens is going to be examined in detail because this was where classicists and historians knew the most about women in Athens� This does not mean to say that other city states were not examined by historians but Athens certainly had the most� William O’Neal puts the role of women in Athenian society rather succinctly, “The roles of Athenian women in the fifth century B.C. were primarily those of wife and mother� The Athenians, in their patriarchal society, selected models for women based on the divine and heroic orders�” Therefore, do these historians show interest in the lives and experiences of women? Let us examine one of the finest Greek historians, Xenophon.

In his book Oeconomicus one would expect Xenophon to examine the role of the woman very carefully but, as Oost writes, “Unfortunately this is not a systematic account of women in general; it deals with ‘honest and honourable’ women primarily in their capacity as managers of domestic

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arrangements”. Furthermore one has to stretch the definition of history to include this book by Xenophon and when writing it surely it would have provoked him to talk about women� However the most important point to come out of the Oeconomicus is that the lives of women were rather tedious and so it was no wonder that historians tended to ignore the lives and experiences of women. For Xenophon describes how women “must bear children, rear children, be discreet, practice self-control, manage the house, supervise the slaves, and be able to weave and to teach the slaves the art of weaving”� Furthermore this is only one book of many by Xenophon In one of the most famous passages of Thucydides’ recording of Pericles’ funeral oration, Pericles announces, “A woman’s reputation is highest when men say little about her, whether it be good or evil�” The argument for Athens is that these historians such as Thucydides or Xenophon did not need to talk about at length the lives and experiences of women because unless they broke the conventional bounds of their divine and heroic orders, they were seen to be only generalised and not talked about specifically. These historians did not show any real interest in women because they did not need to� However although perhaps the “classic” historians such as Thucydides and Xenophon ignored the lives and experiences of women, women were nevertheless very prevalent in other ancient sources such as Greek tragedy – perhaps a contemporary form of a history lesson� For these Greek tragedies would take an issue of the day and turn it into a play so that people could learn more about the society that they lived in� However there is a problem regarding how you define what a historian is. Is it merely someone who later “historians” can then study and learn about what they wrote about? Or is it someone who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it? This is where Greek tragedy comes in as it is one of the finest examples of where we can learn, as historians, what the roles of the women were actually like� Furthermore these historians did have an interest in the roles of women because they needed to� The playwrights of Athens understood that their audience “could understand the characters of Clytaemnestra and Electra, Antigone and Ismene, Deianeira, Jocasta, Alcestis, Medea and Phaedra, Iphigenia, Creusa, Hecuba, Andromache and Helen, because there were living Athenian women of whom these characters were types.” There is a vast quantity of quotes from these plays that give us a small glimpse into what went on in society such as from Euripides’ Hippolytus, Phaedra says “I am only a woman, a thing which the world hates.” This oft-quoted quote has some bearings on our Oundle History 2019

contemporary view of women in classical times and therefore of historical significance to us. It is not a quote from a book of Thucydides but it nevertheless presents a story of what was going on at the time. Of course the tragedians had to be interested in the lives and experiences of women because some of their audience would be women� If one expands the definition of a historian then actually there are many Athenians and Ancient Greeks who constitute as one and therefore many people who are interested in the lives and experiences of women� Rome is of course the other great civilization in antiquity. The first question is whether the role of the women was different to those women in Athens and Greece� As previously Hesiod and Pandora was mentioned, it seems right that Ovid and his Metamorphoses should be mentioned. Here it is very different to the myth of Pandora and in Ovid’s poem it does not actually say whether the first of “mankind” was a man or a women. To begin with, there is already a small difference in the perception of women between the two civilizations.

This of course is very difficult to generalise as Rome’s history is so vast and has two very different eras: Republic and Empire� However, with that being said, Helen Knight provides a very overarching definition about the role of women which says that women in Rome were “represented as guardians of Roman culture and traditional morality”. If one goes by this definition then the role of women was essentially very similar between the two civilizations. Roman historians, such as Livy, on the surface seem to care more about the lives and experiences of women� However although, looking at Livy’s History, “Women play a part in the first two books that is disproportionately large, if compared to their rare appearances in the rest of the work�” Smethurst then goes on to comment that “apart from obvious references to their chastity, self-sacrifice, or patriotism, Livy gives them even less individuality than his heroes who, with a few exceptions, are all described after a stereotyped pattern”. So it seems, much like Thucydides and Xenophon, Livy is not interested in the lives and experiences of women� Another famous historian from antiquity is Tacitus, who is in Annals, is very much interested (or he seems to be) at telling the gossip stories, perhaps like a tabloid today� For example Tacitus talks at length about Valeria Messalina, a wife of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD), and her relationship with Gaius Silius.

This is a fine example of an interest in the life and experience of women� However Messalina is one woman and is not representative of the rest of society. The Roman historians were more interested in the lives and experiences of woman than the Greeks, but aside from that they were not really that interested, again, because they did not feel the need to�

1� O’Neal, William J� “The Status of Women in Ancient Athens�” International Social Science Review 68, no� 3 (1993): 115-21� 2� O’Neal, William J� “The Status of Women in Ancient Athens�” International Social Science Review 68, no� 3 (1993): 115-21� 3�

If one was to examine a female figure that is not talked about enough is Hortensia� Hortensia is the daughter of Quintus Hortensius Hortalus – who is extensively talked about by historians such as Cicero� Hortensia is famed, though poorly, for her speech against taxation without representation of the Roman senate in the 1st century AD� Not, however, near as well-known as other male orators because she is only mentioned in a few sources such as Appian. However, Hortensia is an exception (or so we are led to believe) for it was very difficult for women in Rome to hold political office.

In fact they could not but they could – like Messalina – marry well and influence their partner’s opinions by using their own. Therefore, much like Athens and Greece, does it matter that the historians were not doing a study of the women in society? Frankly there is not enough that, in through the eyes of the historians of antiquity, that was interesting. For Rome was trying to be a very domineering state, trying to control a rather large empire and if the historians were talking about the lives, not of the all-conquering soldiers but of women, the contemporary readers would not have been as interested� Now, in the modern age, we are interested in the lives of all: poor or rich, male or female and so on and so forth. Furthermore many of this historical texts were written so that the emperors or the senate would look favourably upon them� Therefore, it is understandable that the historians ignored the lives and experiences of women� First, frankly the lives of women were not as interesting and secondly the historians of antiquity, much like any, had to serve an audience� Importance is an interesting word and for a historian to talk about someone they tend to have importance� Women did have importance in both Greece and Rome but only through our modern eyes. For in the historians-from-antiquity’s eyes, women had less importance than men because they were not as involved in the affairs of state. Therefore, in conclusion, the “classic historians” such as Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius did not really have an interest about the lives and experiences of women because they did not need to� For their works reflected the mood of the society perhaps our definition of historian is too narrow. There are so many different sources out there that can enable us to have a deeper understanding of the classical world� Perhaps there is a very poignant quote from O’Neal at this point which is that “the Greeks of antiquity remain an enigma, despite the efforts of scholars who have tried to investigate every facet of their civilization”. This is very true and if one was to make this more specific to this essay it would be that the women of antiquity remain an enigma. However, perhaps it would become less of an “enigma” if we accept all sources to be actual “historians” in their own right� whatathenianmensaid�htm� 4� Smethurst, S� E� “Women in Livy’s ‘History’�” Greece & Rome 19, no� 56 (1950): 80-87�

Thucydides, 2.45.2 & http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/

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More than Just a Coin George Brettle (B U6th) Coins are invaluable to the historian (whether they be ancient, modern or both). Often coins are not used in evidence because the interpretation is so difficult to understand fully but many scholars, such as Christopher Howgego have tried to decipher the complexities of coinage.

I believe that coins in the Ancient World were indeed used for propaganda purposes, as well as economic ones, and it was the Roman world seemed to use coins most effectively as pieces of propaganda� Here, it is important for me to say that I am only referring to the Greek tradition of coinage, which spread as far as India and Britain in antiquity.

Although the Romans were more effective in using coinage to their advantage there are certainly some examples from Classical Greece that give this impression too� Greek coinage is a fascinating area of numismatics. We believe that he first Greek coins appeared in Aegina c� 600 BC which were silver and used a turtle as a symbol of the city’s prosperity based on maritime trade. Other city states also used images to project their power. Some Greek cities used images for their names, so ‘readers’ did not have to be literate� For example, Melos used the image of the apple on their coins (μελον means apple in ancient greek), Rhodes used the image of a rose on theirs (ῥόδον – rose), and Zancle in Sicily used a sickle (ζανκλον) on theirs. This is a fascinating link between coins, literacy and pictography that many historical sources cannot give� Furthermore, 5th century BC Athenian coinage shows that coinage was also used to consolidate alliances, and in this time period especially with the members of the Delian League� Examples of the Athenian silver owl tetradrachms have been found as far afield as Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine.

Although the Romans are typically associated with more interesting numismatic collections, there is still a lot to be learnt from Ancient Greek coinage� However, it is indeed with the Roman Republic and Empire where the coinage tells us a lot that many other historical sources cannot. The first example that I am going to talk about is an aureus minted in 28 BC (therefore, minted under Octavian (Augustus)� The image on the reverse portrays a victorious Octavian, posed as toga-clad civilian magistrate, proclaiming that ‘he restored the laws and rights of the

14

people (of Rome)’, with the inscription LEGES ET IVRA P R RESTITVIT� Here the P R could either stand for Publicae Rei or Populi Romani meaning either “the state” or “the people of Rome”� This phrase outlines a similar programme to his ‘Res Gestae’, which was a document left by Augustus left behind outlining his achievements upon his death on the 19th August 14� The phrase that is used on this coin seems to echo what is mentioned in Res Gestae 34.1, where it is said that “rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium trasnstuli” (I [Augustus] transferred the Republic from my power to the dominion of the senate and people of Rome). This is interesting as it potentially shows that Augustus was already planning his legacy a long time before his death.

Furthermore, it shows that Augustus was a truly calculative and very clever propagandist because he is re-enforcing that point both in literature and in coinage reaching out both to the erudite aristocrats and the merchants trading with the money� Another fine example of a coin is a semis (meaning literally a small Roman bronze coin and was valued at half an Assarius) which was minted under the Emperor Nero circa� 64 AD� The obverse side is the standard Roman coin, as it has Nero’s head. However the reverse side is the more interesting side as it shows a table with an urn and a wreath� Also it has two facing gryphons, as well as a shield by the table leg and an “S” for semis above the table to the left. The gryphon is a mythological creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and sometimes an eagle’s talons as its front feet� The lion was considered to be the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of birds and thus the gryphon was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature. Also in Roman mythology gryphons were normally associated with money� Flavius Philostratus mentioned them in ‘The Life of Apollonius of Tyana’: “As to the gold which the griffins dig up, there are rocks which are spotted with drops of gold as with sparks, which this creature can quarry because of the strength of its beak�” Therefore, this coin tells us perhaps what Nero was wanting to be: the ruler with lots of money. This coin is a fine example of where numismatics tell us so much more than simply the economic history of Rome�

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The Dutch Republic and the Birth of Capitalism Henry Worsley (Ldr L6th) Capitalism and the pursuit of financial gain is the indisputable fuel of the world economy� One only needs to venture into the euphorically buzzing halls of the New York Stock Exchange to see this in its most vehement form; trillions of dollars circulating almost constantly between company and investor.

‘Greed is good’ said the famous fictional Wall Street banker Gordon Gekko, and he had a point; without the concept of trade in its most fundamental state, society would remain in the so-called dark ages, isolated and impoverished� Trade is not only vital in its mutual benefit for all those involved, it is also a symbol of freedom. It was the liberal-minded British who dominated with their doctrine of Free-Trade throughout the nineteenth century, and conversely it was the epitome of evil, Nazi Germany, which strove for total economic isolation through the concept of Autarky� Trade as we know it today, however, was not conceived in the mirrored halls of Versailles or the Bank of England, but rather the streets of Amsterdam� The Dutch Republic (also known as the United Provinces), which lasted from from 1581 to 1795, was for nearly two hundred years the global centre of entrepreneurial innovation. It was the most libertarian nation to have ever appeared in Europe at that time, a precursor to the United States� It both gave birth to Capitalism in all its glorious prosperity, and revealed its greatest flaws; greed may be good, but wealth is corrupting, and it was an insatiable combination of the two that haunted this great republic until its downfall� The Seventeen provinces of the Low Countries were ruled, in the early 16th century, by Philip II of Spain, at that time the most powerful man in the world. It was a combination of several authoritarian and discriminatory measures that ultimately ignited a Dutch revolution, ranging from antiProtestant government policy to increased taxation and dismantling of the region’s ancient feudal system to form more centralized military government. This revolution started a war� The war was long, violent, gruelling and complex; eighty years of Dutch guerilla warfare against the better trained and equipped Spanish Tercios. It was in the midst of this conflict that several northern provinces united in confederation via the Union of Utrecht in 1579, soon followed by a formal declaration of independence from Spain in 1581� Thus the embryonic form of the noble republic was born� It is quite remarkable how similar this war was to the American War of Independence two hundred years later; much like George Washington, the Dutch barely won any pitched battles, rather they relied on constant subversion and

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privateering, therefore also giving birth to the Dutch naval tradition, which would go on to give the United Provinces dominance at sea for nearly three hundred years� In the same vein as America, the Dutch patiently fought for a higher ideal; a nation free of religious persecution and tyrannical absolutism, a nation driven by fresh intellectual thought and innovation. However also like America, this divine liberty was at first dysfunctional and decentralized, and could only flourish via a rapid increase in trade. The Provinces remained at war with Spain until 1648, and war is expensive.

Such circumstance literally forced the Dutch to search for new economic ideas, new resources to monopolize� It was thus that their republic discovered its identity; it was not just libertarian and tolerant in ideals, but overwhelmingly capitalist and avaricious� Such mercantile innovation led directly to the founding of the two most important institutions within the United Provinces: the VOC and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange� To fund their protracted war with Spain, the Dutch were obliged to raise capital in any way possible; they could not simply rely on tax levies and authoritarian seizures of wealth, rather they had to improve on the Medici form of banking established during the Renaissance� The Dutch government, in the very spirit of democracy, wanted the people to invest in the future of their nation via the bond market; they wanted to transform their entire nation into a buyable commodity, a giant opportunity for investment. In doing this they revolutionised banking altogether, creating a new form of bond known as the ‘lottery loan’, in which investors would gamble small capital for a potential (but unlikely) large return. They also created the first reliable, centralized currency via the Wisselbank (Exchange Bank) in Amsterdam, allowing for a far more controlled administration over coinage and paper notes.

However the raw, mercantile cunning of the republic found its place in the East, dotted among the brilliantly saturated spice islands of modern day Indonesia� Here the Dutch established a group of colonial trading ports, spreading themselves across the East Indies, and thus establishing a monopoly over the most lucrative of commodities: spices. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pepper; such ingredients were expensively sought after all over 17th and 18th century Europe, required not just for exorbitant decoration and intensification of cuisine, but for the simple preservation of food. It was the genius of the Dutch to have these oriental initiatives not just as a national source of trade, but again, as a buyable company, a semiindependent charter into which the republic’s citizens might

15

invest� Therefore all East Indian trading posts were grouped in 1602 under the authority of the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company, or the VOC for short� It was the largest single corporation of its time, with five times more investors than its cross-channel counterpart, the British East India Company.

Despite this, its initial success was sparse; in 1612 it was forced to give dividends to its shareholders in the form of raw spices, due to a lack of money� Shareholders therefore had little choice but to sell on shares to other potential investors, and in such circumstance the Stock Exchange was formed only ten years after the joint-stock company. Both doctrines were a thoroughly Dutch, thoroughly republican invention, with every citizen free to trade. It could well be argued that this was the most important development in all of financial history.

This libertarian, intensely democratic atmosphere suggested by the nature of trade in the provinces was, however, a facade� The United Provinces was always in a precarious position; a constant struggle between a true republic and a more authoritarian regime. This was personified most clearly in the political system. Whilst the effective Prime Minister of the republic, the Grand Pensionary, acted as democratic de facto head of state, the Stadtholder had the real title and power� Indeed it was the House of Orange-Nassau, starting with Dutch rebel leader William the Silent, who remained Stadtholders for two centuries� These men had much the same role as the current president of the United States; they were commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, had increased powers in times of crises or war, and had a greater sway over foreign policy. The only difference was, such a role became entirely hereditary; this appeared more a semi-constitutional monarchy than a republic, a corrupted concept of freedom rather than the real thing� Thus the sad stereotype of the corrupted, greed-driven capitalist democracy comes to mind. This was the first.

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It is often remarked that there are two main stages when it comes to the trading of stocks, and within these two stages one can see a microcosm of the Dutch Republic� First there is greed and euphoria, a mad rush to buy as much of some particular commodity as possible. The price goes up rapidly, with the promise of further wealth and success� Then, eventually, this commodity reaches its peak� Interest is suddenly lost; people start to wonder why they put so much money and trust into something that cannot be sold for such a high price. Confidence disappears, and fear sets in. With trade or capitalism or any dangerously powerful idea, greed can turn rapidly into fear as the idea goes out of control; such was the pattern of the Dutch Republic. Freedom of trade, freedom of religion and freedom of thought flourished, but with this liberation of economic autonomy and power came corruption and rivalry. The Stadtholders formed their own faction, the Republicans doing the same. Eventually this great nation was torn apart and invaded by the armies of Revolutionary France; although the Republicans ostensibly won, a French puppet regime was put in place� Of course, the influence of the republic was far-reaching.

The American Declaration of Independence very much mirrored its Dutch counterpart� Even James Madison, when writing his Federalist Papers for the US constitution, referenced the republic heavily, although not in a positive light� He described their government as imbecilic, but nonetheless a significant prototype of a republican nationstate, a union spanning a great area of territory, and proof that the a republican system of government was not only applicable to Italian city-states of the time. The United Provinces was a bold experiment, a visionary hub producing the triumphant capitalist world we rely on today; it was a place full of avarice and selfishness and ambition; it was the real, ugly, genius face of mankind as a whole�

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The Korean War was the Main Reason for Worsening Relations Between the Superpowers in the 1950’s.

How Far do you Agree?

Izzy Ludlam (D 5th) During the Cold War, in the 1950s there were building tensions between the US and the USSR, which led to a deterioration in relations. The Korean War was one of the main reasons for worsening relations between superpowers in the 1950s, however there were other contributing factors too, such as the arms race and conflicting views on communism� The Korean War was a significant factor for worsening relations, as it meant that the superpowers were directly fighting against each other, with the Soviets and China supporting the communist North under Kim il-Sung, and the Americans the South, who were led by Syngman Rhee in a democratic form of government. They were constantly invading each other’s territory in small raids, until the North launched a full-scale attack in June 1950. The USA even involved the UN in fighting against the USSR by using USled UN troops to drive the North Koreans out in the Inchon landings and from the break-out at Pusan, under US generals such as General MacArthur� These events created even more tension and negatively impacted relations, as it brought the sides onto opposite sides of a military conflict, the closest they had been yet to an actual conflict between the two.

The arms race was another contributing factor to worsening relations as it mainly consisted of the superpowers trying to outdo each other and living in fear as they were in direct competition, which was very unhealthy for their relationship.

The arms race included the USSR creating the first atomic bomb in August 1949 and then the USA creating the H-bomb, which was 1000 times more powerful than the atom bomb, in November 1952� The USSR also launched ‘Sputnik’ in October 1957, giving them a lead in the latest manifestation of the arms race, the space race, which terrified the USA. The US responded by launching their first satellite in January 1958� This chain of events proves that the arms race was also a significant factor for worsening relations between the superpowers in the 1950s, as there was constant retaliation and it made the two sides compete with each other in increasingly devastating forms of warfare technology.

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Throughout the 1950s, there was a constant conflict between views on communism between the USA and USSR� This conflict worsened relations between superpowers, as it meant that two could never see eye to eye� As both superpowers were so powerful, neither would back down on their views, which created constant tension and disagreement� The USSR were a Communist regime whose success inspired attempted communist takeovers in many countries, whereas Truman continued to pursue a policy of containment, trying to prevent an increase of communist states around the globe, by setting up alliances such as SEATO in 1954 and CENTO in 1955, leading to a USSR response, as they created the Warsaw Pact in 1955� Nevertheless, the relations between the USA and the USSR also temporarily stabilised in the 1950s after the death of Stalin as the rise of Nikita Khrushchev offered the hope of a deflation in tensions and contest between the two sides. The Secret Speech of February 1956 “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences” gave hope of a new relationship, but the brutal repression of the Hungarian Uprising in October 1956 showed that Khrushchev was able to be just as ruthless as his predecessor� Therefore, although Khrushchev’s ascendency stabilized relations in the 1950s, it did not improve them significantly.

To conclude, there were many contributing factors to worsening relations between superpowers in the 1950s, including the Korean War, the arms race and conflict of views on communism� The Korean War was the main reason, as it was the only factor where the superpowers were actually fighting and therefore opposing each other in armed conflict.

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What Caused the ‘Golden Age of Conservatism’?

Joseph Meisner (L 5th) Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were ‘political soulmates’� Never in the post-World War Two period has the transatlantic alliance been so strong or effective than during that ‘golden age’ of conservatism. Divided only by the Atlantic, they stood for the individual, the free market and the nation. Neither before nor since has such a combination triumphed concurrently on both sides of the pond� So why, from the late ‘70s until the ‘90s, did the West decide the right was the answer, in particular these two political outsiders?

The answer lies as much in their predecessors’ defects as their own virtues� They each offered a principled but pragmatic approach to dealing with the troublesome Soviets� They used free market solutions to sort out the problems their quasi-socialist contemporaries had caused, with methods so revolutionary they got their own names: Reaganomics and Thatcherism� Their most striking similarity was their joint status as outsiders to the political system. They were passionate followers of the belief of Edmund Burke that one ‘must reform in order to conserve’� This is best summed up by Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University: ‘They both thought that they were leading political revolutions at the same time in countries that were fundamentally liberal’� Yet why were these the policies that appealed to the electorate, having been decried as too radical for so many years? Why did these policies so successfully enter the mainstream, creating a political earthquake leading to unprecedented whitewashes at the ballot box? The thirty plus years previous present a worthy explanation.

The Second World War changed economics forever� Not only did it deplete a generation, it also left Europe as a destitute continent in financial disarray. America, despite being in a position of comparative strength, also faced economic difficulty with trade links, as well as many men, lost� Truman followed in the footsteps of the pioneer of the ‘New Deal’, Franklin Delano Roosevelt� His new vision was of an economy managed by the federal government, ensuring the welfare of the poorest citizens. Truman believed in this, announcing his intentions in 1945 to expand government further� He failed to enact many of his desired policies, but succeeded in expanding social housing, the welfare state and increasing the minimum wage� Although Eisenhower did not subscribe to these ideals, he did little to roll the size of the state back. He created the departments of education, health and welfare while broadening social security programs 18

further� Kennedy may have carried out tax cuts but LBJ, his successor, used the ‘Great Society’ as a euphemism for larger government� Nixon tried his hardest to destroy the economy through price controls and ending the Gold Standard� His resignation initiated another recession. Ford’s financial policy is generally regarded as a joke and Carter did little to escape the recession� Reagan had a huge free market and deregulationist economic plan, resulting in vast prosperity, that proved irresistible. The American people wanted to escape unemployment, wage stagnation, inflation and, more generally, government� They wanted the economy back in their hands� Under the Attlee administration, the UK took on a programme of widespread nationalisation of industries such as coal, iron and steel, transport, health (creating the NHS) and electrics, as well as the Bank of England. Despite leading a Conservative government, Churchill did little to oppose this, nor did subsequent Tory Prime Ministers, Macmillan, Douglas-Home and Heath. Nationalisation was not the only way Marxist ideals slowly creeped into British politics. The taxation level could have come straight out of Das Kapital, with top tax rates at an average of 80% between 1932 and 1980� In fact, under Thatcher’s predecessor Edward Heath, the top rate was 75%, as well as an investment surcharge of 15%� Jim Callaghan thought the economy was in such a bad position that it could cause the ‘breakdown of democracy, saying that if he was a young man, ‘he would emigrate’. By the time of Thatcher, the people had had enough of the persecution of the rich, hard-working and successful� Thatcher’s promise of rewarded work, reinstating personal responsibility, appealed to many who had felt unable to increase their cheques while greedy governments were around� The electorate wanted to reinstall trust in the free market economy, not make an already-failing government even bigger. After more than thirty years of quasi-socialism the Brits wanted change� Change through Conservatism.

However, it was not just change through policy the people desired� They wanted a change from the status quo, a leader from outside the typical political class. One who provided a different face, as well as vision, from the duopoly that the two nations had endured. Thatcher was a woman and therefore an underdog� She had been forced to stand up for herself throughout her political career and had frequently been under-rewarded for her efforts. Thatcher was thought of as unelectable by many in her party. She was so naturally unfit Oundle History 2019

for office that she had to drastically work on her presentation, using the help of Sir Lawrence Olivier� A Guardian journalist described her voice as like ‘a cat sliding down a blackboard’� She had not attended public school, nor Oxbridge. She was not the perfect politician. She brought neo-liberal policies back to the fore in British politics where they had not been in years� She believed in Britain and in return the people believed in her� Similarly, Reagan was not an average politician. Having enjoyed a distinguished career as an actor he became Governor of California in 1966. He had been a Democrat until 1962 only then deciding the Republican Party was his home� He was the oldest ever President� His background was screen, not politics and yet this resonated with Americans who had become fed up. He was not a conventional Republican, he was a believer in Reaganism and nothing else� He had been born into a working-class family and had a much stronger connection with the American people than the well-oiled career politicians of the day. He had answers to questions previously unsolvable and he had a fresh approach that Americans found attractive.Not since Kennedy had a man so successfully united the country around America� Reagan reinforced Kennedy’s famous mantra: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country�’ He wanted his country to become a great force again through a reinvigorated economy� Yet also he asked for America to reposition itself on the world stage by standing up to the bullies in the East and standing up for the values which made his homeland so great� After the scandalous and demoralising Vietnam War, Nixon took on a policy of détente, easing strains on international relations. Gerald Ford was a fellow believer in this policy, following through with more of the same� Carter stood as a president for human rights but this affected relations between America and its allies negatively and undermined its stature in the world� Reagan had been key in driving out communists from the Screen Actors’ Guild where he had been president� Reagan escalated Cold War tensions� This was welcomed by an America tired of playing second best. To them, Carter’s emphasis on human rights had conveniently forgotten the real enemy: the Soviets. He was frequently attacked by Republicans for undercutting American allies by criticising their

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moral shortcomings. Carter had forgotten the USA were in a war but the people remembered� Communism was the evil and Reagan reminded them of this� The strength and moral absolutism that had guided them through previous eras was longed for once again. It was time for the Reagan Doctrine.

Thatcher was a moral absolutist. She believed there was right and wrong, no in between� This guided her through her foreign policy. She, like Reagan, believed in facing off against the Soviets and ditching the détente that had got the Western powers so little. However, arguably the most defining feature of her foreign policy was her attitude towards Europe. In 1973 Edward Heath had taken the UK into the Common Market, an action that was backed by the electorate at the ballot box in 1975 in a European referendum� This was a vote for free trade but not a vote for conceding the powers of the UK to Brussels� As the EU tried to enforce itself over the UK Thatcher took a stand� She was guided by a clear ideology and this drove her protests against the arrogant EU� Thatcher and Reagan came in at a necessary time. The Soviets were seen to be getting away with more and more dastardly deeds, Western economies were failing and the political class was not doing its job. Leaders before them had acted like cowards when it came to the very real threat of the USSR.They both offered a strong and principled approach to combating the communism of the East with the goal, which they achieved, of destroying the Iron Curtain� They had suffered years of stagnation and inflation due to incompetent leadership� They both proposed a new economic policy based on free markets, on the individual and away from government, through Reaganomics and Thatcherism� They thought this the way to escape the seemingly unstoppable cycle of decline (it was). Neither was characteristic of a typical politician but this was not a problem in an era where typical politicians were unsuccessful and misguided. Being outside the elite was a blessing, not a curse� Thatcher and Reagan are, arguably, the most successful leaders of the UK and US since the Second World War� Thatcher led to eighteen years of the Conservatives in power, whereas Reagan was the first President since FDR to have a double term followed by a President of the same party. For, when others had questions, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan provided answers�

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Review of The Wider Earth: A Play by David Morton The Natural History Museum (October 24th 2018) Joseph Pickering (Sco 1st) The Wider Earth is a play about Charles Darwin and the discoveries that came out of the five-year voyage he spent upon the HMS Beagle in the 1830s� Stepping into the unknown, Charles Darwin decided to set out to sea for the first time, aged only 22. His father, “being a respected man of his time”, wanted him to carry on his theology training at Cambridge University� Despite his initial reluctance, his father eventually let him go on the voyage� Darwin joined HMS Beagle, a ship that was setting out to complete a survey of South American water, as the naturalist on board� The play shows Darwin’s passion and enchantment for natural history and geology� We watched how he discovered larger fossils of present day animals and sea creatures on top of mountains� His major observation were slight differences between the anatomy of the same animal in different places.

The play showed how as time went on, Darwin began to question the religious beliefs on the Creation of life on Earth at the time, later beginning to form his own theories� We watched how these thoughts led to great conflict in himself and with others, such as Captain FitzRoy� The stage was set up with a large, rotating prop that doubled as Darwin’s house and his quarters on HMS Beagle at the back� An immersive video screen took you with Darwin on his incredible journey with HMS Beagle� I thought the use of the rotating prop and screen were effective as they made me feel like I was actually on board the ship�

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The genius idea of using life-sized puppets, handled by actors, gave me the impression that they were living beings� Similar puppets were used in the recent production of War Horse by Michael Morpurgo� Darwin was played by Bradley Foster, whom I feel gave a brilliant performance showing Darwin’s energy and zest towards natural history and geology� All the actors played their roles realistically and handled the puppets well, but to me Bradley Foster stood out the most� “If you send a wise, experienced naturalist into the field, it will only confirm what he already knew. But if you send a young novice there is no knowing what he might find.”

These words were said by Darwin’s professor at Cambridge� I specifically liked this quote because it showed that even those who lack experience can make remarkable discoveries� The director used Darwin and FitzRoy’s diaries to help with producing the play� By doing this it gave him a sense and atmosphere of what happened on board the ship� I would recommend this play for anybody above the age of seven, because younger children may not understand the storyline, although people of all ages will be spellbound by the use of the wonderful puppets� The play made me think of Darwin’s challenge to show his theory of evolution: it was no plain sailing�

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Lenin’s Actions and How they Affected the October Revolution Joseph White (L 4th) In the early 1900s, Russia was very divided between political blocs such as the revolutionaries like the Bolsheviks who wanted change, and the Liberals who were more central and did not want a revolution. The people of Russia needed change, and fast, as food was scarce and people were dying� In April 1917, Lenin arrived in Petrograd with the objective to change matters, to cause a Bolshevik revolution, and he would do this by weakening the Provisional government, with aid from his two comrades; Stalin and Trotsky.

One of the most significant factors to why the October revolution took place due to Lenin’s actions was the weakness of the Provisional Government. In 1917, after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviets took control of Russia, deciding the governing of Russia known as the ‘Dual power’� However, the Provisional Government lost popularity in 1917 due to their policies and authority in Russia� The Provisional Government failed to listen to the suffering of the people of Russia, they failed in holding elections which caused strikes and riots in Petrograd, they also allowed Russians the right of speech and greater democracy, meaning that people gained greater power in overthrowing the Provisional Government and voicing opinions about the unstable government� The Provisional Government were not supported due to their lack of legitimacy and were also overpowered by the Petrograd Soviets who wanted a socialist revolution for Russia� When Lenin arrived in Petrograd in April 1917, he was able to join the rising Bolsheviks in trying to seize power over the Provisional Government and converting many of the Petrograd Soviets to become Bolsheviks, as both blocs wanted a revolution as soon as possible. However, Lenin fled to Finland before he could be arrested. Furthermore, Kerensky who was the leader of the Provisional Government until July 1917, and then became prime minister until October was in a state of a nervous breakdown, so was unable to control Russia, so this gave the Bolsheviks the opportunity to start the revolution and hence Lenin returned from exile to take action.

Secondly, another reason why the October revolution occurred was due to Lenin’s Marxist ideologies and his actions when he arrived in Petrograd in April 1917. While

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on the train to Petrograd, Lenin devised his theses called, ‘The April Theses’, and within the theses were two slogans to the people of Russia� Firstly, ‘All power to the Soviets’, this slogan showed the Russian people it was now time for change, the Soviet era, where power would be controlled by the soviets� He sought to vex the Provisional Government with this and therefore thought he could orchestrate a revolution by instigating large demonstrations on the streets of Petrograd� The second slogan was ‘‘Peace, bread and land’, all necessities the people of Russia wanted, and by saying this Lenin and the Bolsheviks gained immediate backing from the people for a revolution. Furthermore, Lenin with the support of the central committee of the communist party of the Soviets was able to proceed with the support of the soviets and his fellow Bolsheviks such, as Stalin and Trotsky, who advised Lenin in the attempt for power. Finally, Lenin’s assertiveness in going through with a Bolshevik revolution was great and he pressurised fellow Bolsheviks to seize power� Lenin knew if he did not seize power immediately, the time might never happen again as the Bolsheviks lacked mass support, so it had to be soon!

Furthermore, Lenin’s actions were supported by two comrades in the Bolshevik bloc, Stalin and Trotsky� At the time, Stalin was the leader of propaganda for the Bolsheviks and Trotsky organised all the work in the Bolshevik bloc and spoke to the workers of Petrograd and told them about the advantages of supporting the Bolsheviks. By Lenin and Trotsky speaking to the people of Petrograd, it made the people believe they were one of them and that they wanted the same as the people� Also, Trotsky thought it would be better for the Bolsheviks to wait for the Congress of Soviets before continuing, adding legitimacy to the revolution, a more democratic approach, but Lenin disagreed and wanted the revolution to go ahead immediately, by seizing the Winter Palace, withdrawing the Provisional Government from power of Russia and allowing the Bolsheviks to be successful. Furthermore, Trotsky was a major figure behind the July days, which was when demonstrations and marches against the Provisional Government took place, weakening the Provisional Government and shifting the power to the Bolsheviks, a significant reason to why the Revolution may have taken place� Whereas, Stalin dealt with the propaganda

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side for the Bolsheviks, such as issuing posters on the Bolsheviks policies, newspapers anti-government and procommunism, fixating the minds of the people of Petrograd and Russia to the future of communism and Bolshevik ruleďż˝ Without Lenin having Stalin and Trotsky by his side in the revolution of October 1917, it may never have happened.

To conclude, Lenin was a hard revolutionist, a Bolshevik, a communist and a Marxist followerďż˝ When he came to Petrograd he built on the original communist ideas devised

by Karl Marx, as he wanted Russia to be communist with

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all levels of society being equal and the only way for him to succeed in this desire was to coordinate the revolution which occured in October 1917. Therefore Lenin’s actions of weakening the Provisional Government and the strength he and his comrades, Stalin and Trotsky had in persuading people at rallies to support their aim even though the Bolsheviks had lacked mass support. Ultimately many people wanted a revolution as they were starving to death and the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin were the only party that would provide them with that revolution.

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How did Catherine the Great, Born a German Princess with no Russian Ancestry, Become One of the Most Revered of all Romanov Rulers?

Polly Brown (K L6th) Catherine the Great was born Princess Sophie of AnhaltZerbst, and has no Russian ancestry, yet she somehow ended up as Empress of Russia in her own right and was the longestruling tsarina. She was married off to Peter, Crown Prince of Russia and Duke of Holstein, aged sixteen, and initially the young princess integrated herself well with the ruling Empress Elizaveta and the grand duke. Soon relations with her husband, however, became less easy and the marriage was very unhappy as Peter far preferred the company of his German favourites to that of his wife, and the marriage was only consummated after five years. Elizaveta recognised her nephew’s childishness and bad behaviour, nicknaming him ‘the little Holstein Devil,’ but she was able to do little about it.

When Empress Elizaveta died, Peter, aged thirty-four, became the tsar and Catherine tsarina� Catherine had long feared this moment as she knew that her husband hated her bitterly and would do all he could to remove her from power� She had already produced an heir, Paul, although she later claimed that the father was not her husband but in fact Sergei Saltykov, a courtier and her lover. Paul’s existence meant that she was no longer needed and so her position was very precarious with her husband in control� Catherine accumulated allies among the Russian nobility almost from her arrival� This meant that when her and Peter ascended she had many friends in high places willing to maintain her position, support her assertion for power and create her own regime� Indeed, even when Elizaveta was ruling, the Chancellor Bestuzhev made contingency plans for Catherine to rule in tandem with her husband in the succession to try to keep Peter from having complete autocratic power, although Catherine did not commit herself, knowing the risks involved� Catherine was brilliant at talking for hours with the elderly nobility, befriending them and gaining sympathy� Most importantly, Catherine befriended Princess Dashkova, the sister of her husband’s mistress, Vorontsova, who helped to connect her to the powerful factions who opposed the idea of her husband’s rule, establishing connections with those who would be willing to help her assert power in her own right� She also started an affair with Grigory Orlov after he was injured at the battle of Zorndorf, and his family would be crucial in the later deposition of her husband, as his brother, Alexei

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‘Scarface’ Orlov, was the main orchestrator of this plot� Breteuil reported of Catherine’s position during Peter’s rule, “She’ll have no importance, and is treated with contempt, but she is held in general affection and neglects nothing in cultivating the love of all.” Thus, through her careful cultivation of friendships and through her lover Catherine created a network of supporters for her cause, making herself the obvious alternative for those who despised her husband, with her son’s succession to legitimise her claim.

Peter was widely disliked among the nobility and almost immediately after his accession it became apparent that he was not a suitable ruler, and so many began to look for an alternative. Peter inherited the throne in the middle of a Russian war with Prussia, which he immediately ended as he admired all things Prussian and hero-worshipped their king, Frederick the Great� This was very unpopular in Russia, and even his own Chancellor could not believe that Peter would pursue such an anti-Russian programme. It was clear that Peter was prioritising his Duchy of Holstein above the empire of Russia, something that the Russians could not accept� Not all of his policy was unpopular, however, and as his decree to cancel Peter the Great’s obligatory noble service was very well received as a liberal and popular measure, long-discussed but never actually implemented, and his reduction of the salt tax was also crowd-pleasing.

However, his well-known hatred of the overmighty Guards turned much of the army against him as rumours swirled that he was going to disband them� He behaved like an immature teenager, sticking his tongue out at priests, and changing the culture of the court, making it far more European as he acted out with his German cronies� When Frederick the Great’s envoy Goltz arrived in Russia, he assumed command of Russian foreign policy, himself writing the Prussian peace treaty, recognising all of Frederick’s conquests in return for Frederick agreeing to any gains from Denmark� Throughout all of this, however, Peter did not realise the precarious and dangerous nature of his position, abolishing the Secret Chancellery� Therefore, when Peter went to Oranienbaum, his position was very vulnerable. Meanwhile, a friend of the Orlovs, Captain Passek, was implicated in a plot and under torture would reveal the Catherine’s conspiracy� As a result, Alexei Orlov prepared to start the revolution, while Catherine

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was staying out at Peterhof� At 6am on the 28th June, Orlov burst into Catherine’s room, waking her so she could climb into the carriage to hurry to Petersburg� Upon her arrival, her conspirators quickly rallied the soldiers who rushed to pledge their support� When the Orlov brothers arrived at Oranienbaum to arrest Peter, who had failed to monopolize his remaining support in the army and navy, Catherine’s rule was confirmed. She was now empress.

Catherine was very politically astute, she appointed very able ministers and was herself very capable at governing� She was one of the most effective and efficient of all Russian rulers, and her ascendency to sole power ushered in a Golden Age of Russian prosperity� Despite her series of lovers, including her lifelong partner who she addressed as ‘husband,’ Potemkin, Catherine never again married, holding power in her own right until her death. In one of her first moves for control, she made her former lover Poniatowski a client king in Poland, giving her almost complete control over this satellite state, and signed an alliance with Frederick the Great in 1764, bringing peace to the realm� Despite the messy death of Ivan VI due to an attempt liberate him, Catherine’s reputation remained intact as a successful and enlightened imperialist, a leader of country and culture� Thus she transformed herself from a German usurper and murderer into a beloved ruler� Throughout her reign, possibly her greatest success was the foreign expansion, conquering vast swathes of Ukraine, carving up the Ottoman Empire with Austria and eventually taking Crimea in 1783� She was also a patron of the arts, an enlightened despot who corresponded with Voltaire and adored neoclassical architecture, and who had a personal collection of art which now takes up the entire Winter Palace as the Hermitage Museum� Presiding over the Russian Enlightenment, she even called together a Grand Commission of philosophes in Moscow, and she agreed with many of their ideas; she abhorred the principle of slavery but she did

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everything in her power to maintain the system of serfdom as she understood that this was one of the key foundations of the empire and crucial to her relationship with the nobility.

She encouraged modernization through the Free Economic Society, which she set up in 1765, and slowly reformed the system of government� Catherine implemented great educational reforms such as the Russian Statute of National Education, creating coeducational, free of charge schools for all the free classes, making her a champion of female literacy� Catherine revolutionised Russia domestically by instituting reform and cultural enlightenment, as well as enlarging Russia’s territory by 200,000 square miles during her reign� As an ambitious woman, Catherine loved power and was unashamedly dictatorial, saying, ‘I shall be an autocrat, that’s my trade; and the good Lord will forgive me, that’s his.’ She rose to power through her own capability and her husband’s weakness, using her intelligence to make herself empress despite having no personal claim, and staying in control even after her son Paul came of age. She championed Russian expansion south-westward and institute reform across many areas of domestic politics. She was a ruthless but brilliant ruler, changing the perception of her country by joining the Enlightenment, more closely linking their culture to Western Europe and showing Russian civilisation to be sophisticated and educated, as well as her great leadership in a changing European landscape, with the waning of the Ottomans leaving space for a new great empire, Russia� She surrounded herself with good politicians and generals, such as the gifted Rumiantsev, who pioneered her conquests in Ukraine� She brought Russia into the 18th Century with dynamic and efficient leadership, but ultimately she did not manage one of the key duties of a ruler, leaving a capable heir, as her son Paul was far more similar to his legal, Prussian-fanatic father, Peter, than his astute, politically-minded mother.

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“The British were Primarily Responsible for the Breakdown in Relations with their American Colonies in the Period 1763-5.” Do you agree?

Sienna Rushton (Ldr L6th) The British were primarily responsible for the British-colonial breakdown in relations due to their irregular methods of neglect, then suddenly introducing controlling policies and their ignorance towards the colonies, shown through the Stamp Act of 1765� Another factor that contributed to the breakdown in relations was the incapability of Britain to learn from previous events, such as the introduction of The Townshend Duties in 1766. Whilst colonial opposition and protest may seem unruly and wanton, they were never the primary cause of the deterioration in relations. This is because after the early neglect of the colonies in the 1600s the colonies were simply fighting for the liberties that they had previously held� The British Parliament’s role reversal from being completely permissive to wanting to dominate the colonies contributed to the breakdown in their relations. Britain had not realised how much the spirit of independence had grown during the years of ‘salutary neglect’ and were set on increasing imperial control over the newly extended North America� Therefore, they carelessly introduced the George Grenville Policies in 1763� This caused uproar in certain colonies, for example, the Sugar Act took a heavy toll on New England, where one of their main industries was the distillation of rum� This was further impacted by The Currency Act of 1764 when the printing of all colonial paper money was banned.

The introduction of this sudden policy change by the British worsened relations because the colonists blamed Britain for threatening the colonies with ruin� This was because this act was passed during an economic depression� Furthermore, the British angered frontiersmen by restraining their land to just behind the Appalachian Mountains in the 1763 Proclamation Line. Understandably, the colonists were angry with the British as they had become accustomed to their own ways and they felt that Britain was restricting their liberties and threatening their economy with ruin� Therefore, these sudden enforcements were hated so it was destined that the colonists would try and break them� This contributed to both sides seriously disagreeing with one another and having contrasting ideas on how either side should act; a flourishing relationship cannot form from these qualities.

Whilst it can be argued that it was the excessive colonial reaction that helped to deteriorate relations, they would not act with outrage if Britain had investigated before carelessly Oundle History 2019

applying policies or if Britain had not neglected them in the first instance. This means that what can be viewed as the colonists being ‘out of order’ cannot be the primary reason for the breakdown in relations. Another example of Britain worsening relations was the Coercive Acts of 1774, especially the Impartial Administration of Justice Act. This stated that murder trials in America would be sent to Britain, undermining the colonial justice system and administration.

Having run the colonies through their own methods perfectly well since the 1600s, when the British were too busy with their own civil war, this measure antagonized many colonists� Britain created opposition to itself by neglecting the colonies, allowing them to acclimatize, then suddenly tightening control� It was their fault for allowing the colonists a taste of freedom and for not foreseeing the problems that suddenly enforcing control would bring. Whilst the colonial opposition was partly to blame, how could the British not have expected opposition to arise from their handling of the situation in the first place? Therefore, the British were primarily responsible.

British ignorance to the opposition created by their primary policies and the enforcement of the Stamp Act proves how Britain were primarily responsible for the breakdown in relations. In 1765, Grenville ignored colonial anger and protest, and whilst deciding to focus on the cost of colonial defence, he was completely ignorant to the fact that his methods to carry this out through the stamp bill would seriously damage British-colonial relations. His plan was to raise money by directly taxing all legal documents, however, the colonies had no representation in British parliament therefore were rightly outraged when they were taxed as taxation without representation was unconstitutional. One could argue, what else could Grenville do, as he had to get the money from somewhere and the colonies had been getting away with paying minimal tax rates. The simple solution to this was give the colonies representation. However, Grenville never acted upon this, therefore the colonial response was not unnecessary and the cause of the breakdown in relations was primarily due to Britain’s poor leadership� By introducing the Stamp Act, Britain was responsible for provoking the rise of The Sons of Liberty, who undertook mob action and lead economic boycotts against the British. This significantly weakened relations as now one side was rebelling against the other, hardly a successful alliance� Not only did this cause 25

anger but it caused the breakdown in relations because the enrolment of this act unified the colonies against Britain.

This is shown through eight other colonies supporting The Virginia Resolves in 1765, condemning The Stamp Act� Before this colonies tended to bicker so were disunited with one another yet united with Britain� Furthermore, the repeal of the act showed Britain to be weak therefore, instead of learning from these mistakes, MPs felt the need to reassert control over the colonies� This further antagonized the colonists and is another reason why Britain were primarily to blame� This ignorance and the Stamp Act, implemented by Britain, combined created opposition and shifted unification patterns hence proving that Britain was responsible for the relationship’s deterioration.

Britain should be primarily blamed for the breakdown of British-Colonial relations as after making monumental errors of sudden policy change they did not learn from their mistakes and try to amend the half-broken relations.

Instead of appreciating that, due to their neglect of the colonies, whenever they attempt to introduce control they will cause upset, they decide to force more policies on the colonies in hope that they will conform� However, just like in the past they rebelled ruining relations between the two sides. An example of this were the Townshend Duties of 1765. These introduced duties on colonial imports, tightened trade enforcement and forced colonial assemblies to supply the British with military arms. This increased colonial wrath towards the British as they were being taxed but not represented, also they felt that parliament were abusing their powers by making the colonies strengthen an

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army that wasn’t even their own� In response Boston lead a complete economic boycott against Britain through nonimportation agreements and the Sons of Liberty rose up again to cause dismay� Whilst some evidence suggests that these extremist actions of the colonists were the primary cause of the deterioration in relations, this was not the case.

Without British provocation and neglect, the colonies would have never had the need or want to cut ties with the British, so relations would have remained strong. However, due to the imposition of unjust policies the colonies felt the need to rebel in order to retain their liberties. Furthermore, it is impossible to state that the colonists were overreacting because they were simply fighting for what they used to have before any policies were introduced, therefore, the primary blame should be placed on the British.

Overall, I believe that this statement is true and that a compilation of British policies, ignorance, idiocy and neglect were the primary reasons for breakdown of relations. The colonies aided this breakdown however they were not the primary reason as they were only ever acting in response to the British policies. Evidently if these policies had been introduced in a different way or with reasons that were deemed just and understandable to the colonies there would have been a relatively small breakdown in relations. However, in the grand scheme of British-Colonial relations, whilst the British mishandled many things, their relations had not progressed to a dire state by 1765. The colonies still wanted a strong allegiance with the king and the idea of independence would not start circulating the colonies until seven years later.

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How Far Can Marxism Explain the Failures of Presidential Reconstruction?

Yifei Zheng (Sc L6th) William A. Dunning described Reconstruction as the nadir in American democracy not because it failed, but simply because it was attempted. Freedmen were, of course, uncivilised barbarians to whom Republican tyranny granted rights in order to destroy the South. This interpretation was not a speech at an extremist rally, but rather one on the set curriculum at Columbia University� Thus in the words of Eric Foner, Reconstruction was a period where the “heroes” and “villains” have undergone one of the most “dramatic reevaluations in history”. Marxism has been a relatively new and disputed lens which Reconstruction is viewed through and was primarily only brought to attention with W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Black Reconstruction”� Within his metanarrative account, Marxist theory is used as a framework to explain long-term racial divisions, albeit if classical Marxists have disputed its validity� Marxist analyses of race theory as a class struggle in addition to the struggle between “bourgeois” and “feudal” societies suggest that whilst unable to account for the undeniable mistakes of individuals, inherent ideological conflicts may have indeed held back progress.

Firstly, by examining Marx’s attitudes towards the Civil War one can perhaps view him as symbolic of an idealised situation of Reconstruction� Lincoln’s wartime motive was primarily to reintegrate ex-Confederate states into Union, in the process restoring national authority and cohesion. He famously remarked that: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it�” However, Marx’s “Das Kapital” was undeniably much more opposed to what he called the “oligarchic concentrations of property” - slavery than pragmatic state building� He held a firm belief that the “American Anti-slavery war will do for the working class” what was achieved in the “war of independence” for the Americans� In this sense, he was a critic of Lincoln’s focus on the African American struggle for its practical rather than ideological grounding, suggesting that successful Reconstruction would be ultimately driven from below.

Freedmen who had hitherto undergone extreme economic exploitation would use collective action to potentially overthrow or at least influence the ruling elite� This is certainly a point Du Bois makes in his “Black Reconstruction”, who was eager to rewrite the Dunning narrative portraying negroes as passive, naive actors during Reconstruction. He argues that slavery was intrinsic to capitalism; although this does not explain why it posed such a problem in America in particular. Indeed, scholars such as Gerald Runkle have Oundle History 2019

criticised Marx for this Hegelian attitude which views Reconstruction as a period which should have naturally achieved the goals of the civil war without appreciating the radical aims of individuals� Du Bois’s idea of inherent, capitalist racism undermining Reconstruction was clearly influenced to a great extent by Marxist thought� Throughout the Dunning era, simply arguing Reconstruction was mostly unable to benefit negros in some shape or form was almost unheard of. The fact that criticism of Johnson’s policy as racist was so controversial ironically demonstrates the racist atmosphere Marx would have argued was a main reason for failure� Yet at the same time Marxist accounts of racial tensions have focused solely within a materialistic framework of “an outgrowth of economic forces”, and not appreciated as an arbitrary phenomenon� Du Bois concluded the root cause as the failure of whites to “conceive of negros as men”� This therefore can explain the economically irrational unconsciousness of the value of black labour� Indeed it is undeniable that without the ingrained racism in American society, emancipation would not have necessarily led to such opposition against governmental reform� Even a seemingly indifferent president like Johnson could have appeared much more successful if Black Codes and the like were not forcibly implemented� However, others have argued that this is a dogmatic approach and that Reconstruction was inevitably going to be a transition period where legacies of oppression remained� In 1933 Adolf Hitler held a meeting with Allen Dulles, American diplomat and later head of the CIA� The former began to draw comparisons with the Treaty of Versailles and a hypothetical situation whereby the North forced subjugation upon the South after the Civil War. Dulles replied that Germany were clearly treated leniently by France in comparison to the Confederate States� As a result of Reconstruction, some courts were even made to have black judges. To try and justify this racism with pragmatic economic concerns seems odd given the obvious financial benefit of post-war cooperation, giving doubt to Classical Marxism. Whilst classes remain volatile and interchangeable, the fact that all types of negros were so heavily discriminated against suggest that the lack of political freedom was perhaps the reason for Reconstruction failing.

Du Bois claimed that the growth black political power was one of the “most extraordinary experiments of Marxism that

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the world had seen” but ultimately remained a failure for not going far enough� To some extent the fact that blacks gained some activism in political life during Reconstruction suggest Marxist views of a rising “black proletariat” is more accurate than the traditional “passive” view. This was justifiably seen as a threat to contemporary ex-slaveholders who feared the slaves which they ruled wishing to seek revenge with their new governing roles� Yet the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement - often seen as the “Second Reconstruction” has allowed arguments of actual continuity in balances of political power to shift to the forefront of analysis. Even if Lincoln showed ambiguity in whether secession would lead to racial equality, it was Johnson - the “queerest character that ever occupied the White House”- who drove this issue of freedman rights into failure� Marxists would argue that this political unfreedom was again a natural consequence of the determination of the white elite to suppress exslaves through economic measures� Brought up as a typical Southern yeoman, Johnson believed that radical slaves would form alliances with their masters at the expense of the poor white in society� Andrew’s presidency saw him grant land and amnesty to 7,000 White Southerners by 1966 instead of ex-slaves before finally being impeached in 1868 for ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’� Economic controls were thus seen as a way to preserve social order� Mississippi’s Black Codes essentially permitted the arrest of unemployed freedman by any white seeking for labour� Meanwhile, South Carolinian law required blacks to sign annual contracts with the threat of being whipped and sold if they were broken� Marxism perhaps explains the failure of political development such as suffrage insofar as it assumes blacks were constantly subordinate in their legal standing. Clearly, political gains were made regardless of economic status due to the possibilities Reconstruction brought. South Carolina’s House of Representatives in 1873 only contained 23 white members out of 123� Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Hahn even goes so far as to suggest black nationalism was the unifying consensus within the freedmen community; authority and identity rather than assimilation were what they seeked� Furthermore, Foner’s analysis of attempts to revive the post war economy suggested that its hierarchical nature arguably held it back because of failures concerning labour� Although not compatible with classical Marxist theory due to the South being a largely feudal economy, issues of bourgeois domination remain nonetheless. Driven by class conflict, Du Bois argued that Reconstruction was also a period where capitalism failed because whites did not see that their interests lay in cooperating with freedmen. Socially, the failure to implement welfare policies, further emphasised the status of a freedman as economically, in addition to legally, subordinate to his landowning master� Sharecropping receiving land in exchange for a share of crops grown on that

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land - became the dominant agrarian system and often led to labourers being trapped in debt� Although racial divisions may not have made this possible, land distribution following emancipation was seen as a necessity to prevent de-facto slavery falling back into place� In this case, it is reasonable to think that the South would have made much better use of its labour and thus rebuilt its economy quicker� Foner describes the “New South program merely underscored reformers’ continued inability to think of blacks as anything but dependent agricultural labourers”� One could perhaps interpret this as a natural consequence of the failure of the Republicans to foster economic unity between North and South� True socialism for all was clearly held back by a lack of support; by 1870, even white income had fallen to 2/5 of that of a Northerner� Of course, there is some evidence to suggest that classes did begin to emerge within the formerslave community as a result of limited economic autonomy� However, above all, many have stressed that the greatest achievement was only creating potential for future change.

Yet Marxist interpretations which blame Reconstruction’s failure on economic exploitation do not seem to recognise that political repression continued after economic integration had been achieved� Cedric Robinson is particularly critical of Du Bois’s analysis that capitalism and a desire to gain wealth necessarily led to continued suppression of freedmen. He claims that “masters feared their former slaves’ success far more than their own failure”� Johnson’s desire to appeal to the white masses clearly superseded the economic practicality in working out a common goal between North and South. Thus, one could argue that Marxist interpretations struggle to explain although how social hierarchies were left untouched despite the potential for black communities to create revolution with their political power. Since political power almost always failed to translate into social equality or economic mobility, few would regard this period as completely revolutionary. Further, the fact that there was actual opposition to blacks wielding power meant those who decided to interfere with politics often jeopardised their reputation with the influential Southern white community.

In the case of ex-slave Henry Johnson, his business was “ruined” by his stand as a slate legislator and had “never gotten a job since”. Dunning’s argument that the failure of Reconstruction ultimately lay in the inability of freedmen to actively participate in a reconstituted union seems to ignore the much greater failure of the Republicans to re-integrate ex-slaves in a way so as to feasibly gain respectability� Although Marxist interpretations can explain the failures of Reconstruction in a largely theoretical sense, the fact that they did not appear until the 1920s and remained so controversial suggests that they were radical� The failures of Reconstruction are described by Foner as one of the most

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significant revisions of modern historiography. The view that Andrew Johnson attempted to carry out Lincoln’s reforms but was thwarted by the vindictive Radicals, was a dominant one at the time. Any Marxist views were criticised as politicians seemingly imposed black supremacy, with the full knowledge that African Americans were clearly unfit to exercise suffrage or political rights. Additionally, recent opinions have seen increased revision on successful aspects such as increased education, which was deemed only to teach ex-slaves in stay in order� Marx therefore serves as a basis to view Reconstruction from a black perspective with the idea of freedmen playing an active role against social antagonism.

Reconstruction was however also not simply a case of slave against slave-owner� Foner refers to the St� Louis general strike of 1877 which he claimed, “brought together white and coloured men” for the “supreme contest of common rights”� He suggests that if the government had gained a long term appeal to white voters, they could have implemented more radical social policies which would have benefitted the entirety of America in the long term.

Thus one could argue that Marxism helps us to understand

Reconstruction not because it is necessarily correct, but because it highlighted the areas where 19th century American society were blind towards� Sharecropping was certainly not the environment Marx expected revolution to arise from, but nonetheless demonstrates issues with free labour and capital� The inherent idea of racism arising from class conflicts whilst somewhat able to explain the opposition to enforcing Reconstruction, does not explain why planters would not have wanted to cooperate with freedmen if their hatred was motivated purely on economic grounds. Nonetheless, this interpretation opens us to the idea that “there was no Negro problem”, as Judge Albion W� Tourgee described� Similarly, by viewing the “black proletariat” as actively seeking political influence rather than being blindly exploited by carpetbaggers, we can realise how active suppression such as paramilitary groups was what held back progress � Yet the fact that most white contemporaries did not consider the declining status of freedmen a failure emphasises Du Bois’s analysis of Reconstruction as successful only in its main goal of achieving political reunification. For this reason, Du Bois described the period as a “splendid failure” – one which should have succeeded but ultimately did not go far enough�

1� Eric Foner, “Reconstruction – America’s Unfinished Revolution”, New York: Harper & Row, 1989, 12

11� Ibid�

2� Walter Johnson, “The Pedestal and the Veil: Rethinking the Capitalism/Slavery Question”, 229-308

13� Foner, 346

12� Ibid�

3�

Ibid�

14� Noel Ignatiev, “The American Blindspot. Reconstruction According to Foner and Du Bois”, 243-251

4�

Gerald Runkle, “Karl Marx and the American Civil War”, 117-141

15� Cedric Robinson, “A Critique of Black Reconstruction”, 44-50

5�

Sidney M� Willhelm, “Can Marxism Explain America’s Racism?”, 98-112

16� Ibid�

6�

Bertholf, 78-91

17� Ibid�

7�

Foner, 284

18� Eric Foner, “Reconstruction Revisited”, 82-100

8�

Bertholf, 78-91

19� Ibid�

9�

Gregg Phifer, “Andrew Johnson Loses His Battle”, 291-328

20� Bertholf, 78-91

10� Ibid�

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