Book Review - Good-Bye Dolly Gray by Rayne Kruger

 Good-Bye Dolly Gray: the Story of the Boer War by Rayne Kruger

London: Pan Books, 1974 (first published 1959)    ISBN 03300238612

Apart from (even in?) South Africa, how many of the combatant nations remember the Boer War of 1899-1902? My hometown has a magnificent memorial in the main street commemorating the 250 Victorians who died fighting in South Africa, but I'm sure most passers-by these days assume the memorial is to World War One if indeed they notice it at all.

The Boer War was the progenitor of many things: blockhouses and barbed wire entanglements, concentration camps, armoured trains, mounted infantry, and not least the participation of most of the Empire. Kruger's book, originally published when some combatants were still alive, is a good "traditional" narrative history of the conflict, covering the military and the political quite well, the social less so.

"The Boers said the war was for liberty. The British said it was for equality. The majority of the inhabitants, who were not white at all, gained neither liberty or equality." This quote from the final pages of the book is pithy, and is not far from the truth. The Great Trek, undertaken the generation previous to that fighting this war, was undertaken so that the Boers could maintain their independence from the British, who had taken the Cape Colony and Natal for their own. The Orange Free State and Transvaal were in nearly all senses independent states, which both sides found acceptable.

That is, until gold was discovered in the Transvaal. The rush brought many foreigners (Uitlanders) to the state, mainly British. Fearing loss of control, the Transvaal government restricted the franchise of non-Boers. The Uitlanders complained to the Crown. The British had long harboured a desire to unite their colonies with the Boer republics to create a South African state. They thought that supporting the Uitlanders in their claim for representation may be a way to achieve such an outcome via the franchise and demographic takeover. So, like many other wars and revolutions throughout history, the fundamental cause of the Boer War was essentially about taxation without representation.

Militarily, the British Empire was always going to win a long drawn-out struggle. The best the Boers could hope for was to make Britain pay such a price that they would make terms. Eventually this is basically what happened in 1902, when the Boers recognised the suzerainty of the English and South Africa became a reality, but the Boers maintained their culture and language and eventually gained political preponderance over the new territory via their own demographic takeover. The War spilled much blood and spent much treasure to only reach a position that could realistically have been negotiated.

The opposing military forces could not have been more different in 1899. The initial British force, under General Buller (whose reputation suffered an irretrievable collapse during this conflict owing to his caution and tactical blunders) might have been wearing khaki and carrying modern Lee Metford rifles, but were old-fashioned in other ways. Their huge columns, with baggage trains consisting of thousands of carts drawn by oxen, officers that ensured that they brought with them champagne, baths and other luxuries, were no match for the Boers. Boer mobile commandos, who lived off the land (supported by many residents), were incredibly mobile owing to their horsed infantry that travelled without impedimenta, and were tactically supple as everyone had a say in how battle was commenced and fought.

Unfortunately the unique structure of the Boer fighting force also became a weakness as the war developed. With no fixed military structure, Boers came and went from the battle-ground as they pleased, and each commando could decide to engage how it chose to, whether that supported Boer strategy or not.

The British eventually dominated the battlefield through combining two seemingly opposing principles, which they fused into a strategy which eventually brought the Boers to the negotiating table. The first was to create units that copied the Boer way of fighting: mobile columns of mounted infantry, lightly equipped, that could cover distance quickly to bring the enemy to heel. The second was the construction of thousands of blockhouses - small forts that linked together into a military fence across the country. By using the mobile columns to push the commandos onto the lines of blockhouses, the British eventually wore down the Boer forces so much that their will to continue fighting began to fail. The Boers had hoped since the start of the war that their cousins who lived in Cape Colony and Natal would rise in rebellion and support them. This support did not materialise even after the Boers "invaded" the Cape and caused much trouble there. This fact also helped seal the fate of the Boers.

The British, while eventually "winning", also paid a heavy price. As many wars have, the Boer War brought down a government, and also a way of governing. The many failures of both politics and military during the war led to the British public losing faith in the rule of the upper classes. The Liberals took over politics, and the British officer class, where commissions were bought rather than earned, was dismantled after the war by Kitchener, who was the modernising leader of the forces in South Africa.

Kruger's book lists a catalogue of military blunders, with the British consistently underestimating the capabilities of the Boers, and the Boers suffering from too much or too little caution, often failing to press home their advantage or fruitlessly attacking points that were too strong. Early in the war the Boers laid siege to Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberly. They failed to take any of these places, and if they had the war may have taken a different turn.

By the same token, if Buller had moved more decisively and had more tactical nous, the Boers may not have won their early victories and in fact might have suffered defeats that may have led to them putting down their rifles much earlier than they did.

Kruger spends a few chapters on the political aspects of the war, particularly in England, but glosses over the politics of the participation of the Empire in the war, as well as the politics of the Cape Colony and Natal during the conflict. While he describes the concentration camps, again it is a side-issue in this book to the descriptions of the military activity.

If you want to get a grip on the military progression of the Boer War, Good-Bye Dolly Gray (the title comes from a well-known song from the era) is not the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

 The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992              ISBN 019285271X

(The text of this edition first published 1989 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland)

If I check out my DNA profile on Ancestry, it tells me that I'm more than fifty percent Irish. My father's family is almost completely Irish (with a little Danish), while my mother is Scottish, English and Welsh. Because I grew up in my mother's home town rather than my father's, it is the Scottish connections that I absorbed growing up, so I know more history of Scotland than I do of Ireland. In fact the only Irish history I've absorbed is the internecine battles between Catholic and Protestant in Ulster which have been in the news, and the Dublin of James Joyce which has been in my books.

I mean to set out to correct that, and I have started (as you would) with the Oxford history. It's a relatively short book into which to pack a few thousand years of history, and so it's fair to say that parts of the book can seem like a list of "kings" rather than a true history. In fact in many ways, despite attempts by the authors to move away from an "old fashioned" history that focusses on political and military machinations, that's mostly what the reader gets, sometimes to their confusion as the roll-call of petty rulers adds up as one turns the pages.

History is what happens from day-to-day, and it's the job of the historian to try and knock events into shape to tell us a story - particularly in a book like this; a narrative of the creation of a people and a state. The authors in this book question the hackneyed themes of Irish history - the perfidy of the English and the iron control of the Catholic Church over the faithful, and the inevitability of sectarian conflict.

Rather than iron control from over the Irish Sea, this book portrays an England that, while seeking profit for sure, rarely had a coherent strategy for dealing with the land and the people that it had taken centuries to control. It was the internecine warfare between rival chieftains (probably a more appropriate term than kings) that led to the intervention in Irish affairs by the English, who arrived initially with thought of plunder and ongoing riches.

Once the English realised that Ireland was not as rich as was thought, it rapidly became an afterthought in English affairs, only brought to the forefront when rebellion threatened. The Irish began the long process of trying to accommodate themselves to English norms, if they lived East of the Shannon. The more unproductive lands of the West were, generally speaking, left to themselves, which created a wealth and status divide that existed well into the modern era.

It was really only after the Act of Union in 1800 that Irish nationalism began to grow, and that sectarianism became an issue. The Catholics looked for equality, and when moves were made in that direction the Protestants began to fear for their privileged place in society, and the downward spiral of English rule began, culminating in the creation of a "two-state solution" in the twentieth century, which left many of the festering issues unresolved.

This book is clear, but very dry and formal in style, which for me as a neophyte had too much detail without enough explicatory material to make full sense of it. That said, I now feel that I have an overall structure in my mind of Irish history with which to continue my journey.

 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

London: Fourth Estate, 2010 (first published 2009)     ISBN 9780007230204

Of course I had heard of Wolf Hall before I had read it, after all, who hasn't? It's my contrarian nature rather than anything else that has led to fifteen years elapsing between the publication of this book and my reading of it. To my detriment, I have an irrational reluctance to read prize-winning novels. As is often the case, it was my wife who led me to read this book, and as is usual I'm glad she did because it's a magnificent book (and dare I say a worthy prize-winner...).

Wolf Hall takes as its subject Thomas Cromwell, his rise to power and his machinations in the Court of Henry the Eighth. Specifically, the book covers the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the annulment of Kathryn of Aragon's marriage to Henry, the rise of Anne Boleyn, and all that this meant for those in the Henrician Court.

The difficulty that arises when a novelist takes on a historical subject is for them to successfully straddle the lines between historical fact, literary necessity, and narrative flow. In some senses Thomas Cromwell is an excellent subject for such treatment. We know what he did when he was in power, just enough about his early life to weave a good tale, but little enough about his character to enable a good writer to go to town.

And Hilary Mantel is a good writer. I haven't read any of her other works, but if they are all this good I will read them all. She deftly creates a believable milieu for the court not only of Henry, but also of Wolsey, and of Cromwell himself. Her use of language is not too old-fashioned, but nor is it jarringly modern. She can evoke a scene or a character in a few words, or if needed spend pages creating the tension required to move the plot forward. Most of all she creates believable characters not only of Cromwell and those around him, but also of Wolsey, More, Kathryn, Anne and Henry himself.

Cromwell is the "hero" of the book, and is by no means portrayed as the heartless reformer that historical legend has given us to believe. He is a man of much experience, and excellent reader of his fellow man (although perhaps not so much of women), not afraid to send men to their death if required, but preferring to take the path of mercy and pragmatism when he can. He is, in this book, a complete and complex man. Mantel delineates all her characters well, giving the reader an understanding of why they have turned into who they are. Anne Boleyn is a creation of her class-climbing and grasping family; Mary Boleyn is a victim of the same family, used as a tool against her wishes. Henry is a creation not only of his family history, but has also been enabled by Wolsey. Wolsey thought he could control Henry to his own advantage, right up until the moment he couldn't. Cromwell was intelligent and ruthless enough to step in and enable Henry's wishes when no-one else could.

Of course we the reader know the outcome of this saga, but Mantel is adept at portraying the story and history on the move with many possible outcomes, not just the one that came to pass.

Wolf Hall really is a wonderful book on every level. Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

- some quotes from the book that made it into my commonplace book are listed below -

"Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's uncollected sins."

"There it is: if you are so lenient with yourself as to insist on living with a woman, then for the sake of your soul you should make it a woman you really don't like."

"At some point he must have slept. When daylight came, the room felt so empty it was empty even of him."

"He doesn't believe that the dead come back; but that doesn't stop him feeling the brush af their fingertips, wing tips, against his shoulder."

"Flint-face and keen-eyed, he is lean as a gnawed bone and as cold as an axe head."

"His eyes are drawn unwillingly to the cheese; it is pitted and wobbling, like the face of a stable boy after a night out."

"But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to complain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frighten people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires."

"... it's all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it's no good at all if you don't have a plan for tomorrow."

"If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy;"

Book Review - A Concise History of Australia by Stuart Macintyre

 A Concise History of Australia by Stuart Macintyre

Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2016 (4th edition)        ISBN 9781107562431

About a third of the text in this book covers events in my lifetime, which I guess says two things - one, that I am getting old, and two, that this book is a "front-forward" history. Macintyre is a well-known Australian historian, who was part of the famous "History Wars" that occurred in this country early this century.

This book, part of a series of concise histories commissioned by Cambridge University Press, breezes through thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation of the country before covering the history of the European conquest, colonization and development of the country.

This book is mostly a political history - it glosses over the social - I felt as a reader that I didn't get a sense of how people were living on a day-to-day basis. For instance, the central role of sport in the social make-up of the country is hardly mentioned, and the churches are more often mentioned as sources of division than of inclusion and provision of welfare.

As a political history, it seems to me that Macintyre's personal politics are on display too much in what is meant to be a general history for the average reader. One comes away from this book feeling that there is and has been nothing good produced by the conservative side of politics, or by business interests, and that the left, and the working class, have been nothing but noble in their pursuits.

This bias cruels the history in a few ways: Macintyre gives too much emphasis on events and movements that were peripheral to mainstream Australia, such as the Unemployed Workers Movement and the New Guard in the Depression. He also fails to explain why the conservatives have been so successful throughout Australia's political history if they were such a reprehensible group of people - is he suggesting that Australia's polity is irredeemably stupid? Or could it be that the majority of people, for the majority of the time have on the whole preferred what the right has to offer them? This seems to be a conclusion that Macintyre cannot accept.

Generally speaking, Macintyre's history paints Australia as a plaything of Empire (Britain or the USA) or of greedy elites, either Liberal or Labor. He seems to belittle the hard work of those everyday people who actually built the country that we know today, and who sacrificed themselves in so many ways to create a better life for their successors. While he details the many mis-steps that have been made along the way, he does not describe the successes in as much detail.

If I was someone who knew nothing of Australian history and I had only read this book, I would look around at today's Australia and wonder how we got to where we are, given what Macintyre has described. This is not a history that can be read as a stand-alone tome. Alternative views must be sought to get a rounded view of the singular history of this country.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - England's Pride by Julian Symons

 England's Pride: the story of the Gordon Relief Expedition by Julian Symons

London: White Lion Publishers, 1974 (first published by Hamish Hamilton 1965)

ISBN 085617548X

Many years ago I, like tens of thousands of other Melburnians, emerged from the underground railway station at Parliament and walked past a statue of General Gordon on my way to work. Paid for by public subscription, it is an indicator of how shocking to the Empire his death was, and in how much esteem he was held. I wonder how many commuters today even know who he is?

Certainly in 1884 everyone in England knew him - a hero from his service in China, and seen as a moral exemplar owing to his efforts to eradicate slavery in Africa, "Chinese" Gordon seems the quintessential Victorian hero - doing good work in far-flung places, wildly eccentric, and a favourite of the Queen.

Gordon ended up in the Sudan mainly owing to Gladstone's unwillingness to spend money on a military intervention there. In fact he had decided that the Anglo-Egyptian force in Khartoum should be withdrawn, rather than face the forces of the Mahdi, who's rebellion was gathering strength. The newspapers were pushing for a relief force to be sent, but the Government decided that they could just send Gordon, hoping his cachet would be enough to enable an orderly withdrawal, assuage public opinion, and curtail any unnecessary expense.

Unfortunately for Gladstone and his government, Gordon was a poor choice for such an assignment. Firstly, Gordon was a Christian visionary: hardly a good choice to try and pacify an Islamic insurgency. Secondly, he followed his own path, revealed to him by God, as he thought. Sent to arrange a retreat he instead fortified Khartoum and set himself to withstand a siege.

Soon enough he was surrounded by Mahdist forces, and it was public opinion - whipped up again by the newspapers - that forced the Government to send an expedition to relieve Gordon and bring him safely back to Egypt. If the Mahdi was defeated in the process, all the better.... so much for saving money!

England's Pride is the story of the expeditionary force that was sent up the Nile to relieve Gordon: a story of success and failures, of battles and massacres, and of Victorian attitudes and characters such as Generals Wolseley, Buller and Stewart, Colonels Barnaby and Butler, Lord Charles Beresford and most famous probably today Kitchener, who played a minor but important role in what came to pass in 1884-5.

Once Gladstone was finally convinced that rescue of Gordon was needed, the army decided the best course of action was to trans-ship the force up the Nile in small whaling boats to a forward base at Korti, and then send a force across the desert on camel to Metemmeh before continuing on to Khartoum.

The story therefore is mainly one of logistics and movement rather than fighting: the logistics and movement were in fact bigger obstacles to the army than any of the Arab warriors that they met on the battlefield. Moving thousands of men up the Nile over multiple cataracts (some of which were at the time un-mapped) was a huge undertaking, requiring mammoth efforts not only from the troops themselves, by the boatbuilders who built over 400 whalers in quick time, and also the Canadian guides (voyageurs) who were employed to manoeuvre the boats up the river safely to their destination (which in great part they managed).

The provision of camels proved to be a major problem. There were never enough for the army's needs and those they did have became severely over-worked. In fact one of the main reasons that reprisal against the Mahdi's forces for his sack of Khartoum (which occurred two days before the first British steamer came in sight of the town) was discontinued was that the British had too few camels to engage in effective campaigning.

Symons maps all this out well, and also provides a good synopsis of the final days of Gordon and the battle of Abu Klea. He charts the fate of those involved in the expedition - who prospered and who didn't, and a useful chapter speculating whether there was any chance that relief of Gordon was ever a realistic prospect. Symons thinks that those who became scapegoats at the time were unfairly treated and concludes that if anyone was to blame, it was Gordon for not communicating his position effectively enough to Wolseley, and Gladstone for delaying his decision to send a relief force. Wolseley's army, all things considered, did about as well as it could have in the situation.

What struck me most in this retelling of a great Victorian epic was how the situation rings through the ages - vacillating politicians and bickering military leaders leading to disaster is a story as old as time, and as recent and tomorrow's news.

England's Pride is a solid exposition of an interesting, if now semi-forgotten, piece of Empire history.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Blood, Class and Nostalgia by Christopher Hitchens

 Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies by Christopher Hitchens

London: Vintage, 1991 (first published 1990)       ISBN 0099878003

This is a fascinating book of inter-connected essays about the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain. It's a highly personal view and written as a polemic, but when that view belongs to, and the polemic is written by, Christopher Hitchens, you know it's going to be well worth reading.

While we might (up until Trump's second coming anyway) take for granted the very close geo-political ties between Britain and America, there was never a guarantee that those ties would ever form or be enduring. One look at American history shows us why - America threw off the British yoke in the 1770s, and fought them again in the early 1800s; and through most of the 19th century England did what it could to thwart American expansion across the continent. Britain also supported, for its own reasons, the Confederacy in the Civil War.  Given that history, it was not given that both America and Britain would forge such close ties in the 20th century.

The theme that runs through the essays, which roam from Rudyard Kipling to nuclear warfare, is the idea expressed by Harold Macmillan, and noted at the beginning of this book, that Britain, on losing their status as a first rank power would play Greece to America's Rome ("We...are Greeks in this American Empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans - great big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt. We must run Allied Forces Headquarters as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius."). Hitchens goes on to explain that in his view this is not an entirely correct explanation of what was happening.

There was actually something much more subtle going on. Britain, clinging on the the vestiges of its empire, was coming to the realisation that it would have to let go, and formed the view that America was the obvious successor, and so if it could guide and direct them in how to have, hold and run an empire, they could be an indispensable partner - providing intellectual heft and skill to ensure that America's power and treasure could be spent wisely. So rather than Britain's Greece to the Rome of the USA, what was envisaged was the Roman centre moving across the Atlantic, but with Britain still very much part of the infrastructure.  

Unfortunately, as Hitchens points out, what sounds good in theory doesn't always work out in practice. There were many in Britain who didn't like this idea, and tried to cling on to bits of the Empire, until they couldn't, and then essentially ran to the US cap in hand to get help. This put America in a stronger position, and also reinforced the idea that was held by some in power that they were being used in a way that they didn't like or want. 

While we are bombarded at the moment with news about Trump cutting ties with Europe and other places with his trade policy, he is in some ways merely the latest iteration of American exceptionalism and isolationism. Hitchens explains that, between the wars, there was a significant part of the American polity that didn't like Britain (for example those of Irish descent), and certainly didn't want America to "take up the white man's burden", or begin its own empire building.

World War Two changed the dynamic of the relationship between Britain and the USA. Britain during the war did assist the USA greatly in the spheres of atomic weaponry, and in spycraft and intelligence gathering in general. These lessons were gratefully received, and while America was later on grudging in the way it shared nuclear information, the genuine camaraderie between intelligence services was often a major fixative in the "special relationship" during the Cold War years.

So from enemies, to a connection that led to semi-serious discussions of a political merger between the two states, Hitchens chronicles the demise of the "special relationship" to something that doesn't really have much power anymore, beyond nostalgia and what he calls kitsch. While Britain still feels the bond, America it seems sees Britain as one among many powers that they deal with, just easier to talk to because they speak the same language.

Blood, Class and Nostalgia is well worth reading not only for Hitchens insight into the relationship between Britain and the US, but also for the interesting bits of information he imparts. From Kipling's correspondence with Teddy Roosevelt, to Churchill's conversation with Mark Twain, there are many fascinating insights into how major figures have crossed paths during the last century or so, and what they thought of the "special relationship".

A good read. 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

 

Book Review - A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

 A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964

This is a handy little crib on the history of the Jewish people, rather than the Jewish faith. Of course, it can be difficult to separate the two; as Parkes writes in his introduction, "[t]he history of the Jews is the story of a people inextricably interwoven with that of a religion. Neither can be told apart from the other. It is obvious that there would be no story of Judaism if there were no Jews; but it is just as true that Jews would not have survived the long centuries of their total dispersion had there not been the cement of a religion moulded to their need either to transform or to tolerate the conditions of their corporate and individual lives."

Parkes' history shows a long tradition of a people trying as much as they can to accommodate themselves to the situation in which they existed at any one time. From the earliest days there were geographically diverse groups of people practicing the religion of Judaism, with more or less oppression from the powers of the time. There have only been very short periods of time when Jewish people have had the capacity to control their own polity - very early and very late in their history.

The story of the Jews after Classical times is one of interaction with both Christendom and Islam, and the changing fortunes of those relationships. Christendom very quickly began oppressing the Jews, as they saw them as a threat to the growth of their own religion. The Jews were, in Christian eyes, apostates, Christ-killers, and subverters of fellow Christians. Islam initially treated Jews much better than did Christians, but as the Muslim world shrunk in the face of Western Christian dominance of Europe and Africa, and Islam withdrew into itself, that relationship too became poisoned and died. During the secular age, rather than religious scares, the route of anti-Semitism runs along the lines of finance and conspiracy - the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi rantings about Jewish control of finance took the place of older tropes of Blood Libel and miscegenation.

Parkes explains how the Jews developed their faith and ideas in separation from each other - the Sephardic Spanish versus the Ashkenazi Central Europeans. While non-Jews were the people's biggest enemy, they were not averse to internecine conflict either. The destruction of the Temple and exclusion from Jerusalem meant that the old ways of Jewish worship had to change, through a "democratic" system of congregationalism, through to a "professional" structure of paid Rabbis. This is not gone into in great detail, but is fascinating to a non-Jewish reader such as myself.

The final section of the book deals with the horrors and hopes of the twentieth century - the Holocaust, and the creation of Israel. Parkes focusses on the British Mandate in Palestine, how something that began with such high hopes ended in disaster, with the British washing their hands (a la Pilate) of the problems they had created with a poorly thought-out plan to let Jews come back home. Written in 1964, this book doesn't cover much of the ongoing disaster that has come out of this recent history.

If you are a person who doesn't know much about Jewish history this book, although dated,  isn't the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Battles of the Falklands War by Gordon Smith

 Battles of the Falklands by Gordon Smith

London: Ian Allen Ltd, 1989          ISBN 0711017921

This is a somewhat dry, but very useful book. Built around 40 maps, the book is a day-by-day account of the invasion of the Falklands and South Georgia by the Argentinians, the build-up of the British task force and their arrival in the conflict zone, and the battles naval, aerial and on land that led to the British victory. There is a potted history of the Falkland Islands at the beginning of the book, appendices at the end covering British awards for Gallantry, British ships lost and damaged, British and Argentinian air losses, and a useful bibliography.

Even though this could be almost classed as a reference book, there is still much to be gleaned and learnt about this short and vicious conflict, one that almost seems to have been forgotten these days. Not emphasised in this book, but still obvious, is the weather. In the middle of the Atlantic, at 51 degrees south, the weather even in summer can be treacherous, but in May and June, when the major battles of the war took place, the seas are rough and the land is cold and blizzard-prone. It's not mentioned in this book, but surely the Argentinian leaders assumed that by invading in April, the weather would be a protection from quick action by the British to re-take the islands.

They were so very wrong in thinking that. The British very quickly mobilized naval and land forces to head down to face the Argentine forces. This was a huge logistical effort, undertaken very quickly, and it is a credit to those that organised and undertook those logistical operations that they managed to transfer thousands of troops and dozens of ships and aircraft, and all the ancillaries, ammunition, food and fuel required so quickly, generally in an efficient manner.

That this was a battle about control of sea and air space was clear to the British command, but perhaps less so to the Argentinians (this book is written from the British viewpoint, so the reader gets little to no insight into the strategies, tactics or thinking of the Argentine side). From the sea point of view, the British would have thought that they had the advantage, which in the end proved to be the case. Although the Argentinian Navy was quite large, and did have some modern ships (ironically their modern ships were made by British shipyards), mostly they were older (the General Belgrano was an ex USN WWII cruiser) and had limited capacity against the modern ships of the RN. While the sinking of the Belgrano was shocking and controversial at the time it happened, strategically it made perfect sense: the Belgrano, with its 6 inch guns, could have made short work of the British carriers if it had got within range, but more importantly its sinking had the effect of sending the rest of the Argentinian Navy back to port for the rest of the war. This had a huge effect on not only the Argentinian ability to interdict and fight the Royal Navy, but to assist the Army troops on the Islands.

The battle for airspace was much more contested, and was a much more even fight. The British side were hamstrung by their very limited number of fighter and attack aircraft (approximately 40 Harriers/Sea Harriers), and no AEW capability. The Argentinian side were hamstrung by the distance from their bases to the Falklands, which left them very little time for battle flying once there, and the fact that the British carriers could position themselves much closer to the active area while being out of range to any Argentinian 'plane. It's fair to state that it was in the air where Argentina had its biggest successes - while not managing to down more than one British fighter (others were destroyed by ground fire or accident), they did manage to sink seven ships, several helicopters, and do other damage to naval vessels and on the ground. In achieving this, they lost over 50 aircraft, losses which were unsustainable and led to air attacks reducing as time went on.

In the end, after a few nasty battles, the Argentine garrison surrendered, not because they thought they couldn't fight, and fight well, but with the realization that without supply and support from the Navy, and with diminishing capacity of the Air Force to assist, the end was inevitable. The Argentinian commander onsite disobeyed the Junta in Buenos Aires and surrendered, thus no doubt saving many hundreds of lives on both sides.

Battles of the Falklands War is not a true history, but rather a chronology and as such doesn't go into the whys and wherefores of the battle. But there are things that we can glean from this sorry bit of history, some of which resonate now in 2023, more than forty years later. One is that undemocratic dictatorships eventually drown in their own dreams of power and glory, another is never dismiss democracies as unable to stand up to naked aggression, and the third is that, quite often, logistics win wars.

If you would like to know what happened when and to whom in the Falklands War, this book is worth fishing out. If you are after a more rounded history of the conflict, there are better books to read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A General History of England 1688-1832

 A General History of England 1688-1832 by W.A. Barker, G.R.St. Aubyn and R.L. Ollard

London: A&C Black Ltd, 1952

I loved this book not only because it was a highly readable history of an era of English history that is not well known to me, but also because the style in which it was written (by two Eton Schoolmasters and a Lecturer at the Royal Naval College) is so redolent of an England that is now lost.

England in the period covered by this book changed completely, from an absolute monarchy, to the beginnings of truly representative democratic government; from an agrarian society to an industrial one, and from a small player in world affairs to a huge player in Europe and throughout the World. This book shows that the development of England into the power that in 1832 was about to create the biggest empire the world had ever seen came about not through design, but through a series of what turned out to be happy accidents.

This book begins with the "Glorious Revolution" in 1688, when James II, through his arrogance and stupidity lost the throne, and the Parliament invited William of Orange to be King. The importance of this step in the future development of the United Kingdom is paramount, as it cemented the right of Parliament to regulate how the monarchy can work, although the significance perhaps was not realized at the time.

The Whig faction (it would not be accurate to think of the Whigs and Tories as "parties" in the modern sense), who supported the "revolution", benefited by the ascension of William III, and presided over the fallout of the revolution - which was war. They defeated the Irish, and managed to keep France out of Spain and Holland, for English foreign policy revolved at this time around France, and limiting her power. 

The Eighteenth century in England was one of experiment in many areas - agriculture, industry, and other sciences. While these advances were taking place, England was also a vigorous player in the slave trade, dispossession of native tribes in America, and in repressing the poor in the home countries. In the political sphere, the forces of progress had a rocky time of it, given the corrupt nature of the parliamentary system. Seats had not changed for hundreds of years, which meant that there were some seats with but a few electors ("rotten boroughs") which were easily bought off, but also some large cities that had grown up around industry and trade that had no representation in the House. Add to this electorates that were under the sway of the local Lord, and membership of the House of Commons was highly regulated. The House of Lords even more so, as the creation of members of this house was entirely up to the King, and so could be relied on to follow the wishes of the monarch even if the Commons was being feisty.

As with most politics, progress only came through crises: in the case of the Eighteenth Century, these were usually wars. The crisis that hit home hardest was the War for American Independence, which was completely avoidable. The ham-fisted control of the colonies by London, and the punitive taxes and restrictions on trade that came about as the result of England's wars with France and Spain, led to a revolt that succeeded, again through the incompetence of the military leaders of the time. The loss of America led the government to review how it taxed and controlled the colonies, and ensured that such a revolt never happened again.

The Empire increased in other ways, and in other areas. The rise and rise of the East India Company meant that by the Eighteenth Century it was a nation within a nation, with enormous sway in England, and hegemony over an ever-increasing area of the Subcontinent. That a private company could do such a thing was not tenable for an extended length of time, and over the course of the Eighteenth Century the Government exerted more and more control over the Company, until by the end of the century India was effectively under British government control.

While the American Revolution was a heavy blow to England, it was the French Revolution that created modern England. The war that followed the revolution ensured that England became a major power, and the post-war depression, with unemployment and destitution facing many, created social upheaval that needed to be addressed to stop an English revolution along French lines. Parliament faced this crisis, and through concessions that led up to the Reform Act in 1832 fended off a major social upheaval, at the "cost" of creating the beginnings of the representative democracy and the welfare society that we recognise today.

This is a period of English history that is usually glossed over these days - we move pretty much from Elizabeth to Victoria, and don't seem to look deeply at the centuries in-between. While this book is no doubt been superseded as current history, it's a great "old-fashioned" (i.e. great men, dates, kings and wars) introduction into an era that set the stage for modern England to be born.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Made in England by David Malouf

 Made in England: Australia's British Inheritance (Quarterly Essay 12) by David Malouf

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003                                      ISBN 1863953957

There is something about David Malouf's writing: clear-eyed and lucid, with a calm thoughtfulness that resonates with truth. This is so in his fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. One gets the feeling that spending an afternoon in his company would be a wonderful mind-expanding experience. Failing that, we read him, and this essay, discussing the English heritage and what it means in Australia.

Being a writer, Malouf uses language as the pivot to look at how Australia developed from an outpost created by British strategic needs of the time to the independent polity of today. Intriguingly, he argues that the change in English language between the time of the Puritan settlement of America and the convict settlement of Australia flowed through to influence the different ways our societies developed. The hard, combative English of the 1600s created the fractious American polity, while the more reasoned thoughtful language of the Enlightenment created in Australia a polity that was more open to compromise and arbitration. This is not the only accident of history that Malouf notes: surely, he writes, if Australia was settled earlier than 1788 the workforce would have consisted not of convicts, but slaves, which would have added a layer of history that would have resonated down to the present day as it has in America. We dodged a bullet of history there, he is suggesting.

Malouf also mentions things that have been forgotten by today's opinion writers and journalists: Australia had a lot to do with America since our formation. From the early visits of whalemen, through to the back-and-forth during the Gold Rush era, Australians and Americans were sharing lives, visiting each other, influencing each other's societies, building on the British foundations of both countries. 

For that is the nub of Malouf's essay - that the British inheritance of Australia is also the inheritance of much of the Empire - we, as Australians have a common inheritance with so many other countries. So much so that as Malouf travels the world of writer's festivals, he can have a conversation with writers from India, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia and find that they have the same literary touchstones as himself, which connect these diverse cultures with a common thread. The diaspora of Empire, so influenced by Britain in the past, now return the favour, by creating a new Britain, reflecting back to the centre the many different ways the British inheritance can shine.

That common inheritance was enabled by something unique to the British, compared to their European neighbours: the ability for the Britishness to be transported and live independently from the geographical Britain from whence it came. More so than in  France, or Germany, Britishness could exist in Melbourne, Auckland or Toronto virtually in the same way it existed in Manchester, Birmingham or Sheffield (although perhaps not so much in Delhi or Mombasa). Malouf makes the point that, even though Australia was on the periphery of Empire geographically, we were much more a part of the inheritance than our location may suggest. In Australia particularly, we were treated generously by the British Government, and allowed very much to develop on our own lines: our connection to America influenced our coming together as a Federation, when we took the best of the U.S. system and Westminster to create our own government.

The Quarterly Essay series has its ups-and-downs as a literary and cultural journal, but when it produces something good, it's really good. Malouf's essay is good in a way all good essays should be: it makes you think.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie

 Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War by Robert K. Massie

New York: Random House, 1991                              ISBN 0394528336

This blockbuster of a book, which arrived with a splash in 1991, has left me strangely unsatisfied: there is no doubt that Robert Massie has written a highly readable, detailed, and interesting book about the maneuverings of both British and German politicians and royalty, and the construction of the British and German navies, from the later 1800s through to the declaration of war in 1914. The problem at the core of this book is that no matter how much the naval arms race between Britain and Germany affected relations between the two countries, in the end it had little to do with the outbreak of war per se. Therefore, what we have here are really two separate stories that do not meet, and a book with a misleading title.

That stated, this is still a book worth reading for a lively description of the personalities involved in both the naval and political worlds of the time, and of the differences in outlook of both Britain and Germany. Through these pages we see the development of England's strategy, from "Splendid Isolation", to the realization that preserving peace meant preventing German hegemony over the other great powers of Europe. German strategy was more confused, as it revolved to a much greater degree around the whims of one person, the Kaiser (who had a much greater role in foreign affairs than that bestowed on the British monarch). The tragedy for Germany was that Wilhelm II was by turns arrogant, blustering, indecisive, and prone to over-excitement. His desire for Germany to be a great power meant, in his eyes, competing with England, including on the high seas. This strategy was a fundamental mis-understanding of both British personality and strategy and was in the end fatal for both Wilhelm and Germany. In the same vein, British mis-understanding of the Germans and the Kaiser did not help defuse the situation.

Britain, through geography, history, and empire, was a sea-going nation. It's very survival in the Nineteenth Century relied on being able to ensure freedom of the seas for its marine activities. This need led to the "two power standard", whereby the Royal Navy wanted enough ships to defeat the combined might of the next two greatest sea powers combined. The naval development of Germany was based on two flawed doctrines - one, that to be a great power and be respected as such one needed a great fleet (not true: Germany was a great power owing to their military strength on land - they had no need of a navy to garner respect), and two, that the Royal Navy's strategy would be to blockade Germany (this was never a British intention, and would not have been possible in any case).

The British saw the development of the High Seas Fleet as solely aimed at themselves, and therefore as an existential threat to the survival of the British Empire. Once that thought became entrenched in the minds of the English Cabinet, they moved from being un-involved in European affairs, to developing an understanding (the Entente Cordiale) with France as a bulwark against German aggression. Prior to the existence of the German Fleet, Britain was not too bothered about war between Germany and France - after the fleet's growth, the thought of the Kaiser having control over France, and its fleet, could not be borne. Massie explains these tensions well, and also documents the points of friction that occurred between the great powers in Africa (Boer War, Fashoda, Tangier, Agadir), and the Balkans (Balkans War 1912).

In his vivid descriptions of statesmen, the reader is often struck by the irony that a great appreciation of the "other" was usually apparent. Thus many of the British, such as Haldane, had a great appreciation of German culture, and many of the Germans were Anglophiles. Even the Kaiser saw much to admire in Britain and her achievements (he was after all the grandson of Queen Victoria).

Massie, in 900 pages, gives us much detail of various policies and strategies on both sides, but fails to uncover any "smoking gun", or deep-seated antagonism that forespoke of the coming of War. In fact - as he points out - in early 1914 both England and Germany thought a more peaceful period was coming into being after the turmoil of the previous few years. Massie's description of the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is clear and concise and shows the duplicitous role played by Germany, as well as their complete inflexibility regarding their plans for war; a fatal, and dare I state foolish, mistake.

As a narrative history of the time, well fleshed-out with good character portraits and explication, I can recommend this book. As a ground-breaking piece of history, it doesn't add much to what already exists.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Sea of Dangers by Geoffrey Blainey

Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and his rivals by Geoffrey Blainey

Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2010         ISBN 9780143204893


The blurb in the front of this book points out that Geoffrey Blainey is "one of Australia's best-known historians." With over 30 books to his name, he has also been one of our most prolific. His academic career initially started in the field of Economic History, but he soon branched out into more general topics, with Mining being a particular interest, before in his late career writing some broad histories such as A Short History of the World, which sold very well.

Sea of Dangers is a return to the more specific, a history of Cook's "discovery" of Australia - mostly. The book is mainly about Cook's first voyage (1768-1761), but Blainey has intertwined the journey of Jean-Francois-Marie de Surville across the Pacific in the Saint Jean-Baptiste with Cook's story. Why has he done this? Because, although Cook was on a scientific mission and de Surville on a trade mission, they shared a similar goal - to find the "missing continent" "Davis Land", which was purported to exist in the South Pacific.

Although the two explorers never met, they were at one stage of their voyages within a few hours of each other, at the Northern tip of New Zealand, an absolutely extraordinary circumstance. Blainey notes that de Surville was also within a few hours of the Australian coast before he turned east to New Zealand: in fact he was so close that the crew could smell land.

So the question needs to be asked - why did de Surville spend so little time investigating new lands? The key is in the purpose of his voyage - to trade. Spurred on by the belief that Davis Land existed, and by stories emanating from the voyage of the Dolphin that Jewish traders from another land were seen at Tahiti, de Surville did not want to land on the coast of Australia, which others had written about as a barren land of no water, gold, or food, and with natives who were hostile and not interested in trade.

In fact de Surville's search for trade ended up severely hampering his voyage. With no incentive to stop for a long time at places he couldn't trade, his crew never had the chance to gather and eat enough fresh food to stave off scurvy and the other ills that beset a ship-bound crew in the Eighteenth Century. On several occasions he barely had enough fit men to crew the ship.

Nor was Cook's crew immune to the effects of scurvy. Despite what we think we know, on his first voyage Cook did not fully understand how to curtail the effects of this disease, and it was only his frequent soujourns ashore that saved much of his crew. In fact Blainey suggests that the holing of the Endeavour on the Great Barrier Reef was in some ways a blessing in disguise, as it enabled his crew enough time on shore eating fresh food to face the rest of the voyage.

Blainey, using the journals of Banks and Cook as prime sources, shows us a Cook that was methodical, usually averse to risk-taking, and willing to indulge his scientists as long as it fitted into his bigger plan. Blainey points out too that it was the scientific outcome of the voyage that was the highlight on the Endeavour's return - there was no real ballyhoo about the "discovery" of a new land. That was because of course Cook did not discover Australia, or New Zealand. What he did do though, and with a remarkable degree of accuracy, is map much of the coastline of both countries (While one could claim he "discovered" much of the East Coast of Australia, he knew it was there before he arrived, just not it's extent).

Blainey carefully describes the interaction of Cook and his crew, and de Surville and his, with the native inhabitants of the lands they entered. The mutual misunderstanding is well mapped out in the text, highlighting the effect that over 100 extra mouths to feed had on the locals. This quite often led to friction and occasionally conflict. Blainey notes the difference in attitude to the Europeans between the Maori and the Aboriginals, with the former keen to barter or to steal for European items, especially steel and iron, and the latter not interested at all.

Cook came home to praise and promotion, but what happened to de Surville? An altogether sorrier tale, after sailing the Pacific and not finding the hoped-for lost continent, de Surville sailed to South America, only to drown trying to enter Chilca Harbour. His crew were then kept captive by the Spanish for three years before getting home to France, with little to show for their time away. Unlike Cook, de Surville was not an assiduous chart-maker, so his voyage added little to the knowledge of the Pacific, and his name has faded into obscurity.

Cook also met his end in the Pacific, but by that time he was already famous, and has gone on to greater glory. While he never saw himself as the discoverer of Australia, it suited the English to paint him that way, thus obscuring his true genius as a map-maker and leader of men.

Sea of Dangers does not really break any new ground, and the premise that Cook and de Surville were rivals in any real sense of the word is false (a publisher's gambit perhaps?), but as a wonderfully readable account of Cook's first voyage, and an interesting one of de Surville's, this book is worth the effort.

 

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The English Revolution by G.M. Trevelyan

The English Revolution 1688-1689 by George Macaulay Trevelyan

London: Oxford University Press, 1938 (1965 printing)

Historians go in and out of fashion as much as periods of history. Manning Clark is barely mentioned and hardly read these days, and yet at the time of Australia's Bicentenary he was lionized by the country. There are so many others too - E.H. Carr, A.J.P. Taylor, and the author of the work under review here, G.M. Trevelyan. It would be interesting to read a "history of the historians" that looked at how fashion and the change in societal mores moves a historian from flavour of the month to the dusty end of the second-hand bookshop - where Trevelyan is now no doubt Schama and Ferguson will be tomorrow - each age must write its own histories, or so it seems.

Trevelyan wrote The English Revolution at a time when it was clear that European despotism was threatening England and he points out that 1688 had some similarities with his own time. The French were looking to aggressively destroy Protestantism in Europe, and with the ardently Roman Catholic James II on the throne of England, seemed to have garnered an ally in the cause.

However, James II chose incorrectly. Every time. He rode roughshod over Parliament, angering those Tories who were his natural supporters; he tried to ally himself with dissenters, who could see through his chicanery, knowing he only relaxed the right for them to worship to further his Catholic ambitions and so were not inclined to support him; and did not even gain the support of many English Catholics, who were concerned that by connecting themselves to him they might suffer at the hands of the rest of the population.

So it was that a hitherto unthought-of alliance of Tories and Whigs, High Church and Dissenters, rallied around William and Mary when they landed on English Shores, and James yet again made a wrong decision and flew off to France, never to return.

The Revolution meant different things to different participants and different places. In England itself, the Revolution forever affirmed the primacy of Parliament over the Monarchy, and allowed for some freedom of religious worship. It spawned the beginnings of parliamentary parties, of Ministers of the Crown, and of the British way of non-interference in people's personal lives.

This result did not attain, however, in Scotland or Ireland. In the former, the religious toleration south of the border was not replicated, and in the Highlands in particular the feeling that William was not a legitimate King led to the Jacobite revolts that occurred for the next 50 years. Ireland in theory should have fallen for James, but he mis-managed his allies there, and brutal repression of the populace followed.

Trevelyan has written a good, basic introduction to the Revolution in this book, with enough background for those needing to be filled in on the situation before 1688. His view was that the Revolution was a great moment in English history, which allowed the Empire to flourish and for England to defeat France and ensure that Europe's history moved toward democracy. This book was written as part of the "Home University Library", versions of which flourished during the first half of the Twentieth Century. While not being a replacement for a University Education, the noble intent of these volumes was to provide for those that couldn't attend University a way of becoming familiar with a topic to a level of some seriousness. Quite often the books were well-written, by knowledgeable men (they were mostly written by men) - from memory the book on Marx was written by Isiah Berlin, for example.

There are probably more up-to-date books one could read on this topic, but if you happen upon this volume in your travels, it is a useful introduction.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell