Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i History Extra

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TALKING POINTS Historical consultant Hallie Rubenhold (@HallieRubenhold) noted on Twitter in February that “a lot of people’s concepts of ‘the past’… are decidedly coloured by the 19th century… It’s like the century has become a visual shorthand for ‘the past’, and I wonder how this started. I feel [that] Hollywood, with its constantly reinforced tropes and clichés, is in part to blame… I can’t tell you how many cigar-smoking Georgians I’ve encountered in scripts, as well as people playing poker. Every corset seems to look like those worn in the 1880s. Lots of bad guys [were] packing revolvers in the 18th century, too, apparently.” Her comments sparked a debate about the shadow cast over our view of the past by the 19th century. Historian and broadcaster Greg Jenner (@Greg_Jenner) agreed…

The republicanism of the 1650s may have been extinguished by the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, but the effects of those years would endure. It was precisely through the disruption, disagreement and dissent that many components of modern Britain were forged. The strong hand of the monarchy and the state-sponsored church had long helped control beliefs and ideas – political, social and religious – but as Britain descended into war and new systems emerged, that control shattered. The war had been sparked by disputes about religion; as the floodgates to religious difference were opened a remarkable range of religious sects and societies came into view: Fifth Monarchists and Seekers, Baptists and Quakers. The English censorship regime, whereby any printed publication had to be licensed by the Stationers’ Company, broke…

Long in the tea bag The pantomime character Widow Twankey (shown in an 1896 image) derives her name from a type of cheap China tea. In 1861, the Victorian journalist and dramatist Henry James Byron wrote a play called Aladdin or The Wonderful Scamp which introduced the widow. The name Byron used for her, originally Twankay, referred to an inferior brand of green tea from the Tunxi district of eastern China. To audiences at the time, the name would have subtly implied that the widow was well past her prime. Gould medal In 1908, the London Olympics featured jeu de paume, the version of tennis favoured by kings such as Henry VIII and Charles II, for the only time in the history of the games. Eleven players competed for the…

“The BBC’s first black producer said her time there had been ‘an exciting dream’ that ‘ended in a nightmare’” In the spring of 1941, the 36-year-old Jamaican writer Una Marson was offered a job as staff producer at the BBC. It seemed a watershed moment for Britain’s national broadcaster. A full seven years before the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, bringing nearly 500 British citizens from the Caribbean to their “Mother Country”, the corporation was opening up one of its much-sought-after editorial posts to a woman of colour. Yet by the time Marson left her job – in deeply troubling circumstances – less than six years later, she had every reason to conclude that the BBC’s commitment to racial equality had much further to go. The BBC had never been…

Embroidering Her Truth by Clare Hunter Hodder & Stoughton, 416 pages, £20 The story of Mary, Queen of Scots is well-trodden territory for historians. She has long been a source of fascination, her life often inspiring either sympathy or impatience. Given that most of the events of Mary’s life and reign – from her religious policies to her relationship with Elizabeth I and her ultimately gruesome end – have been the subject of a plethora of modern scholarship, one might wonder which stone in her narrative could possibly remain unturned. But Clare Hunter’s Embroidering Her Truth is no ordinary cultural biography of the Scottish queen, instead it explores the expression of female power through its wealth of material trappings and splendour. Hunter fulfils her objective admirably. With her engaging style, she…

“It’s important to document ordinary lives as well as the changing political and social context” Did you expect to get so close to the present day with this series? Never! When I started gathering testimonies nearly 10 years ago, I was thinking only about documenting the arrival of the £3 generation, because it hadn’t been done extensively before. I wanted to put on record what those early postwar arrivals imagined Britain to be like, what it really was like when they came, and their first steps in their new country. We’re now in the fifth series, looking at the years 2002-7. The programmes now have a huge following, particularly with younger generations of British south Asians who are eager to know their history. In the new series you discuss the…

The Persian version Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones explores one of the ancient world’s great empires from the perspective of the Persians themselves Distant flights Roy and Lesley Adkins examine humanity’s long and complex relationship with birds Creative genius James Hawes argues that Britain’s history might explain the tremendous success of its cultural outputs across the globe The Dudleys Joanne Paul explains how this powerful dynasty helped to shape the Tudor age…

1. Tea and theatre Our Q&A section is always full of fascinating trivia, and one item that caught my eye this month was the fact that the pantomime character Widow Twankey was named after a brand of Chinese tea (page 59). 2. TV history lessons I was fascinated to learn from our interview with Neil MacGregor that a blackboard used in the sitcom Derry Girls has become a highlight of the Ulster Museum’s displays (page 36). 3. Majestic moai In Cat Jarman’s piece on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), she explores the creation of the stunning moai monu ments, revealing that some weighed up to 74 metric tons (page 55).…

During the Bronze Age, an influx of immigrants significantly altered the population of the archipelago of Orkney. It was a dramatic change – and, unusually, incomers who settled and had children were predominantly women, a new study suggests. Researchers from the universities of Huddersfield and Edinburgh studied human remains from a site on the north coast of the island of Westray. Using archaeology and DNA analysis, they concluded that a large number of people arrived in Orkney in the early Bronze Age, between 4,500 and 3,500 years ago, and that they shared some of their genetic heritage with inhabitants of an area north of the Black Sea. Though such migration wasn’t uncommon across Europe in that period, it had previously been thought that Orkney’s population was largely insular at the…

30 APRIL 1952 When was Anne Frank’s diary first published? Originally written in Dutch, the diary was first published in 1947 in the Netherlands as Het Acterhuis: Dagboek-brieven 12 Juni 1942-1 Augustus 1944 (The Secret Annex: Diary-Letters 12 June 1942-1 August 1944). Frank herself had chosen the title for the book, which she planned to publish after the war. “The title alone,” she observed, “would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.” What was the significance of the English translation? In 1952, two English language editions were published, in the US and the UK. The title was changed to Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. The emphasis was on the work of a young person whose life had been tragically cut short. The book…

Folklore and festivals One of the qualities of your magazine is the great breadth of subjects that you cover, and in the February issue I particularly enjoyed Francis Young’s feature on British folklore (Lore of the Land). It is interesting to see the extent to which some pagan beliefs have been incorporated into the origins of Christianity in this country. Here in Hastings we have an annual Jack in the Green festival [pictured left in 2018] clearly drawing on the Green Man stories from paganism. Surprisingly the festival was founded only a few years ago, and includes a special service in one of Hastings Old Town’s parish churches. Although it is a eucharist, the service also includes Morris dancing. I conducted the service three years ago, and in my sermon…

On 5 March 1650, early in the life of the new Commonwealth of England, a state funeral was held. There was a stellar turn-out for Roland Wilson, army officer and politician. Almost the whole of the new political establishment was there: the head of the victorious New Model Army, Lord Fairfax; the lord mayor of London; and a host of MPs who had just taken up executive authority in the young republic. As the cavalcade swayed solemnly through the city streets, the crowds built. The mood was subdued at first, until one of the “rabble” spotted in the midst of the politicians and soldiers the 46-year-old Cheshire lawyer John Bradshaw, who had presided at the trial of Charles I in January 1649. They cried aloud: “Here is the rogue that…

“We decide for ourselves who we think we are – and museums are central to that” Accompanies Neil MacGregor’s 20-part BBC Radio 4 series The Museums That Make Us Matt Elton What ideas about museums did you aim to probe with this new series? Neil MacGregor We wanted to explore the civic role of Britain’s museums by looking at 20 institutions across the whole of the UK outside London. How are they rethinking their purpose in the community? How are they using their objects to engage with visitors in new ways? It seems to me that museums everywhere are looking again at their history, their collections and their visitors, and thinking about them afresh. We asked the staff of each museum to pick a single object – but, rather than…

How many statues are there? The Rapanui are believed to have carved more than 950 statues, ranging in size from 2-10 metres tall and weighing up to 74 metric tons each. When were the moai constructed? There are no written records of when the statues were carved, and it is impossible to date the stone moai directly. We believe they were carved soon after the island was settled in around AD 1200, and that statue carving continued at least until AD 1650. How were they made? Most of the moai were carved from volcanic tuff, a porous stone found in the quarry of Rano Raraku, one of the island’s volcanic craters. The stone is relatively easy to carve. At least 10 moai were carved from basalt, a much harder stone.…

In the days before the advent of the internet, anyone intent on seeking out the story of the black Jamaican healer and entrepreneur Mary Seacole would have been hard-pressed to find any information on her. There was her brief memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1857 to help relieve the crushing debts that had landed her in the bankruptcy court at the end of the Crimean War. But this little book with thin cardboard covers was, unfortunately, not printed to last. Today, only a handful of copies of the original version survive, in repositories such as the British Library and Oxford and Cambridge universities. It was not until the republication of this long-forgotten memoir in 1984 by Falling Wall Press, a small feminist imprint in…

Lloyd Bowen on a dramatic Jacobean duel “This duel between two gentlemen in 1610 wasn’t, in some ways, an extraordinary one. It came at a time when duelling was on the rise and was causing anxiety in England and Wales – King James VI & I was exercised by the death of what he saw as the “noble blood” of the land because of the increase in duelling. So it was part of a growing trend – but what does make this duel very unusual is the wealth of evidence that surrounds it.” Victoria Finlay on the fascinating history of fabric “Cotton started off as a luxury good in India, one of the goods that was traded with Indonesia. Then it went to Europe, where Pliny the Elder complained that…

@Fullard There are so many to recommend, but my favourite history book of all time is Rubicon, by Tom Holland. For those who like this period of history [the Roman Republic], it’s also worth reading Robert Harris’s fiction trilogy about the life of Cicero (Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator). @vamottram Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt by Chris Naunton (pictured) was one of the most exciting and tantalising ancient history books I’ve ever read. It made me realise there’s still so much to discover, even after two centuries of excavation. @DiogoMorg Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is a classic – and rightly so. For an excellent fictional take on the same conflict, I recommend Steven Pressfield’s Tides of War. @RolandButter13 Foundations of Christianity by Karl Kautsky – an excellent…

The Castle: A History by John Goodall Yale, 400 pages, £18.99 No one knows castles better than John Goodall. His earlier book The English Castle (2011, also published by Yale) was a magisterial and monumental survey of its subject, clocking in at 480 pages and weighing more than 3kg. This new volume, by contrast, is a somewhat lighter affair. We are presented with just over 100 chapters, each focused on a particular castle (or, occasionally, a group of castles) at a significant moment in its history – a royal visit, a siege, a great rebuilding, etc. The chapters are arranged chronologically, advancing from the Norman Conquest to the present day. The majority of the castles are English, with a dozen in Wales, two in Scotland and one in Ireland. A handful…

IN PROFILE William Wilberforce was a British politician who led the movement to abolish the slave trade, culminating in the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 – the beginning of the end of slavery in the British empire. An evangelical Christian, and an MP from 1780 to 1825, the Yorkshireman also championed the foundation of the Church Mission Society and the RSPCA. He died in London aged 73 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. “It was thanks, in great part, to his single-mindedness, eloquence and determination that the passage of the Slave Trade Act was secured” When did you first hear about Wilberforce? At school, and later at university. Most people think of reformers as coming from the progressive or liberal wing of politics – but that isn’t…

Marisa Linton “The French Revolution was founded on hopes that a better world could be created, based on liberty and equality, but it descended into political instability, tragedy and war. The result was Napoleon’s militarist dictatorship.” Marisa explores how Napoleon undermined the French Revolution on page 41 Neil MacGregor “In big cities all around the UK, museums are in every way part of the public realm. Indeed, the civic role played by museums is one of the great traditions of our country.” Neil considers the changing role of museums in modern Britain on page 35 Anna Keay “In my new book I’ve chosen to explore the Commonwealth period in the British Isles through a series of contemporaries, including a maverick newspaper editor, a pioneering scientist and a pistol-wielding countess.” Anna…

“Russian nationalists have always felt betrayed by Ukraine” At the beginning of the 20th century, today’s Ukraine was split between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. The Russian part was officially known in Moscow as “Little Russia”, and was subjected to a series of repressive measures to keep it that way. When Ukrainians began agitating for greater autonomy in 1906, Tsar Nicholas II reacted by arresting Ukrainian activists. In the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists tried again: they announced their independence, and raised an army to try to protect it. In the civil, ethnic and class wars that followed, the new Ukrainian army lost out on both sides. In the west, they lost to the Poles, who annexed large parts of the regions of…

“The Arthur myth is British-Celtic history as people dreamed it was” I took the train to Oxford the other day, to walk some old haunts. Down an alley just by the station, are the scant ruins of Osney Abbey. Founded in 1129, it was demolished after the Reformation and plundered for building materials. All that remains now is one medieval timber-framed building and a derelict stone arch. Oxford is, of course, a place whose fictions seem as real as its histories. Lord of the Rings; The Chronicles of Narnia; Alice in Wonderland; His Dark Materials – all were written within yards of this spot, and all are proof of the power of stories, the seduction of imaginary worlds. And it was here at Osney in the 1130s that a young…

On Saturday 14 February 1942, Japanese forces advanced to a point just a few miles from the city of Singapore. But in a corner shop in the Yorkshire town of Dewsbury, the conversation was about events much closer to home. Two days earlier, three large German warships, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, had sailed up the English Channel and passed through the Strait of Dover in broad daylight. It was the one topic every customer in the Yorkshire grocery store wanted to talk about. “What have they been doing to let them ships escape? They’ve made fools of us, haven’t they?” exclaimed one woman. The fact that Britannia no longer seemed to rule the waves – could not even stop German warships from passing within a few miles of…

1649 As civil war rages, King Charles I is tried and executed. The monarchy is abolished and a Commonwealth, or Republic of England, declared. 1649-51 An English army led by Oliver Cromwell subjugates Ireland and Scotland. 1651 Cromwell’s forces defeat Charles II at the battle of Worcester. Charles evades his pursuers by hiding in an oak tree, and escapes to France. 1653 The Commonwealth is abolished and a Protectorate declared. This is stewarded by a “Lord Protector”, Oliver Cromwell (shown left). 1654-58 Cromwell’s administration in Ireland undertakes a mass dispossession of Irish landowners and redistributes the land to the funders and fighters of the English army. 1655 English forces wrest the island of Jamaica from Spain and establish a colony. 1656 A political union between England and Scotland is effected;…

1805 Mary Grant is born at Haughton, a hamlet in St Elizabeth parish, Jamaica, to a Scottish father and a free woman of colour 1836 Mary marries Edwin Seacole, a white merchant 1844 Edwin Seacole dies. Mary runs a successful lodging house in Kingston 1851 Mary nurses during fever epidemics on the Isthmus of Panama, a shortcut route taken by prospectors heading to the Californian gold fields 1854 Britain joins the war in Crimea. Mary sails to England to volunteer for the war effort as a nurse but is turned down 1855 Mary makes her own way to Crimea, where she runs a restaurant and general store – which also acts as a drop-in clinic – until July 1856 June 1857 Mary’s memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many…

Rhiannon Davies: How did Suleyman the Magnificent become sultan of the Ottoman empire – the 10th man to hold that title? Christopher de Bellaigue: Suleyman had a very easy rise to the sultanate because his father, Selim – known as “the Grim”- had no compunction about killing. Everyone else who could have become sultan had been dispatched. There was a tradition that had become law under Mehmed the Conqueror, Suleyman’s great-grandfather, by which the Ottoman sultan could kill brothers and sons in order to ease the passage to the sultanate of a particular favoured son or brother. And, indeed, Suleyman benefited from this tradition – Selim killed several brothers and nephews and, however many sons he may have had, only Suleyman was allowed to survive. Suleyman came to power in…

Resistance: The Underground War in Europe. 1939-1945 by Halik Kochanski Penguin, 960 pages, £35 In 1943, Polish resistance fighter Jan Nowak was on his way back from a secret meeting in Warsaw when he was stopped in the street by a Gestapo agent. The policeman demanded to know where Nowak had just been, so he pointed to the first thing he saw: the brass plate for a dentist’s surgery on the door next to him. Suspicious, the German agent rang the doorbell to confirm Nowak’s story. When the dentist came to the door she did not hesitate for a second: even though she had never seen him before, she immediately confirmed that Nowak was her patient, and the Gestapo agent reluctantly let him go. Resistance to Axis forces in occupied Europe…