Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2019 i History Extra

The fate of the princes in the Tower is one of the greatest historical mysteries, and the debate often centres around who was behind the boys’ murder. But what if, in fact, they were not murdered at all? That is the view of historian Matthew Lewis, and in this month’s cover feature, on page 42, he argues his case against fellow expert Nathen Amin in a quest to determine whether or not the princes survived. While we were making this issue, the streets around us – as in many other British cities – were disrupted by protesters from Extinction Rebellion. Though their tactics seem to divide opinion, it’s clear that the environment is only going to become a more urgent issue in the years to come. Yet green activism is…

The hashtag #TheEmpireGivesBack has recently been shared on Twitter following a Guardian article by Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which asked: “Should museums return their colonial artefacts?” It comes in the midst of an ongoing debate about colonial repatriation and demands for the restitution of historic objects taken from Africa during the 19th century. Hunt made the case that “for a museum like the V&A, to decolonise is to decontextualise... for alongside colonial violence, empire was also a story of cosmopolitanism and hybridity.” Many disagreed, with Danielle Thom (@Danielle_J_Thom) tweeting “I’m still angry about this… mainly the disingenuous ‘misunderstanding’ of the concept of museum decolonisation.” Other historians, such as Katherine Cook (@KatherineR-Cook), rejected Hunt’s assertion that empire was also a “story of cosmopolitanism and hybridity”, implying…

Roman York to be revealed York’s Roman heritage is set to be uncovered as part of a two-year city centre excavation. York Archaeological Trust will carry out the digs before local developers begin construction work on a new office and retail district, which will also boast a large Roman visitor attraction “double the size” of the city’s Jorvik Viking Centre. London museum plans unveiled The Museum of London has revealed plans for a proposed new home in Farringdon. The development, estimated to cost £332m and intended to replace the present museum at London Wall, would be housed within the former Smithfield General Market building. As well as restoring a Victorian café found on the site, the proposals also include ideas for making the museum a “24-hour destination”, accessible at all…

Complements series 5 of the BBC One drama Peaky Blinders “Surely all respectable and law-abiding citizens are sick of the very name of ruffianism in Birmingham and assaults on police. No matter what part of the city one walks, gangs of ‘peaky blinders’ are to be seen, who ofttimes think nothing of grossly insulting passers by, be it a man, woman or child. I venture to say that 99 times out of 100, they are not even brought to justice.” This anguished letter, signed “Workman”, was published in the Birmingham Daily Mail on 21 July 1898. ‘Peaky blinders’ were easily recognised. Contrary to the myth that grew in later decades – and the BBC drama series – they did not wear caps lined with razors. In fact, they wore ‘billycock’…

Did people in previous centuries refer to different decades as the 60s, 70s or 80s, like we do today? You find very occasional uses of expressions like “the twenties of this century” (ie 1820s) in mid-Victorian newspapers, and certainly by the late 19th century, people would talk about previous decades in the way we do, albeit not as much. In the 1880s, Mark Twain titled an essay Three Statements of the Eighties, but there are relatively few other literary uses. The usage only emerged in an industrial age more attuned to the calendar than previous generations. In earlier times, people might talk of the ‘year of our Lord’ such-and-such, but they also organised their personal and community chronologies in terms of seasons, feast days and royal reigns. You also have…

The growth of the garden Tenancy agreements obliged council householders to keep their front gardens neat and tidy, and many grew vegetables in their back gardens. Gardening clubs sprouted on many estates to share knowledge, tools, seeds and cuttings. On middle-class estates, a neat garden was an essential hallmark of respectability. The rise of the car People on new developments had to travel further to work. In 1919, there were just over 100,000 privately owned cars on UK roads. By 1939, there were more than 2 million. Public transport in regional cities also shifted from trams running on fixed rails to motor bus services, whose routes could be more easily modified. Smaller families Suburban homes were more healthy, with lower infant mortality, and couples of all classes felt they could…

Was Roman Britain as wild and dangerous as we might imagine? Probably. I see these stories as Westerns set in c100 AD. Frontiers by their nature bring together different people and ideas, and this was the outer fringes of the Roman empire, not long after the Romans arrived. We now know they would stay for 300 years, but at the time the locals did not. So this was a time of real transition. How were you inspired by the real Vindolanda fort and the tablets there? Vindolanda is an incredibly atmospheric place and the finds – of shoes and the like – make you feel much closer to those who once lived there. The writing tablets give you glimpses into the everyday life of officers, merchants and their wives, and…

Cricket Country by Prashant Kidambi OUP, 448 pages, £25 When, in the summer of 1911, a squad of barefoot Indian men of the Mohun Bagan football team defeated the British military East Yorkshire Regiment team in Calcutta to win the coveted Indian FA Shield, it exploded the myth of racial superiority on which British imperialism was based, and struck a symbolic blow against the empire. In contrast, the organisers of the first all-India cricket tour of Britain and Ireland, taking place that same coronation summer, sought to smother the flames of anti-colonial violence that had engulfed India and London, and express their loyalty to empire by promot- ing fraternal relations on the cricket field. The team from Bombay was chosen on the basis of religion rather than region or merit…

Pirates: A New History, from Vikings to Somali Raiders by Peter Lehr Yale University Press, 272 pages, £20 Penned by an expert in terrorism studies, this ambitious new study offers “a global account of pirates and their modus operandi from the Middle Ages to the present day”. Wide-ranging in geography and chronology, it aims to survey the ingredients of the ‘recipe’ for piracy (an astute metaphor first coined by Gerard Mueller and Freda Adler in their 1985 book Outlaws of the Ocean), which have led to a ‘piracy cycle’ across time and space. “Take a maritime geography, which favours local outlaws and disfavours distant law enforcers,” writes Lehr. “Add the chance of enormous profit and little risk. Mix it generously with strife, internal and external. Avoid maritime law enforcement capacity,…

Renaissance Italy was home to a number of wealthy patrons who amassed huge art collections during their lifetimes. Lorenzo de' Medici is perhaps the most famous example, but also included within this bracket are later figures, such as Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), a Roman antiquarian who spent years assembling what he called his ‘Paper Museum’ – a collection of 10,000 drawings, watercolours and prints touching on an array of scientific topics. Much like the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, many of these works ended up in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, where they have remained ever since. An exhibition curated by postgraduate students at the University of Birmingham brings together a selection of Cassiano’s most interesting acquisitions, covering subjects as diverse as architecture, zoology, botany and cartography. To put…

How much did Carnegie give away? It’s believed that, during his lifetime, Carnegie gave away more than 90 per cent of his fortune – an estimated $380m he had accumulated as the world’s biggest steel maker. No one comes near to him for giving. In today’s money that’s $300bn, much more than what the current largest donors Bill and Melinda Gates have to give away. And why? His article ‘Gospel of Wealth’ said that to die rich was to die disgraced. Where did he target his money? Carnegie gave money worldwide to science and music – almost mischievously for church organs so they could brighten up what he considered to be very dull religious services. In his later years he gave millions to promote peace and disarmament, but education was…

From the high-octane drama of the James Bond canon to films about the real-life heroics of Alan Turing, the public’s fascination with espionage shows no signs of abating. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that GCHQ has decided to mark its 100th anniversary by hosting a free exhibition at the Science Museum, exploring the history of British codebreaking and intelligence-gathering from the Crimean War through to the present day. As well as the chance to browse through recently declassified government files, visitors will also be able to view a number of important cipher devices, including a world-famous Enigma Machine and a lesser-known 5-UCO – a tool once considered so secret that all examples were thought to have been destroyed. Elsewhere, the exhibition addresses the challeng- es of working for GCHQ in the…

How did you first hear about Sitting Bull? I was an odd child and obsessed with Native American history from the age of nine, especially the Plains Indians – of course Sitting Bull is very prominent in that history. As a teenager, I had pen friends in South Dakota who were descendants of him. I don’t know why I had this obsession. I lived on a housing estate in Birmingham. What kind of person was he? He was born at a time when the Sioux were dominant on the northern plains of America. It was very much a warrior society and he rose to the top purely because of his courage and bravery. He was very insightful. He went to Chicago and saw the poverty there, and he said: “The…

Jerry Brotton I’ve spent 30 years writing about Ferdinand Magel- lan’s first circumnavigation of the globe, one of the most misunderstood of all the voyages of discovery. It has much to tell us about our current moment of globalisation. Jerry looks at how Magellan’s voyage changed the course of history on page 50 Emma Butcher PTSD caused by war is a current global issue. Recently, I’ve been reading historical accounts about how the world recognised and responded to war trauma when it had no name. Emma traces the changing attitudes to war veterans’ mental health on page 56 Brendan Simms Hitler wanted parity with the other great actors, principally the United States and the British empire, but felt that this desire was not reciprocated. Once he realised that, he had…

The summer of 1356 found Edward, Prince of Wales, in typically warlike form. At the age of 26, the Black Prince was in his prime, adored by his fellow Englishmen, but dreaded by his French enemies. A year earlier, Edward had ravaged much of modern-day Languedoc. Now he set out once again, burning and pillaging, with the vague intention of reaching Normandy, where he hoped to rendezvous with another English army. By early September, his offensive had ground to a halt and he had decided to turn back to Bordeaux. Then, not far from Poitiers, he heard the news that the French king, John II, was just a few miles away with an army of his own, hot on his heels. Historians still disagree as to whether Edward always meant…

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO , on 14 September 1769, the scientist Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin. The son of wealthy aristocrats, he later left his life of privilege behind and spent his fortune on a five-year exploration of South America. This daring journey shaped his life and made him the most famous scientific figure in the world. He was adventurous, restless, relentlessly curious and a visionary thinker. Humboldt wrote about the “ancient connection” between Africa and South America more than a century before scientists began to discuss shifting tectonic plates, invented isotherms (the wavy lines we still see on weather maps today) or discovered the magnetic equator, and he was the first to talk about global climate and vegetation zones. Most importantly, he came up with…

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It’s one of the most notorious episodes in all of British history, but one that stubbornly refuses to give up all its secrets. When Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, disappeared into the Tower of London in 1483 – where, many believe, they were murdered – the finger of blame for their fate soon alighted on their uncle, Richard III. And there it has stayed for the past 500 years. But proving Richard’s guilt has proved fiendishly difficult, and throughout those five centuries a strand of opinion has advanced the case for Richard’s innocence. Here’s what we know: in April 1483, Edward IV died suddenly at the age of just 40. Edward’s eldest son was proclaimed king (as Edward V). But the young Edward was just 12…

Ellie Cawthorne: Why did you think that a new biography of Hitler was needed? Brendan Simms: Because I think that some of the most important things that we think we know about Hitler are actually not true. Primarily, I argue that Hitler saw his main enemies not to be communism and the Soviet Union, but actually Anglo-American capitalism. That’s a fairly fundamental point, which I think has been missed in the previous literature. I also argue that, in the beginning, Hitler wasn’t actually aiming for world domination. Instead, he began with a concept of international parity – he wanted to establish a role for Germany among the other great world powers. But the way in which events unfolded made it imperative, from his point of view, to seek something like…

Yasuke: The True Story of the Legendary African Samurai by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard Sphere, 480 pages, £20 In the closing decades of the 1500s, more than a century of civil war in Japan was being brought to a painful, bloody conclusion, under the leaderships, one after the other, of the ‘three unifiers’: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu – founder of a shogunate that went on to rule Japan right up to the 1860s. Compelling characters, epic battles and the added spice of non-Japanese involvement – European Jesuits, in particular, plying a mixed trade of religious evangelism, political meddling and valuable commerce – have helped these crucial, formative years for Japan remain a favourite among readers of history and historical fiction alike. Yasuke is an intriguing attempt…

Prashant Kidambi on the history of cricket in India “We should think of cricket as a cultural resource. It was used by different sections of Indian society for different purposes. The Parsis used it to demonstrate their Britishness, the Indian princes saw it as an entry point into the imperial establishment, and for oppressed minorities such as Dalits, it was used in a quest for social justice, and became a rebuttal of the discrimination that they had to confront.” Susan Oosthuizen on the origins of Englishness “By around AD 600, the kings of Kent were already writing laws in English. By this time, they were also referring to the peoples who lived in what we now call England as Angli, even though they were sub-divided between any number of political…

Who Will Write Our History? by Samuel D Kassow (Penguin, 2009) As Churchill said, the Holocaust was “the greatest crime ever committed in the history of the world”, and it has generated some of the most extraordinary pieces of historical writing of our time. One is Samuel D Kassow’s Who Will Write Our History? It’s the tale of the historian Emanuel Ringelblum who, during the German occupation of Warsaw, gathered a clandestine group to record the history of Jewish life in Poland, to pass it on to posterity. This is the history of ordinary people written by ordinary people, in the belief that the truth of their lives was worth handing on. Of more than 60 members of the ‘History Club’, only three survived, but two of the containers of…

Sitting Bull was a warrior who fought against US forces in Red Cloud’s War (1866–68). He played a key political and strategic role in the Great Sioux War of 1876, and fought at the battle of the Little Bighorn. As settlers encroached on the northern plains, slaughtering buffalo herds and irrevocably disrupting traditional nomadic life, he joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Viewed as a leader by his people until the end, Sitting Bull died when an attempt to arrest him ended with his being shot in the chest and head.…

An undiscovered bomb dropped by the Allies during the Second World War caused a minor earthquake when it suddenly exploded in a corn field in central Germany. Residents near the town of Limburg were awoken in the early hours of 23 June by the shock of the blast, which measured 1.7 on the Richter scale. Although no injuries were reported, the buried device left a 10-metre wide crater in the ground, seen here in a drone photograph. Experts say the explosion would have been triggered by decomposition of the bomb’s chemical detonator. Have a story? Please email Jon Bauckham at jon.bauckham@immediate.co.uk…

On 16 August it will be the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre, when a 60,000-strong demonstration for parliamentary reform, which had gathered in a holiday atmosphere in St Peter’s Field in Manchester, was attacked by troops and local yeomanry. Eighteen were killed and 700 injured, with women – depicted in contemporary illustrations in their Sunday-best white dresses and wide-brimmed hats – figuring disproportionately in the casualty lists. New research into Home Office records and letters in Robert Poole’s book Peterloo: The English Uprising shows that the authorities had decided in advance to use force to disperse the crowd. Such shocking violence caused widespread anger, and the outpouring of songs and poetry included Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy, surely the greatest political poem in English (“I met Murder on the…

If you stand on the eastbound platform at Sloane Square underground station and look up, you’ll notice a large metal tube, painted green and held together with rivets. It cuts across both platforms and train lines, and at first glance looks like a bridge. But its convex underside is a clue to its true function. It’s not pedestrians or traffic being carried aloft at Sloane Square station but a river: the Westbourne – one of London’s lost waterways. London today is a city of one river. Yet the Thames, like all great rivers, is fed by her tributaries. Since the 15th century, more than a dozen of these streams and rivers, which once wound their way visibly through the capital, have been entombed, buried one by one beneath the vast…

THREE PECKS OF OATMEAL Ralph Standish, a collier from Anderton, asked for relief in 1691, saying that although he was only 27 last May it had “pleased God to visit him with a sad distemper in his knee and leg”. He could no longer walk, and despite spending all his means getting help from doctors, he could no longer earn a living, bringing him into “great poverty and want”. Despite the fact he’d been of “good government and carriage”, all the overseers had given him was three pecks of oatmeal and a shilling in cash. He asked for “some reasonable relief”. A CARER’S CRISIS Thomas Rothwell of Blackley, near Manchester, asked for help in 1654. He was known locally as ‘Tom Cook’, and this reflected one of his three occupations:…

Edward V When Edward IV died in 1483, it was widely expected that his 12-year-old son, also Edward, would accede to the throne. Edward’s coronation was set for 22 June but, by the end of the month, his uncle Richard had seized the crown and consigned his nephew to the Tower. Young Edward was appar- ently never seen in public again – his fate the source of a 500-year mystery. Richard of Shrewsbury Edward V’s younger brother, nine-year- old Richard, was also sent to the Tower when his uncle seized the throne. Richard of Shrewsbury’s fate is unknown: most historians argue that Richard III ordered his murder, though others speculate that he could have survived into the reign of Henry VII. Edward, Earl of Warwick As the nephew of kings…

On 20 September 1519 a fleet of five ships with a crew of 270 men left Sanlúcar on the southern coast of Spain, heading westwards into the Atlantic. At the helm of the flagship, Trinidad, was the fleet’s Portuguese commander, Fernão de Magalhães, better known in the English-speaking world as Ferdinand Magellan. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Magellan’s tiny fleet was embarking upon a three-year, 43,000-mile odyssey that would end in the first circumnavigation of the world. What Magellan also couldn’t have known as the Trinidad headed for open water was that his epic voyage would put his crew through unimaginable suffering and result in his own death in a pointless skirmish in the Philippines. This truly was a voyage from hell – but also one of…

In the middle of the Sea Mills estate on the edge of Bristol there is an open green space generally known as Sea Mills Square, though it is actually a semi-circle. It was here, on 4 June 1919, that Dr Christopher Addison, president of the Local Government Board and the architect of the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act, formally inaugurated Bristol’s council house building scheme. A large crowd looked on. Cutting the first sod, Dr Addison said he could not imagine a more glorious location for housing than Sea Mills, a greenfield site close to the upmarket suburbs of Sneyd Park and Stoke Bishop. Addison proclaimed himself happy that the famous and ancient city of Bristol was now at the forefront of the nation’s great postwar drive to create…

Passionate Spirit: The Life of Alma Mahler by Cate Haste Bloomsbury, 496 pages, £26 This immensely readable book recounts the life of a great 20th-century socialite, Alma Mahler, née Schindler. Haste plunders Mahler’s astonishingly frank diaries and letters to reveal a mercurial and sensual personality. Born into fin-de-siècle Vienna, Mahler had a glittering social circle, which embraced the musicians Strauss, Debussy and her first husband, Gustav Mahler, whose death left her a wealthy young widow. She knew the artists Klimt (her first crush), Rodin and Oskar Kokoschka (her on-off lover). And there were writers, architects (her second husband, Walter Gropius), psychiatrists (Freud), scientists and priests. But because Haste focuses closely on her subject, this fascinating cultural and political world remains largely in the background. Mahler’s endlessly waxing and waning passions…

1939: A People’s History by Frederick Taylor Picador, 368 pages, £25 “As conscription arrived, Brits worried about their courage and whether they’d be up to the task” Frederick Taylor’s new book covers the 12 months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. It eschews a focus on political, diplomatic and military actors and instead endeavours to piece together a history of the times from the perspective of ‘ordinary’ men and women. The book focuses on popular reactions in Britain and Germany to the mounting crisis that eventually culminated in war. Self-consciously a ‘people’s history’, Taylor’s work argues that there was a marked lack of widespread public enthusiasm for war. This is perhaps unsurprising, given how potent memories of the slaughter of the First World War remained. Taylor’s desire…

RELIGION Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Penguin, 752 pages, £12.99) NOW IN PAPERBACK Self-made man Born the son of a blacksmith, Thomas Cromwell weaved his way up the social ladder to become Henry VIII’s right-hand man. The meteoric rise of this indomitable self-starter is one of the most intriguing tales of the Tudor era. In what Hilary Mantel has called the “biography we have been awaiting for 400 years”, MacCulloch reassesses Cromwell’s life, and his role in events that altered the course of English history. FICTION The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (Cornerstone, 336 pages, £20) Medieval mystery From Nazi Germany to ancient Rome, blockbuster novelist Robert Harris has crafted pacy, crowd-pleasing thrillers in a variety of historical settings during his career. Now he turns his eye to…

With Britain once again approaching a much-delayed exit from the European Union, the return of As Others See Us seems especially opportune. The show finds Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum who now heads the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, exploring how people in other countries perceive the UK. The series often throws up events overlooked at home, such as those in Australia in 1973, when, as ex-governor-general Dame Quentin Bryce recalls, the nation’s agriculture took a hit after Britain joined the Common Market. As Others See Us Scheduled for 2 September / BBC Radio 4…

To call any series by Stephen Poliakoff a historical drama is of course misleading in that he’s a writer-director whose work, whenever it’s set, occupies its own universe. This is a heavily stylised place of clipped dialogue, surface gloss and nothing ever being quite as it seems. Yet it’s also a place where the past, in particular the way personal histories shape people’s lives, is constantly to the fore. That’s especially true with Summer of Rockets , a drama – now available on DVD – that utilises details from Poliakoff’s family to add depth to a Cold War tale of espionage. One example of this is that Poliakoff’s Russian émigré father developed a pager (with Poliakoff’s grandfather) and serviced Churchill’s hearing aids, as spendthrift Samuel Petrukhin (Toby Stephens) does in…

1. LEIGHTON HOUSE MUSEUM Leighton House Museum is the former studio-house of Victorian artist Frederic Leighton, featuring the magnificent Arab Hall and its extraordinary display of Islamic tiles and handcrafted mosaics. Also not to be missed is Leighton’s grand studio. leightonhouse.co.uk | museums@rbkc.gov.uk 5. FROGMORE MILL, HEMEL HEMPSTEAD Learn about the history of paper, make your own sheet, see a working 1902 paper machine and much more at the world’s oldest mechanised paper mill. thepapertrail.org.uk | 01442 234600 9. MUSEUM OF WITCHCRAFT & MAGIC Contains the world’s oldest and largest collection relating to witchcraft, magic and the occult in the world. Located in the historic harbour of Boscastle on the North Cornwall coast since 1960. museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk 2. NATIONAL WATERFRONT MUSEUM Right on the dock in Swansea’s marina, the National Waterfront Museum tells…