Reparations for Slavery?

      You will no doubt be aware of a recent movement to claim reparations for West Indian populations in general from Britain in particular and Europe in general because of past slavery. Here we see two popular tropes: (1) negative experiences have permanent, intergenerational effects, and (2) those poor dark skinned people can't possibly improve themselves without the help of a (left wing) white saviour. Let us shine a more rational light on the subject.

The Tribulations of Peter and John

      Good Friday is again upon us. Seven years ago I discussed the reaction of Pontius Pilate when he found himself, unwillingly and unwittingly on the cusp of history. This time it might be appropriate to examine the actions of two of Jesus' inner circle of disciples, St Peter and St John, at what appears to have been the first time they acted together as a team. The reason for this is that, when reading first hand personal accounts, one thing I've noticed quite frequently is that the really brave men seldom emphasize or make an issue of their own bravery.

Ireland's Malthusian Apocalypse

     If my great-grandfather had been born in 1846, as his obituary claimed, and not 1844, as he himself had claimed, then it is possible his parents had migrated to England because of the Great Irish Famine. You probably know the essential details: the Irish peasantry had become dependent on the potato - they lived on almost nothing else - and when the potato blight struck, famine and starvation ensued on a previously unimaginable scale. I myself had heard a lot about it, but it was only recently that I read Cecil Woodham-Smith's classic history, The Great Hunger, Ireland 1845-1849, and something leaped out at me which the author herself did not press, and few others have mentioned: the underlaying cause of the disaster was overpopulation. It was a classic case of the Malthusian limit being reached.

The Riddle of the Amazonian Amazons

      Imagine, if you will, that beyond your towns and farms - the only world you know - dwell large settlements of aliens from outer space, of which you know very little, except that they are completely different, and incomprehensible. You see their flying saucers passing overhead, and more and more frequently they themselves are intruding into your domain. But you keep your distance, because oral tradition tells how they once committed terrible atrocities against your kind, or that once there were friendly relations, but then they brought the plague upon you.

     This, essentially, is the experience of thousands of Indians who are literally hiding from the outside world in the fastness of the Amazon jungle. Every time it is announced that the last uncontacted tribe has been discovered, another turns up. But once there were millions of them - only to be wiped out by massacre and enslavement, but mostly, as in North America, by infectious diseases which could devastate whole communities before any white man arrived. And somewhere in this maelstrom of destruction there was lost a community which most people now relegate to mythology: the women warriors after which the Amazon River was named.

The Miracles (?) of Apollonius of Tyana

     Who the heck was Apollonius of Tyana? I first met him in a novel called My First 2,000 Years (about the Wandering Jew) by G. S. Viereck and P. Eldridge (1928), where he appears as a philosopher who raises a dead woman to life, and informs the narrator that he and Jesus had been disciples of the same master in Tibet. (The latter statement, of course, expresses the common Western trope of Tibet as a centre of profound, occult, and mystical philosophy. While Tibetan Buddhism could well be described in such terms, it did not arrive in the country until the seventh century.)

     Naturally, I assumed that Apollonius was a fictional character. Afterwards, however, I kept seeing references to him as a wonder worker, and always juxtaposed, usually favourably, with Jesus. I was later to discover that he had been cited in anti-Christian writers of the late second and early third centuries, and later by anti-Christian writers of the Enlightenment, up to the present day. But who the heck was he? When I finally managed to read his biography, it turned out to be a damp squib.

The Case for Colonialism

     On my last visit to Singapore, our city guide explained that they are grateful for British rule, because it brought them the rule of law, democratic principles, and education, as well as laying the basis for its emergence as a modern twenty-first century state. One Singaporean historian has made the point that, because they were not conquered, and because most of them are the descendants of immigrants during the colonial period, they do not have a "victim mentality".
    Meanwhile, a poll of 1,008 Jamaicans in 2011 found that 60% of all age groups said they would have been better off under British rule, and only 17% disagreed. By any objective view, they were correct. The same thing must be said about the former Marxist rebels in the Yemen who, in 2010, declared that they regretted driving out the British. Just the same, Kartar Lalvani complained that, in 50 years of living in Britain, he could not find any Briton to say that India had benefited from British rule, so he wrote a book to prove it.
    That colonialism has been, on balance, a benefit to those it governed should be a no-brainer to any knowledgeable person. Therefore, when Prof. Bruce Gilley wrote an article entitled, "The Case for Colonialism", and submitted it to the Third World Quarterly, the editors, seeing that it was heavily referenced, logically argued, and peer reviewed, and in view of the fact that they were a forum for all sorts of opinion, decided to publish it, little realizing that they were committing a thought crime. The PC establishment had an allergic reaction. In academia not so long ago, if you read a paper you disagreed with, your response was to gather your data and write a rebuttal, but that is oh-so-passé in the age of Twitter storms, deplatforming, and the vicious, violent gangs calling themselves Antifas, whose aim is to close down discussion. Fifteen of the 34 members of the editorial board resigned, and two petitions, with a total of 17,577 signatures were mustered to demand the article be retracted and, if possible, the author's Ph.D. be rescinded. Probably only one percent had ever read the article. But when Indian nationalists made credible death threats against the editor, the article was taken down from the journal's website. I doubt if any serious police action has been taken in relation to the death threats.
    Fortunately, the article can be downloaded as a PDF from Prof Gilley's website. It has also been archived. So now I am republishing it, as my small part in support of historical truth and freedom of speech, but mostly to cock a snoot at the rampaging totalitarians who are now seeking to silence every opinion but their own. (I am pleased to advise that it has now been published in full by History Reclaimed.) He has since written a book, which has been reviewed here, with many details of the failure of independence.
    Note that, well researched as it might be, they are his words, not mine.

The Hallowe'en Which Changed the World

     Hallowe'en, as everyone ought to know, is All Hallows Eve, the day before All Saints' Day, "hallow" being simply an alternative to the word, "holy", which is what the French word "saint" means. The fun and games now celebrated on that day refer back to the Celtic festival of the dead, which the holy day supplanted.
     Five hundred years ago All Saints' Day was a very special day in the German university city of Wittenberg. Its pious ruler, Frederick the Wise had amassed a huge collection of holy relics, including a twig from Moses' burning bush, a piece of bread served at the Last Supper, four hairs of the Virgin Mary, and more than17,000 other items of equal undoubted authenticity, each bearing its own indulgence. By 1518, the year after the events in question, anyone who viewed and prayed before them, and made the proper contribution could gain a reduction from purgatory, for himself or others, of 127,709 years and 116 days assuming the world lasted that long.  In 1520 the Pope, in order to gain Frederick's co-operation, increased the indulgence to 1,902,202 years and 270 days. And the logical day for them to be placed on display would be All Saints' Day.
     But 1517 was different. The day before the display, the University's Master of Sacred Theology, a priest and monk called Martin Luther, sent a letter to his superiors and some friends, which included an invitation to a debate on 95 theses concerning indulgences. (He may not have nailed them to the church door.) All he wanted was a polite debate, but something unexpected happened. Anonymous persons translated the theses into German and started distributing them. Within a month they were all over Germany. The author suddenly found himself thrust to the head of a great movement of spiritual reform which divided Europe and the Church, and for which men would be prepared to die.

A Licence to Steal

     Confession is good for the soul, and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox requirement of frequent confession, in the right hands, would certainly allow the priest scope to teach moral principals to his congregation. One of these, of course, is restitution. As well as seeking God's forgiveness, it is necessary, as far as possible, to seek pardon from the one you have wronged. At least, you should do your best to make amends. In particular, stolen property must be returned. But what if the rightful owner cannot be found, or identified, or the ill-gotten gains are acquired by devious means - short changing, adulterating the product, etc - such that a large number of victims have been cheated of small, and not easily quantifiable sums? Obviously, there are good ways and bad ways to go about it, but in the past some of the practices of the church have been very dubious, to say the least.

On the Scaffold or Battlefield

[T]here is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or battlefield. [Winston Churchill]

     I have just returned from a brief trip to England, so I would like to share a couple of memorials I saw there.

When History Is Just a Matter of Chance

     The First World War, as every schoolboy knows, was sparked by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo by the Serbian terrorist, Gavrilo Princip. The royal party took a wrong turn, and the assassin took a wrong turn, and by chance they came face to face. The gun went off. A million others followed. Later, when Princip was asked in prison what he thought would have happened if he had failed, he said, in effect, that the Germans would have found another pretext to go to war. He might have been right. Europe at the time was powder keg waiting for a fuse to be lit. But he might have been wrong. Perhaps the right conjunction of events would never have occurred.
     Nevertheless, there are many instances where the course of history has turned on chance. Let us examine a few.

No, the Germans Did NOT Know About the Gas Chambers

     ". . . like those Germans who claimed they knew nothing about the gas chambers."
     You  don't hear that comment very much these days, but it used to be cited as an example of people who were deliberately blind, who refused to look at, or accept, some evil which they must have known about, or even that those who were pronouncing their ignorance were telling lies. Well, I have news for them: during World War II the average German, particularly the average German civilian, really did know nothing about the gas chambers.

When a Superpower Was Written Off

     When I was a little boy, we didn't have television, so we had to make do with the wireless instead. After school we would listen to 15-minute serials about such characters as Superman and Tarzan, for our parents were rather tolerant. Then, within a week of the first Sputnik going into orbit, some Australian radio writers started up a new serial, Operation Moon Satellite. By the time I caught up with it, it presented as a Flash-Gordonish fantasy, which soon resolved into a war of wits against a humanoid computer known simply as The Brain. The plot became ever more convoluted - and implausible - as the heroes found their moves checked at every turn by The Brain, and one by one they fell into his hands. They were trapped. The situation was hopeless. At last, The Brain came down and conversed with a woman standing just above a large engine room. All of a sudden, without warning, she pushed him into the machinery, and he disappeared in a flash of blue flame. He was simply written out of the script. Just like that! Next, a voice-over came on and announced that the show was over, and was going off the air.
     I was dumbfounded. It was the classic "with one jump Jack was free" artificial ending. I could hardly believe that such a complicated story line could end so abruptly. But the amazing thing is, several decades later, I watched the same thing being played out on the world stage. An awesome and terrible superpower was simply written out of the script of history. Just like that!

Why Didn't the Norse Settle North America?

     Almost 500 years before Columbus, Snorri Thorfinnsson became the first white person to be born in North America. Labrador and Newfoundland were first discovered by Norsemen based in Greenland sometime around 1000 AD, under names such as Markland and Vínland. The site of the second area is disputed, but that was where Snorri was born. How many Norse settlements were made, how long they lasted, and how frequently attempts were made at settlement are all unknown. Certainly, only a single Norse site has been archaeologically discovered, and that in Newfoundland. What is known is that the first bishop of Greenland visited Vínland in 1120, so there were presumably people living there. In 1347 a Greenland ship bringing timber from Markland was driven to Iceland, but whether it had visited a colony at the time is unknown. Shortly afterwards, the Greenland settlements themselves disappeared from history.
    The Norse venture into North America is one of the great might-have-beens of history. Why did it fail? It has been suggested that the European weapons of the day were not markedly superior to those of the natives. Climate change, particularly the start of the Little Ice Age, has also been implicated. But I think there were more profound reasons.

Wini, the Wild White Man of Badu

     It must have been about 1958 or 1959 that Ion Idriess' book, Isles of Despair was republished, and it created a stir. One of my teachers at primary school told us about it. There was an article about it in The Woman's Day. A few years later I was able to read the book myself: the well-written, gripping true story of Barbara Thompson, who had been adopted by a tribe of Torres Strait headhunters. Equally intriguing, the book described how she met, and narrowly evaded Wongai, a ruthless escaped convict, who had been accepted on another island as a chief, and the incarnation of a god.
     A few years later, another of the same author's books was republished: The Wild White Man of Badu. Here we were presented with the gripping account of this same character. It told how, on escaping from Norfolk Island in an open boat, the convict killed and ate his companions and then, fortuitously negotiating the reefs of the Coral Sea, landed on Badu Island at the most opportune time. The natives were celebrating the wongai, or wild plum, totem when he arrived at the same time as the lightning flashed behind him. Shouting "Wongai!" which he had heard the natives shout, and which he assumed was a war cry, he slew the first warrior who attacked him. Thus, the natives concluded he was their god in human form, and so commenced his climb to power.
     Of course, when I was a boy I assumed that anything on the printed page was the truth. Fifty years later, I have developed some critical faculties, but all that time I have been wanting to learn the full story of this enigmatic character who once dominated the western islands of Torres Strait for a quarter of a century. I don't suppose I ever will.

Why Columbus Didn't Write Italian

     Although it is as well established as anything can be that Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, there has been a lot of foolish speculation about his nationality, particularly by those hoping to claim him for their own. In this debate, the question is often raised: why didn't he ever write anything in Italian?
     Well, for a start, most of his most important correspondence was when he was resident in Spain, and writing to people who spoke Spanish. However, one commentator has pointed out something that would have been as obvious to his contemporaries as it is forgotten today: his native language was not Italian; it was Genoese! Genoese is not a dialect of Italian; it is a dialect of Ligurian. It is as different from Italian as Occitan/Provençal is from French.
     Over the last few centuries the centralisation of political power has also meant the centralisation of national languages, leaving the regional languages to wither on the vine. However, they were still very much alive five centuries ago. Indeed, Italy itself did not exist then as a political entity. Genoa in those days was one of many independent republics which patterned northern Italy at the time like a big jigsaw puzzle.
     Genoese is not dead yet, but it is withering on the vine. In a couple of centuries it will be forgotten, and people will still be asking why Columbus never wrote in Italian.

Reference: Paolo Emilio Taviani, Cristoforo Colombo, Genius of the Sea (2nd edition, 1991)

Ned Kelly

           [Little] John smote off the monk's head;

    No longer would he dwell;

                   So did Much [the Miller's son] the little page,

    For fear lest he would tell.

               (Robin Hood and the Monk, verse 52)

     This tale of the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed man and boy, presented with modernised spelling, is an early illustration of society's tendency to glamourise criminals. Of course, the best-known example today is the way we whitewash those drunken, foul-mouthed cutthroats known as pirates. (A realistic pirate movie would be R-rated for the filthy language alone.) In modern times, of course, America has Billy the Kid and Jesse James. And Australia has Ned Kelly.

     The image of Ned Kelly with his guns and armour (which he wore only once) has become iconic in Australia. To many people he is a hero, even a victim. In reaction, there has been a tendency for some others to regard him as a black-hearted villain with no redeeming features. As for myself, I prefer a more nuanced assessment. A truly evil person presents as pathetic in his depravity. To be an effective villain, it is necessary to possess a certain ration of virtues, of which courage is the most important. Ned Kelly was the sort of man who, under different circumstances, and with different life choices, would have become a model citizen and a pillar of society.