̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - British Empire

Britain's first colonial anthropology experiment revealed

ta385 — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

A new exhibition at MAA examines the pioneering ethnographic archive assembled by Britain’s first colonial anthropologist, Cambridge alumnus Northcote Thomas.

Pride and prejudice at high altitude

ta385 — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 09:30:00 +0000

Tensions between foreign climbers and Sherpas began over 200 years ago, a new study suggests

A glimpse of India

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:45:02 +0000

For most people, owning a mobile phone also means owning a video camera. There is no cost at all in sharing with others the scenes you film, thanks to YouTube and other such sites, so you can film nearly everything you do. In 1935, this was not the case. A cine film camera was expensive, film was not cheap and developing it was particularly pricey. You could not waste hours of expensive film waiting for your cat to do something funny, your baby to belch hilariously or some stranger’s dog to chase deer across a national park. People filming home movies had, therefore, to be more selective about what they filmed. There is as much difference between one of these films and most YouTube clips as there is between a letter written in 1935 and the majority of the emails you have sent recently.

As the archivist of the Centre of South Asian Studies’ Collection, I am effectively responsible for a set of home movies which, when analysed, bears great resemblance to the sort of documents historians, anthropologists and others working in the arts, humanities and social sciences have relied on for many years. Some, like newspapers, document significant events. In our own collections, for example, we have film of the funeral of Lord Brabourne (Gradwell 1), footage of the aftermath of the Quetta earthquake of 1935 (Berridge 4), a train derailed by pro-independence activists in c.1938 (Berridge 5) and two very harrowing films of the catastrophic results of the mass migrations that followed Partition in 1947 (Williams 1 and 2) as well as footage of refugees arriving in Lahore in the same period (Burtt 3 and 7). Others, a bit like official documents, show the working of the Empire, the ways in which the infrastructure of the Raj was built, such as the building of the railways (Berridge 1), or the vast canal systems of the North-West (Stokes 12 and 13).

Some of the films are similar in tone to the letters in our paper archive – made to be sent home so that people could show those back in the UK what their new life was like, such as the first few films of the Hunter Collection, which are actually filmed to look like a letter inviting viewers on a holiday to India and showing them what they will see when they arrive. And some show, often accidentally, the lives of Indian people (Banks 5), as well as the lives of the British who ran the Imperial system – the garden parties (Meiklejohn 8), hunting/horse-riding (Banks 2) social gatherings and sports, and also more personal, domestic scenes in which we are shown the homes and gardens of British India (Stokes 3).

̽��ֱ��Collection is perhaps most interesting, though, when the films reveal something unintended by the film-maker, enabling an insight into the situation in which the film was made or into the mindset of the person holding the camera. ̽��ֱ��writer of a letter, diary or government document is able to exercise absolute control of the narrative that is presented, but this is not always the case in a film, as those being filmed can act in ways that tell us more about the context in which the document was created.

Two examples jump out at me – one is a flippant example of what films can reveal, the other asks some interesting and important questions about social attitudes and about what a British woman is willing to have her audience see when viewing the films she made, or about what is acceptable in certain social settings. I shall leave these deeper questions without an answer, though – my role as an archivist is to prepare, preserve and present our collections, not to interpret them. There is, however, a growing branch of academic study which is using film collections such as ours as tools for visual anthropological study: the work of my colleague Dr Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes would be an excellent starting point for those who wish to read further on this subject, and a good deal of it is based on the films mentioned in this article.

̽��ֱ��two films come from the Kendall Collection and both are, somewhat unusually, made by a woman, Lady Kendall, who was the wife of a judge in Allahabad. Kendall 1 shows mainly domestic scenes: the garden being tended, a children’s party, people walking in the family garden. Towards the end there is footage of a wedding. These scenes are interspersed with footage of Indian agricultural workers operating an irrigation system. This juxtaposition is, in itself, interesting.

While it shows the lifestyle of an affluent member of British Indian society, however, it also reveals something quite simple. It is clear that this was the first film taken on a new camera. You can tell this not because of the quality of the footage, but because of the way the camera was used – the film-maker treats it like a still camera. She points it at an object or scene, captures the image and then turns it off. What this leaves is a dizzying collection of short clips, mostly lasting between one and two seconds. Even when longer scenes are filmed – the wedding at the end or the agricultural scenes, for example – these are taken in short episodes. In the whole 10 minutes of the film, there are very few times when the camera is turned on for longer than four or five seconds. It is very difficult to watch, and even harder to watch to the end without getting a headache.

It is entirely understandable, however. We are used to watching what we have filmed straight away, and if we are doing something wrong, we can correct it with our next recording. Lady Kendall had to wait until the film she was using was completely recorded and then take it to be developed. Given that she shot 10 minutes of film in sections of a few seconds at a time, it is likely that it took quite a while to fill the whole reel. After viewing it she corrects her use of the camera – if you watch the whole Collection, you will see that the shots in subsequent films gradually lengthen.

Kendall III is more complex, although it also has at its heart the problems associated with making the switch from taking photographs to shooting films. In this film, Lady Kendall shows a picnic in the hills. After showing a group of friends (and a larger group of bearers and other servants) making their way up to the picnic site, she tries to take what is essentially a photograph of the scene, composing it to suit what she wants the image to show. She does this, though, with the cine camera running.

This provides us with a very revealing moment – it starts 42 seconds into the film (just after footage of a tennis match and some shots of mountains), and only lasts a second. Standing behind the people, seated on their blankets and smiling and laughing through their sandwiches, is a servant in livery.

For some reason, Lady Kendall, who has been quite happy to show the servants involved in carrying the picnic things up the mountain, does not wish to have this servant in this shot, so she asks one of the party to stand and obscure him from the camera’s view. ̽��ֱ��servant initially sways slightly to his right to try and stay in the shot, but then steps across to his left, remaining firmly visible. ̽��ֱ��friend moves back across to block him again, clearly taking direction of where she should stand, at which point Lady Kendall stops filming.

This attempt to create a mise-en-scène clearly fails, but in doing so it opens up many questions and lines of enquiry. Why the servant wants to remain in the shot, where he is clearly not wanted, for example. It also suggests that there are some situations in which it is acceptable for servants to be shown in the film, and others where it is not. Why this might be is not immediately clear, but this does show that a film can helpfully shed light on social attitudes, conventions and mores in a way that a written account would not. A diary entry or letter about this picnic would have simply not mentioned the presence of the servant, obscuring him far more effectively than Lady Kendall’s friend is able to do in this short piece of footage.

Inset images: stills from the Kendall III film (Centre of South Asian Studies Archive).

This article was first published in CAM Issue 75 (2015).

Kevin Greenbank, archivist at the Centre of South Asian Studies, explores the ways in which the home movie offers fascinating insights into the lives of those in front of, and behind, the camera – as rare footage of a 1935 Raj picnic shows.

̽��ֱ��Collection is perhaps most interesting when the films reveal something unintended by the film-maker

Kevin Greenbank

A glimpse of India

Centre of South Asian Studies

Stills from the Kendall III film

̽��ֱ��Centre of South Asian Studies Archive

̽��ֱ��Centre of South Asian Studies’ film archive was largely collected by its remarkable first archivist, Mary Thatcher, who was commissioned in 1967 to begin a search for archival material that was otherwise in danger of being lost.

Her brief was to focus on ordinary British men and women who worked in India, either in the Civil Service or its associated governmental concerns, those who lived in the Princely States, or were in the private sector, or served as missionaries or teachers. ̽��ֱ��resulting trawl of families who had returned to Britain after Independence has resulted in an archive of international importance and renown.

̽��ֱ��Collection deals mostly with the British in India (Indian collections would generally be restored to Indian archives, rather than being kept out of the country) and includes papers, photographs and films, and an oral history collection.

The unique collection of amateur cine films comprises films mostly made in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Where the archive has a film, it also normally has accompanying papers and photographs, providing a rare level of documentation and analysis.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Package tour to Mecca? How the Hajj became an essential part of the British calendar

tdk25 — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 07:10:47 +0000

Modern customers are more likely to book seven nights in Tenerife or a last-minute deal in the Algarve, but back in the 19th century, Thomas Cook’s premier package tour was a pilgrimage to Mecca.

In the 1880s, Britain’s colonial Government in India found itself under fire. With more of its Muslim subjects than ever before travelling to the Arabian Holy City to perform the annual pilgrimage known as the Hajj, concern about the exploitation and insanitary conditions that the journey often involved had reached breaking point.

Facing media outrage, the British authorities decided to call in the professionals. Thomas Cook & Son, the original package holiday entrepreneurs, were approached – and promptly became the official travel agents for the Hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam.

̽��ֱ��story is one of many captured in a new study of Britain’s relationship with the Hajj during the age of Empire, written by Dr John Slight, from the Faculty of History and a Research Fellow at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Contrary to its remote, even exotic image, he argues that the pilgrimage, which millions of Muslims are undertaking from September 20 – 25 this year, was a matter of major British concern. Leading historical figures, and the general public, became fascinated by the ritual, as the business of running a vast Empire impelled Britain to behave as if it was a Muslim power in its own right.

̽��ֱ��book reveals that Queen Victoria, King George V, Lord Kitchener, Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill all took an active interest in the Hajj, debated its management, and pencilled it into their calendars. ̽��ֱ��pilgrimage even made its way into a Sherlock Holmes adventure, a Joseph Conrad novel, and inspired Britons across the Empire to convert to Islam.

Britain’s relationship with the Hajj is a topic that has not been fully studied by historians before. Slight’s research covered a period from 1865, when a cholera outbreak forced Britain to manage the Hajj more pro-actively, to 1956, when the Suez Crisis significantly reduced its capacity to do so.

For most of that time, Britain ruled over approximately half of the world’s Muslims, across an area that stretched from West Africa to Southeast Asia. In global terms, the Empire’s first religion was Islam, and the Empire contained more Muslims than any other religious group.

As a result, the Hajj – a mandatory religious act that must be carried out at least once in the lifetimes of all adult Muslims capable of doing so – became a British question. Churchill himself observed in a 1920 memo to the British Cabinet: “We are the greatest Mohammedan power in the world. It is our duty to study policies which are in harmony with Mohammedan feeling.”

Slight’s research reveals that Britain’s stewardship of the Hajj started with controls to prevent disease, but soon expanded into a full-blown bureaucracy. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the British authorities were increasingly obliged to manage the pilgrimage so as to be seen as a friend and protector of Islam.

“It was one of the most significant unintended consequences of Britain’s rule over a large part of the Islamic world,” Slight said. “Britain ended up facilitating the pilgrimage in an ultimately futile attempt to gain legitimacy among its Muslim subjects. Inadvertently, it ended up acting like a Muslim power.”

Slight found that a preoccupation with the Hajj went right to the top of the British State. Queen Victoria took a personal interest, for instance, after meeting some South African pilgrims. In 1898 she exhorted the British ambassador in Istanbul to urge the Ottoman Sultan, who controlled Mecca, to address the ill-treatment of British Muslim subjects who were performing their sacred duty.

Later, amid war with the Ottomans in 1915, Lord Kitchener stressed to the British War Committee the need to secure the “Mahommedan Holy Places” and with them British prestige in the eyes of its Muslim subjects. King George V also devised a scheme to arrange for Indian Muslim soldiers to perform Hajj on their way home after the First World War, intended to be a PR triumph, but the scheme had mixed results when the participants got into fights with the local Bedouins.

Thomas Cook was called in by the Government in 1886, after a scandal surrounding the near-sinking of a pilgrim ship that made the front page of ̽��ֱ��Times. ̽��ֱ��firm was given a contract to arrange tickets, train journeys, ships and other logistics enabling Muslims living in India, as subjects of the British Crown, to perform Hajj.

By 1893, however, the firm had made such a loss that it chose to pull out. “Some government officials said I am powerless to make any improvement,” John Mason Cook, Thomas’ son, remarked. “I reminded them that government officials have been to a great extent powerless in relation to that pilgrimage.”

His comments reflect one of Slight’s major findings, which concerns the little-studied, hundreds of thousands of destitute, “pauper” pilgrims, who made Hajj. Barely able to go in the first place, many of these people ran out of money by the time they reached Mecca and were stranded at the nearby port of Jeddah. Repatriating them proved an ongoing problem for the Empire and, Slight says, illustrates the limits of its power.

By the First World War, Britain was essentially underwriting the cost of taking these pilgrims home, at great expense. A system of IOU forms was attempted, but reclaiming the outlay frequently proved a forlorn hope. Slight’s search through the archives revealed that many illiterate pilgrims signed with thumb prints, others gave false names, or even fabricated the name of the village where they lived. ̽��ֱ��IOUs were rarely repaid.

̽��ֱ��plight of poor pilgrims also hastened efforts to employ more Muslims, capable of handling their needs, in the Hajj bureaucracy. By 1887, Bombay had its own Pilgrim Department, staffed by Muslims, and run by a Muslim “protector of pilgrims”. By the 1930s, the British consulate at Jeddah was so reliant on Muslim staff that the consul remarked that he never saw much of the pilgrimage at all.

“We have the idea that the British Empire was run through some sort of top-down imposition of power, but in fact it was a very haphazard enterprise,” Slight said. “Instead of an image of British officials in their pith helmets dispensing justice to colonial subjects, this is a story where the main actors on both sides were Muslims, who to some extent shaped Imperial policy.”

One effect of Britain’s role as a “Muslim power” was that other Britons were inspired to perform Hajj or convert to Islam. ̽��ֱ��most famous was the Victorian explorer, Richard Burton, who travelled to Mecca, which was out-of-bounds to non-Muslims, disguised as an Afghan physician. Arthur Hamilton, also known as “Hajji Hamilton”, was director of the Political Intelligence Bureau in British Malaya and who went in 1927, is one of several eminent converts also recorded in the book.

Additional images: A Mecca pilgrimage ticket published by Thomas Cook & Son in 1886 / Title page from a Mecca pilgrimage booklet published by the company. Both images reproduced by permission of the Thomas Cook Archive.

Following the events in Mecca on Thursday 24th September, Dr John Slight discussed the complexity of managing the mass ritual in an article for the Independent. You can read the article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/hajj-stampede-managing-this-...

This week, millions of Muslims make the annual pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj. A new study reveals how, in the age of Empire, the spiritual journey became a major feature of British imperial culture, attracting the interest of Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and others – and resulting in one of the earliest Thomas Cook package tours.

Britain ended up facilitating the pilgrimage in an ultimately futile attempt to gain legitimacy among its Muslim subjects. Inadvertently, it ended up acting like a Muslim power.

John Slight

Wikimedia Commons

Pilgrims at the Masjid al-Haram on Hajj in 2008

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Price of Britain’s Slave Trade revealed

tdk25 — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 05:00:56 +0000

Letters discussing the value and sale of slaves in the 18th century, which provide a distressing reminder of the powerful business interests that sustained one of the darkest chapters in British history, are to be made available to researchers and the public by St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��collection contains the business exchanges of an 18th century English landowner, William Philip Perrin, who ran a sugar plantation near Kingston, Jamaica. In it, Perrin and his correspondents discussed in callously practical terms the human cargo that was being shipped to the West Indies at the height of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a time when the equivalent of millions of pounds were changing hands as slaves were bought and sold.

̽��ֱ��papers have been acquired by St John’s College, which was the undergraduate College of leading anti-slavery campaigners William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, whose combined efforts helped to bring about the Abolition Bill of 1807. While the College already holds a wide-ranging collection of material dealing with the anti-slavery movement, these documents tell the other, rarely-discussed side of the story, by providing an insight into the wealth and influence that lay behind the pro-slavery lobby.

One list, dating from 1797, contemporary with Clarkson’s own evidence-gathering campaign against slavery, details the names, ages and prices of slaves to be bought for Perrin’s plantation. ̽��ֱ��note, described as “a list of Mr John Broomfield’s negroes, with their age and valuation”, catalogues 35 men and 19 women, as well as children as young as 14, who had been valued for sale as slaves.

Entries such as “Dick, 25, able field negro, £140” and “Castile, 45, cook and washerwoman, £60” provide a stark and shocking reminder of the high financial stakes that Clarkson and his contemporaries struggled to overthrow. ̽��ֱ��total valuation for 54 male and female slaves came to £5,100, a sum equal to around £500,000 today.

̽��ֱ��collection is being added to an extensive range of material, already held by the College Library, dealing with the political and social conflicts faced by the anti-slavery campaigners in the fight for Abolition. This is made available both to researchers studying the period, and also used as part of educational activities with schools, enabling students to examine primary sources and discover the historic significance of the Abolitionist movement.

Kathryn McKee, Special Collections Librarian at the College, who acquired the papers, which were previously held in Derby County Records Office, said: “These documents provide first-hand evidence of the sale of slaves to British plantation owners. Though appalling to modern eyes, for those involved these were matter-of-fact business transactions: a routine part of the 18th century economy in which business magnates made substantial profits from commodities produced by slave labour and their customers benefited from cheap goods. In opposing the traffic in human cargo, Clarkson, Wilberforce and the Abolitionists were challenging powerful vested interests.”

̽��ֱ��papers date from between 1772 and 1797, at the time when the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Britain and America was at its peak, and deal with the day-to-day running of Perrin’s plantation in Jamaica. Among letters and bills of sale specifying property disputes, shipping preparations and customs duties, are chilling details revealing the ubiquity and commercialisation of slavery and the vast industry it supported.

A letter from 1796 states that one of Perrin’s estate managers had been “on the lookout for a gang of up to 60 able-bodied Negroes” to purchase on Perrin’s behalf to work on developing his Grange Hill estate. Another discusses how buying cheap slaves to work the land for sugar cane would “relieve the estate from the expense of buying cattle”, and allow for more sugar to be sold for rum, which brought in a profit of £4,500 a year, equal to around £400,000 today. A later note assures the reader that the slaves are “happy and contented with their situation”.

Kathryn said: “What these letters reveal, apart from a total lack of empathy for their human commodities is the sheer amount of money involved. Many anti-slavery campaigns were grassroots efforts by ordinary people, while the pro-slavery lobby had significant wealth and influence they could use to exert pressure on Parliament.”

Dr Richard Benjamin, Head of the International Slavery Museum, said:

“These papers are a rich resource which will rightly now be made available to the wider public. Something that should be done for all such papers wherever they may reside.

“ ̽��ֱ��Perrin papers add another layer of information to the narrative of the transatlantic slave trade, which can be both disturbing and distressing, especially when humans are so calmly and callously treated as cargo. While adding to our understanding of the mechanics of the transatlantic slave trade, they also highlight uncomfortable truths - that greed, power and a misguided sense of superiority made up its dark heart.

“However, here lies the dilemma. Regardless of the unassailable fact that millions of African men, women and children were enslaved and treated as commodities so that individuals like Perrin became wealthy and many countries became powerful, we should never see them solely through those spectrums. Such documents are portals into the lives and struggles of fathers, mothers, sons, sisters, merchants, scholars and every possible profession that makes up any society.

“We should also see these papers as part of a larger body of historical documentation that sheds light on the resistance to that dark heart by abolitionists such as Clarkson and Wilberforce, sons of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, and probably more importantly by Africans themselves, from Olaudah Equiano to the Maroons of Jamaica, from Cuffy in Berbice to daily acts of defiance by the enslaved across the Americas and Caribbean”.

̽��ֱ��anti-slavery campaigners faced vicious and well-funded opposition both in Parliament and on the streets. On one trip in 1787 to Liverpool, which along with Bristol was one of the major hubs of the slave trade in England, an attempt was made to drown Clarkson in the docks for asking too many questions.

Despite this hostility, and after a 20 year struggle, the Abolitionists finally achieved victory on 25 March 1807, with the passing of a Bill to abolish the slave trade, making the sale and purchase of slaves illegal in Britain. Clarkson, reflecting on this momentous event, wrote in 1808:

“Thus ended a contest, not of brutal violence, but of reason. A contest between those who felt deeply for the happiness and the honour of their fellow-creatures, and those who, through vicious custom and the impulse of avarice, had trampled underfoot the sacred rights of their nature”.

̽��ֱ��papers are available to view for research at St John’s College Library by appointment. For more information, contact library@joh.cam.ac.uk.

Additional images: "Am I Not A Man And A Brother", a popular anti-slavery image that appeared on posters and was later turned into a brooch by Josiah Wedgwood as part of the Abolitionist campaign; Poster illustrating plan of a typical slave ship used to support the campaign to abolish slavery. All images reproduced by permission of St John's College, Cambridge.

Letters and papers revealing in detail how human beings were priced for sale during the 18th century Transatlantic Slave Trade have been made available to researchers and the public.

What these letters reveal, apart from a total lack of empathy for their human commodities, is the sheer amount of money involved. Many anti-slavery campaigns were grassroots efforts by ordinary people, while the pro-slavery lobby had significant wealth and influence which they could use to exert pressure on Parliament.

Kathryn McKee

Permission of St John’s College, Cambridge

Detail from a list of the names, ages and prices of slaves bought by British plantation owner William Philip Perrin from John Broomfield in 1796.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Stability, unity and nonchalance: What does it mean to be English?

tdk25 — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:47 +0000

It may seem difficult to believe amid continual current debates over immigration, but an aversion to patriotic flag-waving and a relative tolerance of other cultures are both key components of English identity, according to a new history of England, published today.

̽��ֱ��conclusions are just two of those reached in ̽��ֱ��English and Their History, a sweeping survey of the last 13 centuries by the historian Professor Robert Tombs which, by examining the development of the nation and Englishness since Anglo-Saxon times, attempts to answer the enduring and complex question of what it means to be English.

Part of that answer, he suggests, is to be found in a healthy “nonchalance” about national identity that has made the English – while by no means saints – resistant to racism and broadly tolerant of other cultures.

This is, however, only one small piece of the extensive verdict that Tombs, who teaches and researches modern European History at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, reaches in the conclusion of a study that has been six years in the making.

Elsewhere, he perhaps surprisingly argues that the widespread view that England is in a state of post-Imperial political and economic decline is a myth. ̽��ֱ��book also suggests that political isolationism from larger structures – whether the Empire or Europe – has rarely been a part of English history or nature, and identifies a fascinating history of political polarisation on sectarian lines that has, in the modern age, evolved into the split between “Ambridge and Coronation Street”.

̽��ֱ��book, published on Thursday, November 6 by Allen Lane, is the first single-volume history of England to be produced on this scale since the 1930s. Starting in the Anglo-Saxon era and ending in 2014, it aims in part to explore, through the English people’s developing understanding of themselves, what their history means at a time when ties within the United Kingdom appear to be loosening.

“It tries to reflect on how we have understood history, what the past means to us today, and what it might mean to us in the future,” Tombs said. “It is an attempt to say, ‘this is the sort of country we are, and this is what our history has made us’. It’s up to the reader to decide how to use that and whether or not they agree.”

While the multicultural character of English history has been well-documented, Tombs argues that a tolerance of other peoples and, historically, of immigration, has become a component of the country’s national identity.

Central to his argument is the fact that England has, for very little of its history, stood alone. Most of the time it has been the core nation in a multinational state, or at one stage in the Empire. Only between King Alfred and King Cnut, and then during the Tudor period (along with Wales), did England operate as an isolated political entity.

Because of this, the book suggests that English identity tends not to be expressed in terms of ethnic purity or cultural distinctiveness, and it has typically made little political sense for England to “beat the nationalist drum”. Instead, Tombs argues that England has historically propagated its values through interaction with others – spreading Christianity in Medieval times, as a force for European civilisation and free trade more recently, and as an Empire. ̽��ֱ��result, he says, is that Englishness is not founded on ideas of opposition and exclusion, but on inclusion and expansion.

One effect of this is a general “nonchalance” about national identity. “We don’t normally go in for a lot of flag-waving, we find that fairly un-English,” Tombs said. “That nonchalance has made us pretty resistant to racism. That is not to deny that racism has played a part in English history, but it has not been a defining character of our history. And thanks to our memory of resistance to Hitler in the Second World War there is no nostalgia for Fascism in England as we are now seeing in several other countries.”

While some agonise over the lack of a clear patriotic identity or devotion to the national flag, Tombs argues that “there is something to be said for national nonchalance”.

“In recent decades, the English have largely accommodated the shifts brought by changing moralities and multi-ethnicity, incorporating them into new varieties of Englishness,” he writes. “Who could be more English today than Rita Ora and Dizzee Rascal, Jessica Ennis and Rio Ferdinand?”

Another eye-catching argument within Tombs’ extensive survey is that “declinism” – the suggestion that England and Britain as a whole have lost economic and political standing on the world stage since the end of Empire – is a myth.

Key to this is one of the book’s central propositions – that the history of England shows the nation to have been relatively rich, secure and orderly for most of its history. Notwithstanding periods of upheaval, such as the Wars of the Roses, Peasants’ Revolt or even the Civil War (a small-scale affair compared with the prolonged and bloody experiences going on in France and Germany at the same time, Tombs says), Britain has been relatively immune to transformative catastrophes such as invasion, war and revolution.

̽��ֱ��result is the survival of ancient buildings, cultural treasures, and national institutions such as the Crown, Parliament, shires, boroughs, the Church, universities, schools, charitable foundations, voluntary associations and more. This is reinforced by long-term cultural consistencies, in particular the use of English itself as a mainstream spoken and written language dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. “ ̽��ֱ��nation changes, but it has certain structures that continue,” Tombs argues. “England has an ancient structural unity in a way that in Italy, Germany or France do not.”

Taking the same long view reveals that Britain’s power, wealth and global status has been remarkably stable, even though all are typically seen to have failed following the end of the Empire, and decolonisation. When Britain emerged as a significant force in the early 18th century, it was the smallest, and yet the most global, of the world’s half dozen most powerful states. Three centuries later it remains so, outdistanced – like all other states - only by the USA.

Other measures also raise questions about the “declinist” view that British international power has fallen, and its political and social organisation have failed. Britain in the mid-20th century was, for instance, stronger militarily than in the mid-19th, the study observes. In the 1960s it was richer than ever; by 2008 England was second only to the USA among large countries in gross per capita income.

̽��ֱ��book is also critical of the highly centralised nature of Britain’s administration which, it points out, is a relatively recently development – “a seventy year habit that we cannot, or will not, break,” Tombs says. He argues that it leaves British governments having to handle “a neverending conveyor belt of everyday problems”, relating to transport, education, and health, for example, which other countries deliver through local government.

In a complex way this clashes with a long-standing division in the nation’s politics that, unusually, was brought about by the legal recognition given to two religious cultures in England following the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. Unlike other countries, where a single religious denomination tends to have been dominant, England has since the 17th century held Anglicanism on the one hand, and Nonconformism on the other, in tension.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that this unusual situation, of rival religious parties, then evolved new layers. Whig, Liberal and Labour politics were built on foundations of religious Dissent, then took on social and geographical characteristics as the country became divided between the working-class north and wealthier south.

One result of this religious point of origin, Tombs says, is that English politics has a distinctly moral and ideological tone. As a result, the commonplace details handled by a heavily-centralised Government have become the subjects of heated ideological debate – health and education are now disputed in the same terms as slavery or suffrage were in centuries past, when in most other countries they arouse far less emotion.

̽��ֱ��over-arching message of the book is, however, a positive one, suggesting that structural and cultural unity are at the heart of what it means to be English. “We should be fairly optimistic about the future of England, as part of the UK and as a country that will want to reassess itself and will probably gain more autonomy in the coming years,” Tombs added. “ ̽��ֱ��history of England shows that we have, in the long term, been very stable. We are not a nation in decline – and we never really have been.”

̽��ֱ��English and Their History, by Professor Robert Tombs, is published by Allen Lane and is priced at £35.

Inset image: Coronation Street by Allan Lee; Robert Tombs

An epic new history of England offers some eye-catching conclusions on Englishness – suggesting, among other things, that a “remarkable” level of cultural unity and a relative openness to other cultures are both key components of English national identity.

̽��ֱ��history of England shows that we have, in the long term, been very stable. We are not a nation in decline – and we never really have been.

Robert Tombs

Delaware Art Museum / Bridgeman Images.

Detail from the cover image of “ ̽��ֱ��English and Their History”.

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Yes

How the Westminster parliamentary system was exported around the world

sj387 — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Empires, even the greatest of them, wax and wane. As recently as the early 1920s, the British Empire covered an area that is almost inconceivable today. ̽��ֱ��inhabitants of its dominions, colonies and territories accounted for a fifth of the world’s population and its huge geographical spread was summed up by the chilling description ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’.

However, just as the British Empire reached its peak, it was also crumbling as its composite parts pushed against their subordinate status. From the 1940s onwards, a growing number of countries which had been under British rule for as many as 200 years, embarked on the journey that led to their independence as members of the New Commonwealth – an affiliation to the British monarchy that for some nation states proved short-lived and for others more enduring.

As Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies for 2013-2014, the political historian Dr Harshan Kumarasingham is exploring the extraordinary role that Sir Ivor Jennings played at a pivotal period for newly-independent states across the world as they emerged from British rule. For many, it was an era of huge upheaval as, ill-prepared to deal with the task of state-building, they struggled to govern according to a foreign system often imposed with scant regard for regional and ethnic tensions.

Jennings was a key figure in the process that saw the decolonisation of dozens of countries that made up the British Empire in the mid-20^th century. Born in Bristol in 1903, he was educated at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, and towards the end of his career returned to the ̽��ֱ�� to hold a number of prestigious posts.

In his late 30s Jennings became the first vice chancellor of the newly-formed ̽��ֱ�� of Ceylon in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and from 1942, right up until his death in 1965, acted as a specialist constitutional advisor to governments of developed and developing nations all over the world.

Jennings’s career as a constitutional advisor had unique scope and breadth. It is possible that his relatively modest background and grammar school education, which would have been a barrier to entering the legal establishment in Britain, was a factor in his decision to look overseas to forge his career. Having made his name in Colombo, he worked with indigenous leaders to draw up the constitutions of countries as diverse in culture and geography as Canada and Ethiopia, Japan and Nepal, New Zealand and Malta. His legacy continues in some shape or form in the many parts of the world where elements of the Westminster-style constitutions he introduced live on.

“ ̽��ֱ��model Jennings favoured was the Westminster parliamentary system with its historic connection to the Crown and convention. ̽��ֱ��leaders with whom he collaborated to establish their own versions of Westminster represented the powerful elite of their countries and the systems they devised often didn’t take account of local and ethnic differences – such as regional languages and variations in ethnicity and education – which meant that certain groups were excluded from processes of self-government,” said Dr Kumarasingham.

“On the basis of his grasp of constitutional law, Jennings was hired by many countries all over the world to provide advice on the making of their constitutions – he wasn’t in the employ of the British government although his affiliations and loyalties certainly favoured the British and their system. Essentially he operated in the way that a lawyer’s brief would work – he was efficient and focused and did the job he was paid to do. He didn’t see it as his role to deviate from the wishes of his clients.”

Dr Kumarasingham, who took up the Smuts Fellowship in October, is a New Zealander whose work to date has focused on the Westminster system and how it was exported across the world. He will be carrying out research in archives across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and at the Public Records Office in London to develop a fuller and clearer picture of a process that affected millions of people in countries that had been colonised by the British. “Cambridge has remarkable resources for these papers including those of leading British Cabinet ministers,” he said.

“In the UK today, Jennings is remembered for his contribution to British Constitutional Law and Cabinet Government as these were the areas he wrote prolifically on while he in Britain. In the wider world he is known for his work in constitution-making abroad and I hope that my research at Cambridge will bring these two aspects of his career together. I will be editing a book of his selected writings on constitution making, which be published by the Royal Historical Society and CUP.”

When Jennings returned to Britain in 1955, he became Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He later served a term as Vice-Chancellor at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, at a time when the position rotated among the heads of the Colleges.

Jennings and his influence on overseas constitutions is just one strand of Dr Kumarasingham’s research, which looks more broadly at British decolonisation and state-building. Dr Kumarasingham, who is hosted by Professor Sir Christopher Bayly, Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial History Emeritus at the Centre for South Asian Studies, will also be looking at constitutional crises in the post-war Commonwealth and the influence of monarchy on democracy in South Asia.

Inset image: Sir Ivor Jennings (centre front row) as Master of Trinity Hall in 1958, Trinity Hall Archives

As an expert in constitutional law, Sir Ivor Jennings played a pivotal role in the establishment of states emerging from British rule in the mid-20th century. He later became Master of Trinity Hall. As Smuts Visiting Fellow, Dr Harshan Kumarasingham is researching how Jennings and other British figures shaped the lives of millions of people around the world.

̽��ֱ��model Jennings favoured was the Westminster parliamentary system with its historic connection to the Crown and convention

Dr Kumarasingham

Centre of South Asian Studies, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Indian Parliament building (designed by British architect Edwin Lutyens) in 1944

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Yes

PsyWar during the Malayan Emergency

tdk25 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:34:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960 is widely regarded as having involved the most successful British counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign in history. Similarly, it also included one of the most successful British psychological warfare operations ever undertaken. This important aspect of the COIN campaign, however, has only been examined in a handful of studies – something which remains true more broadly of British psychological warfare efforts throughout the period of imperial decolonisation and the Cold War.

In this seminar paper (originally given on Friday, 22 February, 2013), Thomas J. Maguire provides an insight into how psychological warfare played an increasingly important part in the largest British counter-insurgency operation of the decolonisation era.

Psychological warfare was conceived as a potential “force multiplier” which would reinforce other counter-insurgency strategies and tactics employed against the communist Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). It targeted the insurgents’ morale and sought to induce surrenders and defections, while creating dissent, division and instability in their ranks. It was, therefore, intended to both remove insurgents from the battlefield and hasten a greater supply of intelligence.

Maguire explains how, after a relatively ineffective start, the Federation Government psychological warfare strategy became more systematic and refined from about 1950 onwards, eventually playing an important part in the insurgents’ defeat. ̽��ֱ��talk shows how ‘psychological intelligence’ was collected, analysed and disseminated – in particular through the careful interrogation of surrendering enemy personnel. Using this intelligence, the Government information services constructed a number of influential propaganda themes and utilised a variety of techniques to disseminate finished productions, most notably by dropping over 400 million leaflets over the jungle during the course of the conflict.

̽��ֱ��paper also highlights the broader political and cultural context in which psychological operations took place, showing how they influenced British strategy and contributed to the Emergency’s outcome.

̽��ֱ��seminar is part of the regular Cambridge Intelligence Seminar organised through the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. It is chaired by Prof. Christopher Andrew (Corpus Christi), an expert in the international relations sub-field of intelligence and security studies. Prof. Andrew’s extensive list of publications include the recent and much-vaunted ̽��ֱ��Defence of the Realm: the Authorized History of MI5 (2009).

Thomas J. Maguire (Gonville & Caius) is a PhD candidate in POLIS. This paper forms part of a chapter on interrogation and psychological warfare in the forthcoming publication, Simona Tobia & Christopher Andrew (eds), Interrogation in War and Conflict. ̽��ֱ��principal focus of his research is British and American psychological warfare and counter-subversion in early Cold War Southeast Asia. His broader research interests lie within the fields of intelligence and security studies, psychological warfare, and the Cold War.

As part of the Intelligence seminars run by the Faculty of History, Thomas J. Maguire examines how psychological warfare contributed to Britain's counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya from 1948 to 1960.

Intelligence on kills would be supplied for follow-up operations publicising insurgent losses

Thomas Maguire

Credit: UK Department of Information.

Leaflet dropped on Malayan insurgents, urging them to come forward with a Bren gun and receive a $1,000 reward.

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Yes