̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - borders

̽��ֱ��Channel: a historian’s view of an iconic stretch of water

amb206 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 07:00:00 +0000

An image of a rowing boat takes pride of place in the ornamental stonework above the doorway of 10 Halsmere Road in south London. ̽��ֱ��house was built in the 1930s as a home for district nurses serving a deprived area of Lambeth. Aboard the boat several figures hunker down as they pull their oars through a choppy sea. Above their heads, a sturdy oak tree symbolises their destination: England. Today the motif of a perilous sea journey is once again particularly poignant.

̽��ֱ��bas relief in Halsmere Road tells the story of the Minet family who, in the late 17th century, escaped religious persecution in France to seek sanctuary in Britain. ̽��ֱ��fortunes of this family, who over the course of 200 years prospered to become property-owners and benefactors, are recounted in riveting detail by Renaud Morieux in ̽��ֱ��Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century, published tomorrow by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press.

̽��ֱ��first book to look at the history of the narrow seas which connect Britain and the Continent, ̽��ֱ��Channel examines the enduring symbolism, and permeability, of one of the world’s most iconic borders. Morieux was born and raised in France and now teaches British history at Cambridge. He is ideally qualified to explore the narratives of the stretch of water that separates and joins Britain and France.

̽��ֱ��focus of Morieux’s research is on maritime rather than naval history and his book looks at the experiences of the communities who made their living on or beside the sea during the extended 18th century. In the telling of these stories, some local, some national, he raises some of the bigger political and philosophical questions about identity, sovereignty and border-control.

̽��ֱ��Channel, a strait only 21 miles at its narrowest, has for centuries been perceived as a divider – a body of water that gives Britain its unique, and much trumpeted, identity as an island. “La nature a placé l’Angleterre et la France dans une situation respective, qui doit nécessairement établir entres elles une éternelle rivalité,”declared the propagandist Jean-Louis Dubroca in 1802. His assertion translates as: “Nature has placed England and France in a geographical location which must necessarily set up an eternal rivalry between them.”

Generations of British historians plugged a similar line (among them John Seeley and George Macaulay Trevelyan, both Regius Professors of History at Cambridge) to represent Britain as a thrusting sea-faring nation, shaped by its rocky shores. ̽��ֱ��almost sacrosanct idea of borders connects with the notion that geography creates natural divisions. Almost three centuries ago, the geographer Jean-Nicholas Buache de La Neuville wrote: “Nature herself had parcelled out the globe since its beginning; she had divided up its surface unto an infinite number of parts and had separated them from each other by barriers that neither time nor human intervention can ever destroy.”

But Morieux’s thesis is that the narrow Channel joined as well as divided – and acts as a zone for contact as well as conflict. As a body of water, it creates opportunities for trade and transport, informal and cultural exchanges. Britain and France were famously at war for much of the ‘long’ 18th century, between the Nine Years’ War of 1689-1697, which set William of Orange’s England and his European allies against Louis XIV’s France and the wars of the French Revolution, which ended with Waterloo in 1815.

But even in times of war, for the maritime and coastal communities of Britain and France, business continued much as usual. Fishermen harvested the ocean’s resources, sold their wares in ‘enemy’ ports and even joined forces to lobby national governments. Postal services were maintained as a result of ‘postal truces’ which safeguarded the passage of packet boats.

Smugglers flourished with the complicit support both from undercover agents and corrupt officials. In 1774 the number of smugglers (a term that became smogleur in French) operating out of the French port of Dunkirk was estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500. ̽��ֱ��goods that flowed illicitly from France to Britain, avoiding import duties, included Dutch gin, French tea from China and India, coffee from Saint-Domingue and textiles from Rouen and Lyon. These items arrived at the innumerable small coves and inlets of Kent and Sussex. ̽��ֱ��pickings were rich and the networks that made them possible were truly transnational.

Britain’s jagged shape and the existence of its surrounding seas are the result of massive geological and climatic changes over vast spans of time. That this island was, until 9,000 years ago, connected to mainland Europe by a chalk bridge represented a profound challenge to the notion of divine and impregnable isolation. In a chapter titled ‘ ̽��ֱ��impossibility of an island’, a pun on Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel ̽��ֱ��Possibility of an Island, Morieux traces successive shifts in public discourse, both sides of the Channel, about the very formation of Britain as a physical entity encircled by protecting water – “this scepter'd isle” and “precious stone set in the silver sea” immortalised by Shakespeare in Richard II.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, debates about the origins of the people of the British Isles became increasingly conflicted. Commentators wrestled with Biblical teachings about creation and the growing evidence for what later become known as evolutionary theory. As early as 1677 Matthew Hale wrote: “We have reason to believe that we of this island [Britain] are not aborigines, but came hither by migrations, colonies, or plantations from other parts of the world.” Earlier still, Andre Du Chesne (1584-1640) doubted “that in the first age of the world men were drawn out of the earth, like pumpkins or mushrooms that are born of moisture in woods and forests”.

Maps are attempts to define the outlines of land and sea – and identify who owns what. Names, especially the naming of geographical features at points where national borders meet, are loaded with meaning and fraught with potential conflict. In the 1607 edition of William Camden’s Britannia, a section was devoted to the ‘British Ocean’: “This sea which is generally called MARE BRITANNICUM, and OCEANUS CALEDONIUS, … hath sundry and distinct names. Eastward… they call it the German sea.. But Southward where it inter-floweth France & Britain, it is properly called the BRITISH sea, & by the common mariners, ̽��ֱ��Chanel: by the English sailers, THE SLEEVE, and in the same sense, Le Manche in French, because it grow narrow in maner of a sleeve.”

In the 18th century, new names emerged for the Channel. ̽��ֱ��French monarchy aligned France’s territorial boundaries with the French shore – hence ‘La Manche’ in French, a neutral place-name –while the British viewed the Channel as an integral part of their territory. Seen from its northern shores, the Channel was ‘English’ or ‘British’.

Sharing the rich resources of the sea, and regulating fishing and other harvests, remained a matter of constant debate. Where did one state’s territorial waters begin and end? Was it possible to own parts of the sea and its wealth, or was the sea a common resource, belonging to all? Fisherman did not have the same relationship to, and imagination of, the coast as a cartographer, whose own conceptions differed from those of the customs officer.

In a discussion of fish stocks, an anonymous 18^th-century author made a distinction between ‘sedentary’ fish such as shellfish and river fish (which he deemed as needing urgent protection from over-exploitation) and ‘travelling’ fish such as herring and mackerel (which needed no such protection). He noted that: “All the maritime nations of Europe regard the fruit of this fishing as one of the most advantageous products of their industry, and the men employed therein as the base and foundation of their strength and power.”

In ̽��ֱ��Channel, Morieux paints a portrait of a sea alive with activity and peopled by communities who were intimately connected as ‘transnationals’ benefitting from networks that operated regardless of national boundaries. For the Minet family, who as Huguenots (Protestants) were forbidden to practise their religion in Roman Catholic France, this narrow stretch of water offered an escape route. Isaac Minet, who was born in Calais in September 1660 and died in Dover in April 1745, recorded personal and family details in his accounts book. His recollections included the family’s undercover crossing from France to the safety of Protestant England, a trip that meant evading a posse of French customs’ officials.

Isaac Minet had well-established contacts in Dover, and within a single generation he and his family became integrated into civic society. He was naturalised English in 1705 and was elected ‘jurrat’ of the town corporation in 1731. Isaac’s grandson Hugues became mayor of the city in 1765. In 1770 Hugues Minet, having prospered as a businessman and owner of packets (boats), purchased land in Lambeth. Until these lands were sold to the City of London in 1968, his descendants continued to play a capital role in the development of the area. Among local institutions to bear the Minet name was ̽��ֱ��Mary Minet District Nurses Home in Halsmere Road.

Historic British conceptions of the maritime border continue to play out in current debates about migration control. ̽��ֱ��presence of British police and customs officers in Calais to monitor the crossing of the Channel reminds us of a period when the British monarchy claimed its sovereignty over the ‘narrow sea’. But human trajectories defy rules imposed by the state. In 2016 Calais, hundreds of British volunteers daily bring help to the refugees trapped in the so-called ‘jungle’. Then, as now, migrants, fishermen, merchants, smugglers and travellers follow their own agendas and itineraries. As much as it is an international frontier, the Channel also remains a truly transnational border.

̽��ֱ��Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century by Renaud Morieux is published by CUP on March 31, 2016.

Inset images: Ornamental stonework about the doorway at 10 Halsmere Road, South London (Photograph by Jon Newman); Robert Morden, A New Map of England Containing the Adjacent Parts of Scotland, Ireland, France, Flanders and Holland (1673). (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, Map Department, Atlas.3.68.4 (plate 2)).

Water joins as well as divides – and maritime communities often defy the borders imposed by the state. In the first book of its kind, Dr Renaud Morieux offers a fascinating insight into the history of the ‘English’ Channel during the 18th century. He also tackles some of the big questions about identity and sovereignty that continue to be pertinent today.

Nature has placed England and France in a geographical location which must necessarily set up an eternal rivalry between them.

Jean-Louis Dubroca,1802

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Robert Morden, A New Map of England (1673) (detail)

̽��ֱ��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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Soul seller: the man who moved people

lw355 — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 09:00:14 +0000

Johannes Tschudi was 23 years old when he and his wife Anna left Germany in 1749 aboard the Crown in search of work and a new life on American soil. He was to take the perilous voyage across the Atlantic a further four times – a remarkable number considering how many migrants, including his wife Anna, died on these trips. But perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that between his first and last voyage, Johannes Tschudi transformed from a trafficked migrant to enter the business of selling souls – he became a human trafficker.

̽��ֱ��notion of human trafficking is a familiar one today: individuals, either lured by the prospect of a better life or coerced, are recruited, transported, harboured and ultimately exploited by the trafficker. ̽��ֱ��United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that at any one time this billion-dollar business is responsible for 2.5 million victims, many of whom will end up in forced labour, slavery, prostitution or begging.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, trafficking was connected with a rather different purpose, as Cambridge historian, and Fellow of Trinity Hall, Dr William O’Reilly explained: “Trafficking speeded up the establishment of new settlements in America and eastern Europe, where a labour force was needed. This was a time when people were resigned to the inevitability of emigration. Borders were relatively close and various wars had left individuals questioning their long-term safety. In the 18th century alone, as many as one million emigrated from their homelands in western and central Europe to start new lives, mostly in North America and Hungary.”

In fact, the German people, O’Reilly finds, were one of the most migratory of all national groups at this time. Yet the role of the traffickers to populate these new societies has been largely overlooked.

His research, to be published as a book in 2014, provides fresh insight into the activities of these people movers, arguing that their actions kick-started the first systemisation of migration: “Until the process of moving people became a profitable business enterprise, and connections were made between the supply and demand for human cargo, large-scale migration could not occur.”

On Tschudi’s first journey in 1749, he was one of 476 migrants all connected to him by blood or village; they had been recruited by Johannes Marti. On his final journey in 1767, Tschudi had recruited all 62 passengers on board the Sally bound for Philadelphia. “It seems likely that Marti was, at least in part, responsible for the recruitment of Tschudi as a migrant to the Americas and may have facilitated his re-invention as a recruiting agent himself,” said O’Reilly. “This was a chain migration, but it was also a chain recruitment, where the apprentice learnt from the master agent.”

In studies of migration, movement of people is often considered in terms of ‘push and pull’, in which labour shortages in one area might pull migrants, and poor conditions at home might push them. “But this model does not adequately explain European migration before the 19th century; it would suggest that all migrants acted freely and independently,” said O’Reilly.

“This was not the case here. It was more often directed by traffickers towards a specific territory because of the financial reward they would accrue and it was done so through their command of a niche market in information. By selling labour bonds – a ceel in Dutch – these traffickers sold on more than a person’s labour; they sold their soul, or ziel. Contemporaries considered that these labour-bond sellers became 18th-century soul sellers, the beginning of the modern trafficker.”

O’Reilly’s painstaking study of ships’ logs, maps, newspapers, arrest warrants, customs documents, river networks and letters, across seven countries, has enabled him to paint a remarkable picture of the complex processes that were at work. “Traffickers provided a bridge to a new life in a new land for those wishing to cross. It was a market where labour was retailed most successfully if people like Tschudi acted as brokers, filling ships with ‘human freight’ for the transatlantic crossing.”

In effect, the traffickers were walking propaganda machines. “They had to convince would-be migrants of the benefits of migration, to the point of underhand deception. As one example, some were told ‘roasted pigeons would fly into their mouths without having to work for them’.”

̽��ֱ��traffickers also had to thwart negative stories about the harrowing journey fed back by previous migrants. One traveller wrote: “hunger, thirst, and scarcity of all help had cost the lives of the majority on the ship.” Another that many “came close to murdering one another” in the cramped conditions. There were even tales of having to cook and eat dead fellow passengers. O’Reilly estimates mortality at around 15% or even higher as shipping firms in Holland, England and America, seeking to maximise profits, continued to raise the average number of emigrants per vessel.

“Tschudi, and others like him, learned quickly that by counteracting these negative descriptions of the journey with stories of limitless land and bread, of freedom and prosperity, he could turn a handsome profit,” said O’Reilly.

Traffickers could access information about opportunities abroad that was not generally known to potential emigrants. “For me, one definition of trafficking is the sourcing and supply of information leading to migration. In this regard, this is a story across time. From what I’ve found looking at contemporary situations – human trafficking from Moldova, for example – nothing has changed terribly much. ̽��ֱ��information comes from migrants who return home typically in the employ of other agents, and who then gain money for every migrant they recruit in turn.”

“It opened up information channels for those who, through illiteracy or geographic isolation, would have remained ignorant of the possibilities open to them,” he explained. “But the information was endowed with inflated images and delivered by those adept at marketing it for their audience.”

Tschudi’s dishonesty was publicly revealed. Shortly after the Sally docked in Philadelphia, a letter appeared in the local newspaper on behalf of all the migrants who had taken the journey, denouncing him as a “paragon of wickedness, an arrant liar and an out-an-out deceiver” who had “enticed and seduced nearly fifty people” to travel to America, in part through blackmail, in part through the threat of physical violence. “Their resentment was focused on the arduous journey,” said O’Reilly, “but no doubt by this stage the migrants would also have encountered the realities of settling in a new country and finding suitable employment, and have come to realise that not all was paved with riches as he had described.”

“Tschudi refused to accept the accusations levelled against him but his accusers would not go away,” added O’Reilly, who estimates that migrants would have paid £5–10 for the privilege of emigrating. “Denouncing him, they said that he had tricked them with his tales of encouragement, while all the while ‘he took a sum of money from a merchant… with the promise of delivering to him a number of people’.” Men, and women traffickers too, grew rich on the profit of human trafficking.

O’Reilly’s research highlights the role of traffickers like Tschudi as key to the process of migration. “Facilitator, escort, at times swindler and cheat, the human trafficker bound an ever-shrinking world together with ties of information and opportunity, and in effect aided the development of global labour markets for Europeans.”

For further information about this story, please contact Louise Walsh at louise.walsh@admin.cam.ac.uk

People trafficking is a billion-dollar business with a history that spans centuries. A new study identifies the beginnings of the modern trafficker – the men and women who “sold souls” in 17th- and 18th-century Germany.

This was a chain migration, but it was also a chain recruitment, where the apprentice learnt from the master agent

William O'Reilly

Harper's Weekly (New York), November 7, 1874 (Library of Congress)

German migrants boarding a steamer in Hamburg, Germany, to travel to America

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̽��ֱ��life of borders: where China and Russia meet

amb206 — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 09:50:00 +0000

China and Russia are growing economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite this proximity, their practical, local interactions with each other — and with their third neighbour Mongolia — are rarely discussed. There is no better place than the border to compare the remarkably dissimilar ways that economic development, the rule of law, citizen rights, migration and inequality are managed. It is here that many incipient trends are emerging. On one hand, the border is where cultural differences and divergent international strategies become evident; on the other hand, it is where new partnerships are developing.

Last month saw the launch of a new project, “Where Rising Powers meet: China and Russia at their north Asian border”, within the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, in Cambridge's Division of Social Anthropology. ̽��ֱ��project will run for three years under the leadership of Professor Caroline Humphrey, a renowned expert on the region. Professor Humphrey will head a multidisciplinary team of 16 researchers who will carry out research at various sites along the border, from Mongolia in the west to Vladivostok in the east. ̽��ֱ��researchers are all specialists in their field, with years of experience of research along this strategic border. Several of them are native to the region.

̽��ֱ��new research programme builds on an earlier project that ran from January 2010 to January 2011. It brought together anthropologists, sociologists, economists and stakeholders with specialist knowledge of the region into productive dialogue. Their work was presented at two workshops where multiple political, economic and sociocultural dimensions of the border were explored. ̽��ֱ��workshops led to the publication of Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border (Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, 2012), the first book in English to focus on the border between China and Russia.

̽��ֱ��researchers contributing to the new project are drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds and national institutions. Among them is Dr Natalia Ryzhova, an economic sociologist at the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. Her research has shown that while Russian media have consistently associated criminal networks at the border with the Chinese, in reality many of these networks have emerged through partnerships between Russians and Chinese, who both exploit legal loopholes and navigate a complex bribery system.

̽��ֱ��past two decades have also seen the renewal of ancient ties between the indigenous populations on either side of the border. For most of the Soviet period, and particularly during the final three decades when the border was sealed shut and heavily militarised, there was very little contact between them. Yet the region is home to many ethnic groups, such as the Mongols and Buryats whose traditional nomadic lifestyle did not recognise national boundaries. When the border reopened in the early 1990s, divided communities were able to renew their kinship ties. Many of these groups, such as Mongols, Evenki or Koreans, have been able to exploit their connections and take on the role of middlemen.

Another member of the research team is Dr Sayana Namsaraeva, herself a Buryat. She will examine the practices of ethnic traders and the personal and professional ties they weave with their co-ethnics beyond the border. She will also map out the cross-border routes taken by people and their commodities. This kind of research is crucial to an understanding of the enduring significance of the cultural and ethnic links that have historically underpinned the region and continue to do so. Dr Namsaraeva’s research will also highlight the many ways in which communities on either side have developed along divergent axes, and the different worldviews they have come to adopt as citizens of Russia, China or Mongolia.

̽��ֱ��chasm between different worldviews is especially visible in border cities such as Blagoveshchensk in Russia and Heihe in China, which stand opposite each other on the banks of Amur River, separated by just 500 metres yet reflecting strikingly different cultures. These two cities have been a focus of research by Dr Franck Billé, co-ordinator of the project in Cambridge’s Division of Social Anthropology. His work looks at the ideological dimension of Sino-Russian interaction and t he tectonic shifts that accompany China’s rise as a world power. Whereas local Russians previously assumed a certain cultural superiority and saw their city as a beacon of progress and modernity in Asia, unparalleled numbers of Russians are now studying Chinese with the ambition to work in China.

These recent developments appear to reflect wider geopolitical and economic trends. While the Russian Far East has witnessed strong outmigration in the last two decades, China’s economic footprint has increased. As a result, Moscow has grown increasingly wary of Chinese involvement and is seeking to reassert its presence in the Far East. But regional centres do not always share the views expressed in capital cities. In many ways Vladivostok (meaning ‘Ruler of the East’ in Russian) symbolises this growing tension between central and regional powers. It is a city where important world and regional summits are being held, but it is also a city with a history of resistance against Moscow’s rule. Professor Humphrey’s work in Vladivostok will examine the crucial role of this strategic city in the context of a complex geopolitical background.

Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It also sheds light on global uncertainties: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia’s fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious economic independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources.

̽��ֱ��volume is available in hardback, paperback and e-book. It can also be read for free on the publisher’s website, at http://www.openbookpublishers.com

More information about the project is available on the website www.northasianborders.net

A new project based in Cambridge’s Division of Social Anthropology is looking at interactions between China, Mongolia and Russia at the point where these nations meet – on the immense border that separates them.

On one hand, the border is where cultural differences and divergent international strategies become evident; on the other hand, it is where new partnerships are developing. 

John S.Y. Lee (flickr Creative Commons)

Chinese frontier guard at the Manzhouli-Zabaikalsk border

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Yes