Author: Fiona McCall

Coping with epidemic disease in the seventeenth century

Man that is born of a woman
hath but a short time to live,
and is full of misery.
He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower [1]

One of the first school history projects I can remember doing, before leaving Australia at the age of fourteen, was to create my own facsimile newspaper reporting on the great plague of 1665. Who would have thought at that stage that I would have ended up as a seventeenth-century historian? I spent hours poring over a London bill of mortality, copying the forms of 17^th century handwriting and the strange unfamiliar fatal diseases: ‘apoplexie’, ‘ague’, ‘chrisomes’, ‘dropsie’, ‘griping’ in the guts’, ‘Kingsevil’, ‘palsie’, ‘stopping of the stomach’ and ‘timpany’. During the week of 19-26 September 1665 in London, forty-two women died in childbirth, sixty-four people of convulsions, 309 of fever and, a sign of the awful dentistry then available, 121 of ‘teeth’. Accidents were also great killers: one was burnt in his bed by a candle, another killed from a fall from the belfry at the church of Allhallows the Great. Three were ‘frighted’, one died ‘suddenly’, and three of grief. But all of these were hugely outnumbered by the 7,165 people who succumbed to plague in that week.

Researching seventeenth-century history, it is very easy to become immured to the high death rates due to infectious disease. Plague, which had prevented population levels from recovering for nearly two centuries after it first appeared in Britain in 1348, made regular reappearances until the eighteenth century. In the late seventeenth and early-eighteenth century smallpox was particularly virulent. The diarist John Evelyn lost two nearly-adult daughters to the disease within a year in 1685. The elder, and the first to die, the polymath Mary, was mourned over several pages of his diary rather more eloquently than her wayward younger sister: ‘she was a little miracle while she lived, and so she died!’ Her monument is in St Nicholas Church, Deptford. [2]

Monument to Mary Evelyn in St Nicholas Church, Deptford.

Plague was generally a summer disease, and required specific climatic conditions to flourish. During plague epidemics, royalty usually removed themselves pretty quickly to safety. Despite living at the height of the Black Death, only two of King Edward III’s thirteen children died of it, while a third to a half of his subjects perished. But smallpox was more ineluctable: the annus mirabilis of Charles II’s restoration to the monarchy in May 1660 was somewhat spoiled by losing both his brother Henry and his sister Mary (mother of William of Orange) to the virus before the end of the year. In December 1694 Queen Mary II also succumbed to the disease, dying of a particular nasty and invariably fatal variant known as the ‘black pox’ (hemorrhagic smallpox). Her normally taciturn husband William of Orange apparently fainted at the news of her death. ‘It is impossible for me to tell you the sorrow that reigns universally in Holland’ wrote the poet Matthew Prior, ‘the people, who never had any passions before, are now touched, and marble weeps.’ [3]

Queen Mary II died in 1694 of hemorraghic smallpox

Epidemics especially impacted town and city dwellers. In my research into clerical families of the Civil War period, I frequently encountered country-dwelling clerics with eight to fourteen surviving progeny. But urban life was often fatal to children. Though the inscription on the funeral monument to Jane, wife of Yeldard Alvey, vicar of the prosperous coal-port of Newcastle upon Tyne, records that she was the mother of ten children, only three were still alive at the time of Alvey’s own death in 1649.[4] Nehemiah Wallington (1598-1658), a London wood turner and prolific diarist, lost four out his five children in childhood.[5] Town populations struggled to replace themselves, and relied for their population growth (rapid in the case of seventeenth-century London) on incomers.

Urban infants might be removed from the metropolis to protect them during their vulnerable years of infancy. On 17 April 1651 the diarist Richard Drake records his sister-in-law Margaret visiting her two sons Richard and Roger who had been farmed out of London to a wet-nurse in Essex. Yet there was no assurance of safety: a month later Drake records sadly that his ‘sweetest nephew’ Richard had been buried there. In between, another nephew, John, had been struck down by a raging, bloody cough, and after temporary hopes of recovery, three days later, at nine in the morning, ‘sweetly fell asleep in the Lord’.[6] Drake later raised his own children out of London in the healthier environment of Richmond in Surrey. All four of them survived to adulthood, their chances perhaps improved by his wife’s breastfeeding, which although recommended as healthy and virtuous by medical and clerical authorities, was not advice commonly followed by the upper classes.[7] But fellow Surrey resident John Evelyn was not so fortunate: a vast family fortune built on gunpowder production could not prevent him losing four sons in quick succession in infancy as well as the daughters he lost later: only one of Evelyn’s eight children survived him.[8]

During the Civil War years of the 1640s the risk of contagious disease was substantially greater, spread by the armies and widespread social disruption. My local history students, researching mortality crises using parish registers, have over the years discovered anomalously high death rates during 1643, in several different Civil War-impacted localities, including East Meon in Hampshire around the time of the battle of Cheriton. These were probably due to war typhus or ‘camp fever’.[9] Towards the end of the first Civil War plague resurfaced in many locations: as Sir Thomas Fairfax harried the retreating royalists through the West Country, disease was the armies’ unwelcome travelling companion, with epidemics reported in Tiverton and Barnstaple in 1646, in North Petherton and Totnes in early 1647, amongst other places.[10] As with fires and other types of disasters, suffering parishes relied on ‘briefs’ or charity collections in neighbouring churches to relieve them, but as everyone was feeling the pinch of vastly increased war-time taxation, the response was likely to be disappointing.

The City of Oxford suffered repeated epidemics during the English Civil War. Map of seventeenth-century Oxford, by Wenceslas Hollar.

The cramped conditions in the many garrisons of the Civil War made them potentially fatal to the soldiers and civilians who sheltered in them. Anne Fanshawe remembered the conditions in royalist Oxford:

From as good house as any gentleman in England had we come to a baker’s house in an obscure street, and from rooms well furnished to lie in a very bad bed in a garret … at the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes plague, sometimes sicknesses of other kinds, by reason of so many people being packed together. [11]

The writer John Aubrey was Anne’s contemporary as a student at Trinity College, Oxford. His fearful parents summoned him home to Wiltshire at the war’s outbreak in August 1642. He resumed his studies a few months later, only to catch smallpox. He survived, but was sent home again on his recovery, to his great regret: ‘it was a most sad life to me, then in the prime of my youth, not to have the benefit of an ingeniose conversation and scarce any good bookes’.[12] But remaining in Oxford was frequently a death sentence. In Christ Church Cathedral there are evocative monuments to some of those who died during the siege of Oxford, who included the poet William Cartwright and the notorious Frances Coke Villiers, returned from exile in France a somewhat surprising royalist, considering the persistence with which the king had hounded her for her adultery. Dr Humphrey Peake, Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, another royalist refugee in Oxford, seems to have had premonitions of his own death there, writing in his posthumously published Meditations upon a Siege,

If I die by a Canon shot … I die sodainly, and my paine is quickly at an end … how much more wretchedly might I have died in my bed, perhaps languishing of a tedious sicknesse, till I grew a burthen … rotting and decaying part by part, with an intolerable stench, which neither I my selfe, nor any of my friends, … Are able to endure, … desolate in death, with none about me, but those … readie to set me packing. [13]

An even worse fate was to be confined in one of the many makeshift and unsanitary gaols of the Civil Wars. As with prisons today, these were often breeding places for infection, only much worse, as prisoners were supposed to fund their own upkeep or, without it, left semi-starved, housed in the worst accommodation next to the ‘jakes’ (toilet) or exposed to the weather, and sometimes even chained up. Those imprisoned did not readily forget the experience, telling stories to their children years after of their providential survival while those around them succumbed to plague. William Wake proved hard to kill: his nine lives included being shot in the head in a Wareham street, a vile skin disease caught in Dorchester gaol, and being captured and stripped naked after the siege of Sherborne and ‘sent a prisoner to Poole where the Plague then was’. Tending to plague victims, and yet being spared, was seen as a particular mark of God’s favour: of Joseph May, vicar of St Austell in Cornwall, it was claimed that ‘though the Plague rag’d in all the dwellings about him, and he himselfe officiating att the interrment, of every Corpse, neither he or any one of his family was touchd’. On the other hand, if an enemy happened to die of epidemic disease, this was generally interpreted as the hand of God chastising the wicked. An ‘Antient Woman’ reported how the ‘4 persons’, who ‘persecuted’ Richard Long, vicar at Chewton Mendip in Somerset, all dyed, one becoming ‘speechless’, another ‘Grew down right Mad’, another ‘dyed in a Barn’, the final one of smallpox. Gloating over others’ misfortune seems cruel to us today.[14] But as Alexandra Walsham has shown, harsh providential thinking like this was the norm in the early modern period, a consequence of people trying to find meaning in a world in which life itself was very precarious.[15]

Taking into account severe attitudes like these, and the much higher levels of inter-personal violence in early modern society, some historians have taken a ‘pessimist’ view of early modern life, seeing it as characterised by fear, hatred and lack of affection between family members. Early modern parents, Laurence Stone argued, displayed little attachment to their children, and cared little when they died. Stone’s arguments have been widely challenged: even at the time of their publication, Alan Macfarlane pointed out Stone’s selective misreading of the diary of Essex puritan Ralph Josselin in which Josellin begs unavailingly for God to spare the life of his eight-year old daughter Mary, hardly the action of an indifferent parent. It is not hard to find similar examples of parental desperation and despair at the deaths of their children.[16] Nehemiah Wallington had a near-breakdown after the death of his first child. [17]

There was little choice but to seek out ways and means of coping. Stoic philosophy, in vogue in the 17^th century, was of help for to some, along with religious belief. John Evelyn’s correspondence contains a series of moving exchanges by letter between Evelyn, the Anglican theologian Jeremy Taylor, and Evelyn’s brother, comforting each other in their respective distress over lost children. In 1656 Evelyn tries to brace up his distraught brother:

We must remember withal that we grieve not as persons without hope; lest, while we sacrifice to our passions, we be found to offend against God … We give hostages to Fortune when we bring children into the world.[18]

A year later, when Evelyn has lost two more of his own children, he is comforted in turn by Taylor who, having lost nearly all his own children, from two marriages, is well able to empathise. He consoles Evelyn by telling him that his two boys are ‘two bright stars’; ‘heaven is given to them upon very easy terms’. He must accept with ‘patience and submission’ God’s discipline. He sets Evelyn the practical task of comforting his wife, ‘and make it appear that you are more to her than ten sons’.[19]

Gabriel Metsu, The visit from the doctor, 1660-7, Hermitage Museum

The seventeenth-century were cruel times, paying the price for increased urbanisation and trade, at a time when medical science had made few significant inroads in treating disease. The frequent wars of this period acted as vectors for the spread of infection to combatants and non-combatants alike. But some positives can be drawn from the seventeenth century experience. Firstly, people adapted their lives to minimise loss of life where possible, using the limited strategies available to them. Secondly, loss of life due to infectious disease has been the common experience down the centuries, not the exception, and demonstrates the amazing power of the human race to carry on, even under the most unpromising conditions. While individuals succumbed, the population just kept on growing. Sometimes there were unexpected benefits, such as the plague of 1665 flinging to together a group of scientific geniuses, as reported by John Evelyn:

4^th September … I came to Durdans, where I found Dr. Wilkins, Sir William Petty, and Mr. [Robert] Hooke, contriving chariots, new rigging for ships, a wheel for one to run races in, and other mechanical inventions, perhaps three such persons together were not to be found elsewhere in Europe, for parts and ingenuity.[20]

The funeral procession for Queen Mary II.

Finally, the response to death as something that draws people together in their common humanity. Sorrow deepens us, and in the right hands can create great art, which may assist those to come in expressing and thus coming to terms with their own losses. For the funeral of Queen Mary, whose death had made ‘marble weep’, Henry Purcell created funeral music that remains one of the most profound responses in existence to the shock of sudden death wrought by epidemic disease:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYELAu9hqdU

[1] Funeral sentences, from the 1662 Anglican Prayer Book, set to music by Henry Purcell, and used at his own funeral in 1695, http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1662/burial.pdf.

[2] The Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, ed. W. Bray (London, Routledge, n.d.), 425-9, 436-7

[3] F. Bickley, The Life of Matthew Prior (London: Pitman, 1914), 36.

[4] R. Welford, St. Nicholas’ Church Newcastle on Tyne (Newcastle, 1880), 130

[5] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB] Nehemiah Wallington.

[6] Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Manuscript D158, diary of Richard Drake, fo. 14.

[7] T. Reinke Williams, Women, Work and Sociability in Early Modern London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 22-3.

[8] ODNB, John Evelyn.

[9] See a paper by J. Bell discussing mortality at Thame in Oxfordshire, a local transport hub, the same year, J. Bell, ‘The mortality crisis in Thame and East Oxfordshire’, OHLA Journal Vol 3, No. 4 (Spring 1990): 137-52.

[10] Devon Heritage Centre, QS/1/8 1640-1651, Somerset Heritage Centre, Q/SPET/1/94; Bodleian Library, MS J. Walker, C1, fo. 26.

[11] The memoirs of Ann Lady Fanshawe (London, 1907), 24-5, https://archive.org/details/memoirsofannlady00fansuoft

[12] John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), 38.

[13] Humphrey Peake, Meditations on a Siege (1645), 29.

[14] Bodleian Library, MS J. Walker: C1, fos 133, 143: C4, fo. 12.

[15] Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), 32.

[16] Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 4-9; Alan Macfarlane, ‘Review of L. Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800’ in History and Theory, 18 (1979): 103; Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations 1500-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

[17] ODNB, Nehemiah Wallington.

[18] Diary … of John Evelyn, 572-3

[19] Ibid, 583-4.

[20] Ibid, 276.

June 30, 2020
The domestic colonisation of eighteenth-century Scotland

Third year student Kathryn Watts chose an original focus for her dissertation in investigating the eighteenth century attack on Scottish culture. As she argues below, colonialism is often looked at in the global context, but the domestic colonialism of Scotland (and Ireland) predated it, and provided a prototype for many of the colonialist ideas of racial hierarchy and methods of cultural indoctrination which followed. It has been fascinating supervising Kathryn’s dissertation journey – ed.

In this 1766 satirical print, the devil is shown wearing tartan and playing the bagpipes: British Museum print J,1.111

On April 16, 1746, the bloody battle of Culloden ended with Jacobite defeat; the rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie, crushed. This date became synonymous with the decimation of Highland culture, as pro-Government forces sought to destroy Jacobite support, which was equated with the Highlander. My dissertation, entitled Demonisation and Appropriation: Transitions of Scotland Post-Culloden, 1746-1784, explored the impact of appropriation of highland culture by wealthy lowland and English elites. I organised my chapters into three, exploring the historiography first, then examining domestic colonialism and then romanticism respectively.

I chose this topic as my dissertation, having had prior interest in the Jacobite movement, and noting the romantic approach taken by historians, I was interested in examining the ways in which Scottish culture, but in particular Highland culture, was decimated. This was achieved through a concept of domestic colonialism within British borders, an approach taken by both lowland Scottish and English elites who felt they were racially superior to the supposedly ‘uncivilised’ Celtic highlander.[1] Both lowland and highland Scots were demonised, but highlanders especially were designated as the ‘uncivilised’ brute that both lowland and English perceptions sought to change.

After the battle of Culloden, whether through satire, religion, language, or culture, the highlanders were demonised at the same time as legislative reforms were put in place to strip the highlanders of their culture. The Disarming Act of 1746 specifically ordered the ban of the use of tartan and the Highland costume – the kilt – which was identified as a symbol that became equated to the Jacobite movement. It further demanded the removal of the use of bagpipes citing them as a weapon of war.[2] Breaking this Act faced severe punishments: to break the act first time meant six months in prison, a second time could mean transportation for seven years.[3] This Act was not enforced strongly everywhere: most convictions were in towns or villages that were near garrisons.[4]

This 1745 etching caricatures the Scots using a folkloric legend of the cannibalistic Sawney Bean. Whilst the legend dates back much earlier, it was used in the mid eighteenth-century to accentuate the Scot as primitive. Entitled Sawney in the Boghouse, the uncivilised Scot is shown sitting on the toilet, but unable to properly use the ‘lavatory pans’.

Furthermore, the Heritable Jurisdiction’s Act of 1747 stated that any Jacobites’ land would now be in control of the government, and destroyed the former clan structure. The government had observed how clan leaders were able to rouse Highlanders into fighting for the Jacobite cause (though it is contested on how well they were actually able to do this).[5] By removing the clan leaders, the government felt they could then ‘civilise’ the Highlanders by destroying their political structure, and instead anglicise it.

Methods of anti-Scottishness was also introduced through schooling of children. Extra focus was placed on removing the Scottish Gaelic language, and instead teaching English to highland children – implanting dominant English culture over the Highland culture.[6] This was implemented by the missionary group entitled the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK). The form of teaching that the SSPCK used in highland schools was a prototype for what would later be used in the global colonial settings, where punishment was strict, and the enforcement of English culture was to be dominant.[7] Whether it can be said to be successful is doubtful. Rumours, for example, spread that if any person had attended at a school on the Earl of Lovat’s land, they would immediately be transported to the colonies, which dramatically lowered the attendance of that school.[8]

Pompeo Batoni, Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie, painted 1766, National Trust for Scotland, Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, personal photo.

After a series of successive laws that removed the highlanders of their culture, wealthy elites of both England and the Lowlands sought to appropriate their culture for their own personal benefit. Within this period, paintings such as Pompeo Batoni’s Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie (as seen below; figure 1) became common amongst the wealthy classes, removing the connotations of tartan from Jacobitism to a romantic fashionable item. Batoni’s painting is one example of this. The man featured in the painting, Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie, is dressed in both a British uniform jacket married with a philibeg costume (a traditional kilt that was worn over the shoulder). Furthermore, Batoni features classical influences, such as the background behind Colonel William Gordon, suggesting he is the epitome of the civilised gentleman.

However, it was only after British colonialism had decimated Highland culture, and the Jacobites were no longer a threat, that highlanders began to be considered romantic, antiquarian freedom fighters who had lived in a primitive lifestyle. They were ‘uncivilised’ but they were also now romantic. Books such as James Mcpherson’s Ossian, published in the 1760s, benefited from this new perception of the highlanders. Through portraits, literature, poetry, and clothing and particularly the later work of Burns and Sir Walter Scott in the mainstream of the Romantic period, the highlander came to be seen from a restrained Lowland/English perspective – tamed of his former ‘brutish’ manners.

Whilst this is an under-researched topic, I found this dissertation to be extremely rewarding. Scottish colonialism in the eighteenth-century is an under-developed scholarly field, which, in attempts to decipher, unravels a whole lot more about the context of early Scottish enlightenment. Where there is information about the highland clearances, this is often looked at from an economic perspective, rather than the damage to highland culture. Colonialism is often looked in the global context, but there should be greater emphasis placed on domestic colonialism where not only the English, but lowlanders too, saw themselves as racially superior to that of the highlander.

[1] Robert Knox, The Races of Men. A Fragment, (Philadelphia, PA, 1850), 18. Quoted in Iain MacKinnon, “Colonialism and the Highland Clearances,” Northern Scotland 8 (2017): 35.

[2] Fitzroy Maclean, A Concise History of Scotland (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), 182.

[3] T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation: A Modern History (London: Penguin, 2012), 233.

[4] J. Telfer-Dunbar, History of Highland Dress (London, 1962), 6-8; NLS, MS 5129, fo. 42 (Disposition of Troops in the Highlands, April 1749). Quoted in Charles W. J. Withers, Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region (London: Routledge, 2016): 83.

[5] Devine, The Scottish Nation, 47.

[6] Peter Womack, Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989): 4.

[7] Silke Stroh, “The Modern Nation-State and its Others: Civilising Missions at Home and Abroad, ca. 1600 to ca. 1800,” in Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900 (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 67.

[8] Deposition of John Grant, January 17, 1753, British Library Add. 35, 447, 379. Quoted in Geoffrey Plank, Rebellion and Savagery: The Jacobite Rising of 1745 and the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 113.

June 25, 2020
Germans coming to terms with the crimes of the past: the role of the Wehrmacht in World War II

In his dissertation third-year history student Tim Marsella studied the changing understandings and representations of the role of the Wehrmacht (German armed forces in World War II) within modern Germany. He shows how a landmark exhibition in the 1990s challenged perceptions about the breadth of involvement in war crimes, but also how coming to terms with painful memories allowed German society to move on.

Wehrmacht soldiers training in 1942

Most students are aware when they start their degrees that they will be required to complete a dissertation in the final year of their course, and this prospect can seem quite daunting.What I would like to share is both my inspiration for this work and what I gained from doing it.

For myself, deciding the topic was one of the most difficult tasks. I decided that I wanted to base my research upon one of the most well-known historical events, the Holocaust, but was unsure on what focus point to take. What I was particularly interested in was how a nation, which had been involved in such a widespread, and atrocious crime was able to deal with its past in the present day. I approached, Dr Mathias Seiter (who would later become my first supervisor) to discuss my ideas I had regarding my dissertation. He helped to point me towards the role of the Wehrmacht (the combined German armed forces of the Second World War) in the Holocaust’s perpetration, as this had been a controversial topic. It quickly became evident that the reason for this controversy was that by condemning the Wehrmacht, an entire generation of Germans would be condemned. This is because such a large part of the German population had been a part of the Wehrmacht.

Luckily, I had the opportunity to visit the city of Berlin in the summer leading up to my final year of study. I was amazed at the level of work modern Germany had put into commemorating it’s past, even the criminal parts of it. This is most evident by the large ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’, which sits in the centre of Berlin. I was also impressed by the museums of the ‘Topography of Terror’ and the ‘German Historical Museum’. Both museums demonstrate past crimes of the German state and its populace, and important for my dissertation, both highlight the Wehrmacht’s role in crimes. It was evident to me, that modern Germany views its crimes very seriously.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin

Over the year I planned, researched, wrote and changed my dissertation on different occasions. It was not a straightforward process. Luckily, I had two excellent supervisors, Dr Mathias Seiter and Dr Brigitte Leucht who both helped me to better my work. It was also fascinating to listen to their stories as both had witnessed the exhibition at the centre of my dissertation first-hand. What resulted was a dissertation which took a focus point of the Wehrmacht exhibition entitled War of Annihilation: Crimes of the German Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944 (1995-1999) by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. This exhibition would be used to examine the changing perception of the Wehrmacht within the German public conscious and would fit into the wider debate of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Germans coming to terms with the past). The dissertation was divided into three chapters, which looked at the changing ideas of the Holocaust and the Wehrmacht prior to the exhibition, the exhibition itself as well as its reactions, and finally whether the exhibition was able to change the idea of the Wehrmacht in present German society. The analysis was primarily literature based, but used some key primary sources, notable representations of the Wehrmacht within German popular culture.

Visitors to the exhibition War of Annihilation: Crimes of the German Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944 held from 1994-9 by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research

What this dissertation concluded was the Wehrmacht exhibition had a great impact on German society. The levels of guilt in which the Wehrmacht was implicated in varied between different representations, but no representation could deny the Wehrmacht being involved in crimes. Importantly, this idea of Wehrmacht being vital for the Holocaust is presented, the blame not just placed upon the ‘top Nazi’s’ and the SS. This has allowed Germany to be able to move on from its Wehrmacht’s criminal past and deploy as well as commemorate its new armed forces.

From doing this research I gained some valuable insights. What I discovered was the importance of both history and memory on human society. Notably, the exhibition caused a drastic change in perception for some individuals. For example, shockingly to some individuals, pictures of their relatives committing crimes were actually in the exhibition. Visitors were shocked to see their ancestors, who they believed were loving husbands, fathers or grandfathers committing atrocious crimes. People would tour the exhibition using magnifying glasses in fear of spotting a relative. Interestingly, people would react differently. Some wrote into the exhibition, sending in their personal family albums, some needed to visit psychiatrists or sought comfort through religion. Others would write into the exhibition team in defence of their family members, criticising the exhibition team, labelling them with names such as ‘communists’. Criticism reached a peak when there were clashes both inside and outside the exhibition venues, and there was even a bomb attack on the exhibition. A literal attempt at destroying the evidence. Importantly however, the exhibition was causing dialogue between generations and across all levels of society, all the way to the German Federal Government.

Visitors to the exhibition feared what they might find out about apparently loving family members.

Overall, what this dissertation has taught me is that daunting pieces of work can turn out to be very enjoyable. At the beginning, finding a place to start can be hard, and when ideas have to change throughout the topic, it can be tough. But by choosing a topic I enjoyed, and getting good supervision, I was able to complete a piece of work which I got great enjoyment from doing.

June 19, 2020
Cut-throat communities, angry noblemen, and a noseless pirate! My journey through the joys and horrors of writing a dissertation

Below, the first of a series on this year’s bumper crop of student dissertations, from my own supervisee Tom Underwood. Tom was one of the most prepared and organised students I’ve ever supervised, but as he mentions below, also still honing his dissertation down to the wire, and we were blown away with the results. Tom is planning to continue onto an MRes, where his impressive skills at reading early modern handwriting, and patience with sifting his way through basement archives should come to further good use. – ed

Whether its Errol Flynn’s smooth-talking Captain Blood, or Johnny Depp’s rum-soaked Jack Sparrow, the pirate occupies a special place within popular imagination. A glint in the eye appears – well for me at least – to see sails catch the sea breeze, the thunderous sound of cannon fire and the sight of the notorious Jolly Roger flag unfurl in the salty sea air. It is a childhood feeling of freedom, fraternity and insouciance. But, within these multi-sensory interactions there are – rather sadly – misrepresentations which go beyond Davy Jones’ tentacles and Robert Louis Stevenson’s black spot!

My dissertation looked at the ways in which perceptions of the pirate have been driven and curtailed by a series of archetypes in the historiography of sixteenth-century piracy. I examined the very complicated nature of Tudor maritime law and the even murkier local privileges that had been granted to regional governments in the medieval period to show that piracy was a communal crime rather than a crime committed by an individual.

I would be lying, however – as I sit here writing this – if I said I had always planned to write my dissertation on Elizabethan piracy – a subject I have come to embrace. In fact, (my slightly protracted) dissertation journey started on my second day at University. While I always had the intention of writing my dissertation on early modern maritime history – even before I joined University – a chance meeting with Dr James Thomas, a true master of everything wooden-world related, although sadly no longer at the University, altered my somewhat naïve attitude to the subject. He showed me in the very few minutes that I sat and spoke with him the need to look beyond certain key individuals and the need to view the bigger-picture. My dissertation, although without his guidance, is a sum of what he, along with every other history lecturer at the University, has taught me as an undergraduate over the three years. I am indebted to James Thomas particularly for not only his personal insight, but also his research which I hope to have followed – if only loosely and in a different historical time-frame.

Overall, my dissertation took no structured form in its embryonic stages, but I knew I wanted to focus on the smaller social dynamics within historical coastal communities. My argument never stayed the same and adapted and was enriched with every unit that I completed. In particular, a second year unit co-ordinated by Dr Fiona McCall who would later become my dissertation supervisor – positively altered my critical approach to early modern social structures and Tudor court systems. In a weird sense, the unit gave my dissertation a kind of hybridity where I appropriated elements of crime history and understandings of state formations, which I then blended with forms of maritime history to reinterpret the Tudor pirate.

While the dissertation was fundamentally driven by my individual research, it drew heavily on the apparatus and advice / teaching I had been exposed to – perhaps subconsciously at times – across the three years. Archival research was two-words – which as a twenty-year-old – filled me with dread going into the third year. For historians, however, as for Elizabethan state officers, the brazen English pirate of the sixteenth-century has been an elusive figure; historical records are far from forth-coming. My initial research drew a blank. Searching deeper I realised that to gain any access to relevant sources would take effort on my part – and a boat load of it! I had to adopt the role of the detective – as much as the historian – with a lot of suspects, little clues and no circumstantial evidence. The pirate was hidden away in the dark recesses of time and history, but also the archive!

The Discovery engine on the National Archives website proved an invaluable tool in my quest of the pirate, and initial searches showed certain documents that had potential, but not necessarily relevance. My dissertation, as a study, was driven by the local dimension of piracy, and by combining key word searches with certain geographical locations narrowed my search immensely. I realised quite early on that Southampton Records Office held the majority of documents pertaining to my area – which was initially but somewhat unimaginatively Portsmouth! Having recorded all the document reference numbers, I went the archive. Stepping off the train at Southampton central station my first emotion was to get straight back onto the train. I felt archival research was beyond me, in both my years and capability. Unfortunately for me I had realised I hadn’t bought a return ticket!

SC8/1/1 – Southampton’s Admiralty Court Book

I persevered, I knew that to write the dissertation on the subject I wanted would require some degree of internal strength – which at this point was lacking. Going into the archive – which I initially couldn’t find, but that’s a story for another blog – I was confronted by everything that I expected; a dimly-lit, deathly quiet basement reminiscent of the IT Crowd. But, despite the appearance I was met by the most friendly, helpful and knowledgeable staff. Seeing, and touching, 500-year-old documents is an unbelievable experience. At many points I had become so captivated by what I was touching that I had forgotten why I was there.

Archival research is something that necessitates patience. Be prepared to be given a box full of documents, transcribe Elizabethan writing in your mind and on paper, only to find there was nothing of pertinence to your argument. Countless train journeys and days spent in the archives may from the out-set appear laborious and futile, but through it you can develop some invaluable – and some less valuable – skills. I have become a more patient person; I can also fully read and transcribe even the most difficult Elizabethan writing. But I have also gained some memories. Sitting in the archive touching the signatures of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster, and Dr Judge Julius Caesar – a well-known figure in the Elizabethan piracy world – can be an exhilarating moment – if you’re that way inclined!

SC8/1/1 – A page within the book displaying the complicated, but highly fascinating, nature of Elizabethan documents

I lost count of my trips to the archive, and it became something I enjoyed rather than loathed. My dissertation, and archival, journey had brought me before some of the most interesting documents I have ever had the privilege to read. From angry mayors trying to protect their piratical behaviour within Portsmouth’s waters to pirates that have been identified by their victims through their distinctive facial features, reading through unpublished material can be hugely exciting, especially when it offers information that goes against the current scholarship.

SP 12/132 f.1 – The hardest document that I have had the pleasure to transcribe. Early modern writing can be hard to decode and can make you feel like you want to give-up at first. But, weirdly, after a while they become easier to read

My dissertation journey has been a long one, but also one that I have devoted the most hours of my life to. At many points I have felt like I have been stranded on an island, surrounded by a sea of documents (this is the last nautical pun, I promise!). But the opportunity has offered me a lot of freedom and has enabled me to formulate my own judgements as a trainee-historian. I feel lucky to have had a supportive dissertation supervisor that has pushed me further and further – even to the last days before submission! Without Fiona McCall’s guidance I would not have produced the dissertation in the forms it is currently in. Her support and constructive criticism helped shaped my research, but also sharpen my analytical tools. I cannot wait to continue researching my topic and get back to the archive!

June 16, 2020
Sinister Stalin, the Cold-War Octopus

The cartoonist David Low’s depiction of Stalin as an octopus, published in 1948, sits within a long-standing tradition of monstrous, dehumanised depictions of political enemies. Octopi in particular have been used in the past to represent the sinister ambitions of Prussia, Britain, France, Nazi Germany, America and the oil industry, amongst others. But as second-year UoP History student Georgia Hutton explains, Low’s octopus critiques both Soviet policy and contemporary Western-bloc attitudes towards it. Georgia wrote this piece for the second-year module, Danger! Censorship, Power and the People.

A cartoon by David Low for the Evening Standard, on 15 April 1948, reveals a great deal about the British, contemporary Western, perspective of the USSR during the early development of the Cold War hostilities.[1] The “Grand Alliance” of 1945 had crumbled into a polarised Europe by 1948.[2] Whilst it is important to note that cartoons generally exaggerate the truth for comedic purposes, the image by Low provides insight into messages a contemporary audience was exposed to regarding the USSR: Britain’s fear of Soviet expansion; the USSR’s policy of isolationism and perceived ‘Social Utopia’ alongside the years of ‘anti-red hysteria’.[3]

Stalin in 1949

Low’s decision to place Stalin’s facial features on a large cartoon ‘octopus’ statue is significant as it provides an acknowledgement that the USSR was pursuing a policy of expansionism, whilst illustrating a negative assessment of this. Low creates the metaphor of the Russian spread of communism across Europe by portraying Stalin as an octopus with a ‘tentacle like’ grip that he warns with text at the bottom of the statue is “REACHING ALL OVER THE WORLD [sic]”.[4] Stalin viewed “Eastern Europe as vital to Russia’s security” and consequently post-war focused on the creation of the Eastern Bloc to “prevent any nation in the region from developing close economic or military ties with the West”.[5] Longden stresses that Britain was inherently fearful of the prospect of Soviet expansion; foreign Secretary Ernst Bevin knew post-war Britain was too weak to protect Europe or themselves from the Soviet threat.[6] In addition, the timing of the cartoon is significant as it was published less than two months after the Prague Coup of 1948 which saw “Czechoslovakia’s slide into Communist rule”.[7] The Coup of February 1948 alongside the post-war swing towards the left in countries such as Italy and France persuaded the West that political change was “being orchestrated from Moscow”.[8] Schwartz notes that by January 1948 the Foreign Office had launched an anti-communist propaganda campaign to stop the USSR’s influence infiltrating Britain.[9] Although Low’s depiction of Stalin trying to extend its influence was not direct government propaganda, its view of the USSR was one shared with Whitehall.

An octupus was again used an symbolic of Soviet aggression in 1980

Low highlights the idea throughout his cartoon that Russia was pursuing a policy of secretive and hostile post-war isolationism in the large wall that runs across the middle of the image separating the two sides of the cartoon. This draws parallels to the notorious speech by Winston Churchill in 1946 claiming “’an iron curtain’ had descended across the Continent”.[10] Robert Dallek highlights that “Stalin … couldn’t accept that his allies meant what they said about post-war goodwill”.[11] As a result, Russia fell into a policy of hostile isolationism and bitter distrust of the West. However, whilst the wall is blocking what Low labels “SIGHTSEERS [sic]” a figure with resemblance to Stalin is seen looking over the wall into the other side. [12] This suggests that the USSR, whilst isolating themselves from the rest of the world, were still interested in the politics of, and how they were perceived by, the West. Ian D. Thatcher states that “the world of Soviet politics was noted for hidden motivations” which links to Low’s depiction of the USSR hidden behind the wall.[13] Low titles his piece, “PRETTY GOOD SOVIET PROPAGANDA, I SAY [sic]”.[14] The Soviet Union’s effort to maintain the illusory image of “Social Utopia” is referenced in Low’s cartoon on the entrance door of the wall.[15] Low makes reference to the Western view that there was instead “MUDDLE & MESS IN THE USSR [sic]”.[16] Levering suggests the USSR recognised their technological inferiority and would produce propaganda accordingly insisting “the West was preparing to attack the Soviets in order to destroy their way of life”.[17] Through Low’s imagery we are exposed to the contemporary views regarding Russia’s secrecy and policy of isolationism, which in turn are used to promote a negative suspicious view of the Soviets.

In his cartoon Low presents the ‘anti-red hysteria’ surrounding ideological differences in his descriptions of Stalin. Although as Erik Goldstein states, “geo-politics even more than ideological rivalry have shaped British reactions to Russia”, there was an obvious stark contrast in ideology between the Communist “Soviet camp” and the Western “imperialist camp.[18] .[19] Low plays on the differences between the two ideologies by his use of juxtaposing statements on the base of the statue. Underneath the statue starting with the title “SINISTER STALIN [sic]” follow three more statements: “FRIGHTFULLY CLEVER, DREADFULLY POWERFUL, AWFULLY EFFICIENT [sic]”.[20] The positive adjectives link back to the idea of ‘social utopia’ whilst the contrasting negative adverbs highlight the ‘anti-red hysteria’ created by the West. Despite this, However, Low also acknowledges the hysteria generated by expansionism and contrasting ideologies by the inclusion of a man labelled “ANTI-RED HYSTERIA [sic]” who is building the statue where both ideas were presented.[21] It is important to note that the Evening Standard was a staunchly conservative paper. Mark Hampton argues that while Low, as he stressed in his autobiography, had “complete freedom in the selection and treatment of subject-matter”, his cartoons often met with a “hostile reception” from its readers, reaction he was perhaps both evoking and provoking with his direct reference to the subject matter of hysteria[22] Through Low’s descriptions of Stalin we are exposed to how he perceives the ‘anti-red hysteria’ is being created.

Low’s cartoon provides us with great insight into the British perspective of the USSR in the early years of the cold war through the use of imagery. Low highlights the British fear of Soviet expansion through the depiction of Stalin as an octopus following the creation of the Eastern Bloc including the recent Czechoslovakian Communist coup. In addition, Low highlights how the British perceived the Soviet policy of hostile isolationism through his imagery of the giant wall separating the cartoon despite Stalin being able to see over. This suggests that, whilst isolating themselves from the rest of the world, the USSR were still interested in how they were perceived by the West. Finally, Low’s description of Stalin provides us insight into the ideological differences of the cold war suggesting ‘anti-red hysteria’ was created both by expansionism and differing ideology.

[1] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’, Evening Standard, 15 April 1948. DL2866, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent.

[2] David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 267.

[3] Lowell H. Schwartz, Political Warfare Against the Kremlin: US and British Propaganda Policy at the Beginning of the Cold War (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 209.

[4] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’

[5] Ralph B. Levering, The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 21.

[6] Martin A.L. Longden, “From ‘Hot War’ to ‘Cold War’: Western Europe in British Grand Strategy, 1945-1948”, in Cold War Britain 1945-1964: New Perspectives ed. Michael F. Hopkins, Michael D. Kandiah and Gillian Staerck (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 116-117.

[7] Michael D. Kandiah, “The Conservative Party and the Early Cold War: The Construction of ‘New Conservatism’” in Cold War Britain 1945-1964: New Perspectives, ed. Michael F. Hopkins, Michael D. Kandiah and Gillian Staerck (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 33.

[8] Longden, “From ‘Hot War’ to ‘Cold War’”, 117.

[9] Schwartz, Political Warfare, 19.

[10] Reynolds, From World War, 249; Jenks, British Propaganda, 32.

[11] Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope (New York: Harper, 2010), 66. Quoted in Levering, The Cold War, 20.

[12] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’

[13] Ian D. Thatcher, “From Stalin to Gorbachev: Reflections on the Personality of Leaders in Soviet History”, Contemporary European History 19, no.1 (2010): 96.

[14] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’

[15] Schwartz, Political Warfare, 209.

[16] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’

[17] Levering, The Cold War, 32.

[18] Erik Goldstein, “Britain and the Origins of the Cold War”, in Cold War Britain 1945-1964: New Perspectives ed. Michael F. Hopkins, Michael D. Kandiah and Gillian Staerck (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 7.

[19] Robert C. Tucker, The Psychological Factor in Soviet Foreign Policy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, RM-1881,1957), Quoted in Schwartz, Political Warfare, 14.

[20] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’

[21] David Low, ‘Pretty good Soviet propaganda, I say’

[22] David Low, Low’s Autobiography (New York: 1957); Mark Hampton, “Inventing David Low: Self-Presentation, Caricature and the Culture of Journalism in Mid-Twentieth Century Britain”, Twentieth Century British History 20, no. 4 (2009): 494, 500.

June 10, 2020
Young people need to learn more about the history of racism in the US and Britain

In the light of the worldwide anti-racists protests taking place across the world, two current UoP students, Lois Marriott and Becca Francis, argue passionately for the need to educate young people about the history of black people’s experience of racism.

We both chose to take units during our history degree that would help us understand issues on race and white privilege. This included “ Racism and Anti-Racism in Postwar Britain” taught by Dr. Jodi Burkett and “African American History and Culture” taught by Dr. Lee Sartain. We also learned about the history of slavery on the core units of our degree, as well as the impact of Imperialism. A combination of all these units gave us a good understanding of black history and a small insight on the oppression black people and other minorities have felt for centuries. This allowed us to understand our own white privilege and our country’s history of racism. The current protests on George Floyd’s murder are resonating with people across the world, including Britain. Many people do not understand why Britain is ‘getting involved’. There are two issues with this, firstly that a racist murder that has video evidence should cause anger across the world. Secondly, many people are pairing this argument with the claim British police shouldn’t be scrutinised, as it was American police who committed the crime. Racism is not a uniquely American problem. Racism can be seen across the globe and Britain is not exempt from this. Britain’s history with racism, particularly within the Empire, is not taught to students at school and this creates a large gap in many people’s knowledge on British racism. This is why so many people are not understanding why the American protests have resonated so much with the British.

The statue of Bristol slaver Edward Colston thrown into the river Avon yesterday.

Lois on Jodi Burkett’s unit:

Britain’s history with racism is both long and complicated. With that being said, it is not something taught in schools. This was what inspired us both to choose Jodi’s unit as it was a subject we both had limited knowledge on. This highlights a clear flaw in the UK’s curriculum. The new curriculum in England was released in 2014 and includes an option on ‘Migration to Britain.’ This unit also covers some history of the Empire too but only 4% of GCSE pupils take this unit.^[1] Our own GCSE experience was just as limited as the only Black person I learned about on the whole GCSE course was Mary Seacole. Even her memory was placed in the shadow of Florence Nightingale and her significance massively played down which demonstrates the clear racism embedded in our education system.

Jodi’s unit highlighted the prejudices black people face everyday in the UK. We learned about the ‘criminalisation’ of black youths from the 1970s onwards. This is something still present in society today and by studying this at university it opened up our eyes to the injustices the black community faces on a daily basis. It highlighted to us that even fifty years later this was still a major issue. The racism faced by the black community in the UK does not stop here. Stephen Lawrence is seen as the personification of racial violence in the UK and I was completely unaware of it until I studied this unit.^[2] Stephen Lawerence was murdered on 22nd of April 1993 in a racial motivated attack. The police ignored the racial motive, his friend’s eye witness account because of his ethnicity and many leads in connection with the case.^[3] This led to the Macpherson enquiry into how the police handled the case in 1999 and the amendment of the Race Relations Act in 2000. It took campaigning from his family and nineteen years for his murders to be held accountable for their actions. This also demonstrated the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police at the time. This is just one example of the racially motivated attacks we studied and just a handful of those that have been committed. The whitewashing of British history cannot continue and we must educate young people on black history. Beyond this, we must educate ourselves where school education has failed us. The society we live in today gives us knowledge at our fingertips through technology and google. I am lucky enough to have studied this at degree level however black history should not be limited to those who choose higher education.

Lynchings by states and counties in the United States, 1900-1931, data from Research Department, Tuskegee Institute, source: Library of Congress

Becca on Lee Sartain’s unit:

While I have briefly studied African American history and culture throughout GCSE and A-Level, studying the topic at degree level has allowed me to gain a greater understanding of African Americans’ struggles in the twentieth century. This topic has provided me with vital knowledge that has helped me understand the history behind years of racial discrimination, systemic racism and white privilege. Within this unit we gained an uncensored insight into the lives of African Americans through the twentieth century and the struggles they have always faced, even up until today. In the early 1900s, the NAACP “perceived police torture as an issue intertwined with lynching”.^[4] It is clear that police violence is still an issue we are facing over one hundred years later and some may say that not much progress has been made. Similarly, during the anti-lynching campaign, the NAACP used images of lynchings to change the narrative and display the white mobs as the savage, and in turn humanize the victim.^[5] They suggested it was the white mob who was the true threat to the American modern and democratic image. The NAACP’s message was that all white Americans are potential mob members when they do nothing.^[6] This message resonates with us today with the current events. Whilst embarrassment evoked change regarding lynching, it appears history is repeating itself today. The uncensored history of African American society and culture is something that should be taught in schools and colleges, not just at degree level. It has been reported that the current situation is the biggest ever Civil Rights Movement. Therefore, learning the history behind how we got to this point is vital.

An issue of The Liberator depicting African Americans next to a lynching tree. The Liberator. Volume VII. 1837.

News broke on 3rd June 2020 that the four police officers in connection with George Floyd’s murder had all been charged. This is a positive step. However, it is important to remember how many times this has not been the case. It is unfortunate that this was only the result due to growing international pressure, widespread outrage and media coverage. This is just one small step in a long battle that has been going on for over a century. It is a movement we must continue to support and fight for until racism is obsolete. Language used by leaders such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have the power to influence the population. They both use their platform incorrectly – Trump, for example, called COVID-19 the ‘Chinese Virus’. It is clear that the recent events are only the beginning, and learning the history behind why the protests are happening today is very important. We both agree there has been a lot of important information that we did not know until degree level. A less censored version of our history is well overdue in schools.

^[1] Teaching Migration, Belonging and Empire in Secondary Schools (published July 4, 2019)

^[2] Jon Burnett, “After Lawrence: Racial Violence And Policing In The UK”, Race & Class 54, no. 1 (2012): 91.

^[3] Jon Burnett, “After Lawrence: Racial Violence And Policing In The UK”, Race & Class 54, no. 1 (2012): 92.

^[4] Thomas Welskopp, Alan Lessoff, Fractured Modernity: America Confronts Modern Times 1890s to 1940s, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2012), 14

^[5] Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America 1890-1940, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 84

^[6] Jenny Woodley, Art for Equality: The NAACP’s Cultural Campaign for Civil Rights, (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2014), 114

June 8, 2020