Posted by Jenni Hyde under Conferences, Historical research | Tags: Alcala, Scripta in Itinere, Spain |
I was privileged to be invited to the XI Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Cultura Escrita, held this June in Alcalá de Henares, which will for me be forever remembered as the city of storks – these enormous birds nest atop many of the old buildings around the Calle de Colegios, clacking their beaks as you walk the streets below.
I will be honest: I was at a bit of a loss when it came to most of the papers, as my Spanish is only rudimentary despite several attempts to learn over the course of about 30 years; my French is worse and my Italian is non-existent. Nevertheless, it was certainly an experience.
The inaugural lecture was given by Beatrice Frankel, on Montaigne, and the conference coincided with the opening of an exhibition of Alcalá's environmental print over the years.
Veronica Sierra Blas, Beatrice Frankel and Antonio Castillo Gómez
I enjoyed Veronica Calsoni Lima's paper, 'From official to clandestine presses: the publishing businesses of Giles Calvert and Thomas Brewster in the 1650s'. She began by describing the rapid circulation of news during the run up to the Civil War, and the breakdown of censorship which led to a flood of printed material. After 1653, there were new attempts to clampdown, and Cromwell's regime began attempts to find a new official printer. Four men were considered, and between May and August at least 25 official texts were shared between them. Received wisdom is that Brewster and Calvert were the less obvious choices within the four potential printer, as they had associations with radical groups. But Veronica pointed out that this period coincided with the Nominated Assembly, or 'Barebones Parliament', which makes their presence fairly reasonable given it was made up of religious radicals itself. The folio-sized official publications they produced were intended to be pinned up in public and had large titles to catch the reader's attention from a distance, decorated capital letters, the commonwealth's arms, and shared imprints.
But after August, Brewster and Calvert disappear from official publications. Veronica suggested that this might be due to their radical sympathies and links with separatist congregations. They printed anti-royalist propaganda and pro-commonwealth propaganda, but also radical religious tracts by Quakers, Baptists and Fifth Monarchists. They also started to print anti-Cromwell propaganda, which got them into trouble. She took as her examples Edward Burrough's 'A trumpet of the Lord' (which was a millenarian pamphlet that landed the printer in prison) and Henry Vane's 'A Healing Question'. Neither pamphlet has the official information, and although they have large titles, they don't have complete imprints. Later clandestine works have no names for author, printer, or publisher. She suggested that the controversial texts that they published at the same time they were publishing official material, led to them being dropped as official printers.
She closed her remarks by commenting that other printers printed throughout the commonwealth, restoration, and under James II, which showed them to be canny businessmen, but Brewster and Calvert put their political and religious beliefs before business, risking loss of profit and even imprisonment rather than give up their ideals.
I gave my paper at one of the main panels on Wednesday afternoon. It is the first time I have ever been on a panel with someone talking about Twitter and someone talking about mobile libraries. I'm not entirely sure what the link was, but it certainly made for a different experience!
After the panel, we walked across Alcala to the opening of a mural, Alcala: Ciudad Escrita, on the wall of the city's outdoor swimming pool, and to finish the evening, we went to El Sexto Sensido for the conference dinner, where I was asked to sing again for some of the delegates who had missed my paper.
All in all, it was a very interesting few days, and I enjoyed the opportunity.
Posted by Jenni Hyde under Conferences, Historical Association, public engagement, Uncategorized | Tags: Conferences, Historical Association |
This is the final entry in a short series of posts about the Historical Association conference, held in Chester in May 2019.
After the break, it was time for me to reprise my lecture from the Historical Association's 'Teaching the Tudors' CPD day in York, 'A History of the Reformation in 5 Ballads'. It was great fun giving the paper again, not least because it has so much singing that it's almost like a performance rather than a lecture.
After lunch, the first lecture was given by Claire Hickman on 'The Doctor's Garden'. She described how the 1760s saw a real interest in natural history and importing exotic plants. The plants had economic value as well as being beautiful. People spent a lot of money creating immense collections
Dr Claire Hickman
Dr John Lettsom was a well-trained doctor, with many important roles in natural history and medicine. His patients were sometimes recruited through his plant collecting networks, and he was very well connected – his admission to the Royal Society was signed by Benjamin Franklin and James Ferguson, among others. He had a city practice but bought himself a rural estate, where opened his garden to visitors, even writing a guide book. Everything in the garden was labelled with the correct scientific name, so you could teach yourself botany from walking round the garden through practical experience. The garden was used to trial agricultural techniques. Lettsom thought the mangel wurzle could be useful as a cheap food to feed the poor, because they grow very large; it was known as 'the root of scarcity'. He was one of the first people to grow the mangel wurzel in England. But Dr Hickman argued that Lettsom also saw it as a beautiful plant, as it was planted among larches in the garden borders. Lettsom published his findings as a pamphlet on how to grow and use them.
William Curtis, another Quaker, opened a botanic garden for training medics but it was also open to the public. Doctors were already trained in botany and students needed to see the plants, but the gardens also attracted visitors who wanted to see the new exotic plants from the rest of the world, so Curtis included agricultural plants and grasses as well as medicinal plants. Botany was seen as a public interest as well as an academic interest.
By 1777, the Leith Walk Garden was laid out not on a straight path like a botanic training garden, but on picturesque walk. The public had to start applying to see the gardens through ticketing policies, and announcements were made when interesting plants flowered.
The final session of the conference was given by Tara Morton on 'Suffrage Lives 1866-1914: Researching the Database'. Tara had worked on building the Suffrage Lives database for the HA, which was based on two key sources: the 1866 petition for female suffrage, and the Home Office Index of Suffragettes Arrested, 1906-1914.
The 1832 Great Reform Act extended the franchise slightly through the enfranchisement of male persons, but women were excluded. Debates prior to this had been about 'persons', which meant the principal of women's enfranchisement was included before the reform act because person does not specify man or woman. But the Great Reform Act replaced this phrase with 'male persons' meaning it removed the 'women' argument. Tara suggested that the shared struggles against this oppression brought women together.
Tara Morton
The original petitions from 1866 no longer exist, but one of the founders was Emily Davies and she got printed copies printed, published and circulated. These include names, occupations and locations where the signatories signed the petition. Some gave their full names, others didn't. Addresses are likewise vague at times. This makes it difficult to trace them all, but it does show that support for women's suffrage was socially more widespread than we might expect – echoing the keynotes by Yasmin Khan and Fern Riddell, she pointed out that the signatories were not just the stereotype of staid, white middle class women. There were blacks and working-class women too.
Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy
Even when we look at the supposedly staid white middle class women, they turnout to be unseemly. Tara gave two examples:
Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy founded her own school; later, the Manchester Schoolmistresses Association; and the Women's Franchise League with Emmeline Pankhurst. She gave evidence to the first royal commission set up to look at secondary education. She described marriage as 'a lifelong sentence of pauperism and dependence'. Nevertheless, the fact that she lived as man and wife with a man who wasn't her husband made other suffrage campaigners unhappy, as they thought that she brought the campaign into disrepute. She was on the committee on the WSPU but left in 1912, possibly because of the increased violence. She led some of the suffrage pilgrimage through Congleton even though by this stage she was in her 80s. Her photograph appears to show a staid white middle class woman – but only because that's what we expect to see.
Viscountess Katherine Louisa Amberley was member of the Stanley family. An outspoken member of the suffrage community, she was a public speaker in favour of women's rights, and one of her lectures was published. However, she was not acceptable among her class and particularly offended Queen Victoria.
The 1867 and 1884 Franchise Reforms enfranchised more men, but not women, so lots of women's suffrage societies were set up afterwards. They had to decide on tactics and ideologies: should they campaign to promote wider social reforms to benefit women, or concentrate on the franchise?
In 1897, the umbrella group National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies was set up, promoting the women's franchise through peaceful means. But there were more radical women in the industrial north who thought traditional means wouldn't work so they set up the WSPU. Their tactics escalated from heckling to arson and bombings. This is where the Index of Persons Arrested comes in, although even at the National Archives they don't know quite why it was created. It includes names, dates and places of arrest. There are anomalies, such as the random placement of names in the index out of alphabetical order, and also suffragette aliases.
The document shows that there was more diversity in suffragettes than the stereotypical images, for example, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who lived at Hampton Court Palace and was an Indian princess, and Verla 'Jack' Holmes, a cross-dressing lesbian. The database also shows how many working-class suffrage campaigners there were. Again, Tara gave two examples:
Adelaide Knight was born in Bethnal Green. Her father was an alcoholic and committed suicide. She was crippled and used walking sticks, but also loved poetry and music. She married the son of a naval officer in a mixed race marriage in which her husband took her surname, and they shared the household chores. She was arrested in 1906 for disturbing the peace. She was sent to prison for 6 weeks unless she agreed not to take part in any further suffrage activities, but she chose prison. Her husband looked after the children during her imprisonment and fully supported her decision. Tara argued that she was representative of many working class women who were concerned about the motivations of the WSPU, who seemed happy to use working class women but only when it suited them. As a result she left the WSPU and eventually joined the Communist party.
William Ball was twice arrested for the suffrage cause. We know little with certainty but his ordinariness makes him interesting. He was probably from the Midlands, and he was married with 5 children. He believed in adult suffrage – that women should be enfranchised in line with men before more men were enfranchised – and said that he wanted as much protection for his girls as his boys. He was a member of the men's wing of the WSPU, the Men's Political Union. He was arrested and sent to prison for breaking two Home Office windows. He declined prison food, but he wasn't given the option to order his own food because he was not classified as a political prisoner. Ball was also subject to force feeding. The prison officers quickly discharged him to a lunatic asylum. He was eventually moved to a private nursing home through the intervention of well wishers. An inquiry into his case was heavily biased in favour of the prison authorities, belittling Ball by saying the mental ill-health was not down to his prison ordeal but his own defective character and the excitement of indulging in suffrage activities.
These are only a few snapshots of the evidence recorded on the HA's Suffrage Lives database.
This is the third in a short series of posts about the Historical Association conference, held in Chester in May 2019.
The opening session on Friday morning was a keynote talk from Dr Fern Riddell called 'Uncomfortable Histories: From sex to the suffragettes'. Considering that the audience was mainly made up of teachers, Dr Riddell's lecture hit just the right note, celebrating the teachers (both at school and university) who had helped her make a career in history by believing in her when others didn't. She commented that this is an incredibly exciting time to be a historian.
She opened by commenting that sex and violence, especially female violence, is difficult to deal with. Our belief in the naïve and prudish Victorians has dominated our understanding of the 19th century. But she argued that throughout the Victorian era, sex was universally acknowledged and celebrated, with, for example, condom advertisements on the front page of newspapers specifically marketed towards women. Dr Riddell commented that we are fixated on the cold, drab view of Queen Victoria, but the fact that she had many children and wrote movingly in her diary of seeing Albert naked for the first time on her wedding night shows how much she enjoyed sex. Dr Riddell further argued that we should talk about these sorts of facts with students, especially at secondary school, to show that it has always been normal to desire and want to talk about sex. The Victorians also advocated birth control, and lived openly queer lives. When cases of immorality are tried in court, they tend to result in a view that people should be allowed to live as they wish. What the dominant power said about sex, and what the culture actually shows (from newspapers, letters, diaries et cetera), are two different things.
Dr Fern Riddell opening her Friday morning keynote lecture
1860 is the year when 'pornography' enters the English language. The Art of Begetting Handsome Children was published that year, albeit reprinted from many earlier versions of book that had been published over the centuries. The book promoted foreplay and argued that women should not be coerced into sex. One of the most important messages is that under no circumstances should children come from a marriage in which there is no love. Furthermore, sales of a guide to contraception skyrocketed after a trial at which Annie Besant spoke, and the birth rate plummeted over the following few years.
Moving on to look at the suffragettes, Dr Riddell commented that our traditional view is based on Emmeline Pankhurst: strong women, marching, speeches and the WSPU. We have forgotten their real actions. She reminded the audience that the term 'suffragette' applies only to members of the WSPU. Their motto was "deeds not words" – they had done talking. One of their tactics was violence, especially arson and bomb attacks. She argued that the WSPU was the most violent and dangerous domestic terror organisation we have ever had and that not even the IRA come close if you look at the size of the bombs and where they were left. This claim, however, was the subject of some debate amongst conference delegates over the morning tea break! Nevertheless, the WSPU wanted to create a sense of fear and terror. Christabel Pankhurst asked in a 1913 newspaper interview that when men throw bombs it's called war, so why shouldn't women make use of them too?
Dr Fern Riddell
Dr Riddell suggested that despite our discomfort with the facts, there is no evidence at all that the suffragettes didn't want to hurt anyone: it is just not true. Their bombs were full of nails and they gave no warnings. They were referred to at the time as terrorists. They are idolised because of the result, but we need to tell all sides of the story and give the rounded view. We sanitise the story and can't believe that women would really do that. The histories are uncomfortable to the present as well as the past. We need to show what radicalises people and how: the suffragettes, for example, were deeply harmed by the state through marginalisation, suffering violence themselves, and force feeding. But it doesn't matter what we feel about the need for women to have the vote, we need to show that no one is perfect and that in every civil rights movement there has been an extremist element. Men and women fought for the economic, political and social freedoms of women. Dr Riddell finished by concluding that we make change together.
The first Friday general pathway session was given by Professor Peter Gaunt on Chester in the Civil War. He commented that the Civil War had a dramatic effect on Chester. In summer 1639, it was a prosperous city. Seven years later, its population had halved, it had suffered plague, and the bombardment of the civil wars had caused destroyed parts of the city. Two of the suburbs had been completely removed by the Royalists holding the city. It was Royalist almost throughout the war, although in Feb 1646, shortly before the end of the war, it surrendered on terms to the Parliamentarians. Prof Gaunt's lecture addressed what the Royalists and Parliamentarians hoped Chester would be, what role it played in reality, and why.
Prof Gaunt described how the Civil Wars used to be seen as a single national war, with major battles between national commanders. He argued that this national picture has relevance no here, because Chester's role is as part of a local war between garrisons which supplied a longer term civil war. The aim was to tie down key places and territory such as roads, ports, and resources such as men, horses, fodder, food drink and above all, cash!
Chester is often referred to as a regional capital. Even though it was never a really big regional town, it was the largest in the north west, bigger than Lancaster, Liverpool or Manchester. It had a population of between 5 and 10 thousand. It was a centre of trade and manufacture, partly because it was the centre of road network and also a port. The city was often the departure point for going to Ireland, as it was more accessible than Holyhead.
He argued that the king certainly accorded Chester a high priority, as he visited early in the war shortly after raising his standard at Nottingham. He arrived in Chester in September 1642, in an attempt to capitalise on the swell of support for the king in the west. Although some people didn't want the king there because they didn't want to get involved in the war, they let him in. The king apparently gave the same speech in each location he visited, flattering the residents by saying he could think of nowhere better to make his residence, then asking them to open their magazines and taking men and armaments.
The king's two nephews were given southern armies and were ordered to come up and secure Chester, but the king himself didn't return until nearly the end of the war, by which time the city was under great threat. Although he ordered one of his few remaining field armies to come up and protect the city, his reinforcements were torn to pieces at the Battle of Rowton Moor. The king left, leaving the city leaders permission to surrender.
Prof Peter Gaunt
But Prof Gaunt pointed out that we are not sure why he thinks the city is so important as it is barely mentioned in his letters. There are a number of possible reasons:
A buffer to help protect the royalist heartland of north wales.
The prestige of holding established county towns.
After Marston moor and the loss of north of England, Chester is one of the few key towns he still held so might serve as launching point to link up with Montrose and recapture the north.
Above all it allowed access to Ireland where the king had links with the Irish Catholic rebels. He had made a truce with the Catholics, which meant that his Protestant army could be brought home as they didn't have to fight the rebels any more. Chester was his best bet for bringing in reinforcements from Ireland
The Cestrians themselves just hunkered down and hoped to avoid as much of the problem as possible. The locals provided a garrison of horse and foot, which was one of a string of garrisons across the area. Most of the garrison commanders tried to take the fight to the parliamentarians, trying to disrupt the parliamentarian hold, but even though Chester was on the edge of parliamentarian territory, it didn't do much. Prof Gaunt asked why? He outlined several factors which encouraged the local commanders to sit back as they knew they could hold out.
Successive governors were pretty incompetent. Even the most active didn't take much part in the fighting.
Governors had to liaise with king's northern commanders, and they weren't competent either.
The situation was made worse when Capell from Hertfordshire was moved in as northern commander – as he was not local he was not trusted.
The city had strong stone walls and these were supplemented by mud walls round the suburbs, so there was no incentive to leave them.
The city sits on a corner of the river Dee, so again, it was relatively easy to defend.
Royalist north wales was on their doorstep
From the Parliamentarian perspective, one local commander, Brereton, tried unsuccessfully to raise forces in Chester. He thought Chester was a priority. He couldn't sleep easy holding half to two thirds of the county while the county town was in the king's hands. But he knew how difficult it was to capture Chester with only his own forces, so he tried to induce other regional parliamentarians to join him in attacking Chester. In 1644 Fairfax intervened at Nantwich, and Brereton suggested that he came further west and helped to capture Chester, but Fairfax wasn't interested and, moreover, it did not form part of his orders from Parliament. Brereton also tried to persuade the Earl of Manchester and others, but none of them would help.
Parliament and the Committee of Both Kingdoms were worried about Chester's strategic importance in 1642, especially when Byron's forces were reinforced by Irish troops. But they didn't respond with land forces. Instead they sent in the navy to patrol the Irish Sea in order to stop the king's reinforcements getting across in the first place. When some did try to land at Milford Haven, the Parliamentarians threw them, bound, into the sea. Brereton attempted to play the Irish card, suggesting that bloodthirsty murderers might still get through, but parliament took no notice. Because Chester is on a road to nowhere, as long as the king couldn't use it to get men in from Ireland, it was of no strategic importance to the Parliamentarians – it's just a road to Royalist Wales. They knew that the king's army would be defeated in the Midlands, not near Chester.
Only in the closing weeks of the war did Parliamentary high command finally turn its attentions to Chester and order other regional commanders to support Brereton.
This is the second in a short series of posts about the Historical Association Conference 2019, held in Chester in May.
The first general pathway session that I attended was given by Dr Tim Grady on 'German Jews, the First World War and its Devastating Aftermath'.
Gorlitz War Memorial is illustrative of German Jewish history in the aftermath of World War I. It was erected in 1921 but it was later destroyed in the run up to World War II; the destroyed memorial was left in place but they recently replaced it with a new once. The memorial shows the scale of Jewish participation in the First World War, and also tells us about the scale of loss from Jewish communities – 25 Jews from Gorlitz alone died in the war. But it also shows that German Jews were also heavily involved in the memorialisation of the war and finally it tells us about the rise of persecution between the wars as the memorial was destroyed.
Dr Tim Grady
Dr Grady asked why German Jews wanted to be involved in the First World War? Many Jews and many other Germans didn't support the conflict and opposed the war. Once the war did start in early August, the picture changes to an image of total support. German Jews rushed to volunteer. They had good reason to be supportive – the war was against Russia which was at the time renowned for its anti-Semitic attacks.
The Kaiser declared that he only recognised 'Germans'; not parties, not divisions. This was a boost for German Jews who felt they had never been seen as proper Germans up to that point. Moreover, no matter how they were seen by others, they saw themselves as Germans, so they wanted to defend their country.
Dr Grady argued that we can see the foundations of total war in the conflict. Everyone in Germany would have been effected, and Jews were no exception. They had little choice over this. Nonetheless, they did their best to assist in the militarisation of the home front: they turned over buildings for hospitals; the Cologne Jewish community took in Belgian refugees; and it was Walter Rathenau, a Jew, who took steps to ensure that raw materials and food supplies were available, with his work central to the organisation of wartime supplies. Jews also produced a lot of German propaganda. One example was Ernst Lissauer, who wrote the 'hymn of hate' against England, which was satirised in Punch.
There was, however, more to the war than just Germany defending its borders. German Jews were fairly opposed to expansion for the sake of it, but they could see some sort of logic to an expansionist war because the more the military moved eastwards so the more Jews came under German control. These were large areas with an east European Jewish population within them. So a logic started to form that it would be an opportunity to rescue them from the Russians.
Nevertheless, anti-Semitism was a defining aspect of the conflict. This was a form of continuity from before to after the war, so maybe the Jews were naïve in thinking that the war would get rid of anti-Semitism. The other question is whether the war exacerbated the problem, because the suffering and length of the conflict had a big impact. Once food shortages began in 1915, Germans began to look for someone to blame. People start pointing the finger at different regions, the establishment, women, and the Jewish communities. Jews were targeted because they are seen to be shirking, not doing their duty, or profiteering. From 1916 the archives contain anonymous letters to the war ministry 'making them aware' of Jews who weren't fighting. That summer the war ministry counted the numbers of Jews who were fighting so they could prove the nay sayers wrong. But they weren't counting Protestants or Catholics so it was in itself an anti-Semitic act. It is sometimes seen as an indication of the change in attitudes, towards the Jews. But as Grady pointed out, this didn't change their actual involvement in the conflict.
The fact that Germany lost the war left difficult legacies. Dr Grady suggested that we need to examine the mismatch between the end of the war and people's expectations. There was no excitement or joy – it was more resignation. This was a contrast to the way the war had been fought and the belief that a unified Germany would achieve great things. There had been so much sacrificed for the war effort but attempts to grow Germany had failed. There is no doubt that Jews made a complete contribution to the war effort, yet they start to be blamed very quickly for the problems at the war's end. There are soon claims that they shirked, profiteered, or were disloyal. The finger of blame for the war's failure points to the Jews – they stabbed the country in the back.
The horror of this is that German Jews had sacrificed themselves, they had shaped the war experience, they had set up the possibility of total war, and created propaganda which shaped people's expectations. In the end it was they who were reshaped as outsiders.
Over lunch, the branches and members committee (of which I am vice chair) held a 'meet and greet' for HA branch members. It was good to meet up with several old friends and make some new ones, and we had some interesting conversation about how branches work in different places.
The first lecture after lunch was from Prof Elaine Chalus on 'Gender, Place and Power in Controverted 18th Century Elections'. This was really interesting, as I know less than I should about the 18th century at the best of times, and even less about how elections worked in practice. Controverted elections are those which were fought all the way up to parliament.
Prof Chalus pointed out that the depiction of the election processions in the 18th century describe lots of participation. They were like celebrations, with processions and banner carrying which included the involvement of women and children. Women were not, as has been suggested, just part of the window dressing – they were part of the organisation, and in some places women could make their husbands into voters. They sewed banners, provided food and benefitted financially from the increased business in towns at the time. But they were also canvassed by candidates and were presumed to have influence over their husbands votes. They were believed to be open to flattery and persuasion, or cowed into acquiescence (although they sometimes stood up against it).
Although they themselves didn't or vote, women could shape the outcome of elections. The more hotly contested the election, the more likely it was that women would be involved. For women of the political elite there were two aspects:
socio-political – going to court, hosting dinners, visiting, and marrying for political ends;
directly political – serving as their husbands agents, running election committees, canvassing, standing in for men who were away.
What I had never realised was that where the vote was attached to property, if a women owned the property technically she could vote, but she didn't and appointed a proxy. This meant that women might be canvassed for their proxy vote. Prof Chalus then gave examples of cases where women's influence really mattered because the elections went all the way through the contest.
Prof Elaine Chalus
Canvassing was the crucial point of contact. There were public or personal canvases. Public canvasses took place early in the campaign, to introduce the candidates and see if there were enough support for different candidates to contest the election all the way to the polls.
After a processional entry, there would be introductions, speeches, and a procession round town. They mopped up the easy votes – those who 'plumped for' or promised their 2 votes to one candidate were given a sweetener. But the more difficult votes were pushed for by agents, through private canvassing, often in people's homes. They were the most intense and intimidating experiences, not least because sometimes the canvassers visited when they knew the men were out.
Prof Chalus used the 1830 Taunton election as a case study. Taunton was a potwalloper borough where everyone who wasn't on the poor relief had a vote. The franchise went right down the social scale to include artisans and traders. The borough had 2 MPs. In 1830, we can recapture some female voices and we can tell that they knew how the system worked. They thought of some votes as theirs, in that their husband had one, they 'had' the other. They also know they might be intimidated if they don't vote the way the canvasser wants. She argued that we can use the records of controverted political campaigns to help restore the personal dimension of 18th century elections. They bring voices back from those who are otherwise voiceless.
Friday evening's keynote was given by Dr Yasmin Khan on 'The Raj at War'. This session had resonances with Tim Grady's lecture on the German Jews in the First World War, as it was based on commemorative work which wants to restore black and Asian voices to the narrative. Dr Khan pointed out that the publishers' first version of her book had a man in a spitfire on the cover. She challenged the design, saying that she wanted to emphasise minority voices, and the published version now has an Imperial War Museum poster of two Indian women in the Home Guard.
Dr Yasmin Khan
Although the Japanese swept across Asia into Burma, India itself was not invaded. Many soldiers from all over the world mobilised in India ready for the fight in Burma. George Orwell, like many, feared that India might fall, and for 10 weeks in 1942 it became the centre of the war. At the same time, however, the Quit India campaign was working to force independence before they aided the war effort. So during this time, many of the Congress Party including Gandhi and Nehru were imprisoned, to be released at the end of the war.
Dr Khan described how 2.5 million men volunteered for the Indian army, making it the largest ever volunteer army. Like Tim Grady, she asked why they joined up?
In some areas there was a family tradition of joining the British army and these areas were nurtured by the British by ensuring the fields were irrigated and education was provided. But in the 1940s they needed more men so the recruiters had to go to other areas too.
A way of securing independence from their background.
For many, it was the salary which was sent straight back to the family. An army job came with meals too.
Meanwhile, women served on the home front, even down mines and building roads with picks and shovels.
The Indian famine was caused by inflation as prices rose and wages didn't keep up. Then a major cyclone in Calcutta wiped out the rice harvest. Although there had been shortages before, this one was different because, due to the war, they couldn't import rice from Burma. People started to hoard, and because there was no rationing until 1944 there was no way of equalising supply. Churchill was not keen on sending supplies to relieve the problem, and Dr Khan described the attitudes behind preventing the relief of the famine as 'a horrible cocktail'.
Dr Khan then turned to the experiences of individuals, noting that for British officers and soldiers we have many documents, but its difficult to find rank and file soldiers for whom you can trace a lot of documents across their life, or even across the war. She presented 4 case studies:
Aruna Asaf Ali joined the Congress, but was not rounded up in 1942 with the other congress leaders because she was not seen as troublesome even though her husband was arrested. This radicalised her and she turned to violence with the Quit India campaign, conducting acts of sabotage. Her husband was horrified because he followed Gandhi, but she became a popular hero, working against the war effort.
Clive Branson was a communist, and a very vocal anti-fascist, from an elite family. He was conscripted and sent to India. He is interesting because, like of lots of men from Britain, he saw things that he wouldn't ordinarily have seen. He wrote home, and his letters were collected and published by his friends when he was killed on the Japanese front in 1944. He saw the problems with colonialism, and wrote about the maltreatment of servants, men visiting brothels, and the effects of the famine, but he was also a soldier fighting for that colonial power.
Bhajan Singh was court-martialled and sent to the Andaman Islands penal colony.
Walchand Hirachand seized opportunity to make money. He had a lot of ships so turned them over to the army to ship troops and materials. He managed to gain a $4million dollar investment into an aircraft factory, yet he constantly complained that he was overlooked in favour of British suppliers. He was a supporter of independence and siphoned off some of the money to support the independence campaign.
Dr Khan concluded by remarking that although we think we know everything on the Second World War, there are whole areas that are untapped which can take us beyond celebrating the soldiers – there are contradictions and complicated relationships with empire which need exploring.
EFDSS Broadside Day Part 1
Posted by Jenni Hyde under ballads, Conferences, Uncategorized
At the end of February, I travelled up to Glasgow to speak at the English Folk Dance and Song Society's Broadside Day at the Unviersity of Strathclyde. This is the first in a short series of posts about the day.
On Cathdral Street, Glasgow
Due to a series of unfortunate cricumstances, I didn't reach Glasgow until 11am, so I missed papers by Catherine Ann Cullen (Speckled Cats and Gravey Distillers), David Stenton (The Forth Valley Songster) and E. Wyn James ('The Black Spot' and 'The Old Man of the Wood': Welsh Street Literature During the Long Eighteenth Century
I arrived during the morning tea break (nice pastries and a decent cuppa). The first paper I heard was given by Freyja Cox Jensen on 'In Good Queen Bess's Golden Days': Memories of Elizabethan England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'. Freya talked about the context of English identity, which was very closely bound up with Protestantism and Protestant insularity. The period was shaped by the notion of England as an island nation. The idea comes from Elizabeth I, who comes to embody a very English types of Protestantism, with England as God's chosen land. Elizabeth continues to play a role in the idea of Englishness in the years after her death, as part of the cultural memory of Elizabethan England. She's a model for high politics after James II, especially with William and Mary. The image of England is partly, therefore, created from the top-down, but it is also celebrated more widely. Ballads from Queen Anne's reign make explicit reference to Elizabeth I. They see parallels between the armada and the Anne intervention in the war of Spanish succession. The most common idea, though, is the one that Elizabethan period was merry and a golden age. It was held up for centuries afterward as a jolly good time.
Freya Cox-Jensen
Ballads are often set to Tudor tunes, and pick out martial characters from the period, such as the earl of Essex, or Thomas Stukely who was a rather more complicated character than most – the ballad suggests he repents of going abroad as a recusant even though there is no evidence of this. Many of these are long lived songs. They represent England as the underdog, the small and feisty man fighting for good.
But Freya noted that none of this is true – it's a constructed myth that's been going on for centuries. And it's not just about nation building, it's also the belief in the ancient constitution which we see raised against Charles I before his execution. Custom is also a legitimising framework in court. Appealing to time out of mind trumps anything more recent especially relating to parish boundaries and common land. Traditionally scholars say the creation of the Elizabethan myth happens in the 18th and 19th centuries but Freya argued that the ideas were alive and well even before Elizabeth died.
Next up was me, talking about 'Liege Ladies: Sixteenth-Century Broadside Ballads and Reigning Queens', in a significant reworking of a paper I gave a few years ago at the Mary I Quincentenary conference. Then it was time for lunch.
MedRen 2018 Part 1
Posted by Jenni Hyde under Conferences, music, Uncategorized | Tags: dance, Maynooth, MedRen, music, Sourcework |
This is the first in a short series of posts about my trip to the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference in Maynooth during July 2018.
The Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, known as MedRen, was a slightly scary undertaking for me. I've only been to one music conference before, where I presented a paper on ballads and the public sphere in Tudor England during the final year of my PhD. I only lasted half a day before I was poached by the Voices and Books Network! So 3 and a half days of wall to wall musicology was a bit intimidating, not least because there was so much on the schedule that I knew almost nothing about.
I left Liverpool early in the morning, and arrived in Maynooth about 11am. The first paper that I caught was given by Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita on 'Women, oral tradition, and morality: the iconography of the sixteenth-century Spanish dance'. She described how women appear in foreground of pictures by Hoefnagel for an atlas by Georg Braun, even though they don't appear in other sources. The musical scenes are concentrated in Andalucia, and focus on women dancing and playing instruments, especially percussion instruments. The text, however, does not refer to the musical illustrations. There has been speculation that they are perhaps playing music in the Muslim fashion, as this was the last Muslim community in Spain. Morisco music was banned in 1556, and furthermore, music was seen as unladylike by Vives. The women in the images hold the rosary, as if they have to demonstrate their faith. She noted that dance and music was part of an oral tradition so difficult to establish what it was like in the 16the century, but she suggested that the Spanish dance referred to by travelers might have been done in the Morisco fashion, not least because on some of the copies (which were all hand coloured) the skin of the musicians is darker.
The next paper was given by Lynsey Callaghan: 'How was music theory read in fifteenth century England? The evidence of ''þe Proporcions"'. Lynsey provided evidence from 3 different, mainly mathematical, manuscripts which included the same musical treatise. The treatise was not directly connected to sound, but had implications for it, because the mathematical ratios it included were used to to decide what was a consonant interval. It includes a passing reference to sonorous music and the voice. She noted the treatise's pedagogical tone meant that it assumed a teaching role, especially through it use of Latin to name the ratios. This was necessary because there was no vernacular equivalent for these Latin terms, but they were thoroughly explained. Finally, she pointed out that the three manuscripts offer evidence of three different ways in which the text was consumed.
The final paper in this first session was given by Katie Bank on 'Voices in Dialogue in Martin Peerson's Private Musicke (1620)'. She described dialogue function as cultural predication, an inherent part of early modern thought processes. Sometimes the dialogue itself is fiction – an ambiguity between fact and drama – but at the time this was seen as part of its effectiveness. Katie described four different ways in which a song could be dialogic, but she acknowledged that dialogic songs were usually written for two accompanied human voices, in textual and musical conversation. Peerson, however, was not clear on whether he meant 'dialogue' figuratively or the songs for more than one voice. She also pointed out that even though the singers did not have costume for characterisation like drama, decisions made by performers at the point of performance affected the way the songs were heard. This was something that I wholeheartedly agree with, as it chimes in with my work on the ballads in circulation during the Pilgrimage of Grace. Songs are so much more than just the words and music!
After lunch, I attended two paired papers on music in Reformation Germany. The first paper, 'Canonisation in Lutheran Repertoire in public and private education: the case of Lüneburg', was given by Christine Roth. She described Lutheran culture as based on a common canon of music. Musical education was designed to bolster this, choosing a canon of important or exemplary music that was considered suitable for teaching. This canon aimed at acquainting children with the exemplary works whether they were Lutheran works or pre-Reformation. It was linked to Lutheran notion of history and what should be remembered – the memory of portent events which were divine acts.
Hein Sauer then gave a paper on '16th Century Music Manuscripts in Neustadt an der Orla'. The Reformation in Neustadt was influenced by Augustinian monks, but the town became Lutheran in 1528. Neustadt needed a lot of music, as music for every Sunday was obligatory. This led to the purchase of more than 200 prints and the creation of nine manuscripts. Having examined two, it appeared that most of the repertoire in them could be found elsewhere. In many case the prints were available first, but Hein argued that most of the manuscript versions are closer to performance practice in Neustadt. They give evidence of social practice, for example, a psalm which was altered for the wedding of one of the scribes. The manuscripts included a good mix of older canonised examples and newer music for festivals.
The next pair of papers, which had no direct relationship to each other, nevertheless both looked at otherness, one from the perspective of Lutheran hymnody, and the other from Catholic dance. Antonio Chemotti' s paper was entitled 'Hymn culture and enemies of the church in sixteenth-century Silesia'. He suggested that hymns were used to strengthen identity and that we can use the lyrics to identify who the hymns were 'attacking' through the beliefs they express. One of the church's enemies was the expanding Ottoman Empire, generally referred to in polemic as 'the Turk'. Collections of hymns against the Turks were printed in 1566, the year of Sulieman the Magnificent's campaign against the Habsburg Empire in Hungary. Antonio gave an example of a psalm paraphrase which asked God for help, being given new meaning as if that help were specifically needed against the Turk. This occurred because, as I have argued in Singing the News, contrafacta carried the original meaning of the songs with them. The way Triller choses his melodies carried many meanings, creating links between old secular texts and new sacred meanings. Triller also wanted the new texts to be used at the same liturgical time as the old one was – thus creating an even stronger link than the Lutherans had. Antonio also argued that Triller's was a compromise hymn book, demonstrating that the Catholics and Lutherans got along well against the Salesians. the Silesian hymn book doesn't attack the pope like Lutheran ones do – attempt not to offend the Catholics as they are trying to disassociate themselves from the religious dissidents.
Moritz Kelber's paper on '(De-)constructing the enemy in early modern music and dance' looked at music and the war against the Turks. This war was one of the most important political issues in German speaking lands in the 15th and 16th centuries, even in areas where there was no direct military threat. This was especially true of the siege of Vienna, an event which shocked public discourse. German music was part of the construction of an omnipresent anti-Turkish literature, although most 16th century sources use the word Turk for a variety of ethnic groups. Churches were made to ring their largest bells at noon to remind their people to pray against the Turks. Similarly, in the 16th century, the black legend against the Spanish began to infect the German-speaking lands, and they used similar polemic to demonise the Catholic Spaniards. There were many pamphlets against the Turks, many containing songs. Some of these have music so seem to be aimed a musically-literate audience. Dance used exotic costumes and instruments to assimilate foreign cultures in a very special way. For example, Maximilian's court was fascinated with foreign dances and masquerades, where courtiers mixed with professional Morris dancers, both encountering and interacting with the 'other'.
Sourcework
In the evening after dinner, we were treated to a concert of 5 voice polyphonic motets by the Boston group, Sourcework, who sing not from printed editions, but from original notation. It was very impressive, and I have to say that conferences with inbuilt concerts rather than keynotes might just be the way forward!
Embodiment and New Materialism Part 2
Posted by Jenni Hyde under Conferences, Henrician politics, seminars, Uncategorized | Tags: ballads, hunt is up, Lancaster, Lancaster Universityster University, new materialism |
Over the weekend of 25-26 February 2017, I attended a conference in Lancaster which looked at new materialist approaches to the pre-modern period: 'Embodiment and New Materialism in Premodern Literature and Culture 1350-1700'. Having already blogged about the first day of the conference, I thought it was time to share my recollections of the second.
The first speaker on day 2 was Dr. Robert Stagg (St Anne's College, Oxford), who talked about 'Shakespeare's "Stuff"'. The word 'nothing' appears 32 time in King Lear, but its range of opposites also appear a lot, and more often towards the end of the play. The monosyllabic irreducibility of Shakespeare's language is part of the atomic sound scape of King Lear.
Emily Rowe (University of York) continued the focus on language with 'Words and things: Francis Bacon, Lingua, and New Materialism'. She explained how Francis Bacon criticised the construction of knowledge based on rhetoric as based on words rather than things. He acknowledged that language was necessary to explain, but it was often overcome by what Erasmus described as a 'wild and wanton flow of words'. In Thomas Tomkis's play Lingua, the only female character is Lingua, who fights and tricks others in her attempt to become the 6th sense. Appetitus, Gustus's servant, presents a long list of Lingua's failings. One of these is her power of translation, because vulgar language and mixed tongues were a concern of the 17th century. Her biggest problem, however, is that she is a woman. During the early modern period the unruly tongue is particularly associated with women, because it is associated with the destructive power of female speech. Bacon challenges the need for affected, metaphoric speech to explain, so while he wouldn't describe language as a vulgar whore as Lingua does, he would not support her claim to be a sense.
I opened the second panel on ephemerality with my paper on 'The (im)material sixteenth-century ballad'. I talked about ballads and the Pilgrimage of Grace, focussing on the way ballads were sung and experienced rather than their material, printed form. As usual, I got the audience to sing.
Following me was Catherine Evans (University of Sheffield) who spoke on 'Pleating time in early modern almanacs'. Almanacs were the most popular early modern cheap print, containing astrological and medical information and guidance for every aspect of life at a low price. Almanac annotations show a great variety of readership. The flexible function of almanacs shown by the fact that they often contain all three of Heidi Brayman Hackel's categories of annotation. Chronologies at the beginning of almanacs give potted national histories, often with transparent political agendas. Nevertheless, people personalised these timelines by annotating these calendars with personally important information. Also people made changes to the printed dates. Therefore almanacs had another role as diaries. People interleaved blank pages, so printers started introducing blank leaves. These changes create books that are long lasting records of the self rather than a plan of the year. Furthermore, users did not stick to the linear notion of time indicated by the almanac because they were creating their own topographical understanding of time by using almanacs in ways that they weren't intended.
The final paper in our panel was given by Beth Cortese (Lancaster University) on 'Exchanging places: witty transformations', much of which concentrated on the play of the weekend, Albumazar. Betha argued that thieves and tricksters in early modern plays are the place of subversive wit, revealing anxieties about identity. Their plots are to do with material wit – inequality made animate in performance. Wit is therefore a performative and transformative form of subversion. The trickster often overturns rank.
Next came 'An Embryo of rare contemplation': a special panel chaired by Dr. Rachel White (Newcastle University). Dr. Lucy Munro (King's College London) raised the question 'how does one fall in love on stage' in her paper 'The Insatiate Countess: Body, Text and Stage'. Her paper concentrated on The Insatiate Countess, written by John Marston even though he seems to have objected to his name being added to the published script. There are several textual difficulties with the play. She pointed out that it can be hard to tell stage directions from speech and vice versa in early modern plays. Different editions of the play have different names for the same characters. Also there were problems with the printing of different editions, with a lovely mondegreen where 'the boxe unto Pandora given' appeared in the text as 'the poxe is unto Panders given'.
The play exploits the rampant sexuality of women and might have had a particular resonance at the time. It opens with the scene of the countess in mourning, before any speech, so the first line 'what should we do in this countess's dark hole' is deeply shocking, especially with the men being described as 'unruly members'. At the end she is executed, ostensibly for ordering the murder of her lover, but as much for the fact that her rampant sexuality subverts the patriarchy. The social hierarchy in the play is desperate for her to make a good death by admitting that she was at fault.
The next paper was given by Dr. Rachel Reid (Queen's University Belfast) on '(Re)reading John Dee: Exploring Polytemporal Identities in his Collection of "Rarities"'. Rachel showed that the placement and context of the object was what informed its meaning and focussed on polytemporalities as reaching across time rather than periodisation. John Dee had many roles and assembled the largest library in Elizabethan England. Although the Glindoni painting of 'John Dee Performing an Experiment before Elizabeth I' contains lots of things related to Dee, but it is not the image of a necromancer. However, in a fantastic animated slide that switched between the two images, she reminded us that the original painting had Dee surrounded by skulls.
I was particularly interested in the paper by Dr. Clare Egan (Lancaster University), '"By the singular operations of your excellent preparations": Material Bodies and Medicinal Words in the Libel Case of Edwards v. Woolton (Exeter, 1604)'. She pointed out that the difference between libel and slander was not so clear cut in the early modern period. One reason for the concern about libels might be that their epidemic nature made them more dangerous. This is illustrated by the move of libel trials from ecclesiastical to criminal courts, because disorder is the problem and can cause more scandal if it IS true than if not. The truth of the matter is not the issue – it's not the content that matters, it is the manner in which they are spread. Clare placed the emphasis on performance suggesting that hearer is implicated in the performance by consenting to listen.
Matthew Blaiden (University of Leeds) talked about 'Shakespeare's Masks', showing that masks in plays were structural devices which provided material splendour. Masking is mentioned in Shakespeare's plays from very early on. First accepted appearance of masking within a play is in Love's Labours Lost. Examples mentioning or including masks run the gamut of Shakespearean genres. The classic Elizabethan mask consisted of an entrance and a dance, but there are other types during the period. Much of the evidence Matthew uses for revels comes from revels accounts, but they were not exclusive to court, also taking place at the Inns of Court and also in towns where Queen Elizabeth went on progress.
The final event of the conference was a roundtable discussion, which developed the idea that the metaphor and the material occur simultaneously.
All in all, it was a very interesting weekend and much credit is due to the organisers of the conference for bringing everyone together.