tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/19th-century-36630/articles19th century – The Conversation2023-11-30T14:22:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173222023-11-30T14:22:54Z2023-11-30T14:22:54ZBeing child-free has been deemed ‘selfish’ for decades – the history of this misconception explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562173/original/file-20231128-18-m2by5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C17%2C1260%2C943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Waiting By The Window by Carl Holsøe.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waiting_By_The_Window.jpg">Wiki Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Choosing to be child-free is <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/">more common than ever before</a> in some countries, including the US. Many people see not having children an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/give-up-having-children-couples-save-planet-climate-crisis">ethical and ecological choice</a>, made to protect the environment, people and other species. Being child-free is about being “green”. Consequently, more positive discourses around childlessness are emerging.</p>
<p>But this was not always the case. In societies that encourage an increased birthrate, motherhood is <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/232581954">often presented</a> as natural and caring. Meanwhile, women without children are often described as <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-00837-001">biological failures, or as deviant</a>. For example, when visible in popular culture – they are often not represented at all – women without children are either presented as animal-lovers like the “crazy cat lady” or animal-killers, like Cruella de Vil. In these examples, the focus on animal represents their supposed inability to care for humans (their species), their “unnaturalness”. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, women without children were already being described as selfish and unnatural. The natural world was conversely used to describe fertile women, who were often compared to flowers in bloom in literature.</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/should-i-have-children-148388?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=InArticleTop&utm_campaign=Parenting2023">Should I have children?</a> The pieces in this series will help you answer this tough question – exploring fertility, climate change, the cost of living and social pressure.</em>
<em>We’ll keep the discussion going at a live event in London on November 30. <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/events/the-conversation-should-i-have-children/london-tottenham-court-road">Click here</a> for more information and tickets.</em></p>
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<p>The association of women with plants and fertility is an ancient one, found particularly in agricultural pagan figures. Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of the harvest, for example, was the goddess of grains, but also of marriage and fertility. </p>
<p>Many expressions still link women’s reproductive systems and flowers. In French, the flower is a metaphor for a virgin sexual organ. To <em>avoir ses fleurs</em> (have your flowers) is an expression for having periods, and being <em>une jeune fille en fleur</em> (a young woman in flower) means that the young woman is ready for marriage – and therefore reproduction. </p>
<p>Women themselves are also compared to flowers: in English, both “pretty flower” and “English rose” describe attractive young women. Reducing women to flowers, through these comparisons, is not only misogynistic, but reinforces the social pressure to produce children “on time”. Timing is important in these comparisons, as flowers fade quickly.</p>
<h2>Being child-free in the 19th century</h2>
<p>But what about women without children, those flowers that will not produce seeds? <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/25269/1004825.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y**">My research</a> into literature and paintings from the second half of the 19th century has shown that they were often represented as monstrous horticultural hybrids. </p>
<p>At the time, “hybrid flowers” – which were often sterile – became the preferred metaphor to describe sexually active women who were either unable or refused to bear children. In France, having and raising children was seen as a woman’s <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/debating-the-woman-question-in-the-french-third-republic-18701920/A1E670D26BDB0203197A734E856855C1#:%7E:text=Book%20description,neighbors%20from%201870%20to%201920.">natural and civic duty</a> for the nation. Conversely, women who were sexually active but without children were often seen as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Figures_of_Ill_Repute.html?id=jaSPKb2kJ5wC&redir_esc=y#:%7E:text=Ubiquitous%20in%20the%20streets%20and,%2C%20class%2C%20and%20the%20body.">unnatural and dangerous</a>.</p>
<p>Comparisons that described women as flowers were historically about fertility. How was it then that flowers became a metaphor for sterility at the end of the 19th century? </p>
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<img alt="Painting of a woman smelling roses" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562174/original/file-20231128-25-guh58a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fertile, childbearing women were compared to more classic flowers such as roses. Girl And Roses by Auguste Toulmouche (1879).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/auguste-toulmouche-woman-and-roses">Clark Art Institute</a></span>
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<p>The emphasis on flowers as sexual organs and as a metaphor for women’s sexuality appears to have been used more often after the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus <a href="https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html#:%7E:text=Biography%20of%20Linnaeus,from%20a%20very%20early%20age">openly discussed</a> the sexuality of plants with anthropomorphic language at the end of the 18th century.</p>
<p>It is important to note that, for a long time, if men knew at all that flowers were sexual organs, they believed they were unisexual and feminine. They did not believe that both male and female organs were involved in the production of fruits. </p>
<p>Once the sexual nature of plants had been established, the nature of the floral metaphor changed and the innocence of the flower was lost. Flowers progressively became the symbol of a young lady with an emerging sexuality or who was waiting to “bear fruit”.</p>
<h2>Horticultural hybrids</h2>
<p>During the second empire in France (1852-1870) and the beginning of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Third-Republic-French-history">Third Republic</a> (1870-1840), horticultural hybrids were extremely popular. </p>
<p>Horticulturists developed large plants and flowers such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/plant/cattleya">cattleya</a>, <a href="https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/hibiscus/growing-guide">hibiscus</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/plant/Nidularium">nidularium</a> which often looked like enlarged genitals (natural plants are often a lot smaller and less colourful). These hybrids made the sexual analogy even more obvious. </p>
<p>By the end of the 19th century, the artificial hybrids became used for describing, indirectly, near-pornographic scenes. Here is an example from <a href="https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/the-kill-9780199536924?cc=gb&lang=en&">The Kill</a> (1895), a famous novel by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Zola">Émile Zola</a>. Instead of describing the characters making love, he describes the plants:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As their glances penetrated into the corners of the hothouse, the darkness became filled with a more furious debauch of leaves and stalks; they could not distinguish on the terraces between the marantas, soft as velvet, the gloxinias, purple-belled, the dracoenas, like blades of old lacquer; it was a great dance of living plants pursuing one another with unsatisfied fervour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many of the hybrids being created at this time were sterile. They therefore became a metaphor for “unproductive” sexuality. Because they were man-made, they could be seen as a perversion of the laws of nature. Comparing women to those hybrids was a way to criticise what was deemed the artificiality of their infertility, or decision not to have children. </p>
<p>Fertile, childbearing women were frequently compared to natural, more classic flowers such as roses or lilies.</p>
<p>At the time, France was obsessed with its low birth rate. Many politicians believed it explained why France had lost the war against Prussia (1870-1871). Childless women were therefore also seen as bad citizens.</p>
<p>Through their comparisons with hybrid, infertile flowers, women who could not or choose not to reproduce were deemed un-French, undesirable and, in some ways, monstruous. </p>
<p>Understanding how women are associated with nature and very often compared to flowers is essential to understanding how being childless continues to be demonised in contemporary society. As contemporary art, culture and the very language we use demonstrates, child-free women are still often described as “unnatural” or biologically deviant.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aude Campmas is affiliated with:
I am a volunteer for Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Service.</span></em></p>Hybrid flowers became a metaphor for sterility at the end of the 19th century.Aude Campmas, Lecturer in French Studies, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153442023-11-20T19:56:06Z2023-11-20T19:56:06ZIn America, national parks are more than scenic − they’re sacred. But they were created at a cost to Native Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559946/original/file-20231116-17-i13sy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C1%2C1017%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Valley of the Yosemite' by the 19th-century artist Albert Bierstadt, owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/albert-bierstadt-valley-of-the-yosemite-oil-on-paperboard-news-photo/544274100?adppopup=true">VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Abraham Lincoln has an almost saintly place in U.S. history: the “Great Emancipator” whose leadership during the Civil War preserved the Union and abolished slavery. </p>
<p>Often overlooked among his achievements is <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-30">legislation he signed June 30, 1864</a>, during the thick of the war – but only marginally related to the conflict. <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-30">The Yosemite Valley Grant Act</a> preserved the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in California as a park “held for public use, resort, and recreation … for all time.”</p>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/yosemite-turns-150">the first time</a> the federal government had set aside land for its scenic value, and it created a model for U.S. national parks, which are themselves hallowed sites in American culture. Originally granted to the state of California, Yosemite formally became the third U.S. national park in 1890, joining a system of picturesque lands that hold spiritual and patriotic significance for millions of Americans.</p>
<p>At the same time, however, the establishment of national parks had severe consequences for Native American peoples across the continent. <a href="https://www.rhodes.edu/bio/tom-bremer">My research</a> on the <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/religious-and-spiritual-appeal-of-national-parks/">religious history of U.S. national parks</a> illustrates how religious justifications for establishing parks contributed to the persecution of Indigenous tribes, a reality that the National Park Service has begun to redress in recent decades. </p>
<h2>US civil religion</h2>
<p>With <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/annual-visitation-highlights.htm">more than 300 million annual visitors</a>, the U.S. National Park System is a much-valued treasure. It encompasses stupendous scenery, opportunities for encounters with wildlife, outdoor recreation and commemoration of important places and events.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two men standing on a tiny ledge above a deep valley." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The scenery of Glacier Point in Yosemite Valley has awed visitors for centuries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/glacier-point-yosemite-valley-california-usa-stereoscopic-news-photo/463954611?adppopup=true">The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But the parks’ significance goes beyond this. The national parks, historic sites, battlefields and other sites of the National Park Service are sacred places <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Formed+From+This+Soil%3A+An+Introduction+to+the+Diverse+History+of+Religion+in+America-p-9781405189279">in U.S. civil religion</a>: the symbols, practices and traditions that make the idea of a nation into something sacred, seemingly blessed by a higher power.</p>
<p>First brought attention by <a href="http://www.robertbellah.com/">sociologist Robert Bellah</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/001152605774431464">civil religion</a> flourishes alongside conventional religious traditions, like Christianity or Buddhism, with its own sacred figures, sites and rituals. In the U.S., these include George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. flag and Pledge of Allegiance, and national holidays such as Independence Day. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religious-and-Spiritual-Tourism/Olsen-Timothy/p/book/9780367191955">I have observed</a> that many of the most sacred places of the nation’s civil religion are found in sites cared for by the National Park Service, from Independence Hall in Philadelphia and the Statue of Liberty in New York to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.</p>
<p>In addition, the National Park System is a testament to Manifest Destiny, a prominent feature of U.S. civil religion. This 19th-century notion held that Americans had divine blessing to expand the borders of the nation. As historian <a href="https://history.columbia.edu/person/anders-stephanson/">Anders Stephanson</a> writes in his <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809015849/manifest-destiny">book about Manifest Destiny</a>, it became “a catchword for the idea of a providentially or historically sanctioned right to continental expansionism.” </p>
<p>This westward expansion came at the expense of Native Americans and other groups that previously inhabited the territory. For many Protestant Christian Americans, the superlative scenery of natural sites like Yosemite and Yellowstone affirmed their belief that God intended for them to conquer and settle the American West in the decades following the Civil War – as I write about in <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/sacred-wonderland-book/">my forthcoming book</a>.</p>
<h2>Products of Manifest Destiny</h2>
<p>The earliest national parks were established <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1999.00041.x">as products of Manifest Destiny</a>, amid the national push to bring land from the Mississippi to the Pacific into the United States, which many white Americans viewed as a mission to expand settled Christian society.</p>
<p>Beginning with <a href="https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1706-the-yellowstone-story-revised-edition-volume-i">Yellowstone in 1872</a>, followed by Sequoia, Yosemite and Mount Rainier, the early parks created in the 19th century had symbolic significance for U.S. civil religion. In many Americans’ eyes, the sites’ beauty affirmed their belief that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/inherit-the-holy-mountain-9780190230869?cc=us&lang=en&">the U.S. was exceptional and divinely favored</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small wooden church with a steeple stands against trees, with tall mountains in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The chapel in Yosemite, photographed in 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/la-chapelle-de-yosemite-dans-le-parc-national-de-yosemite-news-photo/947872774?adppopup=true">Tripelon-Jarry/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Westward expansion had severe consequences for American Indian nations, and the earliest national parks played a role in forcing their removal, as historian <a href="https://oregonstate.academia.edu/MarkSpence/CurriculumVitae">Mark David Spence</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142433.001.0001">has documented</a>. Transforming lands into national parks for visitors’ enjoyment meant dispossessing communities whose ancestors had valued those places for generations.</p>
<p>Following the creation of Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, a band of Shoshone people who had been there for generations – the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/the-tukudika-indians.htm">Tukudika, or Sheep Eater</a> – were relocated to a reservation in Wyoming. A similar situation involved the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142433.003.0006">Nitsitapii, or Blackfeet people</a>, whose treaty rights were abrogated with the establishment of Glacier National Park in 1910. </p>
<p>In contrast, the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/their-lifeways.htm">Yosemite Indians</a> of California, who were mainly a band of Miwok people known as the Ahwahneechee, remained in Yosemite long after it became a national park. By 1969, though, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142433.001.0001">they had been eliminated from the park</a> through decades of onerous regulations, economic pressures and attrition.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small lean-to structure made out of sticks sits in front of a glade of trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The site of a former Miwok village in Yosemite Valley is now an outdoor museum display of traditional shelters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas S. Bremer</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new era</h2>
<p>Over the past few decades, the National Park Service has made progress in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/experience/america/national-parks/2022/03/09/national-parks-aim-boost-tribal-nations-role-land-management/9442146002/">acknowledging Native American connections to parklands</a>, beginning to address the history of Manifest Destiny and Indigenous peoples’ exclusion.</p>
<p>The agency is a key contributor to the Interior Department’s recent initiative to facilitate <a href="https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/ar-esb46-009795-doi-and-tribal-co-stewardship-20221125.pdf">tribal co-management of federal lands</a>. Though much still needs to be done, national park managers are increasingly consulting and cooperating with tribal authorities on a range of issues.</p>
<p>Deb Haaland, the first Native American in U.S. history to hold a cabinet position, initiated a process to <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-takes-action-remove-derogatory-names-federal-lands">review and replace derogatory names</a> on federal lands – one of her earliest actions as secretary of the interior. For example, she specifically identified the term “squaw” – a slur often directed at Indigenous women – as offensive, declaring that “racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands.” Within a year of her directive, <a href="https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2022/09/new-place-names-dot-national-park-system-government-removes-derogatory-names">24 places in the National Park System</a> had new names.</p>
<p>Other issues on which the park service is collaborating with tribal communities include adopting <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-shape-our-land.htm">Native American strategies of using deliberate fires</a> to maintain <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-western-states-can-learn-from-native-american-wildfire-management-strategies-120731">healthy, thriving ecosystems</a>. These Indigenous traditions have become a regular part of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1965/wildfires-prescribed-fires-fuels.htm">fire prevention and management efforts</a> throughout the park system. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several teepees stand in a row as the sun rises over a prairie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teepees included in the ‘Yellowstone Revealed’ project by the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowstonenps/52308221241/in/album-72177720301553119/">National Park Service/Jacob W. Frank via Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tribes have also cooperated with a variety of national parks to restore bison herds. Historically, these animals were central for many tribes not only as a source of food and materials for tools, clothing and blankets but also in <a href="https://theconversation.com/bison-are-sacred-to-native-americans-but-each-tribe-has-its-own-special-relationship-to-them-211252?">traditional spirituality</a>. The Interior Department’s <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bison/upload/BCI2020-2020_05_06_508-Compliant_508.pdf">2020 Bison Conservation Initiative</a> and partnerships with the <a href="https://itbcbuffalonation.org/">InterTribal Buffalo Council</a> have helped begin to restore herds on Native American lands with bison from national parks, including <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/management/bison-management.htm">Yellowstone</a>, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/badl/learn/news/2022-11-7_bison_distributed_to_tribes.htm">Badlands</a> and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/bison-reduction-efforts-complete-for-2022.htm">Grand Canyon</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most noticeable initiative, from visitors’ perspective, are the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/photosmultimedia/gcid-05-dvwt.htm">stories of Native American culture and history</a> in displays, ranger talks, roadside exhibits and the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/taas-indigenousheritage-intro.htm">National Park Service website</a>, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/2016npstribaltourismhighlights.htm">amplifying Native voices</a> in the parks. These programs have begun the process of reconciliation and healing – working to make a more inclusive and democratic civil religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas S. Bremer has conducted historical research for the National Park Service as a consultant at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.</span></em></p>The idea of Manifest Destiny inspired Americans to push west, leading to the creation of the first national parks. But those beliefs spelled removal for many Native American groups.Thomas S. Bremer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, American Religious History, Rhodes CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077992023-10-06T16:38:14Z2023-10-06T16:38:14ZThe history of the Yellow Book – the 19th century journal that celebrated women writers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532049/original/file-20230614-19-uzv7a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C3%2C704%2C596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Decadent Young Woman After the Dance by Ramón Casas (1899). </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/ramon-casas/68bc12880c76d4e30657d96ffecbbeba-1899">Musee de Montserrat</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the middle of the final decade of the 19th century, Britain was the most powerful and richest nation on earth, with the <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/20342/peak-land-area-of-the-largest-empires/#:%7E:text=In%201913%2C%20412%20million%20people,of%20the%20world%27s%20land%20area.">largest empire ever known</a>. The nation might be thought to have had nothing of which to be frightened, yet frightened it was.</p>
<p>Many Britons of the time were steeped in an education in Latin and Greek in the classical tradition, so they knew what happened to great empires: they decline and fall. This was the atmosphere addressed by the Yellow Book, the most innovative journal of art and literature of the period, published between 1894 and 1897. It’s a topic I explore in my new book, <a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/decadent-women">Decadent Women: Yellow Book Lives</a>.</p>
<p>With its iconic <em>fin de siècle</em> designs (characteristic of the end of the 19th-century lethargy) and its showcasing of women writers, the Yellow Book gave its name to the decade. The period is now sometimes referred to as “<a href="https://1890s.ca/yellow-book-volumes/">the yellow nineties</a>” in <a href="https://0-go-gale-com.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/ps/navigateToIssue?u=ull_ttda&p=TTDA&mCode=0FFO&issueDate=119110810&issueNumber=39660&volume=&loadFormat=page">tribute</a>.</p>
<p>The Yellow Book was created by the brilliant young artist <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/aubrey-beardsley-716/story-aubrey-beardsley-five-artworks">Aubrey Beardsley</a> and energetic American writer <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095921402;jsessionid=AADD8DC289766EC7FC13ED9F50436F32">Henry Harland</a>. It considered the Victorian artistic ideal of morality as the highest quality in art to be prudish and lacking in a future.</p>
<p>The “Beardsley women” – perfectly stylised black illustrations featured both on the cover and throughout – received the most attention. One of <a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_the-national-observer-and-british-review-of-politics_1894-04-21_11_283/page/588/mode/2up?view=theater">Beardsley’s detractors claimed</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They resemble nothing on the earth, nor in the firmament that is above the earth, nor in the waters under the earth; with their lips of a more than Hottentot thickness, their bodies of a lath-like flatness, their impossibly pointed toes and fingers, and their small eyes that have the form and comeliness of an unshelled snail.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The yellow Cover of The Yellow Book showing a woman in a cloak looking towards a lamp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532052/original/file-20230614-20687-x2c2bd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The third edition of The Yellow Book, from 1894.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-yellow-book">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Yellow Book featured a significant number of women writers. One-third of its writers were women (47 out of 137 writers). An analysis of the poetry in the Yellow Book shows even more women’s work. Of the 116 poems across its 13 volumes, 44 were by women.</p>
<p>They were early modernists like <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp77738/george-egerton-mary-chavelita-dunne">Chavelita Bright</a> (who wrote sexually explicit stories under the pen name of George Egerton) and realist writer <a href="http://users.clas.ufl.edu/snod/D%27ArcyIntroductionNB.072315.pdf">Ella D’Arcy</a>. D’Arcy presented a sour view of women which was rather more complex than that proposed by feminists such as <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp78447/sarah-grand-frances-elizabeth-bellenden-mcfall-nee-clarke">Sarah Grand</a> and <a href="https://heritage.humanists.uk/mona-caird/">Mona Caird</a>, who were battling against male domination in marriage.</p>
<p>In D’Arcy’s world, the greater discourse between men and women which was permitted in the 1890s led only to deeper bewilderment and more disappointment on both sides, when compared to earlier decades.</p>
<h2>The Yellow Book’s ‘at homes’</h2>
<p>Central to women’s involvement in the Yellow Book were the “at homes” given by Harland and his wife Aline at their apartment in London. Women could attend these, unlike meetings held in pubs or men’s clubs.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.eltpress.org/PDFs/37.1.pdf">D’Arcy described it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I see him [Harland] standing on the hearthrug or sitting on the floor, waving his eye glasses on the end of their cord, or refixing them on his short-sighted eyes, while assuring some ‘dear beautiful Lady!’ or other, how much he admired her writing, or her paintings, or her frock, or the colour of her hair. He would rechristen a golden red-haired woman ‘Helen of Troy’; he would tell another that her eyes reminded him of the ‘moon rising over the jungle;’ and thus put each on delightfully cordial terms with herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aubrey Beardsley in a grey suit with button hole flower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532050/original/file-20230614-21-k7vsby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aubrey Beardsley by Jacques-Émile Blanche, (1895).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley#/media/File:Blanche_Beardsley.jpg">National Portrait Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Yellow Book suffered a blow in 1895 when the writer Oscar Wilde was arrested and imprisoned for homosexual offences. A tide moved against everything which was associated with decadence, which included the Yellow Book – even though Wilde had never written for it. </p>
<p>Some of the more puritanical writers for the Yellow Book’s publisher John Lane, insisted on the removal of Aubrey Beardsley as art editor and he was sacked.</p>
<p>Beardley’s departure certainly denied the journal his genius, but it was a gift for women illustrators who were now able to fill the space left by him and his almost all-male commissioning process of art. This included <a href="https://www.londonremembers.com/subjects/mabel-dearmer">Mabel Dearmer</a> who designed the first post-Beardsley cover and <a href="https://1890s.ca/wp-content/uploads/syrett_M_bio.pdf">Nell and Mabel Syrett</a>, sisters who both drew covers.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white illustration of a woman at a sink in an elaborate shawl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532053/original/file-20230614-23042-ritl1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘Beardsley’ woman illustration from The Yellow Book.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-yellow-book">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, the Yellow Book went into a decline. There was now less to distinguish it, and though it had been innovative, now there were imitators. Soon it was no longer ahead of the field – it was just one publication among others. It was also costing too much to run as sales declined. The last issue was published in April 1897.</p>
<p>There was, however, a lingering sense that something important had happened with the publication of the Yellow Book and it was frequently reprinted in subsequent decades. </p>
<p>It had united young and old, women and men in defiance of an ossified literary and artistic establishment and in doing so, lit a beacon for future generations.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jad Adams has received funding for Decadent Women research from British Academy, Scouludi Foundation, Authors' Society</span></em></p>With its iconic designs and its showcasing of women writers, the Yellow Book gave its name to the decade.Jad Adams, Research Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092632023-07-13T06:35:03Z2023-07-13T06:35:03ZHow the British Museum’s new exhibition reveals China’s Hidden Century through everyday lives<p>The face of the British Museum’s big summer show, <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/chinas-hidden-century?gclid=Cj0KCQjw756lBhDMARIsAEI0AgnOpBdyubWlx8hKW_irCAximJYvd7EgVlRXC81w74nvqC8w65wgNssaAmKxEALw_wcB">China’s Hidden Century</a>, is that of an elderly woman wearing jade earrings, dressed in a blue robe with ornate gold embroidery decorating its collar.</p>
<p>It is an image painted, we discover in the exhibition, by an unidentified artist in the Guangzhou area around 1876, as one of a pair. Lady Li is her name. Her husband, Lu Xifu, appears in the other image. All the information about them is contained in the script above the portraits. She managed the family household. He was a businessmen. That’s pretty much all that is known.</p>
<p>Making the vast sweep of Chinese history human and accessible has never been easy, particularly for non-Chinese audiences. The approach of China’s Hidden Century is to focus on details – on ornaments, clothes and artefacts – the sorts of things that figured in daily life in the 19th century.</p>
<h2>A country in flux</h2>
<p>The China of that century was undergoing the painful, often violent and tragic convulsions of change. The golden era of the <a href="https://asia-archive.si.edu/learn/for-educators/teaching-china-with-the-smithsonian/explore-by-dynasty/qing-dynasty/">three great Qing emperors</a> – Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong – which lasted almost a century and a half, was over. Under increasingly weak figures, (prominently portrayed at the start of the exhibition), China’s domestic and international situation deteriorated.</p>
<p>It experienced the horrific <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Taiping-Rebellion">Taiping</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Nian-Rebellion">Nian</a> rebellions mid-century, <a href="https://disasterhistory.org/north-china-famine-1876-79">starvation in the 1870s</a> and violent encroachments by first the British and then other European and Asian countries. This period is not, therefore, remotely “hidden” in the consciousness of modern China, but figures as a crucible of pain, humiliation and victimhood. Despite all of this, life very much went on.</p>
<p>Ironically, plenty of the exhibits bear witness to the fact that the 19th century, far from a period of obscurity, was the time when China finally became accessible to the outside world. Up to the 1840s, international trade was mostly restricted to the southern port of Guangzhou.</p>
<p>The rest of the county was closed off, forbidden to travellers. There is a splendid painting of the various factories along the Pearl River in the city, the busy waterway teeming with vessels. The sheer density of water traffic was something that British commented on when they first caught sight of this place in the 17th century. </p>
<p>But through the first and second <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars">Anglo-Chinese War</a>, China, facing huge international coercion, reluctantly opened up. That gave birth to the modern discipline of sinology – the study of Chinese language and culture. </p>
<p>At that time many observers were intrigued by how less than half a million of the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/who-are-the-manchu-195370">Manchu</a> ethnic group (from Manchuria in north-east China) were able to dominate the 400 million-plus population of <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/who-are-the-han-chinese-people.html">Han</a> people, the country’s largest enthnic group. This fact remains an anomaly to this day – for a quarter of the last millennium, China was under minority control, a form of subjugation that gets glossed over in history textbooks within the country, but stands out starkly in the very different language, social habits, clothing and customs of the dominating Manchu minority.</p>
<h2>From imperial to global China</h2>
<p>Wandering through the various display rooms, visitors get to appreciate the logic of the framework with which the curators have tried to assemble the rich holdings of the British Museum and the other exhibits borrowed from more than 30 institutions. </p>
<p>First, there is an indication of the sheer size of Qing China (1644-1912) – expanded to embrace today’s Mongolia and the annexed territories of Xinjiang and Tibet, through a map at the entrance.</p>
<p>After this comes coverage of the political culture – the grafting onto Chinese imperial power structures of Manchu habits and customs. The figure of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cixi">Empress Dowager Cixi</a> looms large here, the true power behind the throne, dominant from soon after 1861 to her death 50 years later. But she was a woman caricatured and wilfully misunderstood both by contemporaries and those who came afterwards.</p>
<p>At the centre of the display rooms is a large space devoted to normal everyday life. This attempts to address what life was like over this period for the 90% of people who lived in rural areas, and whose lives consisted of subsistence farming, and were mostly confined to the places they had been born.</p>
<p>Finally, there is coverage of global China, and a small final room on its sudden, but not unexpected demise. This was the result of what was initially a military uprising in Wuhan in late 1911 that became a full insurrection by early 1912.</p>
<p>When so much history is covered, it is unsurprising that it is very specific, individual elements that have the most impact, because they, at least, are immediate and accessible.</p>
<p>Footage of French-trained <a href="http://en.chinaculture.org/library/2008-01/21/content_38234.htm">Yu Rongling</a> doing a Chinese-style dance in front of some ancient buildings in Beijing in 1926 is elegant and haunting. So too is the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/36184">Eight Leaves of Insects and Flowers</a> by Ju Lian from the latter part of the century. Delicate and understated, it is the sort of aesthetic statement that intrigued outsiders trying to familiarise themselves with Chinese culture.</p>
<p>The costumes throughout are splendid, dramatic and colourful. Just how much this level of detail makes China’s hidden century more knowable is a moot question. It takes a huge effort of imagination to try to feel what this culture was like to an outsider, and even more to think about what it might have looked like from within.</p>
<p>But this is a bold, ambitious and imaginative effort for which the British Museum should be applauded. The Qing dynasty and its demise has become a little clearer and a little less concealed; that is no easy thing to have achieved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerry Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Curators have concentrated on the small and everyday to communicate a sense of life in 19th century China.Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Politics; Director, Lau China Institute, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2036532023-05-12T12:21:51Z2023-05-12T12:21:51ZWhat’s a Luddite? An expert on technology and society explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525491/original/file-20230510-25-btjznr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=349%2C298%2C1982%2C1453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some Luddites simply want to press 'pause' on the uninhibited march of technological progress.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/digital-rain-2-royalty-free-illustration/1326774318?phrase=luddites&adppopup=true">Stan Eales/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The term “Luddite” emerged in <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/">early 1800s England</a>. At the time there was a thriving textile industry that depended on manual knitting frames and a skilled workforce to create cloth and garments out of cotton and wool. But as <a href="https://www.bl.uk/georgian-britain/articles/the-industrial-revolution">the Industrial Revolution</a> gathered momentum, steam-powered mills threatened the livelihood of thousands of artisanal textile workers.</p>
<p>Faced with an industrialized future that threatened their jobs and their professional identity, a growing number of textile workers turned to direct action. Galvanized by their leader, Ned Ludd, they began to smash the machines that they saw as robbing them of their source of income.</p>
<p>It’s not clear whether <a href="https://www.history.com/news/who-were-the-luddites">Ned Ludd was a real person</a>, or simply a figment of folklore invented during a period of upheaval. But his name became synonymous with rejecting disruptive new technologies – an association that lasts to this day. </p>
<h2>Questioning doesn’t mean rejecting</h2>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/im-a-luddite-you-should-be-one-too-163172">original Luddites were not anti-technology</a>, nor were they <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/">technologically incompetent</a>. Rather, they were skilled adopters and users of the artisanal textile technologies of the time. Their argument was not with technology, per se, but with the ways that wealthy industrialists were robbing them of their way of life.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Engraving of a mob of men breaking into a factory." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wood engraving from 1844 depicts Luddites destroying power looms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/austro-hungaria-social-history-bohemian-weaver-mutiny-news-photo/549548257?adppopup=true">Archiv Gerstenberg/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, this distinction is sometimes lost.</p>
<p>Being called a Luddite often indicates technological incompetence – as in, “I can’t figure out how to send emojis; I’m such a Luddite.” Or it describes an ignorant rejection of technology: “He’s such a Luddite for refusing to use Venmo.”</p>
<p>In December 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates were jointly nominated for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-elon-musk-is-a-luddite-count-me-in-52630">“Luddite Award”</a>. Their sin? Raising concerns over the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. </p>
<p>The irony of three prominent scientists and entrepreneurs being labeled as Luddites underlines the disconnect between the term’s original meaning and its more modern use as an epithet for anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly and unquestioningly embrace technological progress. </p>
<p>Yet technologists like Musk and Gates aren’t rejecting technology or innovation. Instead, they’re rejecting a worldview that all technological advances are ultimately good for society. This worldview optimistically assumes that the faster humans innovate, the better the future will be.</p>
<p>This “<a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/move-fast-and-break-things">move fast and break things</a>” approach toward technological innovation has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years – especially with growing awareness that <a href="https://theconversation.com/sci-fi-movies-are-the-secret-weapon-that-could-help-silicon-valley-grow-up-105714">unfettered innovation can lead to deeply harmful consequences</a> that a degree of responsibility and forethought could help avoid.</p>
<h2>Why Luddism matters</h2>
<p>In an age of <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-pause-ai-experiments-open-letter/">ChatGPT</a>, gene editing and other transformative technologies, perhaps we all need to channel the spirit of Ned Ludd as we grapple with how to ensure that future technologies do more good than harm.</p>
<p>In fact, “<a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kirkpatrick-sale-crow-s-nest-distribution-neo-luddites-and-lessons-from-the-luddites">Neo-Luddites</a>” or “New Luddites” is a term that emerged at the end of the 20th century.</p>
<p>In 1990, the psychologist Chellis Glendinning published an essay titled “<a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chellis-glendinning-notes-toward-a-neo-luddite-manifesto">Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto</a>.” </p>
<p>In it, she recognized the nature of the early Luddite movement and related it to a growing disconnect between societal values and technological innovation in the late 20th century. As Glendinning writes, “Like the early Luddites, we too are a desperate people seeking to protect the livelihoods, communities, and families we love, which lie on the verge of destruction.”</p>
<p>On one hand, entrepreneurs and others who advocate for a more measured approach to technology innovation lest we stumble into avoidable – and potentially catastrophic risks – are frequently labeled “Neo-Luddites.” </p>
<p>These individuals represent experts who believe in the power of technology to positively change the future, but are also aware of the societal, environmental and economic dangers of blinkered innovation.</p>
<p>Then there are the Neo-Luddites who actively reject modern technologies, fearing that they are damaging to society. New York City’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html">Luddite Club</a> falls into this camp. Formed by a group of tech-disillusioned Gen-Zers, the club advocates the use of flip phones, crafting, hanging out in parks and reading hardcover or paperback books. Screens are an anathema to the group, which sees them as a drain on mental health.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how many of today’s Neo-Luddites – whether they’re thoughtful technologists, technology-rejecting teens or simply people who are uneasy about technological disruption – have read Glendinning’s manifesto. And to be sure, parts of it are rather contentious. Yet there is a common thread here: the idea that technology can lead to personal and societal harm if it is not developed responsibly. </p>
<p>And maybe that approach isn’t such a bad thing.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CnUir04L3aS/?utm_source=ig_embed\u0026utm_campaign=loading","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Maynard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite the association of ‘Luddite’ with a naïve rejection of technology, the term and its origins are far richer and more complex than you might think.Andrew Maynard, Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004842023-03-23T13:17:07Z2023-03-23T13:17:07ZWhy thousands of volunteers are transcribing the notebooks of the scientist who inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein<p>Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) is usually remembered as the inventor of a <a href="https://www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/collection/humphry-davys-miners-safety-lamp">revolutionary miner’s safety lamp</a>. But his wild popularity came as much from his influence on popular culture as it did from his contributions to chemistry and applied science.</p>
<p>In the first few years of the 19th century, there was no hotter spectacle in London than Davy’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/sir-humphry-davy-used-poetry-and-theatre-to-bring-science-to-life-84391">lectures</a> at the Royal Institution. The carriage traffic jams caused by his keen audience led to the introduction of London’s first one-way street. </p>
<p>Hundreds of members of the public, many of them women, crowded into the lecture theatre to hear the charismatic Davy speak about his cutting edge research. They would watch demonstrations of his work, which often included elaborate explosions and other breathtaking displays.</p>
<p>In more recent times, Davy’s star has waned. Through <a href="https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/davynotebooks/">our work</a> on the <a href="https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/humphrydavy/davy-notebooks-project">Davy Notebooks Project</a>, we aim to change that. Thanks to the help of thousands of volunteers, we’re creating the first digital edition of Davy’s 83 manuscript notebooks, an exciting and important collection that we’ll soon be able to share with readers all over the world.</p>
<p>The first lecture Davy gave at the Royal Institution was on the subject of galvanism (the electricity generated by chemical actions). The force was thought at the time to be capable of <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/real-scientific-revolution-behind-frankenstein/">animating matter</a> – or of bringing something dead to life.</p>
<p>Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall and despite a lack of formal education, he rose quickly from obscurity to become an important force at the centre of Britain’s scientific community. </p>
<p>As a young chemist, he spent several years in Bristol, where he experimented with new gases, including nitrous oxide (laughing gas) which he frequently inhaled himself to test its effect.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a painting of the Royal Institution building in London with horse and carriages outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516367/original/file-20230320-1817-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Royal Institution by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (c. 1838)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Institution_Shepherd_TH.jpg">Wiki Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moving to London, Davy eventually became director of the Royal Institution’s programme of chemical research and, later, <a href="https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/11/davys-vaulting-ambition/">President of the Royal Society</a>. In his scientific life, he isolated more chemical elements than anyone before or since.</p>
<p>Davy’s famous lectures on the animating power of electricity at the Royal Institution may have inspired a young Mary Shelley as she came up with the idea for Frankenstein (1818), a novel that questioned the boundaries of creation using emerging scientific ideas.</p>
<p>Shelley may have even modelled aspects of the charming but reckless Victor Frankenstein on Davy himself. In fact, many of the things that Davy said in his lectures were <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunday-telegraph/20211031/281801402180672">borrowed word-for-word</a> to craft the fictional scientist’s dangerous experiments.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mary Shelley looks at the viewer, with her black dress off her shoulders and hair tied back." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515884/original/file-20230316-18-fn1qvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell (1831-1840).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw05761">National Portrait Gallery, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, as Mary Shelley probably would have known, Davy was also a writer himself with close ties to the leading authors of his day. </p>
<p>He was friends with poets Lord Byron and Robert Southey and had a hand in the creation of some of the greatest works of the Romantic period. This included editing the second edition of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/william-wordsworth-and-the-romantics-anticipated-todays-idea-of-a-nature-positive-life-196129">Lyrical Ballads</a> (1800).</p>
<p>And he wrote his own poetry – lots of it. The pages of Davy’s dozens of surviving notebooks are crammed full of poems, both published and obscure, which share space with the complex records of his scientific experiments, alongside the notes for Davy’s jaw-dropping lectures.</p>
<h2>Discovering Davy’s poetry</h2>
<p>Our project aims to make these notebooks – which have never been transcribed in their entirety – available in a free to read, online edition based on crowd-sourced transcriptions provided by nearly 3,000 volunteers. </p>
<p>Their hard work has enabled us to bring Davy’s fascinating work in the arts and sciences to a whole new generation.</p>
<p>Davy’s notebooks give invaluable <a href="https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/davynotebooks/category/dnp-blog/">insights into how his mind worked</a>. His firm conviction in the powers of the intellect, coupled with an unshakeable self belief, lay at the heart of his considerable success. As he declares in notebook 19E, containing drafts of lectures dating from around 1802:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Man is formed for pure enjoyments / his duties are high his destination / is lofty and he must then be / most accused of ignorance and folly / when he grovels in the dust having / wings which can carry him to the / skies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These manuscript discoveries show how Davy influenced others, including Mary Shelley, through fantastical ideas rooted in scientific enquiry. While he may not be widely known today, his outsized achievements and towering public personality jump from their pages.</p>
<p>Whether influencing some of the greatest works of literature, or pioneering new modes of experimentation, Davy’s notebooks tell a fascinating story about the intertwined history of the arts and sciences in British history. </p>
<p>Understanding Davy’s legacy – and his possible influence as Victor Frankenstein’s role model – reminds us that these two arenas are much more closely, and importantly, linked to one another than we often hold them to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Davy Notebooks Project has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Davy’s famous lectures on the animating power of electricity may have inspired a young Mary Shelley as she came up with the idea for Frankenstein.Alexis Wolf, Research Associate on the Davy Notebooks Project, Lancaster UniversityAndrew Lacey, Senior Research Associate on the Davy Notebooks Project, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1969812023-01-03T20:50:15Z2023-01-03T20:50:15ZHow 19th-century Victorians’ wellness resolutions were about self-help — and playful ritual fun<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502947/original/file-20230103-26-4tnfru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C464%2C2547%2C1295&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">January is named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, and the Victorians understood this has long been a season of looking backward as much as forward, and not just in search of lessons.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-19th-century-victorians--wellness-resolutions-were-about-self-help-—-and-playful-ritual-fun" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>On Jan. 1, 1887, a poem appeared in two British newspapers. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/readers-guide/rg_resolutions1.htm">I am resolved throughout the year</a> / To lay my vices on the shelf,” begins “New Year Resolutions.” </p>
<p>In what now reads like a familiar vow of post-holiday abstinence, a young <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rudyard-kipling">Rudyard Kipling lists</a> the temptations of women, horses and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/whist">card game whist</a>, pledging “A godly, sober course to steer / and love my neighbour as myself.” </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-new-years-resolutions#:%7E:text=The%20ancient%20Babylonians%20are%20said,when%20the%20crops%20were%20planted.">some sources,</a> the practice of making resolutions at the new year <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-the-new-years-resolution-come-from-well-weve-been-making-them-for-4-000-years-196661">can be traced back 4,000 years</a>, originating with the ancient Babylonians. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.17744/mehc.43.3.05">Opinions differ</a> on the origins of contemporary wellness culture, often the packaging for self-improvement through self-denial at the new year.</p>
<p>As sociolegal scholar <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/article/39/5/957/13664/What-Is-Wellness-Now">Anna Kirkland describes,</a> wellness as a contemporary buzzword can be defined as the belief “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/article/39/5/957/13664/What-Is-Wellness-Now">that each individual can and should strive to achieve a state of optimal functioning</a>.” </p>
<p>And this — echoing Kipling’s promise to better himself in the new year — also sounds very Victorian. </p>
<h2>Individual and national progress</h2>
<p>In 1859, Samuel Smiles, the Scottish journalist, biographer, social reformer and physician, published the authoritative text on 19th-century “character, conduct and perseverance” aptly <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/self-help-by-samuel-smiles">titled <em>Self-Help; with illustrations of character and conduct</em></a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A painting of an elderly Victorian man with white hair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502837/original/file-20230102-3468-asc1ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An 1877 portrait of Samuel Smiles by George Reid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Portrait Gallery collection/Wikimedia)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This was at the height of mid-Victorian hubris, and amid a year of epoch-defining ideas (Charles Darwin’s <em>On the Origin of Species</em> and John Stuart Mill’s <em>On Liberty</em> both entered the scene). </p>
<p>By the time Smiles (yes, that is his real name) died in 1904, <em>Self-Help</em> had sold over <a href="https://shepheardwalwyn.com/product/the-spirit-of-self-help">a quarter of a million copies in Britain alone and was an international hit</a>. </p>
<p>Smiles may now be less well known than some of his contemporaries, but his thesis on “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Self_help/_eUUAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=socrates&pg=PR13&printsec=frontcover">morals and manners</a>” and belief that “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Self_help/_eUUAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=samuel%20smiles%20self%20help&pg=PR3&printsec=frontcover">national progress was the sum of individual industry, energy and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness and vice</a>” shaped the stalwart Victorian work ethic. </p>
<p>This made self-help, as historian <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/samuel-smiles-gospel-self-help">Asa Briggs describes</a>, one of the <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/samuel-smiles-gospel-self-help">defining virtues</a> of the era. These same ideas also helped form the ideological backbone of the wellness industry today. </p>
<h2>Strict habits, hard work</h2>
<p>Over a century and a half after <em>Self-Help</em>, and a week before Christmas 2022, the <em>Toronto Star</em> served readers <a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/12/18/oh-honey-here-you-go-nine-wellness-trends-to-help-you-kick-start-the-new-year.html?utm_source=share-bar&utm_medium=user&utm_campaign=user-share">“Nine wellness trends to help you kick-start the New Year</a>.” </p>
<p>Unlike <em>the Star’s</em> wellness list, there is nothing in Smiles on the benefits of “functional fungus.” </p>
<p>Instead, <em>Self-Help</em> consists largely of a series of case studies: bootstrap narratives of successful men through history (Milton, Newton, Napoleon) who apparently rose through the ranks with strict habits and hard work. </p>
<p>But how different, really, are Smiles’s motivations from our own aspirations for annual self-improvement? </p>
<h2>Converting idle pleasure into profit</h2>
<p>Smiles’s biographer <a href="https://shepheardwalwyn.com/product/the-spirit-of-self-help/">John Hunter</a> describes <em>Self-Help</em>’s “bite-size pieces, undemanding of readers’ time,” with its “quotability” a boon to publishers. These are similar to the easily <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/aug/12/5-ways-listicle-changing-journalism">digestible “listicles”</a> that fill January lifestyle sections. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/12/18/oh-honey-here-you-go-nine-wellness-trends-to-help-you-kick-start-the-new-year.html?utm_source=share-bar&utm_medium=user&utm_campaign=user-share">Personalized wellness plans</a> may, on surface, signal hedonism over Smiles-like austerity and productivity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-resolve-to-be-thinner-and-fitter-this-year-wont-lead-to-salvation-107956">The resolve to be thinner and fitter this year won’t lead to salvation</a>
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<p>But from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/nyregion/napping-in-a-new-york-minute.html?smid=url-share">office nap pods</a>, to the rebranding of friendship as “<a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/12/18/oh-honey-here-you-go-nine-wellness-trends-to-help-you-kick-start-the-new-year.html?utm_source=share-bar&utm_medium=user&utm_campaign=user-share">therapeutic socialization</a>,” we too have come to convert idle pleasures into future profit, just as holiday indulgence becomes fodder for a January cleanse.</p>
<h2>Quantifiable self-improvement</h2>
<p>While often entailing deprivation, resolutions imply the sort of quantifiable self-improvement that would meet Smiles’s approval. </p>
<p>Yet we tend to make — or at least are told to make — the same ones every year. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/here-s-how-quickly-people-ditch-weight-loss-resolutions">Data shows</a> that gym memberships do indeed spike, only to fall again by February, until the cycle repeats the following year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A ferris wheel seen behind people skating." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502831/original/file-20230102-14-vx9s13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A wheel of perpetual seeking? People skate on the Old Port skating rink on New Year’s Day in Montréal, January 1, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
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<p>This could be evidence of what English professor <a href="https://journals.upress.ufl.edu/rhm/article/view/223">Colleen Derkatch terms the wellness industry’s “moving target</a>.” She notes how wellness discourse promotes seemingly opposed notions of restoration and enhancement. </p>
<p>This means people are perpetually seeking wellness — and often spending money trying to achieve it.</p>
<h2>Time for rest</h2>
<p>But the Victorians offer more than the origins of the wellness industry’s current capitalist trap. </p>
<p>While I certainly do not look to 19th-century Britain expecting a road map for a fulfilled life, or to mimic the many abominable views held by men <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/209518">like Kipling</a>, it’s worth noting that such writers can also provide models for unproductive fun that make the repetitive nature of resolutions a positive way to punctuate time.</p>
<p>In many years spent rereading the Victorians, I sometimes glimpse scraps of unproductive joy outside of the stereotypical narrative of hard work and discipline. </p>
<p>While never abandoning his belief that “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Autobiography_of_Samuel_Smiles_LL_D/DKVaBKcujpoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=samuel%20smiles%20autobiography&pg=PP2&printsec=frontcover">work plenty of work is necessary for my happiness and welfare</a>,” in Smiles’s autobiography he also allows time for rest, and even for useless recreation. </p>
<h2>Vows ‘lightly made’</h2>
<p>At one point, the book details how, recovering from a stroke, he replaces his reliance on work with amateur painting. </p>
<p>The artworks he produces “are not of much importance, but the execution of them was a great relief to me …[so] I went on cultivating idleness.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C739%2C8086%2C4207&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man seen with his arms outstretched in a giant gold person-sized public sculptural installation of the numbers 2023." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C739%2C8086%2C4207&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502834/original/file-20230102-12-vctfe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Is letting it all unravel part of the fun of resolutions?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>A commitment to unproductivity, perhaps, offers another way to approach resolutions. The lapsed exercise regimen or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/dec/28/stop-worrying-about-everything-thing-ill-do-differently">abandoned writing project</a>, then, are not just marks of failure, or potential targets for wellness profiteers. They can also be signs of happily wasted time.</p>
<p>In the final lines of his new year’s poem, Kipling flips the resolution narrative, letting his goals unravel, as our annual pledges so often do: “<a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_resolutions.htm">I am resolved—that vows like these/ Though lightly made, are hard to keep.</a>” </p>
<h2>Playfully pointless</h2>
<p>Despite the cynicism, the language stays lighthearted. The form mimics a children’s rhyme — regular in meter, with each quatrain followed by a bouncy couplet. </p>
<p>The poem ends with a bout of numerical diversion: “One vow a year will see me through,” so “I’ll begin with Number Two.” By pulling readers back to reread the second stanza, Kipling loosens the attachment to linear self-improvement. </p>
<p>January takes its name from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Janus-Roman-god">the two-faced Roman god Janus</a>. This has long been a season of looking backward as much as forward, and not just in search of lessons, or warnings or evidence of progress. </p>
<p>Turning to the past also places resolutions in the repetitive time zone of ritual: playfully pointless, and without expectation of future returns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Dufoe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 1859 book ‘Self-Help’ by Scottish journalist and physician Samuel Smiles was written in bite-sized pieces reminiscent of today’s wellness and lifestyle New Year tips.Nicole Dufoe, PhD Candidate in Victorian Literature and English Instructor, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870902023-01-01T19:39:41Z2023-01-01T19:39:41ZMy favourite fictional character: Seven Little Australians’ wild heroine, Judy, was equipped to conquer the world – but not to survive it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498861/original/file-20221205-26-xd1my0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C0%2C7916%2C5297&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Annie Spratt/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I can’t remember if I first met Judy Woolcot on the TV screen or in print: the two versions have cohered into a single entity. The television series of Ethel Turner’s <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/seven-little-australians/">Seven Little Australians</a> first aired in 1973, so if I met her on-screen, it must’ve been via re-runs. </p>
<p>I know my mother’s paperback copy of the novel featured a still from the series on its cover: a family portrait — Meg, Bunty, Baby, Nell, Pip; the General in a nightshirt, clinging to his young mother. The ultra-Victorian Captain Woolcot, played by Leonard Teale, his chin jutting out so precipitously that it threatens to pierce through the picture. And Judy, with bundles of shoulder-length hair, perched on a sofa arm, seeming somehow too big, too angular for the frame. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abebooks</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Seven Little Australians was published in 1893 and tells the story of the Woolcot family: seven children, running semi-wild in the rural outskirts of Sydney, overseen by their generous young stepmother, Esther, and military-man father, Captain Woolcot. Judy, the second oldest, aged 13, is a focal point of the tribe of children.</p>
<p>What is it about Judy that makes her my favourite character? By the time I read Seven Little Australians, I had already met <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8127.Anne_of_Green_Gables">Anne of Green Gables</a> and the stable of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1934.Little_Women">Little Women</a> sisters. I had probably just opened the chocolate sampler box that was the Bennet girls. So why not Anne Shirley? Why not Jo March? Why not Elizabeth Bennet?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IJz1AASVY10?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1973 television series, Seven Little Australians, dramatises Ethel Turner’s 1893 story of the rambunctious Woolcot family.</span></figcaption>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/little-women-at-150-and-the-patriarch-who-shaped-the-books-tone-102565">Little Women at 150 and the patriarch who shaped the book's tone</a>
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<h2>‘Bone-true’ authenticity of self</h2>
<p>For one thing, Judy was solid. You could trust her with an axe, a rope, a river. She was not, like Anne Shirley, a red-headed scrap of a thing, for whom accidents were always just waiting. She was not, like Jo March, inhabiting a secret, interior writer’s life. She was not, like Elizabeth Bennet, riveted to the question of appropriate marriages. </p>
<p>You could rely on Judy, in her boots, stomping across a paddock, cutting through the vanities and inanities of 19th-century life. She was fearlessly outwards-facing, and deeply honest: a “wild, unquiet subject” with a “strongly expressed scorn for equivocation”. Her honesty was the noble type of honesty that came, not from assiduous avoidance of lies, but from a bone-true authenticity of self. </p>
<p>She was also Australian. She spoke in an Australian accent (in the series and in my head). Her trees were my trees: gum trees. Although Seven Little Australians is set in Sydney in the late 1800s, the sky that sheltered her was the sky that sheltered me; the hot, scruffy dust was the hot, scruffy dust of my childhood. The bird calls were from bell birds and whip birds, way up high in impossibly tall trees with names like ironbark: trees that were very hard to cut down and fatal when they fell.</p>
<p>Anne could get knocked off her perch with a mere shake of a tree branch (or of her orange braids); Jo and Elizabeth could fall in love at any moment and waft away from their own centres. But not Judy. Judy was unassailably in and of herself. And only Judy could do that gravest of things: only Judy could die.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Anne Shirley was beaten as a contender for favourite fictional character by ‘unassailably in and of herself’ Judy Woolcot.</span></figcaption>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anne-of-green-gables-goes-to-war-94157">Anne of Green Gables goes to war</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Robustly competent, yet vulnerable</h2>
<p>Re-reading Seven Little Australians, I discovered that the image I have of Judy’s physical sturdiness is not borne out by the text. Turner tells us “she was very thin, as people generally are who have quicksilver instead of blood in their veins”. Her thinness, I realise now, is code for her fragility, which runs like a weave through the novel. </p>
<p>When she runs away from boarding school, walking 70 miles and sleeping rough, she suffers for her adventurousness; she is found in the stable loft, coughing blood into a handkerchief — a signal moment of terror in any 19th-century narrative. </p>
<p>When the children conspire to earn their father’s favour, Judy doesn’t wait on him or sew for him like her sisters: she mows the lawn, <em>with a scythe</em>. It is this hardiness of hers, her ability to wield a scythe, that explains the robust competence that is my image of her. Yet it also reveals her precariousness: she sweeps the “abnormally large scythe” back and forth in long, dangerous arcs, “decapitating a whole army of yellow-helmeted dandelions” while her father watches on in terror.</p>
<p>I’m struck, as an adult, by Captain Woolcot’s recognition of his daughter’s vulnerability. “Be careful of Judy,” her mother had said on her deathbed, and thinking about Judy’s future gave her father “an aggrieved kind of feeling”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That restless fire of hers that shone out of her dancing eyes, and glowed scarlet on her cheeks in excitement, and lent amazing energy and activity to her young, lithe body, would make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her, or else she would be shipwrecked on rocks the others would never come to, and it would flame up higher and higher and consume her […] Judy was stumbling right amongst them now, and her father could not “be careful” of her because he absolutely did not know how.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is a terrible modern tragedy in this: the father’s sensitive awareness of his daughter and complete incapacity to nurture and protect her. Judy is both equipped to conquer the world and ill-equipped to survive it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-with-men-i-feel-like-a-very-sharp-glittering-blade-when-5-liberated-women-spoke-the-truth-191496">Friday essay: 'with men I feel like a very sharp, glittering blade' – when 5 liberated women spoke the truth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The first time I wept reading a book’</h2>
<p>Judy’s death was the first time I wept reading a book. I knew her death was coming: I had watched it on TV. Watched her dash to save her baby brother, watched the enormous tree branch creak and fall, trapping her body beneath it. Still, I wept. I kept hoping the book would somehow reverse the tragedy of the television version: rewrite it, reanimate Judy. But no, Judy dies – as obstinately and heroically as she lived. </p>
<p>And in her death, how honest and modern she remains; wholly absent of any stoic, religion-inflected martyrdom you might expect of the period. She’s a frightened child, in a hut, feeling the light fall away. “Oh Meg, I want to be alive!” she says frantically. “How’d you like to die, Meg, when you’re only thirteen!” This stricken cry cut through my childhood.</p>
<p>I didn’t cry this time, but I did feel sobered and still and, at least for a few moments after finishing, <em>very</em> still. I was right to remember Judy. Judy was a reminder of how to live, how to be in the world, which is “always in a perfect fever of living”. </p>
<p>By virtue of her death, Judy has a gravitas that none of her fictional contenders possess. Her mortality is the very point of her being, the point of her character. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Judy!” Pip said, in a voice of beseeching agony. But the only answer was the wind at the tree-tops and the frightened breathing of the others.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding for her own creative work from Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria. She is the recipient of a Research Training Scholarship and Dean's Excellence in Research Scholarship at the University of Melbourne. She was the recipient of the 2020 Felix Meyer Creative Writing Scholarship and the Helen Macpherson Smith Scholarship for female researchers.</span></em></p>Edwina Preston tells why her favourite literary heroine is Seven Little Australians’ Judy Woolcot and her ‘bone-true authenticity of self’ – beating fellow tomboys Jo March and Anne Shirley.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1934482022-12-06T01:09:01Z2022-12-06T01:09:01Z‘How are they losing their children like this?’ Fiona McFarlane’s novel interrogates the stain of white presence on Aboriginal land<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497865/original/file-20221129-23-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flinders Ranges, South Australia</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Megan Clark/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country? They aren’t used to the desert.”</p>
<p>These are the thoughts of a Pashtun cameleer in Fiona McFarlane’s second novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Fiona-McFarlane-Sun-Walks-Down-9781761066207">The Sun Walks Down</a>, set in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges in 1883. This “bit part” cameleer is one of the few characters with a first-person address in McFarlane’s polyphonic, multifaceted saga that explores the cultural narrative, anxiety, and stain of white Australian presence on arid Australian land. </p>
<p>Bruce Chatwin, in his seminal novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-songlines-9780099769910">The Songlines</a> (1987), suggests “Australia […] is the country of lost children”. Indeed, the figure of the lost, innocent white child has pervaded Australian culture since the early 19th century. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Sun Walks Down – Fiona McFarlane (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I, too, have researched lost children for <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/release">my own novels</a> set in outback Australia, using the motif of a lost child to reflect wider cultural anxiety. </p>
<p>As Peter Pierce suggests in his <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1310831">The Country of Lost Children</a> (1999), “the idea of losing one’s child to a strange and silent country reflected the depth of white settlers’ distrust of their new land and its Aboriginal inhabitants”. Pierce suggests this deep anxiety can be traced to white settlers arriving “in a place where they might never be at peace”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497893/original/file-20221129-20-sev6lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In her masterful, complicated novel, McFarlane takes this further – she asks readers to consider a future of continued unsettlement, where white Australians are always chasing “something very precious, that nobody can find”. She suggests the lost child remains a pervasive symbol, highlighting unresolved unrest between white Australia and its tenuous connection to land. </p>
<p>Earlier in the novel, an Aboriginal stockman, Billy – himself uninitiated and not named as belonging to any specified tribe – reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A lost child is the thing white people are most afraid of. It is the one cost of settling on this country that they consider unreasonable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps McFarlane is saying that it is also the thing most inevitable.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lost-child-is-a-white-australian-anxiety-about-innocence-33900">The 'lost child' is a white Australian anxiety about innocence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Terror, unbelonging and yearning</h2>
<p>While McFarlane’s novel centres around the colonial ur-narrative of being lost in the land, she is really exploring the resulting feelings of terror, unbelonging and yearning. </p>
<p>She asks how it is possible to move forward in a land that first arrived in Anglo-Australian history as “a timely opportunity” and came afterwards “in the manner of a birthright”. She seems to suggest, so far at least, that Anglo-Australia has moved forward by controlling the narrative to its own ends.</p>
<p>The novel opens with an innocent, blonde and blue-eyed Denny, wandering through “desert country” to “collect things for the fire”. It is not long before a “high, dark wall” of a dust storm envelops Denny, his town of Fairly, and the wider South Australian <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-histories-written-in-the-land-a-journey-through-adnyamathanha-yarta-124001">Flinders Ranges</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a dust storm envelops South Australia's Flinders Ranges" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497911/original/file-20221129-16-pt6kmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Fiona McFarlane’s novel, a child is lost when a dust storm envelops the Flinders Ranges (pictured).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Mcmahon/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over seven days and nights, the story documents the resulting search for Denny, told through the perspectives of a massive cast of characters. Among them are Denny, his parents, his teenage sister Cissy, travelling artists Karl and Bess Rapp, the newlywed policeman and his wife, Indigenous trackers, the local vicar, and newly arrived Sergeant Foster. </p>
<p>Interspersed into these third-person limited perspectives, we are given eight intimate direct addresses: from the cameleer, a Yadliawarda maid, an Irish maid, a German widow, a Ramindjeri tracker, a German prostitute, an Australian writer and an English artist. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-frontier-the-intriguing-dance-of-history-and-fiction-40326">On the frontier: the intriguing dance of history and fiction</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Unsettling style</h2>
<p>I initially found the jolt between the narrative styles unsettling; perhaps this was McFarlane’s intention. However, the effect is to show many perspectives, each grappling with their own relationship to this arid land – and how tethered, or untethered, they feel towards it.</p>
<p>The first-person perspectives simultaneously allow us a window into voices often omitted from the Australian settler story (like the maids and cameleer), and subtly ask us to consider how stories – and who tells them – can shape a narrative. </p>
<p>This is particularly so when the “Australian writer” and the “English artist” take up the tale, each of them massaging the facts of Denny’s disappearance into heroic fictions of discovery, control, and ingenuity – within and of the land. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497891/original/file-20221129-18-6kktxd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A story within the story critiques the classic children’s book, Dot and the Kangaroo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank P. Mahoney/Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bess Krupp – or, the “English Artist” – goes on to publish a successful children’s story inspired by Denny’s disappearance. This story seems like a version of Ethel Pedley’s actual 1899 text, <a href="https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/books/dot-and-the-kangaroo-ethel-pedley/p/9780732298999">Dot and the Kangaroo</a>, exploiting the lost child motif and inverting it so that the desert can be somewhere a person can be reinvented anew (albeit through their own control over land).</p>
<p>We could argue McFarlane is also a white invader controlling a narrative: one of the many “Gods” who, while producing art about this land, “made use of a thing that wasn’t mine”. </p>
<p>As McFarlane explores characters cut off from real and metaphorical mothers, others feeling “both claimed by and exiled from” their new world, and others chasing “something very precious”, she explores the exploitative nature of storytelling and myth-making. She asks us to consider the truth of the tales we tell about ourselves and our identities, questioning whether there may be other lenses through which to view our past and our future.</p>
<p>The novel really comes together in the second half, once the characters begin to meet, interact and influence each other from inside the land. I admit, I did find the first half of the novel on the slow side, reading what felt at times like an endless introduction to more characters within the same patch of land. </p>
<p>However, once we move towards the fiery and thrilling conclusion, the novel’s ideas around belonging, destruction and loss come to the fore. As I reached the final few pages, I could see why Ann Patchett had labelled McFarlane’s story as one she is “always longing to find”. It has all the makings of a seminal, important text.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Christopher received a small
Amount of funding from the Arts Council of England to conduct a research trip to Western Australian deserts in order to write her novel, Release.</span></em></p>Fiona McFarlane’s ‘masterful, complicated’ novel explores the exploitative nature of storytelling. She asks us to consider the truth of the tales we tell about ourselves and our identities.Lucy Christopher, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1920532022-10-25T12:29:40Z2022-10-25T12:29:40ZThe creepy clown emerged from the crass and bawdy circuses of the 19th century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491176/original/file-20221023-56557-sw642f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=327%2C635%2C6299%2C4947&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clowns in American circuses were once considered a form of adult entertainment.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/evil-clown-royalty-free-image/471874489?phrase=circus clown vintage&adppopup=true">ArtMarie/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scary clown has become a horror staple. </p>
<p>Featuring Art the Clown as the main villain, Damien Leone’s film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10403420/">Terrifier 2</a>” is so gruesome that there are reports of viewers <a href="https://ew.com/movies/terrifier-2-fainting-vomiting-art-the-clown/">vomiting and passing out</a> in the theater. And every Halloween, you’ll see vicious clowns <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L4-qRaLilY">stalking haunted house attractions</a> or trick-or-treaters dressed as <a href="https://www.partycity.com/group-costumes-pennywise">Pennywise</a>, the evil clown from Stephen King’s “It.”</p>
<p>It can be hard to imagine a time when clowns were regularly invited to children’s birthday parties and hospital wards – not to terrorize, but to delight and entertain. For much of the 20th century, this was the <a href="https://festival.si.edu/blog/american-clowns-performance-history-and-cliche">standard role of the clown</a>. </p>
<p>However, clowns have always had a dark side. Before the 20th century, clowns in American circuses were largely considered a form of adult entertainment. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://womenalsoknowhistory.com/individual-scholar-page/?pdb=2865">my own research</a> on the history of the 19th-century circus, I spend a lot of time in archives where I regularly come across vintage photos of clowns. </p>
<p>Now, I don’t consider myself afraid of clowns. In fact, I always try to remind folks that today’s clowns are <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw3g3b/everything-you-learn-in-clown-college">serious artists with an enormous amount of training</a> in their craft. But even I have to admit that the clowns I come across from old circuses give me the heebie-jeebies.</p>
<h2>Drunken, lewd clowns in drag</h2>
<p>For most of the 19th century, circuses were relatively small, one-ring events where audiences could hear performers speak. </p>
<p>These shows were <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/septemberoctober/statement/the-circus-you-never-knew">rowdy affairs</a> in which audiences felt free to yell, boo and hiss at performers. Typically, clowns would engage in banter with the stoic ringmaster, who was often the target for the clowns’ pranks. Borrowing comedic traditions from the <a href="https://library.brown.edu/cds/sheetmusic/afam/minstrelsy.html">blackface minstrel show</a>, circus clowns used puns, non sequiturs and exaggerated burlesque humor. </p>
<p>One very popular clown act, which <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm">Mark Twain depicted</a> in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” involved a performer disguised as a drunken circus patron who shocked the audience by entering the ring and clumsily attempting to ride one of the show’s horses before dramatically revealing himself to be part of the show. Famous 19th-century clown Dan Rice was <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/famous-american-clown-was-probably-model-uncle-sam-180961852/">known for including local gossip and political commentary</a> in his performances and impersonating prominent figures in each town he visited.</p>
<p>The jokes they told were often misogynistic and full of sexual double-entendres, which wasn’t a problem because circus audiences at this time were mostly adult and male. Back then, circuses were a <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807853993/the-circus-age/">stigmatized form of entertainment</a> in the U.S., considered disreputable for their association with gambling, grift, scantily clad female performers, profanity and alcohol. Church leaders regularly warned their congregations not to attend the circus. Some states even had <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3787111">laws banning circuses altogether</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A circus poster featuring clowns engaged in various hijinks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491177/original/file-20221023-26-w39tra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clowns in the 19th century were often sinister, vulgar characters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/ppmsca/55100/55150v.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clowns played a part in the circus’ seedy reputation. </p>
<p>Showman <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820344379/the-big-tent/">P.T. Barnum noted</a> that part of the appeal of the circuses “consisted of the clown’s vulgar jests, emphasized with still more vulgar and suggestive gestures.” Clowns also subverted gender norms, with many appearing in drag, often exaggerating the female figure with cartoonishly big fake breasts.</p>
<p>In the early 19th century, some circuses also featured a separate tent that contained a “cooch show.” Male patrons were invited, for a fee, to watch women dance and strip. </p>
<p>Circus historian <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807853993/the-circus-age/">Janet Davis notes</a> that some of these performances included clowns in drag “playing gender-bending pranks on dumbfounded men who expected to see nude women.” In a shocking revelation, Davis also notes that at some cooch show performances, gay clowns had sexual encounters with male audience members “during and after anonymously crowded scenes.”</p>
<p>These clowns, suffice it to say, weren’t for kids.</p>
<h2>Clowns clean up their act</h2>
<p>It wasn’t really until the 1880s and 1890s, when entertainment impresarios like <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-selected-letters-of-p-t-barnum/9780231054126">Barnum made efforts to “clean up”</a> the circus to draw in a larger audience, that clowns truly became associated with children.</p>
<p>After circuses started traveling by railroad, they could carry more equipment, allowing them to expand from one ring to three. Audiences could no longer hear performers, so the clown became a pantomime comedian, eliminating any potentially vulgar or suggestive language. </p>
<p>Circus owners, aiming to make as much money as possible, tried to court a broader audience, including women and children. That necessitated the removal of any scandalous acts and strict monitoring of their employees’ behavior.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Circus advertisement featuring drawings of clowns and animals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491175/original/file-20221023-19-skgs8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the directive of P.T. Barnum, clowns became palatable to families with young kids.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/poster-advertising-p-t-barnums-circus-greatest-show-on-news-photo/517292546?phrase=circus%20clown&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The shows with the most staying power, like Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth, were <a href="https://shop.wisconsinhistory.org/ringlingville-usa-paperback-edition">known as “Sunday school” shows</a>, free of any objectionable content. They successfully portrayed themselves as the purveyors of good, clean fun.</p>
<p>Clowns played a role in this transformation. With now-silent acts focused on physical comedy, their performances were easy for children to understand. Clowns remained tricksters, but their slapstick comedy was seen as all in good fun.</p>
<p>This had a lasting effect. Clowns entertained families at the circus, and, as entertainment moved to film and television, child-friendly clowns followed there too. Clowns became staples of children’s entertainment in the 20th century. A popular television program featuring <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254011/">Bozo the Clown</a> ran for 40 years, from 1960 to 2001. Beginning in the 1980s, clowns became <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69919-4/fulltext">regular visitors to children’s hospitals</a> to cheer up young patients. And companies <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ronald-mcdonald-facts-2014-3">like McDonald’s</a> used clowns as mascots to make their brands appealing to children. </p>
<p>But in the 21st century, there’s been a sharp turnaround. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7189401.stm">A 2008 study</a> concluded that “clowns are universally disliked” by children today. Some point to clown-turned-serial killer <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment-and-culture/2021/3/19/22338876/john-wayne-gacy-serial-killer-house-chicago-evidence-art-paintings-devil-disguise-peacock">John Wayne Gacy</a> as the turning point, while others may blame Stephen King’s “It” for yoking clowns to horror.</p>
<p>Upon examining the history of the American circus, it almost seems as if the period in the 20th century when clowns were beloved by children deviated from the norm. Today’s scary clowns are not a divergence from tradition, but a return to it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline Steiner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today’s creepy clowns are not a divergence from tradition, but a return to it.Madeline Steiner, Postdoctoral Fellow of History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1866822022-09-06T12:36:15Z2022-09-06T12:36:15ZSupreme Court’s selective reading of US history ignored 19th-century women’s support for ‘voluntary motherhood’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482327/original/file-20220901-23-94389p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association participate in a 1910 parade in Washington, D.C. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/american-physician-anna-howard-shaw-leader-of-the-womens-suffrage-in-picture-id1393779815">Paul Thompson/FPG/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The history of abortion in the U.S. guided some of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments in the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> decision. Alito argued that abortion has never been a “deeply rooted” constitutional right in the United States. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://facultyweb.kennesaw.edu/lthom182/">as a historian</a> of medicine, law and women’s rights, I think Alito’s read of abortion history is not only incomplete, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/02/alitos-anti-roe-argument-wrong-00036174">it is also inaccurate</a>. </p>
<p>Alito argued in the opinion that abortion has always been a serious crime, but there were no laws about abortion at all in Colonial America. Beginning in the 19th century, most states barred it only after “quickening,” when a pregnant woman can first feel the fetus move, typically around the fourth to sixth <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/scarlet-letters-getting-the-history-of-abortion-and-contraception-right/">month of pregnancy</a>.</p>
<p>Abortion is indeed deeply rooted in the American experience and law. American women <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/13/opinion/sunday/abortion-history-women.html">have always tried</a> to personally determine the size of their families. Enslaved Black women <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/enslaved-womens-sexual-health-reproductive-rights-as-resistance/">used contraception and abortion</a> as specific strategies of resistance against their physical and reproductive bondage. </p>
<p>The very passage of <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/">the 13th</a> and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">14th amendments</a>, which ended slavery and guaranteed citizenship for all, is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/26/opinion/justice-alito-reproductive-justice-constitution-abortion.html">evidence that the Constitution actually does protect</a> bodily autonomy. The 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses have long been the legal basis for gender equality cases. If, as the Supreme Court’s ruling suggests, the right to abortion is not constitutionally protected via the 14th Amendment, it opens up the possibility that other settled law concerning gender and racial equality also has the potential to be reversed. </p>
<p>Instead of examining abortion through the lens of past cases of gender law, however, Alito instead refers to the opinions of 17th-century male legal theorists, <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/06/metro/who-was-matthew-hale-17th-century-jurist-alito-invokes-his-draft-overturning-roe/">who believed</a> in witches and the right of husbands to rape their wives. He also cites as evidence the passage of 19th-century state abortion laws by all-male legislatures, which criminalized abortion and birth control. The <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1038/comstock-act-of-1873#:%7E:text=The%20Comstock%20Act%20of%201873,picture%2C%20drawing%2C%20or%20advertisement.">Comstock Postal Act of 1873</a> also made possessing or selling all sexual information and contraceptive items a federal crime. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Alito’s opinion does not discuss the women’s rights movement in the 1800s or women’s ordinary, daily perspectives on abortion at the time. In this landmark decision, the court has skipped one of the biggest parts of U.S. history on abortion, creating a glaring gap in an understanding of how abortions and abortion law in the country worked in the past.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A middle aged white, blonde woman wears a straw hat, white clothing and a sash that says 'Votes for women.' Five other women, also in white and with the same sashes, stand in the foreground. Two hold a sign that says 'Votes for Women.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482329/original/file-20220901-13-ldb478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Candace Stitzman-Duley, center, a distant relative of Susan B. Anthony, poses with Democratic voting activists in Muhlenberg, Pa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/candace-stitzmanduley-front-back-from-left-are-ella-drumgold-of-of-picture-id1269372458">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Voluntary motherhood</h2>
<p>Considering how suffragists like the Black journalist and activist <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett">Ida B. Wells</a> and other prominent women’s rights activists in the 19th century thought about rights to their own bodies is an overlooked part of this history.</p>
<p>Suffragists in the 19th century focused on a woman’s right to vote – and did not openly support legalizing abortion or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781420000304">birth control</a>. </p>
<p>The reason why reproductive rights were omitted from the suffragist campaign is complex. </p>
<p>Suffragists argued that legalizing birth control and abortion would hurt women, who already had few legal rights at the time. They said that men would then use these legal freedoms to further abuse and control women.</p>
<p>Instead, suffragists embraced an idea they termed “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/07/did-suffragists-support-birth-control/593896/">voluntary motherhood</a>.” This meant that women had the right to reject unwanted sex and could choose if and when they had children. </p>
<p>Even in happy marriages, many women in the 1800s could not necessarily control the number of pregnancies they had. <a href="https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/crime-penalties/marital-rape.htm">Marital rape</a> was legal, and enslavers had total control over enslaved women’s bodies. </p>
<p>The idea of voluntary motherhood – meaning that women should have full control over their own bodies – was a powerfully radical idea. </p>
<p>This notion appealed to women across race and class lines, and it helped drive the emergent women’s rights movement, beginning in the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/womens-rights-movement.htm">1840s</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two older women in old fashioned clothing seated at a table, looking at some papers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482330/original/file-20220901-19-4xoqqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both noted suffragists, are shown in an 1890 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/susan-b-anthony-and-elizabeth-cady-stanton-two-great-pioneers-in-the-picture-id624470444">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What suffragists said about abortion</h2>
<p>Suffragist reformers recognized that the right to vote meant little if they did not have control of their bodies or reproductive lives. Black suffragists like Wells and <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/new-tactics-for-a-new-generation-1890-1915/western-states-pave-the-way/i-speak-of-wrongs-frances-ellen-watkins-harper/">Frances Ellen Watkins Harper</a>, for example, <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1866-frances-ellen-watkins-harper-we-are-all-bound-together/">spoke eloquently</a> about the constant dangers Black women faced from white men raping and assaulting them.</p>
<p>They and White women suffragists like Lucy Stone argued that gaining the right to vote would help women have more power to combat these problems. </p>
<p>These activists recognized that women turned to contraceptives and abortion to control their own reproduction. But they also said that unscrupulous manufacturers and people who performed abortions sometimes took advantage of women, by selling them ineffective or harmful contraceptives or charging them large sums for abortions. Substances used to induce abortion, or <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/19th-century-birth-control-dittrick">abortifacients</a>, also often contained harmful and poisonous ingredients that killed women, while surgical abortions were incredibly risky in an era where germ theory and understandings of infection were rudimentary at best.</p>
<p>Reformers also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2019.0029">openly blamed</a> harsh anti-abortion laws for contributing to these problems – driving women to desperate measures while still allowing men to have sex freely and shirk their responsibilities of fatherhood. </p>
<p>Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage agreed, writing in a suffrage newspaper <a href="https://www.feministsforlife.org/matilda-joslyn-gage-1826-1898/">in 1868 that</a> “this crime of … abortion … lies at the door of the male sex.” </p>
<h2>Using history for today’s arguments</h2>
<p>Today, some anti-abortion rights women’s groups look to the suffragist movement to make the case that abortion should be limited or banned. </p>
<p>Feminists for Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, for example, have long rested their funding and advocacy campaigns on attempting to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/susan-b-anthony-was-pro-life-elizabeth-cady-stanton-roe-abortion-dobbs-decision-11655151459?mod=article_inline">prove that suffragists were “pro-life</a>.” But research shows that their argument is an incomplete reading of suffragists’ complex views of abortion, while also falsely presuming that suffragists would have supported current laws banning abortion today. </p>
<p>There is ample primary source evidence in suffrage newspapers like “The Revolution” or in the private letters of the suffragists showing that they repeatedly insisted that anti-abortion laws punished women, without actually eliminating the practice of abortion. </p>
<p>White suffragists like Anthony held <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html">overtly racist</a> and eugenic views, and their support for women who sought abortions often incorporated ideas of eliminating disability and what they deemed undesirable offspring. They prioritized rights for white, middle-class women and ignored or outright rejected Black reformers’ <a href="https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/18-industrial-america/ida-b-wells-barnett-lynch-law-in-america-1900/#:%7E:text=The%20result%20is%20that%20many,him%20with%20insult%20or%20assault.">urgent pleas</a> for reproductive justice. </p>
<p>But that messy, complex past nonetheless remains central to understanding Americans’ experiences with abortion and abortion law. </p>
<p>Alito wrote that women’s role in abortion history is too “conflicting” to be useful. Yet considering women’s historical attitudes about reproductive rights – and the reasons behind these views – was a critical omission in the court’s historical considerations of the role of abortion in Americans’ lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The women’s rights movement in the 1800s did not openly support legalizing abortion or birth control. But the reasons why are complex.Lauren Thompson, Assistant Professor of History and Interdisciplinary Studies, Kennesaw State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1887942022-08-25T12:26:16Z2022-08-25T12:26:16ZChautauqua, where Salman Rushdie was attacked, has a long history of promoting free speech and learning for the public good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480491/original/file-20220823-24-uqfac4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C1020%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chautauqua's lectures and performances drew hundreds of people with their promise of self-transformation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-4e04-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">L.E. Walker/New York Public Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Aug. 20, 2022, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/20/books/salman-rushdie-pen-.html">a large crowd gathered in front of the New York Public Library</a> to hear prominent authors such as Kiran Desai, Gay Talese and Colum McCann read from <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-salman-rushdies-the-satanic-verses-remains-so-controversial-decades-after-its-publication-102321">novelist Salman Rushdie’s works</a>. The event was organized as a demonstration of support for Rushdie after <a href="https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a">he was brutally attacked</a> during a lecture on Aug. 12.</p>
<p>The Indian-born writer has been the subject of death threats ever since the publication of his 1998 book “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslim leaders <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-fatwa-a-religious-studies-professor-explains-188866">condemned as blasphemous</a>.</p>
<p>The speakers at the Aug. 20 reading stressed free speech. But they may not have known that the very place where Rushdie was attacked, <a href="https://www.chq.org/">the Chautauqua Institution</a> in western New York state, was founded nearly 150 years ago on similar ideals: the free exchange of ideas and learning to benefit individuals and society.</p>
<p>What began as a summer camp for Sunday school teachers grew into a national network of lectures, classes and performances. President Theodore Roosevelt supposedly called Chautauqua “the most American thing in America” – a phrase <a href="https://theatredance.utexas.edu/people/canning-charlotte">I borrowed</a> for the title of <a href="https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/most-american-thing-america">my book</a> about the lecture circuit. The institute aimed to “discuss questions and solve problems,” while “exalting education of all, everywhere, without exception,” as <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/08989885">one founder declared</a>.</p>
<p>Chautauqua has never been immune from larger national tensions and sometimes failed to live up to the inclusive vision it proclaimed. But its founding values are those that Rushdie’s supporters were seeking to defend.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Half a dozen rows of people sit underneath an outdoor shelter among trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480593/original/file-20220823-27-loaoxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A vigil for author Salman Rushdie after he was attacked on Aug. 12, 2022, in Chautauqua, N.Y.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SalmanRushdieAssault/04045e7633f64159bf20ff30f61a8379/photo?Query=chautauqua&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=123&currentItemNo=42">AP Photo/Joshua Goodman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Learning by the lake</h2>
<p>When the Chautauqua Institution held its first meeting in 1874, the nation was still bitterly divided in the wake of the Civil War that had ended less than 10 years before. <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-everyone-should-know-about-reconstruction-150-years-after-the-15th-amendments-ratification-122117">Reconstruction</a> was changing the South, and by extension the entire country. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/overview/">an economic boom</a> helped create an explosion of immigration and a widening gulf between the rich and the poor.</p>
<p>Into this volatile political, social and economic situation stepped Chautauqua. The institution’s two founders – <a href="https://www.smu.edu/libraries/digitalcollections/jhv">John Heyl Vincent</a>, a Methodist bishop, and Lewis Miller, a Midwestern businessman – created a summer educational program for Sunday school teachers in an outdoors setting. Their idea was inspired by the “<a href="https://digitalheritage.org/2010/08/camp-meetings/">camp meetings</a>” popular in rural areas, especially in the South and West: religious revivals where Protestant Christians would preach outside. But Vincent and Miller wanted to replace exhortation and spectacle with study and research.</p>
<p>Chautauqua soon focused on education more generally, and its religious focus became increasingly interdenominational. Four years after its beginning, the institution established the <a href="https://www.chq.org/schedule/resident-programs/literary-arts/clsc/">Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle</a>, which expanded the center’s focus on self-improvement into a guided reading series, and eventually became the first correspondence degree program in the U.S. </p>
<p>Chautauqua pioneered the <a href="https://bestaccreditedcolleges.org/articles/history-of-adult-education-info-on-adult-education-programs.html">adult education movement</a>, with the idea that everyone deserved access to what is now called “life-long learning.”</p>
<p>The “Chautauqua Ideal,” as its adherents called it, did not remain contained to a small enclave on the banks of a lake in New York state. Not long after the reading circle program began, communities around the country decided to establish their own Chautauqua assemblies. One of the few that remain today is in <a href="https://www.chautauqua.com/">Boulder, Colorado</a>. Like the original Chautauqua, people would come for weeks at a time to attend classes and enjoy social activities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows two children and two adults outside a post office in a tent." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480600/original/file-20220823-5550-ug4rqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The post office at a Chautauqua circuit in Columbus, Ohio, 1910.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-post-office-at-the-ohio-chautauqua-in-columbus-ohio-news-photo/488813289?adppopup=true">Vintage Images/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The expanding railway system, meanwhile, sparked a new possibility: Circuit Chautauqua. Commercial bureaus that managed performers’ and speakers’ schedules set up <a href="https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/most-american-thing-america">networks of seasonal Chautauquas</a> and would rotate the talent through each circuit. From their start in 1904 up through their heyday in the 1920s, the circuits played to millions, and at their peak appeared in almost every state.</p>
<h2>Democratic experiment</h2>
<p>What drew people to every incarnation of Chautauqua around the turn of the century was the promise of transformation, self-improvement and a sense of uplift. Whether a person traveled to New York or experienced Chautauqua in their own backyard, they felt that knowledge and self-expression were theirs for the taking. </p>
<p>As a woman from Kansas, whom I quote <a href="https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/most-american-thing-america">in my book</a>, enthused to a reporter in 1910, “the town never was the same after Chautauqua started coming. The Chautauqua brought a new touch of culture which we immediately applied to our lives: new ways of speech, dress, ways of entertainment. … It broadened our lives in many ways.”</p>
<p>Talk about democracy, access to knowledge and open discussion was everywhere in Chautauqua. <a href="https://doi.org/10.7312/ries12642">The movement took off during the Progressive Era</a> of about 1890 to 1920, a time of political and social reform in the United States. Activists agitated for democratic reforms, ethical government and the improvement of everyday life, such as food safety regulations.</p>
<p>Reformers called for improved public education, especially as a way to integrate <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/immigrants-in-progressive-era/">new immigrants</a> into civil society. Chautauqua became a key site for the exchange of ideas on how to achieve Progressives’ aspirations. </p>
<p>Despite being a platform for free and respectful speech and debate, however, Chautauqua has also reflected larger social divisions and prejudice. For decades the New York version remained, as <a href="https://www.sunydutchess.edu/academics/departments/historygovernmentandeconomics/hgefaculty.html">historian Andrew C. Rieser</a> <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-chautauqua-moment/9780231126427">described it</a>, “lily-white to the core,” and the others were not much different. Chautauqua was not revolutionary and never led the charge on issues like suffrage or civil rights. People of color who appeared in Chautauqua had to endure much harsher conditions than their white counterparts, such as having to leave segregated “<a href="https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/">sundown towns</a>” at dusk after they performed, and other oppressive experiences.</p>
<h2>Free speech then – and now</h2>
<p>As the nation struggled to become more inclusive, so too did Chautauqua. Today, its values of reading, critical thinking and open listening are as relevant as they were in the upheavals of the 19th century.</p>
<p>When Rushdie’s assailant <a href="https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a?taid=62f66e7da3b3e500018694a5&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter">rushed to the stage</a>, the novelist was speaking in a lecture series called “<a href="https://www.chq.org/event/salman-rushdie-henry-reese/">More Than Shelter</a>.” The day’s discussion was to have focused on “the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression.”</p>
<p>Chautauqua was founded to discuss those kinds of ideas, although on that day it was no asylum. Yet its continued existence is a reminder that people can insist on thoughtful ideas to transform themselves and their communities for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte M. Canning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Chautauqua movement symbolized progressive reformers’ hopes that public learning could create a healthy democracy.Charlotte M. Canning, Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor in Drama, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1844592022-08-02T20:13:02Z2022-08-02T20:13:02Z‘Skin and sinew and breath and longing’: reimagining the lives of queer artists and activists, from Sappho to Virginia Woolf<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476642/original/file-20220729-17-4dwcee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3988%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pictured, clockwise from left: Gertrude Stein, Lina Poletti, Sarah Bernhardt, Virginia Woolf, Sappho.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/after-sappho">After Sappho</a>, Selby Wynn Schwartz’s reimagining of the lives of 19th and 20th century women artists, activists and sapphists is a book I’ve always wanted to read. (And it’s <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-prize">just been longlisted</a> for the 2022 Booker Prize.)</p>
<p>Sappho, an Ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, was often called “the Poetess”. Plato called her the tenth Muse. Her writing is intimate, lyrical and sensual. It is unapologetically erotic, and mostly directed towards women. She’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-sappho-a-poet-in-fragments-90823">been called</a> history’s first lesbian. </p>
<p>Who among us lesbians hasn’t wanted to be loved by Sappho, be loved in the Sapphic way? To be Sappho — as in, as Wynn Schwartz writes in the prologue, “inside ourselves”, “sky pouring over”, “leaves of trees shivering”, “everything trembling”, “move when nothing touches”; as in the Sapphic fragment “the opposite/ … daring”? </p>
<p>I remember the first time I became Sappho too.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>A novel in fragments</h2>
<p>After Sappho is a novel in fragments or cascading vignettes. It rolls like water, like waves, introducing the reader to numerous feminists, writers, sapphists, activists and artists from the late 19th and 20th centuries. It is through their work and how they determine to live their own lives that they carve out a way to take control, become themselves, and inspire others to do the same. </p>
<p>The narrative of the book adopts the plural first-person “we” or collective voice, binding us as a community of readers to the pioneering poetry of Sappho and these brilliant women who followed, showing us how to live. We become part of the chorus line, the voices that will never be silenced.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sappho has been called history’s first lesbian – and the word itself derives from her home, the island of Lesbos. (Art by Julius Johann Ferdinand Kronberg)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first read, I was a little shy; I thought I needed to know everyone and everything before meeting them: a bit like coming out, I needed to demonstrate a solid sense of the self. Bite by bite, Wynn Schwartz introduces us to her characters, folding them together and into us: she lets their voices “wing their way through”; rise on our tongues.</p>
<p>In this work there are the sapphistories of herstorical figures we know well. There’s Radclyffe Hall, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sarah-Bernhardt">Sarah Bernhardt</a>, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf – along with lesser-knowns such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_%22Bricktop%22_Smith">Ada Bricktop Smith</a>, who in 1924 learned what it was like to black up her face (when she was already a black girl) in order to earn a living, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Gray">Eileen Gray</a>, who in the 1920s as an avant garde artist, writer and architect, opened a gallery of her own, full of light and lacquer and glass.</p>
<p>Difficult-to-read counternarrative moments intersect these herstories. Such as the story of Italian poet, playwright and feminist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Poletti">Lina Poletti</a> (said to be one of Italy’s first openly declared lesbians) giving the poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke">Rainer Maria Rilke</a> an unfinished draft of a play she had written. She wrote Arianna at a time when she and her lover, the great actress Eleonora Duse, were “almost winged”. (Poletti and Duse lived with each other for a time; Rilke was obsessed with Duse.) Rilke declared “she wanted too much, her <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ariadne-Greek-mythology">Ariadne</a> was too many things at once”. Poletti suspected Rilke was “lying through his teeth”.</p>
<p>And <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWblackbook.htm">Noel Pemberton Billing’s Black Book</a> (compiled by the British Secret Service, by reports from German agents), listing every lesbian in Britain (although by law they didn’t exist), and denouncing “lesbian ecstasy” and the Cult of the Clitoris – is it “an unsteadiness in the hand”, is it a “trembling in the mouth”? Moments like this plunge any “careful becoming” back centuries, “into history we had barely survived”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-sappho-a-poet-in-fragments-90823">Guide to the classics: Sappho, a poet in fragments</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A prescient book, for our times</h2>
<p>This book is prescient, written for our times. It’s not just an important re-writing/righting of herstory, or a new view on queer feminists in turn-of-the-century Europe. It’s a warning and a light shone forward, posing an old question we are still asking, especially with the recent Supreme Court overturning of <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-but-for-abortion-opponents-this-is-just-the-beginning-185768">Roe v. Wade</a> in the US. </p>
<p>As Italian suffragist and businesswoman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenia_Rasponi">Eugenia Rasponi</a> argues hotly in 1914, more than 100 years ago: “We are still denying to women the right to their own bodies? It is as if the new century has changed nothing.” Fellow Italian feminist (and writer) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilla_Aleramo">Sibilla Aleramo</a> explains: it’s not democracy, but tyranny. </p>
<p>Dotted throughout this novel is the everywoman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra">Cassandra</a>, who was famously fated to tell the truth but never be believed. She appears in different time periods in this novel, a lantern-bearer and prophetess, modelled by Wynn Schwartz on the Trojan priestess and the poet Anne Carson and her poem “Cassandra Float Can” (from her collection, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/float-9781910702574">Float</a>). Cassandra is also a figure in Virginia Woolf’s writing; she invented a “Cassandra for 1914” to counter the madness of war; Cassandra lights the way to a different kind of future. </p>
<p>We need a modern-day Cassandra, a Cassandra for our time who can scream outside of language, “gash the fabric of normal life, to rend it into strange tatters”. The point and impulse of language is everywhere. A Cassandra who lives in her own future. It is time for women to take language for themselves, as Gertrude Stein argues: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-ZOd2nDVk84?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Anne Carson performs ‘Cassandra Float Can’ – one of many references in this rich novel of reimagination.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each short section of After Sappho, each next fragment, juxtaposes a new day. A further revelation, “scattershot relief against a landscape”. Wynn Schwartz gives us a grammar of becoming that touches all surfaces “like flash powder”; a kaleidoscope of pleasure; a seeking of verb and tense, shifts and changes. </p>
<p>She brings together her purposefully arranged fragments of herstory of this time and these fierce women to give us hope “of becoming in all our forms and genres”. She tells us, “The future of Sappho shall be us.”</p>
<p>And there we are, among these wonderful foremothers, in first-person plural around the table – you know that game, of wishing guests to a slow degustation. The same table that brings Vita and Virginia together for the first time when Vita breaks in, to get Virginia’s attention: “I think you are Sappho of our time.” We will never be silenced.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/painting-in-circles-and-loving-in-triangles-the-bloomsbury-groups-queer-ways-of-seeing-75438">Painting in circles and loving in triangles: the Bloomsbury Group's queer ways of seeing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Speak desires aloud and inspire’</h2>
<p>This is a book in verb and body, a novel of many parts – it’s fun thinking of its genre (fun writing a review in fragments) – a hybrid of “imaginaries and intimate nonfictions”, “a composition as explanation”, “an alchemical experiment”. In this novel, characters are tracked across pages and different years: some come to the page as more of a sketch (like a first draft) and build up as they return; others appear fully formed from when we first meet them.</p>
<p>Writing this review happened in the pages and margins of the book itself: a jot here, underlinings, arrows, transcription, <em>X X X</em> against passages for extra emphasis. There was so much to remark upon, absorb; my imaginaries interlocking with those on the page. </p>
<p>After Sappho is an unstructured community where everyone is equal and where this community imbues a spirit of its own: a heady fountain of what can happen in a space of togetherness itself, in which the “blush of our inner parts” turn “out towards each other”. Where, as inverts and delinquents, lesbians and viragos, we want to be “everything at once” and believe “this is possible”. Wynn Schwartz invites us to this Sapphic community: right here, right now. “Life itself”, present tense. Where we congregate, speak desires aloud and inspire. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-a-room-of-ones-own-virginia-woolfs-feminist-call-to-arms-145398">Guide to the classics: A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's feminist call to arms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After Sappho is an ecstatic read, a sapphistory writing ourselves into existence into the lives we want to live – not the lives others want us to live. It is a provocation to become who we want to become. The women in this wondrous novel, a <em>tour de Sappho</em>, are our foremothers, our foresapphists. Birds fly out of its pages. </p>
<p>Selby Wynn Schwartz gives us a dark herstory; one that is hysterically funny, poetic and maddeningly tender. It is skin and sinew and breath and longing. And becoming. Remember to tongue it slowly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesca Rendle-Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Selby Wynn Schwartz’s inventive, poetic reimagining of lives like those of Virginia Woolf and Sarah Bernhardt – against a backdrop of Sappho – has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize.Francesca Rendle-Short, Professor, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1859472022-07-06T12:21:16Z2022-07-06T12:21:16ZAbortion decision cherry-picks history – when the US Constitution was ratified, women had much more autonomy over abortion decisions than during 19th century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472094/original/file-20220701-16-bcmnaz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C3%2C1020%2C797&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ben Franklin, center, inserted an abortion recipe in a popular textbook he republished in 1748.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/benjamin-franklin-and-associates-at-franklins-printing-news-photo/525372985?adppopup=true">GraphicaArtis/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Justice Samuel Alito appears spellbound by the 19th century. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a>, the decision Alito wrote overruling 50 years of <a href="https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-overturns-roe-upends-50-years-of-abortion-rights-5-essential-reads-on-what-happens-next-184697">constitutional protection for women’s right to get an abortion</a>, he deploys arguments that are based on several historical precedents. He uses the phrase “history and tradition” regularly. </p>
<p>But for Alito, the 19th century looks like the true golden age: “In 1803, the British Parliament <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy</a> and authorized the imposition of severe punishment.”</p>
<p>He goes on and on: “In this country during the 19th century, the vast majority of the States enacted statutes criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy.”</p>
<p>“By 1868, the year when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified,” Alito concludes, “three-quarters of the States, 28 out of 37, had enacted statutes making abortion a crime.”</p>
<p>But in his rather selective forays into history, Alito doesn’t ask what <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/maurizio-valsania-1098422">to me, as a historian</a>, constitutes a set of fundamental questions: Why was abortion eventually criminalized during that time? What was the broad cultural and intellectual context of that period? And, more important, is there something peculiar about the 19th century?</p>
<p>As far as women’s bodies and abortion are concerned, the 19th century saw a decrease in the trust in, and power of, women themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An aged title page for a book, 'Domestic Medicine.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1303&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1303&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472084/original/file-20220701-20-4cpdoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1303&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Buchan’s book ‘Domestic Medicine,’ first published in 1769 and found in many American homes, contained instructions for an abortion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-2544046R-bk">National Library of Medicine</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>18th-century woman: Active and in control</h2>
<p>To begin with, 17th- and 18th-century legal authorities <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4556&context=buffalolawreview">Edward Coke</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Hale">Matthew Hale</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Blackstone">William Blackstone</a> had all advocated for or condoned abortion. They fretted only when the procedure was carried out after “<a href="https://origins.osu.edu/article/commonplace-controversial-different-histories-abortion-europe-and-united-states?language_content_entity=en">quickening,” the moment when the mother realizes that the fetus moves in her womb</a>, approximately the fourth month of pregnancy.</p>
<p>As a medical procedure, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/abortion-in-america-the-origins-and-evolution-of-national-policy-1800-1900/oclc/72092223">abortion was widespread</a> in Colonial and 18th-century America. By using more or less safe techniques, midwives and medical practitioners performed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/j013v04n02_05">many types of operations</a> on their patients. The woman could easily die, of course; but when she sought an abortion, no social, legal or religious force would have blocked her.</p>
<p>Also, a woman could choose from many available remedies rather than have an operation. Derived from juniper bushes, “<a href="https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=juniperus%20sabina">savin</a>,” or <em>Juniperus sabina</em>, was one of the most popular abortifacients. Other herbs and concoctions were similarly taken: <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2937996">pennyroyal</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v04n02_05">tansy, ergot, Seneca snakeroot</a> or <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/womens-life-and-work-in-the-southern-colonies/oclc/519060">cotton root bark</a>.</p>
<p>Benjamin Franklin inserted an abortion recipe <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%22Advice%20to%20a%20Young%20Tradesman%22&s=1511311111&r=1">in a popular textbook</a> he <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ben-franklin-american-instructor-textbook-abortion-recipe.html?fbclid=IwAR0M-wH0zmIEL9caXPLcNw7PaNkXL0NLSN4PXdtRPBt_AbhonX7SCVX5JYg">republished in Philadelphia</a> in 1748. He didn’t prompt any scandal.</p>
<p>The truth is that America’s founders, together with their contemporaries, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-womens-bodies/oclc/52288256?referer=di&ht=edition">had a rather democratic understanding of the female body</a>. They believed that women, physiologically speaking, weren’t qualitatively different from men; the two sexes were equal and complementary.</p>
<p>Men’s and women’s composition, medical doctors argued, was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25407-1">identical</a> in essence – the only difference was anatomical, in that male sexual organs were more externally distended than female organs.</p>
<p>Just like the male, the female was thought of as fully in control of the workings of her physiology, including her sexuality. It was believed that both the man and the woman had to reach orgasm, better if simultaneously, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4330669">for pregnancy to ensue</a>.</p>
<p>This made 18th-century men attentive to the satisfaction of their female partners, though for utilitarian reasons. </p>
<p>Especially when sex was aimed at procreation, the woman had to be as active as the male partner. The 18th-century woman was active and in control. She trusted her bodily feelings, including her pleasures. </p>
<p>And crucially, only she could detect whether quickening had taken place in her womb. Consequently, she could immediately tell whether terminating a pregnancy at a given time was acceptable. Or if it was a crime.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An antique magazine cover with a woman's image on it, holding a baby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472089/original/file-20220701-13-msgk37.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">19th-century American abortionist Ann Trow Lohman, who performed abortions in New York City and was referred to by one anti-abortion advocate as ‘the monster in human shape.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Restell#/media/File:National_Police_Gazette_Restell.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>19th-century woman: Weak and chaste</h2>
<p>The 19th century changed all that. The understanding of physiology and the mechanisms of the female body underwent a deep transformation. European and American doctors, now, saw women as essentially different from men: From a “one body” model, the medical discourse shifted toward <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/physician-and-sexuality-in-victorian-america/oclc/964207">a “two body” model</a>.</p>
<p>Women’s level of self-determination decreased accordingly. Suddenly, they were not only weaker or softer than men, but inherently passive, too. Instead of being encouraged to take part in sex, actively and with vigor, 19th-century women were <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674543553">expected to be withdrawn</a>.</p>
<p>They were thus recast as pure, chaste and modest. Commendable women were virgins, wives, mothers. Or else they were prostitutes, nearly criminals, which reflects the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century">Victorian dualistic mindset</a>. Instead of being urged to trust the quickening and other physiological events happening in her womb or her vagina, the honest woman had to trust her doctor.</p>
<p>Anti-abortion campaigns began in earnest in the mid-19th century. They were waged <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exploring-the-complicated-history-of-abortion-in-the-united-states">mostly by the American Medical Association</a>, founded in 1847, and were <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb5z5&chunk.id=d0e195&toc.id=&brand=ucpress">fundamentally anti-feminist</a>. They chastised women for shunning the Victorian “self-sacrifice” expected of mothers.</p>
<p>Anti-abortion campaigns were <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb5z5&chunk.id=d0e195&toc.id=&brand=ucpress">targeted against midwives and tried to discredit women’s firsthand experience</a> of pregnancy. Male doctors claimed pregnancy as a medical terrain - a realm that belonged to them exclusively.</p>
<p>Based on women’s own bodily sensations – not on medical diagnosis – quickening was denigrated. Quickening, of course, made doctors dependent on women’s self-diagnosis and judgment. Dr. Horatio R. Storer, the leader of the medical campaigns against abortion, described quickening as “<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65701">in fact but a sensation</a>.” In such a context, it could no longer be framed as the basis from where all moral, social and legal standards emerged.</p>
<p>In the Dobbs decision, Alito says: “The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” This is a historical fact: Protection of the right to abortion wasn’t around in America before Roe.</p>
<p>But it is also an incomplete picture of the full story. The criminalization of abortion, plus the decentralization of the woman’s experience, plus the medicalization of her feelings that led to that decision, are facets that belong to the long-gone 19th century.</p>
<p>No American lives in that century any more - not even Justice Alito.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of 18th-century America and the founders analyzes the Supreme Court opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion, which he says relies on an incomplete version of US history.Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di TorinoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856932022-07-05T18:57:00Z2022-07-05T18:57:00ZNation-building or nature-destroying? Why it’s time NZ faced up to the environmental damage of its colonial past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472412/original/file-20220704-21-4ydueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1078%2C818&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.127150">National Library of New Zealand</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ways in which New Zealand remembers European colonisation have changed markedly in recent years. Critics have been chipping away at the public image of <a href="https://theconversation.com/my-ancestors-met-cook-in-aotearoa-250-years-ago-for-us-its-time-to-reinterpret-a-painful-history-128771">Captain James Cook</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/nov/02/new-zealands-children-will-all-soon-study-the-countrys-brutal-history-its-not-before-time">the New Zealand Wars</a> have been included in the new compulsory history curriculum, and <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/300573834/street-name-in-hamilton-changed-from-von-tempsky-to-putikitiki">streets honouring colonial figures</a> have been renamed.</p>
<p>However, while New Zealand is slowly recognising the historical injustices suffered by Māori, the same reappraisal hasn’t extended to the natural environment. The dramatic transformation of “wild untamed nature” into “productive land” by European settlers in the 1800s continues to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572221078974">widely celebrated</a> as a testament to Kiwi ingenuity and hard work.</p>
<p>My soon-to-be published <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361730368_Collective_memory_of_environmental_change_and_connectedness_with_nature_Survey_evidence_from_Aotearoa_New_Zealand">research</a>, based on a survey of 1,100 people, suggests this narrative could be partly responsible for New Zealanders’ apparent <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/08-09-2021/does-new-zealand-care-less-about-climate-change-than-other-countries">complacency on climate change</a> compared to other countries. </p>
<p>Essentially, it appears those who <em>refuse</em> the “taming of nature” narrative – and instead recognise the 19th century as a period of environmental destruction – are more likely to have what psychologists call an “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000029?casa_token=qReyrEO7LoIAAAAA:iMdWMvupOtHNTdrVt9qK7s-ipwz6YUtlQlvjaO0hVobKGqlqpa7ZfByQVYhNPZ2MUn889kD4">environmental self-identity</a>”. </p>
<p>The findings further suggest that changing individual behaviour as a strategy to tackle environmental threats (as recommended in the <a href="https://www.climatecommission.govt.nz/our-work/advice-to-government-topic/inaia-tonu-nei-a-low-emissions-future-for-aotearoa/">Climate Commission’s 2021 report</a>) might mean addressing how we communicate the history of environmental change in schools, museums and at public heritage sites. </p>
<p>In particular, this might mean framing what happened in the 1800s as more about loss than achievement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C652%2C498&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472406/original/file-20220704-27-bkfd4h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Taming nature’: clearing bush in the Coromandel, late 19th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unknown photographer, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A story of progress or decline?</h2>
<p>Prior to human settlement, Aotearoa New Zealand had been isolated from other landmasses for around 60 million years. The result was the evolution of a unique ecosystem that was highly vulnerable to disturbances.</p>
<p>Māori arrived around 1300 and brought with them invasive mammals: the Polynesian dog (kurī) and the Pacific rat (kiore). Through widespread burning, Māori – either intentionally or accidentally – <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/human-effects-on-the-environment/page-2">destroyed large areas of forest</a> in drier eastern parts of Te Wai Pounamu (South Island) and Te Ika a Māui (North Island). </p>
<p>Moreover, archaeological research suggests a number of bird species were hunted to extinction, including <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/moa">moa</a> and <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/13666/north-island-adzebill">adzebill</a>.</p>
<hr>
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<p>European settlers began arriving in large numbers after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. On the back of (often dubious) purchase deals, the introduction of private property laws and forceful confiscation, vast areas of <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-tango-whenua-maori-land-alienation">Māori land ended up in European hands</a>. </p>
<p>What followed was a classic example of what’s been called “<a href="https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Ecological_Imperialism.html?id=5KKNCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">ecological imperialism</a>”. Much of the remaining forest was transformed into grassland for sheep and cattle. Acclimatisation societies introduced other familiar animals and plants from Europe. </p>
<p>Purposefully and accidentally introduced species – such as stoats and ship rats – wreaked havoc on the native wildlife. Within a few decades of European colonisation, several birds went extinct, including the <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/13671/huia">huia</a>, the <a href="https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/topic/2675">piopio</a> and the <a href="https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/laughing-owl">laughing owl</a>. European capitalism also had a devastating impact on <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/sealing">seal</a> and <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/whaling">whale</a> populations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472413/original/file-20220704-27-eczqyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Veneration of the pioneers: a mural by artist Mandy Patmore depicts bushmen at their camp with the Waitakere Ranges in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A “usable past”</h2>
<p>Despite the long history of environmental change, it is the transformation of the landscape in the 1800s that occupies the most prominent place in New Zealand’s collective memory, relative to other periods. The reason is fairly simple: the era provides what memory scholars call a “usable past” – usable because it helps to construct a distinctive New Zealand identity in the present. </p>
<p>Similar to historical events such as the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Gallipoli campaign, the “taming of nature” in the 1800s is remembered as an experience that forged the nation. European settlers – in particular the bushmen who cleared the forest to make way for farms and pastures – are portrayed as the prototypical New Zealander. </p>
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<p>
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</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Their hard work and “number eight wire” ingenuity still define popular versions of the national character today. And media continue to portray the countryside as the “real” New Zealand, including in <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/rural-media/page-3">advertisements</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476420966756">television shows</a>.</p>
<p>It should be stressed this is largely a narrative of the European settler majority. For Māori communities, the transformation of the landscape under European colonialism is more a story of decline than progress. Māori memories of environmental change in the 1800s are intertwined with memories of colonial violence and dispossession.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472408/original/file-20220704-14-yiotss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most New Zealand farms were once dense bush that was cleared by burning and logging.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Memory shapes environmental attitudes</h2>
<p>My survey sought to explore whether different interpretations of New Zealand’s environmental history shape people’s attitudes towards nature, and whether those interpretations make it more or less likely that people see themselves as someone who acts in an “environmentally friendly” way – the environmental self-identity mentioned earlier. </p>
<p>A key finding is that those respondents who pinpointed the 1800s – rather than Māori settlement or the second half of the 20th century – as the most destructive period of environmental change were most likely to describe themselves as environmentally friendly. </p>
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<p>For Māori respondents, this is perhaps not entirely surprising. An awareness of injustices suffered in the 1800s <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-34983-001">tends to go hand in hand</a> with a strong spiritual connection with the land and a sense of responsibility towards nature.</p>
<p>More significant is that European New Zealanders who recognise the environmentally destructive role of 19th-century settlers were more likely to identify themselves as environmentally friendly than those who point to other periods in history.</p>
<p>It appears those European New Zealanders who acknowledge the environmental destruction caused by their ancestors feel a greater responsibility to fix these mistakes in the present.</p>
<hr>
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Read more:
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</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>How we remember the past matters</h2>
<p>To encourage more pro-environmental behaviours, the survey results suggest New Zealand needs to move away from narratives that glorify environmental change of the early colonial era as an expression of national character. </p>
<p>Such interpretations of history reinforce ideas that get in the way of achieving a sustainable future. They promote a strongly utilitarian perspective on our relationship with the environment. Nature is reduced to a commodity to be exploited in the pursuit of human interests.</p>
<p>New Zealand has taken the first steps to work through its violent political past, but this process also needs to include colonialism’s devastating effects on the environment. </p>
<p>Rather than remembering the transformation of the landscape by European settlers as a nation-defining moment, public history should encourage an examination of human complicity in the destruction of nature. Hopefully, this can help transform such understanding into present-day environmental action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185693/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olli Hellmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nineteenth-century European settlement is often depicted as a triumphal ‘taming of nature’. But does that collective memory impede more honest appraisals of the environmental risks we face today?Olli Hellmann, Senior Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1824382022-05-05T09:39:02Z2022-05-05T09:39:02ZNeutrality: why countries choose not to join a war and what responsibilities come with it – podcast<p>When war breaks out, what does it mean for a country to remain neutral? In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of neutrality – and what responsibilities come with the choice not to take sides. We talk to an historian about how an age of neutrality emerged in the 19th century and what lessons it has for the war in Ukraine. And we dig down into the reasons why one country – India – has decided to remain neutral on the conflict. </p>
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<p>In early March, when the UN general assembly <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/unga-resolution-against-ukraine-invasion-full-text">passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine</a>, 35 countries abstained. These countries, across <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-war-with-ukraine-five-reasons-why-many-african-countries-choose-to-be-neutral-180135">Africa</a>, Asia and Latin America, chose to remain neutral for their own reasons, some historic, some economic and some political. Like neutral countries throughout history, they will have carefully weighed up the pros and cons of doing so.</p>
<p>Throughout history, while some countries have chosen to remain neutral for their own security, others have seen advantages in doing so. This was particularly the case in the 19th century, when the first international laws of neutrality began to emerge in Europe. Maartje Abbenhuis, a professor of history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, explains <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-age-of-neutrals/6BB03B3AC6A90D23E56F7D6ACA5945D5">how an “age of neutrality”</a> dawned as the world’s great powers avoided being drawn into a series of costly wars. But by staying neutral, countries such as the UK and the Netherlands were also able to concentrate on colonising other parts of the world. “The wealth of the British empire grew on this policy of as little war in Europe as possible and expansion overseas,” says Abbenhuis. </p>
<p>Today, India is one of the countries trying to maintain a delicate balancing act over Ukraine. Swaran Singh, a professor of diplomacy and disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, calls India’s position one of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-india-chose-a-path-of-proactive-neutrality-on-ukraine-182403">proactive neutrality</a>. “India is not saying we have nothing to do with the conflict, but it’s very proactive,” he says, for example, engaging in diplomacy with Russia, Ukraine and the US and rescuing Indian and other foreign nationals at the start of the conflict. </p>
<p>Singh explains India’s neutrality is rooted in its history of non-alignment during the cold war, which subsequently shifted into a policy of multi-alignment through which India has tried to build as many partnerships as possible. Now that India has close ties to both the US and Russia, Singh explains that it has done a “cost-benefit analysis and it feels that that proactive neutrality ensures maximum benefits with minimum costs.” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-india-chose-a-path-of-proactive-neutrality-on-ukraine-182403">Why India chose a path of 'proactive neutrality' on Ukraine</a>
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<p>But neutrality also brings responsibilities with it, from humanitarian support to diplomatic efforts to bring about peace – and countries can also change their mind during the course of a war too. Learn more by listening to Abbenhuis and Singh in the full episode of The Conversation Weekly.</p>
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<p>This episode was produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">free daily email here</a>. A transcript of this episode <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-countries-choose-to-remain-neutral-and-what-responsibilities-come-with-it-the-conversation-weekly-podcast-transcript-183703">is available here</a>. </p>
<p>Newsclips in this episode are from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiHKS87S9sM">W</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNeNkCKYxv8">I</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06UTcoYqLss">O</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWuc6TD0b7c">N</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0mEon5BtIE">CNA</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Ek1-k1c0w">NDTV</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk_7L2doefQ">eNCA</a>.</p>
<p>You can listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a>, or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Swaran Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maartje Abbenhuis receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. </span></em></p>In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we also explore the reasons for India’s neutrality over the Ukraine war.Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationDaniel Merino, Assistant Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1584022021-05-11T12:50:34Z2021-05-11T12:50:34ZRobert Owen, born 250 years ago, tried to use his wealth to perfect humanity in a radically equal society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399309/original/file-20210506-13-2n89pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=138%2C116%2C2746%2C1833&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The utopian community modeled on the industrialist's principles lasted only two years.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sketch-of-a-city-plan-for-a-new-community-at-harmony-news-photo/615293152">Corbis Historical/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you have a work schedule that leaves you with enough time off the clock to rest up and handle your other responsibilities?</p>
<p>If so, you might owe something to <a href="https://www.assignmentpoint.com/arts/biography/biography-of-robert-owen.html">Robert Owen</a>, a wealthy industrialist who was born in Wales on May 14, 1771.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a wealthy, well-dressed man with well-coifed hair in the 19th century" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398988/original/file-20210505-15-1gr8roq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Welsh social reformer Robert Owen, portrayed about a decade after his experimental community in Indiana collapsed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4674544">National Library of Wales</a></span>
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<p>Owen is widely credited with being the first person to advocate for a universal “eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest” approach to work-life balance. He experimented with this concept at his own factories and urged employers everywhere to adopt this management ethos as part of the <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/Robert-Owen-Father-British-Socialsm/">socialist ideology he embraced</a> decades before Karl Marx.</p>
<p>In the early 19th century, many U.S. and European factory workers worked up to <a href="http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/05/why-a-typical-work-day-is-eight-hours-long">18 hours a day, six days a week</a>.</p>
<p>Once a year, <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253200297/we-make-a-life-by-what-we-give/">I travel</a> with 15 <a href="https://tobiascenter.iu.edu/tobias-fellows/about-the-program.html">fellows enrolled in a leadership program</a> to <a href="https://newharmony-in.gov/">New Harmony</a>. It’s the site of <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/life-of-robert-owen-written-by-himself/oclc/1073483640">Owen’s greatest experiment</a>, a “<a href="https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/working-lives/the-cooperative-movement/">cooperative community</a>” he founded in southern Indiana on the banks of the Wabash River. Far more radical than limiting labor to eight-hour workdays, the utopia Owen envisioned ran up against human nature.</p>
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<h2>Early success and a socialist vision</h2>
<p>Owen, born into a working-class family, had virtually no formal education. By the age of 21, he was managing a textile mill, and at 28 he married the daughter of a Scottish mill owner, whose business he soon purchased. Owen rejected long hours and <a href="http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/factmine/owenfact.htm">took steps to make child labor less exploitative</a>. Although he paid higher wages than his competitors, the mill’s profits made him a wealthy man.</p>
<p>Owen believed in lifelong education, establishing an <a href="https://www.newlanark.org/about-new-lanark/buildings/170-institute-for-the-formation-of-character">Institute for the Formation of Character and School for Children</a> that focused less on job skills than on becoming a better person. This innovation attracted considerable attention, and many dignitaries – including the future czar of Russia – visited to see it for themselves.</p>
<p>But Owen’s ambitions went far beyond the well-being of his workforce.</p>
<p>He conceived of <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/robert-owen-a-biography/oclc/3724196">socialist communities of people</a> who would live together, as well as collectively prepare and eat their meals. Children would remain with their families until age 3, at which point the community would take over raising and educating them. Men and women would have equal rights. </p>
<p>At the core of Owen’s philosophy was an <a href="https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/economic-thought/sets/the-selected-works-of-robert-owen/volumes/the-book-of-the-new-moral-world">earnest question</a>: Why shouldn’t people who work together enjoy the fruits of their labor communally, promoting “the well-being and happiness of every man, woman, and child, without regard to class, sect, party, country, or colour?” </p>
<p>There’s a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-06200-001">long-running debate</a> over whether nature or nurture is the biggest factor shaping human character. Owen firmly sided with nurture. He believed in a concept then called “<a href="https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/ltst/ltst639.php">human perfectibility</a>.” In his view, all that was necessary to create better human beings was to raise, educate and employ them in better circumstances.</p>
<h2>Creating New Harmony</h2>
<p>Owen sought to demonstrate the viability of his ideals by establishing a new community in the United States that would adhere to them. His <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Two-Hundred-Years-of-American-Communes/Oved/p/book/9781560006473">aspirations belonged</a> to a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/66dd5282a2d74f1b95d510aa0c875a17">broader utopian movement</a> that included the <a href="https://thetrustees.org/place/fruitlands-museum/">Fruitlands agrarian commune</a> in Massachusetts and the <a href="http://www.nyhistory.com/central/oneida.htm">Oneida community</a> in New York state.</p>
<p>Other Europeans had attempted their own real-life experiments. In fact, a <a href="https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/projects/catalog/harmony-society">German religious sect</a> that emphasized a communal way of life was selling its southern Indiana town of Harmony, and its residents were <a href="http://oldeconomyvillage.org/learn/history/harmonist-history/">relocating to Pennsylvania</a>.</p>
<p>Owen purchased it in 1825 for US$150,000 (the equivalent of about $4 million today) and renamed it <a href="https://www.usi.edu/outreach/historic-new-harmony/about/history/">New Harmony</a>. He invited “any and all” to come join his “community of equality” located halfway between St. Louis, Missouri, and Louisville, Kentucky. </p>
<p>New Harmony attracted about 1,000 newcomers, including <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/americas-communal-utopias/oclc/34320548">scientists, naturalists, educators and artists</a>, all eager to build what Owen called a “union and cooperation of all for the benefit of each.”</p>
<p>Trouble soon began to brew.</p>
<p>For one thing, Owen himself seems to have taken a greater interest in <a href="https://www.robertowenmuseum.co.uk/tag/new-harmony/">traveling and promoting his ideas</a> than in securing the success of the new venture.</p>
<p>A second problem was who moved there. Some residents sincerely believed in Owen’s ideas, while others had been lured by the <a href="https://heritage.humanists.uk/robert-owen/">promise of an easy life</a> and did little to promote the community.</p>
<p>Finally, his reforms proved to be at odds with human nature. Few families wanted their children to be shielded from what he called the “<a href="http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/utopia/uc07.html">negative influence</a>” of their parents, and people who worked hard resented those who contributed little. </p>
<h2>Ahead of his time</h2>
<p>Despite considerable investments that depleted Owen’s fortune, the community failed economically after just two years. Perhaps he had overestimated the malleability of human nature. Owen personally believed that <a href="https://www.biographyonline.net/business/robert-owen.html">humanity wasn’t yet ready</a> for his radical new ideas. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A row of colorful buildings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399019/original/file-20210505-13-xq1iio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The small town of New Harmony, Ind., today is a picturesque and historic destination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Downtown_new_harmony_indiana.jpg">Timothy K Hamilton/Creativity+Photography</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>He returned to Europe, where he continued to promote publicly funded education, better working conditions and his vision of an enlightened society. He died in Wales in 1858. His four sons and <a href="https://www.in.gov/governorhistory/mitchdaniels/2568.htm">one of his daughters</a> remained in New Harmony, <a href="https://usi.edu/owen250">leading notable lives</a> of their own.</p>
<p>Owen’s legacy doesn’t just live on in the <a href="https://bestlifeonline.com/9-to-5/">nine-to-five schedules that became the norm</a> starting in the early 20th century. It’s also in the broad notion of social welfare behind everything from public schools to paid sick leave – including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/biden-gives-congress-his-vision-to-win-the-21st-century-scholars-react-159979">expansion of government benefits</a> the Biden administration is proposing.</p>
<p>Visitors to New Harmony, where <a href="https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/1852974">about 750 people reside</a> today, can wander around its <a href="https://www.indianamuseum.org/historic-sites/new-harmony/">many historical sites</a> and learn about its one-time owner and most famous resident, who devoted his fortune and his life to improving the human condition.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The wealthy textile manufacturer harbored ambitions that went far beyond the well-being of his own workforce and depleted his fortune.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1582812021-04-11T11:47:51Z2021-04-11T11:47:51ZWriting from 130 years ago shows we’re still dealing with the same anti-Asian racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393621/original/file-20210406-21-1r2zfi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C201%2C4183%2C2443&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Community members gather for a vigil in memory of the victims of the Atlanta shootings and to rally against anti-Asian racism in Ottawa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March, when a white man <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/03/8-people-killed-in-atlanta-rampage-6-of-them-asian-women.html">targeted and killed eight women in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian</a>, mainstream media and police initially <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-atlanta-attacks-were-not-just-racist-and-misogynist-they-painfully-reflect-the-society-we-live-in-157389">refused to categorize it as a racially motivated hate crime</a>. But for Asian people, across North America and globally, this tragedy was one more episode in a long history of anti-Asian violence. </p>
<p>Over 150 years ago, <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11825013">white settlers in the United States rounded up Chinese merchants and miners</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520256941/driven-out">put them onto burning barges, threw them into railway cars and even lynched them</a>. But this story is not limited to the U.S. — early Chinese immigrants were not welcome in Canada either. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/asian-americans-top-target-for-threats-and-harassment-during-pandemic-158011">Asian Americans top target for threats and harassment during pandemic</a>
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<p>This is documented in the life and works of Chinese-Canadian author and journalist <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/eaton_edith_maud_14E.html">Edith Eaton</a> (1865-1914). While researching <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/becoming-sui-sin-far-products-9780773547223.php"><em>Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton</em></a>, I discovered numerous accounts of early Canadian anti-Chinese racism in her work.</p>
<h2>Memoirs from the past show similar hatred</h2>
<p>In Eaton’s memoir <a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/far/leaves_mental_portfolio/"><em>Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian</em></a>, she recalls being called “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater,” after moving to North America with her family — a white father, Chinese mother and five siblings — in 1872.</p>
<p>Soon after the family’s arrival in Montréal, locals would call out “Chinese!” “Chinoise!” as they walked down the street. Classmates would pull Eaton’s hair, pinch her and refuse to sit beside her.</p>
<p>These taunts and torments were felt deeply by Eaton throughout her life. She wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have come from a race on my mother’s side which is said to be the most stolid and insensible to feeling of all races. Yet I look back over the years and see myself so keenly alive to every shade of sorrow and suffering that it is almost a pain to live.” </p>
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<p>Eaton published <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/mrs-spring-fragrance/#tab-description">a book of short stories depicting Chinese immigrants’ encounters with racism</a> under the pseudonym “Sui Sin Far” (Cantonese for narcissus). And her advocacy was appreciated by Chinese people in Montréal <a href="https://winnifredeatonarchive.org/timeline.html">who erected a memorial beside her grave</a> with the inscription “Yi bu wang hua,” which means “The righteous one does not forget China.” </p>
<p>Since the Atlanta shootings, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/nyregion/asian-attack-nyc.html">Asian women have been assaulted and even killed</a>. Asian people have been accused of causing <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/26/980480882/why-pandemics-give-birth-to-hate-from-black-death-to-covid-19">COVID-19</a>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/03/sery-kim-texas/">stealing intellectual property</a> and more. What Eaton described in her fiction and memoir continues to happen today.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="1896 newspaper article titled 'The Chinese Defended'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a signed letter to the editor, Edith Eaton defends Chinese people in Montréal who have been the target of hate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Montréal Daily Star</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1890s headlines interchangeable with today’s</h2>
<p>Eaton also documented anti-Chinese violence and championed the rights of Chinese immigrants in stories published in the <em>Montréal Star</em> and the <em>Montréal Witness</em> throughout the 1890s. </p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/history-ethnic-cultural/early-chinese-canadians/Pages/history.aspx#rac3">white men were convinced that Chinese immigrants were taking their jobs away</a> and that Chinese men — many of whom lived alone behind their shops (because of the <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/the-chinese-head-tax-and-the-chinese-exclusion-act">Head Tax</a> — had an unfair advantage over white men with families. </p>
<p>In the <em>Montréal Star</em>, Eaton published <a href="https://issuu.com/reillyreads/docs/a_plea_for_the_chinaman?backgroundColor=%2523222222">A Plea for the Chinaman</a>, in which she called out politicians for mistreating Chinese men in Canada: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Every just person must feel his or her sense of justice outraged by the attacks which are being made by public men upon the Chinese who come to this country.… It makes one’s cheeks burn to read about men of high office standing up and abusing a lot of poor foreigners behind their backs and calling them all the bad names their tongues can utter.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anti-Chinese violence was so common in 1890s Montréal that Chinese men carried police whistles in their pockets. In an <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/becoming-sui-sin-far-products-9780773547223.php">1895 article, titled Beaten to Death, Eaton noted</a> that even when they blew their whistles, no one would come to Chinese men’s aid. Bystanders often refused to identify their assailants and police told the men who had been assaulted that they should be arrested for bothering them.</p>
<p>The recent reports of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/nyregion/asian-attack-nyc.html">security guard’s refusal to act when a Filipino woman was brutally beaten</a> uncannily recall the anti-Asian violence Eaton documented 125 years ago.</p>
<p>My research leads me to suspect that Eaton published other <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/419804834/?terms=Chinese%2Blaundries">unsigned articles documenting anti-Chinese racism</a> in Montreal newspapers at this time. She may have written a <em>Gazette</em> article reporting on youth who would gather nightly in Montreal’s Chinatown to <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/419785179/?terms=Chinese%2Bwindows">throw stones at passing Chinese men and through the plate glass windows of their businesses</a>, or those describing Chinese men being <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/419785179/?terms=Chinese%2Bwindows">punched, kicked or beaten to death</a>.</p>
<h2>What was written when?</h2>
<p>Looking at literature and journalism of the past such as Eaton’s can help illuminate the challenges of today. Her observations about people’s motivations — ignorance, jealousy, suspicion, competition — invite us to reflect on the motivations of today’s perpetrators of anti-Asian violence and conclude that not much has changed.</p>
<p>The anti-Asian racism recorded in Eaton’s work and journalism across Montreal persists today. Recent reports of <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/new-report-details-disturbing-rise-in-anti-asian-hate-crimes-in-canada-1.5358955">racist violence</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7734109/anti-asian-racism-canada-what-to-do/">hate crimes</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7726666/guelph-woman-anti-asian-slurs/">verbal harassment</a>, <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/opaque-policing-two-deaths-other-attacks-loom-as-asian-montrealers-fear-unrecognized-hate-crimes-1.5353647">opaque policing</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/03/983406365/in-response-to-anti-asian-hate-incidents-groups-step-up-trainings-for-bystanders">passive bystanders</a> could have been written more than a century ago. </p>
<p>We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to make up for over a century of treating Asian people like they do not belong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Chapman receives funding from SSHRC and UBC's Faculty of Arts. </span></em></p>Chinese-Canadian journalist Edith Eaton documented anti-Asian racism in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th century. Over 100 years later, not much has changed.Mary Chapman, Professor of English and Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1502122020-12-08T15:18:01Z2020-12-08T15:18:01ZPenny dreadfuls were the true crime podcasts of their time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373582/original/file-20201208-19-1aarxk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C748%2C445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Host of popular true crime podcast Serial, American journalist Sarah Koenig.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatelive/16029671559">Penn State/Flikr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A young man named Rob hears a voice in his earbuds. It belongs to his favourite true-crime podcast host, Matthias. Like all good podcast hosts, Matthias takes pride in addressing his audience as individuals, developing a rapport and a trustworthy intimacy. So when Matthias tells Rob to murder women, Rob obeys.</p>
<p>This isn’t a true story but the plot of the 2017 audio drama <a href="https://www.11thhouraudio.com/monsters-game/">Monster’s Game</a>. But like all good fiction, this horror story has a basis in reality: our contemporary, <a href="https://www.stylist.co.uk/entertainment/podcasts/true-crime-podcasts-why-are-we-all-obsessed/412453">sometimes ghoulish fascination</a> with true-crime podcasts. The 19th century had a similar macabre popular fascination, the penny dreadful. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, people enjoyed a tale of murder and woe as much as we do now. From their complicated relationship with journalism to their love of sensationalism, the two forms have a lot in common.</p>
<h2>Fake murders and violent crimes</h2>
<p>Penny dreadfuls arose in Britain the 1830s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/penny-dreadfuls">due to a growing number of readers and improved printing technology</a>. The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2597594?seq=1">penny post and railway distribution</a> also played a part. While literacy levels are hard to establish, by the 1870s, most of the working class <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40985739?seq=1">could read well enough</a> to read a newspaper. </p>
<p>This explosion of crime literature gave a bewildered populace the erroneous impression that violent crime (especially murder) was increasing, as historian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40985739?seq=1">Christopher A Casey</a> notes. This led to many believing that cities had never been more dangerous to live in and had startling implications for criminal justice in Britain. For instance, capital punishment, which had almost disappeared in the 1840s and 1850s, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40985739?seq=1">was reinstated</a> in 1863.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Illustration of Sweeney Todd murdering a victim in his barber's chair from A String of Pearls." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373574/original/file-20201208-22-1n3hf3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of Sweeney Todd murdering a victim in A String of Pearls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful#/media/File:Sweeney_Todd_murdering_a_victim.png">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With so much printed material on violent crime, it’s perhaps not surprising that the penny bloods (<a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/penny-dreadfuls">renamed penny dreadfuls</a> in the 1860s) were so incredibly popular. The name change is thought to have happened because of the shift from tales of highwaymen and Gothic adventure to true crime, especially murder. And if there weren’t enough real crimes, the writers invented them, as with, most famously <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-string-of-pearls-or-the-barber-of-fleet-street">The String of Pearls</a>, which was the first story to introduce the demon barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd.</p>
<p>Serialised, short, printed on flimsy paper, cheap and luridly illustrated, penny dreadfuls were issued weekly to a large eager audience. There were a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/penny-dreadfuls">100 publishers</a>,) of penny-fiction and magazines between 1830 and 1850 and by the 1880s there were 15 periodicals <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2597594?seq=1">competing simultaneously</a>.</p>
<p>Casey links the newspaper era that parallels the rise of the penny dreadful with the gestation of the 19th century idea of “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781405186407.wbiecn012#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20New%20Journalism%2C%E2%80%9D%20a,working%20class%20and%20female%20readers.">new journalism</a>”. Coined by cultural critic, the term refers to a wide range of changes in British newspaper and magazine content, which sought to make print culture more accessible to working class and female readers. This included a shift away from political news coverage to wider reporting on crime, which focused on the journalist putting themselves in the story and often shaping it. </p>
<p>While this idea of “new journalism” arose in the 19th century, it has links with our current era. Observing the wide range of subjects for podcasts, the journalism academic <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303398533_Personal_narrative_journalism_and_podcasting">Mia Lindgren</a> has discerned how investigative journalism podcasts (a genre identified with true crime) quickly became very popular. This swift rise is similar to that of penny bloods.</p>
<h2>Moral outrage</h2>
<p>The true crime genre, of course, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336487562_True_crime_podcasting_Journalism_justice_or_entertainment">predates podcasts</a>, but its recent renaissance is, in part, due to award-winning productions like <a href="https://serialpodcast.org/">Serial</a>. In 2019, <a>22 of the top 100</a> podcasts on iTunes were true crime.</p>
<p>Like penny dreadfuls, these podcasts are about real murder and mayhem and naturally blur the line between news and entertainment. </p>
<p>Like penny dreadfuls, true crime podcasts tend to be serialised, short, of variable quality and drop weekly or bi-weekly. They may not have the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/penny-dreadfuls" title=" ">lurid illustrations</a> associated with penny dreadfuls, but the supplementary visual assets on their websites are arguably just as visually arresting — and necessary to the format. Readers of penny dreadfuls wanted to see an illustration of what the murderers and victims looked like; modern podcast listeners also enjoy having their aurally stimulated storytelling supplemented with colourful podcast logos, images and videos of the podcast hosts, and pictorial evidence of crimes.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Illustration of a flying demon terrorising people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373576/original/file-20201208-13-1akq0m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1867 serial Spring-heel’d Jack: The Terror of London was based on urban legends about ghosts and a series of crimes around the city.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-heeled_Jack#/media/File:Jack4.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Penny dreadfuls were developed to cater to <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/penny-dreadfuls" title=" ">a specific youth audience</a>. They generated a moral panic and were held responsible for inspiring real acts of violence as juveniles exposed to such <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160502-the-shocking-tale-of-the-penny-dreadful">“trash”</a> were thought to be morally corrupted. For example, in 1895, Robert and Nattie Coombes, aged 13 and 12, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/30/penny-dreadfuls-victorian-equivalent-video-games-kate-summerscale-wicked-boy">admitted to stabbing their mother to death</a>. The police discovered a collection of penny dreadfuls in the house, which the coroner argued had led the boys to commit the heinous act.</p>
<p>True crime podcasts haven’t been accused of corrupting the young and contributing to juvenile delinquency (<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47474996">yet</a>) but the consequences for real people involved in real investigations have been felt. One example comes from Serial. As the podcast’s investigations threw doubt onto whether Adnan Syed was responsible for the murder of his high school girlfriend, a crime for which he had been jailed, avid listeners began searching and stalking Jay, the person Adnan says is <a href="https://theintercept.com/2014/12/29/exclusive-interview-jay-wilds-star-witness-adnan-syed-serial-case-pt-1/">responsible for the murder</a>. </p>
<p>Podcasts seem to be, at worst, tolerated as escapist entertainment, and at best, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336487562_True_crime_podcasting_Journalism_justice_or_entertainment">able to influence the criminal justice system</a> — in a more socially progressive way than crime reporting did in the 19th century. The charity the Innocence Project has seen <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/29/korey-wise-innocence-project-when-they-see-us/">increased donations</a> as a result of podcasts and listeners appear in court to support defendants. Judges even cite podcasts as reasons for changing their decisions on <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336487562_True_crime_podcasting_Journalism_justice_or_entertainment">defendants’ motions for post-conviction relief</a>. </p>
<p>The economic historian John Springhall noted that “often-reprinted serials about low-life crime and mystery … would have held a vicarious appeal for young metropolitan readers seeking a romantic escape from uneventful daily lives”. True crime podcasts have also been a welcome escape from the monotony of life in lockdown during the pandemic. Investigative podcasts like The Washington Post’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/podcasts/canary/">Canary</a>, a seven-part series about women who refused to stay silent about sexual assault, and <a href="https://counterclockpodcast.com/">CounterClock</a>, which investigates two unsolved murders, have made it on to lists of the <a href="https://www.engadget.com/apple-best-podcasts-of-2020-213312088.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAA-txVGNOacOz2v4Z8nZseTdXZGDQcFsgCOM3I3RQpsS95LS8gfyta1Q-ow5IdokqrMsi_1CNO-h0fVLxmJp_AGgFFIoNTLzWSpSTDoUoUosgTS6H4uFaIpGcmCS6YElM6ER6HEjXv8msTmzl9OTgVVHDY2rBz9X5-3617y2WsbL">best podcasts for 2020</a>. Both podcasts and penny bloods satisfy a lurid fascination in all that is dark and violent. A fascination that is sure to push the true crime genre to even greater heights in years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Penny dreadfuls told real stories of murder and mayhem to 19th-century audiences seeking escape from city life. True crime podcasts have a lot in common with them.Leslie McMurtry, Lecturer in Radio Studies, University of SalfordAdam Fowler, Lecturer in Creative Audio, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1497082020-11-16T13:23:26Z2020-11-16T13:23:26ZTrump 2024? Presidential comebacks have mixed success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369340/original/file-20201113-13-rswdz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C551%2C4345%2C3276&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are already reports that Trump is mulling a run in 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-of-president-donald-trump-cheer-and-hold-a-shirt-news-photo/1201954048?adppopup=true">Caitlin O'Hara/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American author F. Scott Fitzgerald <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/05/scott-fitzgerald-gatsby-mccrum">once wrote</a> that “there are no second acts in American lives.”</p>
<p>Yet it’s already assumed Donald Trump will go on to a next act in one form or another. </p>
<p>Will he start <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-planning-media-channel-rival-fox-news-axios-2020-11">his own media company</a>? Serve as <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/11/10/trump-planning-to-form-pac-remain-in-politics-as-gop-kingmaker/">a GOP kingmaker</a>? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/us/politics/trump-future.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share">There are even rumblings</a> that he will decide <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-ronna-mcdaniel-rnc-2024-run-1546815">to run again for president in 2024</a>. Having served only one term, he is constitutionally eligible to try for another. </p>
<p>If he does decide to run again – and if he wins – he’ll be in rare company.</p>
<p>Only one American president has lost reelection and then won back his office: Grover Cleveland. In the American elections course that I teach, students learn details about the long-term political impacts of these comeback efforts, most of which are exercises in futility.</p>
<h2>‘Gone to the White House, ha ha ha’</h2>
<p>The late 19th-century political environment resembled today’s in many ways: tight polarized elections, strong regional patterns in national voting, relatively high voter turnout and negative campaigning.</p>
<p>Cleveland, a Democrat, had been governor of New York for less than two years when his party nominated him for president in 1884. As governor, he had gained a reputation for fighting <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/cleveland">Tammany Hall corruption</a> in New York City.</p>
<p>During the 1884 campaign, in which Cleveland ran against Republican James Blaine, a scandal erupted when a New York woman named Maria Halpin <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/president-clevelands-problem-child-100800/">accused Cleveland</a> of raping and impregnating her. She was eventually institutionalized and forced to give up her child for adoption. Cleveland disputed some of the details of the story, and his supporters <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/president-clevelands-problem-child-100800/">countered jeers</a> of “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” with chants of “Gone to the White House, ha ha ha.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A baby cries 'I want my pa!' in a political cartoon mocking Grover Cleveland." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369342/original/file-20201113-19-9gi9ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grover Cleveland weathered attacks that he had fathered a child out of wedlock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/another-voice-for-cleveland-political-cartoon-featuring-u-s-news-photo/1177464462?adppopup=true">Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cleveland ended up winning the national popular vote <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1884_Election/">by a slim margin</a> – 48.85% to 48.28% – and won 219 electoral votes to Blaine’s 182. Cleveland’s base of support was in the South and in his home state of New York, while Blaine did well in the rest of the North. Voter turnout was high, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections">estimated</a> at 77.5% of the voting-age population.</p>
<p>During Cleveland’s term, <a href="http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/THM1866?OpenDocument">tariffs became a divisive partisan issue</a> in American politics. Republicans favored higher tariffs to protect Northern manufacturing interests, while Democrats like Cleveland generally wanted lower tariffs to help the South’s agricultural export-oriented interests and to lower prices for consumers.</p>
<h2>Cleveland’s comeback</h2>
<p>When Cleveland ran for reelection in 1888, he faced off against Republican Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland again won the national popular vote by a tight margin, but lost two states – Indiana and New York – that he had won in 1884. It was enough to flip the <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1888_Election/">Electoral College</a> and allow Harrison to be elected president.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A campaign poster highlights the platform of Cleveland's reelection campaign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369346/original/file-20201113-19-1cqzhfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grover Cleveland ran on tariff reform in 1888 – and lost.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-1888-campaign-poster-for-incumbent-president-grover-news-photo/640476369?adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After losing the election, Cleveland returned to work as an attorney in New York. Under President Harrison, Congress approved the <a href="http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/THM1866?OpenDocument">McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act</a>, each of which were strongly opposed by Cleveland. </p>
<p>In 1891, after two years of avoiding the public spotlight, Cleveland again became <a href="https://elections.harpweek.com/1892/Overview-1892-2.htm">politically active</a> and started to vocally oppose the economic policies of Harrison. Cleveland attracted some national attention that year with a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Letters_and_Addresses_of_Grover_Clevelan/010NAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22grover+cleveland%22+silver+letter&pg=PA204&printsec=frontcover">public letter</a> indicating his continuing support for <a href="http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/currency.html">the gold standard</a>.</p>
<p>As Cleveland <a href="https://elections.harpweek.com/1892/Overview-1892-2.htm">met with party leaders</a> and made some public speeches in 1892, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030313/1891-02-13/ed-1/?q=Herald&sp=4&st=text">national Democratic support</a> for his presidential nomination began to grow. By the time the Democratic National Convention met in June that year, support for Cleveland had become <a href="https://elections.harpweek.com/1892/Overview-1892-2.htm">overwhelming</a>, and he secured the nomination.</p>
<p>With Populist Party candidate James B. Weaver on the ballot pulling votes from both major party presidential candidates, Cleveland won the national popular vote for the third straight election, <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1892_Election/">this time besting Harrison by a 46% to 43% margin</a> and winning the Electoral College.</p>
<h2>Try, try again</h2>
<p>While Cleveland has, thus far, been the only U.S. president to lose reelection and then come back and win, other presidents have tried and failed. </p>
<p>In 1840, Democratic President Martin Van Buren lost reelection. He <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/vanburen/life-after-the-presidency">attempted</a> to be renominated by his party in 1844, but Democrats instead chose James Polk. By 1848, Van Buren joined with a group of disaffected Democrats and anti-slavery activists to become the nominee of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the extension of legal slavery to U.S. territories. While Van Buren <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/1848">won 10%</a> of the national popular vote and finished second in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, he won no Electoral College votes.</p>
<p>Van Buren is the only president other than Cleveland to be renominated by his party, lose reelection and then appear again on ballots as a presidential candidate. </p>
<p>Three other presidents also made attempted comebacks to regain the presidency after leaving office.</p>
<p>In 1852, President Millard Fillmore, who had ascended to the presidency after the death of Zachary Taylor, made a <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/fillmore/campaigns-and-elections">halfhearted attempt</a> to win the Whig Party nomination for a full term. When he failed, he came back four years later as the presidential candidate of the American Party, better known as the “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/">Know Nothings</a>,” a political movement to restrict Catholic immigration to the United States. Fillmore won over 21% of the national popular vote, the second-best performance by a third-party presidential candidate in American history and <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/1856">won Maryland’s electoral votes</a>.</p>
<p>The best performance by a third-party presidential candidate in American history was also by a former president, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1912, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination against his more conservative protege, President William Howard Taft. When Roosevelt <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1912-republican-convention-855607/">failed to get his party’s nomination</a> that year, he ran as the Progressive Party candidate.</p>
<p>After being <a href="https://www.history.com/news/shot-in-the-chest-100-years-ago-teddy-roosevelt-kept-on-talking">shot at a campaign rally</a> during the month before the election and surviving, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/1912">Roosevelt got</a> 27% of the national popular vote and 88 electoral votes, finishing far ahead of Taft in both vote tallies – but well behind the winner, Woodrow Wilson.</p>
<p>The last American president to lose reelection and attempt to run for president again was Herbert Hoover, who was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/hating-on-herbert-hoover">unsuccessful</a> in both 1936 and 1940 at persuading other Republicans to let him lead the party again after he lost in a landslide in 1932.</p>
<p>Richard Nixon made a different kind of political comeback. </p>
<p>He lost the presidential election of 1960 while serving as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president and then <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-03-22-me-7477-story.html">went on to lose the 1962 California gubernatorial election</a>. After the two losses, Nixon famously told the press, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/03/20/tricky-dick-nixon-series-episode-2-clip-2.cnn">You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore</a>.” But the press did get another whack at Nixon when he ran for president a second time – and won – <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1968_Election/">in 1968</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Nixon addresses the press after his 1962 loss." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369347/original/file-20201113-19-tl13fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After losing the 1962 California gubernatorial race, Nixon complained of his treatment by the press and hinted that he would retreat from public life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/defeated-gubernatorial-candidate-richard-nixon-speaks-at-a-news-photo/514683092?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The last attempt at a political comeback by a defeated president was a very brief effort by Gerald Ford, who had lost reelection in 1976, to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/30/magazine/george-herbert-walker-bush-the-accidental-vice-president.html">negotiate</a> the possibility of being Ronald Reagan’s running mate during the 1980 Republican National Convention. The plan fell through, and Ford returned to private life.</p>
<p>Once out of office, most ex-presidents stay out of the spotlight and avoid criticizing their successor. Whether or not President Trump attempts a political comeback in 2024, it’s likely that he won’t stay mum over the next four years.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our most insightful politics and election stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149708/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Speel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only one American president – Grover Cleveland – has lost reelection and then won back his office.Robert Speel, Associate Professor of Political Science, Erie campus, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1433392020-07-30T12:18:53Z2020-07-30T12:18:53ZEnslaved people’s health was ignored from the country’s beginning, laying the groundwork for today’s health disparities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350239/original/file-20200729-21-1lyimt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C3%2C2509%2C1831&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Freed slaves on the plantation of Confederate General Thomas F. Drayton in Hilton Head, South Carolina. This photograph was taken circa 1865.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-freed-slaves-gather-on-the-plantation-of-news-photo/615304338?adppopup=true">Getty Images / CORBIS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some critics of Black Lives Matter say <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/black-lives-matter-all-lives-matter">the movement itself is racist</a>. Their frequent counterargument: All lives matter. Lost in that view, however, is a historical perspective. Look back to the late 18th century, to the very beginnings of the U.S., and you will see Black lives in this country did not seem to matter at all. </p>
<p>Foremost among the <a href="https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0074-02762006001000017">unrelenting cruelties</a> heaped upon enslaved people was the lack of health care for them. Infants and children fared especially poorly. After childbirth, mothers were forced to return to the fields as soon as possible, often having to leave their infants without care or food. The infant mortality rate was <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">estimated at one time to be as high as 50%</a>. Adult people who were enslaved who showed signs of exhaustion or <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mental-illness-in-black-community-1700-2019-a-short-history/">depression</a> were often beaten.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://socialwork.iu.edu/faculty-staff/profile.php?id=Kyere_Eric_ekyere">professor of social work</a>, I study ways to stop racism, promote social justice, and help the Black community empower itself. A relationship exists between the health of enslaved Blacks and the making of America. </p>
<h2>‘Racist medical theory’</h2>
<p>White masters, often brutal and violent, dehumanized the enslaved people who worked for them and became wealthy from their work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.36">Slaveholders justified their treatment</a> by relying on the widely accepted view of Black inferiority and the physical differences between Blacks and whites. Racist medical theory, the racist notion that the blacks were inherently inferior and animal-like who needed maltreatment to be sound for work, <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">was a critical element</a>. </p>
<p>Enslaved people were poorly fed, overworked and overcrowded, which promoted germ transmission. So did their housing – bare, cold and windowless, or close to it. Because they were not paid, slaves could not maintain personal hygiene. Clothes went unwashed, baths were infrequent, dental care was limited, and beds remained unclean. Body lice, ringworm and bedbugs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.14">were common</a>. </p>
<p>This treatment began in slave dungeons, built by Europeans on the coastal shores of Africa, where enslaved Blacks awaited shipment to the New World. In Ghana, for example, perhaps 200 were cloistered in tiny spaces where they ate, slept, urinated and defecated. Archaeological research has shown the dirt floors were soaked in vomit, urine, feces and menstrual blood. Conditions within the dungeon were so deadly that cleaning them was discouraged; those who tried <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2018.1578480">risked smallpox and intestinal infections</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In Ghana, a dungeon for enslaved females." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dungeon for enslaved females at the Cape Coast Fort in Ghana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric Kyere</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sick slaves rarely saw doctors</h2>
<p>Diseases among the enslaved people in the colonies and later the states were common and at a disparate rate when compared to whites: typhus, measles, mumps, chicken pox, typhoid and more. Only as a last resort did the slave owner <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.36">bring in a doctor</a>.
Instead, the white master and his wife would provide the health care, though rarely were either one trained physicians. Older enslaved women <a href="https://www.japss.org/upload/5.%20Bronson.pdf">also helped</a>, and brought their knowledge of herbs, roots, plants and midwifery from Africa to the Americas.<br>
As with everything else, Blacks had no say about their care. And if a doctor was involved, Black patients were not necessarily told anything about their condition. The medical report <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.14">went directly</a> to the slave owner. </p>
<p>Black women played multiple roles. Of course, they were part of the labor force. And they took care of the sick. But they were also the machinery for producing more black bodies. <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">After the mid-Atlantic slave trade was banned</a>, slave owners needed a new source of labor. A pregnant enslaved woman provided that possibility. The birth of a baby born into slavery meant profits that potentially lasted generations, a product requiring little investment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="1860. Enslaved people on a South Carolina plantation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slaves on an Edisto Island, South Carolina plantation, 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/when-james-hopkinson-owner-of-a-plantation-on-edisto-island-news-photo/535796009?adppopup=true">Getty Images / Photo 12 / Universal Images Group</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Terrifying medical research</h2>
<p>Some of the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/19/fact-check-j-marion-sims-did-medical-experiments-black-female-slaves/3202541001/">Black women were used in medical experiments</a>; much of the research, some conducted without anesthesia, focused on maternal health. As the white scientists inflicted tremendous pain on the pregnant women, the infants being carried <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Apartheid-Experimentation-Americans-Colonial/dp/076791547X">sometimes died</a>. Through the torture of these enslaved women, many white physicians and white medical institutions gained <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">considerable fame and wealth</a>. </p>
<p>Adverse health consequences for Blacks facilitated the establishment of some medical advances, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/19/fact-check-j-marion-sims-did-medical-experiments-black-female-slaves/3202541001/">such as the invention of the speculum</a> for gynecological exams. One enslaved woman reportedly endured 30 gynecological surgeries without anesthesia. Medical interests and also economic and political interests were served. </p>
<p>More than 150 years later, the health disparities of Black and white Americans remain. To fix what is wrong today, an understanding of the inequities of the past is an imperative. Only then can we begin to dismantle the structural racism that is replete within the American system. Knowledge of the history is necessary to explore and identify the underlying mechanisms to understand how racism revives itself to continue to produce health disparities, and ways to interrupt it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Kyere does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The health care inequities suffered by Black Americans today began centuries ago.Eric Kyere, Assistant professor, social work, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1313562020-03-09T15:38:31Z2020-03-09T15:38:31ZHow the technical expert emerged in 19th century politics – and what empire had to do with it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318598/original/file-20200304-66056-i9krqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C6%2C1050%2C793&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Technical expertise comes first: the first vessels through the Suez Canal in 1869. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SuezCanalKantara.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In many of today’s debates on the world’s great challenges, one question that keeps getting asked – <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/greta-thunberg-wants-you-to-listen-to-scientists-not-her">most prominently</a> by the climate change activist Greta Thunberg – is “why don’t politicians listen to the experts?” Why, for example, don’t governments listen to the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/were-almost-out-of-time-the-alarming-ipcc-climate-report-and-what-to-do-next/">recommendations of</a> the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and take the necessary action to reduce global warming?</p>
<p>While more expertise does sound like a good solution, it is more complicated than that – for two main reasons. First, experts can bring in crucial information and know-how, but politicians also need to cast judgements about, say, fairness and equality. Politicians can listen to the scientists, and agree that climate change is real, but their opinions about who is responsible and where to make changes may still diverge. </p>
<p>Second, who counts as an expert is not obvious. Often the selection is politically motivated – and once experts are selected, it’s unclear how much power they should have over policies. This means the way politicians use expertise can underestimate or even overlook important questions of legitimacy, and it’s far from an easy add-on to democracy.</p>
<p>In my ongoing doctoral research, I’m exploring how ideas about expert politics proliferated in the 19th century and evolved into a deeper “expert mentality”. This mentality was built around an urge for applying scientific method to all aspects of social and political life for the purposes of progress, an urge in common with imperialism, and most ideologies at the time. </p>
<p>Its proponents hoped to dissolve political disagreement by rendering political problems strictly technical. This hope was as attractive then as it is today – a promise that we might be able to overcome partisanship and replace the politics of belief with a politics of facts.</p>
<h2>Birth of a science of politics</h2>
<p>In the early 19th century, political theorists and practitioners (particularly in France, Britain and Germany) formulated ideas about what they came to call “political science” – a discipline that would somehow apply the principles of scientific method to the realm of politics. </p>
<p>The puzzle was that politics is often made up of hard-to-grasp phenomena – phenomena that can be observed, but don’t always look the same. Principles like good and bad, fair and unfair, equal and unequal all depend on assumptions, contexts and perspective. So too do actions, whether they are planned and rational, or spontaneous and irrational. The goal was to devise a scientific method that would allow for the observation and examination of such fuzzy concepts, and create “order” from “chaos.”</p>
<p>Determined to tackle this, 19th century political theorists such as <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27942/27942-pdf.pdf">John Stuart Mill</a>, philosophers such as <a href="https://archive.org/details/systemofpositive02comt/page/n6/mode/2up">Auguste Comte</a>, and statisticians such as <a href="https://archive.org/stream/grammarofscience00pearrich#page/n9/mode/2up">Karl Pearson</a> developed increasingly sophisticated methods that sought to distinguish truth from falsehood and fact from belief. But the problem they tried to address remained: politics was still replete with manipulation, partisanship and belief. The move to fact-based politics was far from straightforward.</p>
<h2>The making of experts</h2>
<p>As the science of politics <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science/19th-century-roots-of-contemporary-political-science">became popular across Europe</a>, alongside the rise of capitalism and empire, a new mentality emerged. Keen reformers opened schools that would train technical specialists; created international organisations; and promoted the use of expert committees. One of the most widely read of these reformers was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-de-Saint-Simon">Henri de Saint-Simon</a>, who not only strongly influenced Comte’s notion of “positive science,” but also advocated government by an expert elite. </p>
<p>By the late 19th century, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07341510701300288">an expert mode for doing politics had emerged</a>: the idea that the more specialist knowledge we gather, the better we are equipped to tackle national and international challenges. </p>
<p>Yet from the start, this idea was far from politically neutral. Big technological projects at the time relied on specialist technical knowledge – but they were <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/history-science-and-technology/scientist-empire-sir-roderick-murchison-scientific-exploration-and-victorian-imperialism">political and imperial projects</a> first and foremost, looking to spread “civilisation” through technical progress and to extend imperial control.</p>
<p>The first transatlantic telegraph cable, completed in 1866, was an Anglo-American project with <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-invisible-weapon-9780195062731?cc=gb&lang=en&">obvious benefits</a> for speeding up the command structure of the British Empire. Upon the opening of the Suez canal, completed by a French company in 1869 and acquired by the British in 1875, a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293029591397&view=2up&seq=552">British contemporary characterised it</a> as “our highway to India.”</p>
<p>In these cases, expertise was brought in to assess the technical feasibility of laying a cable or excavating a canal – but who counted as an expert, and which experts politicians would listen to, were political questions. Often “technical feasibility” was taken as sufficient justification for projects that followed deeply political motivations. The Suez canal is a case in point: once an 1856 scientific commission had agreed the project was feasible, it was built as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Parting_the_Desert.html?id=67NDDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">a private enterprise that exploited Egyptian labour</a> and strengthened European imperial transport routes.</p>
<p>There are various explanations for these projects, and imperial reach certainly <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/engineering-the-empire-british-water-supply-systems-and-colonial-societies-18501900/781E208AD13B9585818E56F5C40F4907">informed the rationales</a> for building infrastructure in colonies and protectorates. But the role of <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/4016693/politics_of_expertise">expert authority</a> and the supposed depoliticisation it brought about is crucial here, not least because it has survived to the present day.</p>
<h2>The technical point of view</h2>
<p>With the rise of using technical expertise to address complex political questions in the mid to late 19th century, politics became accessible not only to kings and courtiers, but to trained professionals as well – and with them, a new way of looking at and understanding politics <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/292997/governing-the-world-by-mark-mazower/">took hold</a>. The expectation was that, thanks to the involvement of technical experts in political decision making, politics would get “closer to the facts” and therefore better.</p>
<p>My ongoing research suggests that one effect of the introduction of expertise into politics is that technical experts can more easily claim to stand outside of politics. It renders politics a set of technical problems that can be solved with technical solutions. Moral problems disappear from view. But history shows that expertise is not something we can simply insert into politics in order to solve its problems.</p>
<p>After knowledge still comes judgement, which is always inherently political. Technical expertise can show that something is feasible, but not whether it is justified.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Eijking receives funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Oxford.</span></em></p>The science of politics became popular across Europe, alongside the rise of capitalism and empire in the 19th century.Jan Eijking, PhD Candidate in International Relations, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1269032020-03-06T17:00:56Z2020-03-06T17:00:56ZRoyal Navy sailors were appalled by conditions on slave ships, but those they ‘rescued’ rarely experienced true freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308810/original/file-20200107-123389-1qh2mwp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=359%2C45%2C1179%2C768&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The capture of a slave ship by the Royal Navy in 1859, from which 847 enslaved Africans were released.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Illustrated London News</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain was once among the most enthusiastic of slave-trading nations. But just over 200 years ago, the country dramatically changed course and used its naval dominance against the transatlantic trade in enslaved African people, one of the worst historical crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>After the Abolition Act of 1807 made British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade illegal, the country switched rapidly to an extensive commitment to enforce its abolition. For the next 60 years, the Royal Navy’s <a href="https://archives.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/exhibitions/museums/chasing.html">West Africa Squadron</a> worked to suppress the human traffic between West Africa and the plantations of the Americas, as <a href="http://visualizingabolition.org/">Britain exerted increasing diplomatic and coercive pressure</a> on nations continuing the slave trade such as Spain, Portugal, France and Brazil.</p>
<p>At its peak in the 1840s and 1850s, British operations off the West African coast involved up to 36 vessels and more than 4,000 men, costing an estimated half of all naval spending – amounting to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.cttq4338">between 1% and 2% of British government expenditure</a>.</p>
<p>In all, nearly 200,000 African men, women and children were released by the navy. It’s a huge number of people, but represents only a relatively small share of the estimated 3.2 million who were taken from West Africa as slaves between 1808 and 1863. Nevertheless, the work of the West Africa squadron was the first chapter in <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759103399/Slavery-in-the-Twentieth-Century-The-Evolution-of-a-Global-Problem">a long history of British naval campaigns against international slavery</a>, including in the Indian Ocean from the 1860s, and in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf in the 1920s and 1930s.</p>
<h2>Witnessing slavery first hand</h2>
<p>My new book <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/51528/">Envoys of Abolition</a> looks at the personal experiences of British sailors serving in West Africa, including their relationships with the African people they met while intercepting and detaining slave vessels at sea, and while spreading the British anti-slavery message on shore. Alongside their official duties of law enforcement, chase and capture, sailors’ experiences of anti-slave trade service included their roles as negotiators, guardians, humanitarians and “liberators”.</p>
<p>Conditions of this service were extraordinary, and the naval personnel involved need to be recognised as more than just sailors performing a job. Their stories uncover notions of duty and a sense of moral and religious imperative to end the slave trade, but also raise questions of racial identity and the meaning of freedom.</p>
<p>A snapshot of the human interactions at the heart of slave trade suppression is the “prize voyage”, where intercepted slave vessels were transported to Admiralty Courts, usually in the British colony of <a href="http://www.sierraleoneheritage.org/sites/monuments/kingsyard">Sierra Leone</a>. The terrible conditions for those captive aboard slave vessels on the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic meant dysentery, fever, small-pox and eye diseases were common, compounded by over-crowding and poor ventilation below deck. These conditions were not easily alleviated if the ships were taken under the control of the Royal Navy. </p>
<p>In a letter written home from Sierra Leone in 1863, naval officer James Bowly described how on one captured vessel only around 200 of the 540 original captives survived the passage to Sierra Leone:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were in the most dreadful condition that human beings could be in … I should never have believed that anything could have been so horrible … some of them mere walking skeletons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Diseases were easily transmitted to sailors, and the squadron suffered significantly higher mortality rates than other naval stations in this period. As one officer noted: “I dread sending away an officer and men in such a floating pest house!”</p>
<p>Witnessing the distressing realities of the slave trade was for many a transformative experience. Commodore John Hayes, a hugely experienced officer, witnessed cases “too horrible & disgusting to be described”. His compassion for the enslaved led him to plead, in his correspondence with his seniors: “Gracious God! Is this unparalleled cruelty to last for ever?”</p>
<p>Sir George Collier, appointed as the first leader of the squadron in 1818, believed the dreadful realities of transatlantic slavery roused “active benevolence” and “philanthropic feelings” in his fellow crewmembers. However, the conditions of the prize voyage could also contribute to tensions between sailors and recaptured Africans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158763/original/image-20170228-29906-g4rm1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malachi Kirby as enslaved man Kunta Kinte, in the 2016 History Channel adaptation of Roots.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/A+E</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘In the hands of new conquerors’</h2>
<p>Regrettably, few African testimonies survive, although it’s possible to create an idea of the conditions of captivity that led former slave <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP004">Mahommah G. Baquaqua</a> to declare: “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/baquaqua/baquaqua.html">my wretchedness I cannot describe</a>.”</p>
<p>Were recaptured Africans even aware of a favourable change in their circumstances? Born in present-day Nigeria, <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP010">Samuel Ajayi Crowther</a> was released from a Portuguese slave vessel in 1822 and went on to have a remarkable career as a respected missionary and, later, the first African Anglican bishop. Crowther’s first-hand account reveals the distrust inherent in these initial encounters with the Royal Navy. “We found ourselves in the hands of new conquerors”, he wrote, “whom we at first very much dreaded.” </p>
<p>Naval officers were tasked with maintaining order and discipline on prize vessels as on any other ship. Tensions were exacerbated by language barriers, as Africans enslaved from diverse communities invariably spoke different languages. Racial prejudices of the time also played a part.</p>
<p>Some naval men were prepared to assert control in ways reminiscent of those used by the trade they were attempting to suppress. When an African man on his prize vessel was accused of stealing a 4lb piece of beef, Lieutenant Philip de Sausmarez tied the man in the rigging with the piece of beef suspended above him, and made the slaves process around him as an example.</p>
<p>While Britain’s abolitionist campaign was presented to the rest of the world as a shining example of the country’s benevolence, the reality revealed in the accounts from the front line is more nuanced. The granting of liberty (or more accurately, British perceptions of liberty) to captive Africans was riddled with ambiguities.</p>
<p>This continued after recaptured Africans were resettled in British territories, where, rather than being repatriated, they became part of the wider British anti-slavery campaign to end slave trading within Africa by “civilising” the continent via Christian education and European commerce. We should also remember that until the Emancipation Act of 1833, <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/">many Britons still owned slaves in the Caribbean</a>. </p>
<p>The British commitment to anti-slavery operations in this period is rightfully commended. The insight offered by the personal experiences of British sailors from the West African coast, however, serves to remind us of the complexities of British abolitionism in this period.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249588/original/file-20181210-76968-jfryp4.png?h=128">
<div>
<header>Mary Wills is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/51528/">Envoys of abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign Against the Slave Trade in West Africa.</a></p>
<footer>Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Wills has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Britain’s Royal Navy embarked on a huge anti-slavery campaign, but those ‘rescued’ didn’t always feel the benefits.Mary Wills, Honorary Fellow, Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1289682019-12-17T16:32:31Z2019-12-17T16:32:31ZWhat the 19th-century fad for anti-slavery sugar can teach us about ethical Christmas gifts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307440/original/file-20191217-58292-nlmvmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sweet and toil. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/granulated-white-sugar-spoon-some-cubes-1138338317">Losmandarinas</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With shopping days to Christmas fast running out, how many of us are thinking about the ethics behind what we buy? This can be a difficult area to understand, since data on ethical consumption is very thin on the ground. One indicator, the <a href="https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/research-hub/uk-ethical-consumer-markets-report">Ethical Consumer Markets Report 2018</a>, points to good news and bad news in the recent past. </p>
<p>In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the average person in the UK spent £1,238 on ethical purchases, compared to £542 ten years earlier. That’s a rise of over £500 per head even after inflation is <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator">taken into account</a> – although <a href="https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JCE_2018_1_21_28-Boyce-Harrison.pdf">we need to be</a> slightly cautious with this kind of information because the data is based on products that have been categorised as ethical. It ignores the fact that people sometimes buy them for other reasons, such as health or availability. </p>
<p>Year on year, the report painted a mixed picture. There was a 20% rise in UK purchases of ethical clothing and a 23% rise in purchases of second-hand clothing for environmental reasons. Ethical food and drink purchases rose 16% and green energy spending grew 56%. Yet this was offset by an 87% drop in sales of solar panels and a 28% drop in sales of energy-efficient cars. This was because the government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/19/subsidies-for-new-household-solar-panels-to-end-next-year">subsidies</a> had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/12/scrapping-uk-grants-for-hybrid-cars-astounding-says-industry">been</a> shifted to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-go-further-and-faster-to-tackle-climate-change">other areas</a>. </p>
<p>We also shouldn’t assume that purchases of ethical goods will keep on increasing over time, just like the ten-year data seems to show. In fact, history tells us to be careful here. One interesting case study that I was <a href="http://links.springernature.com/f/a/MXbayq5ppqzLY0e83wU9lg%7E%7E/AABE5gA%7E/RgRfmWD-P0QwaHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcHJpbmdlci5jb20vLS8yL0FXNFhjYklMRjJmd1B0OVNSbnFtVwNzcGNCCgAAfi24XUlWgXJSHEplbm5pZmVyLmpvaG5zQGJyaXN0b2wuYWMudWtYBAAABuc%7E">involved in</a> examining is that of rise and fall of free-labour sugar. It highlights just how little power consumers may actually have when it comes to ethical shopping, and how we need to put more pressure on businesses and governments to do the right thing.</p>
<p>In late 18th century Britain, several sugar producers started offering consumers a choice between slave-produced and free-labour sugar. Many housewives chose the free-labour sugar, even though it cost more. They had the support of leading businessmen such as the potter Josiah Wedgewood, who produced a <a href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/research/sankofa/legacies-slavery/item-186990.aspx">custom sugar bowl</a> advertising to the afternoon tea guest the moral decision of their host. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wedgewood’s bowl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/research/sankofa/legacies-slavery/item-186990.aspx">Liverpool Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet in the 1830s, free-labour sugar was withdrawn from the marketplace. This wasn’t because people had stopped buying it. The businessmen who had been selling the sugar had died or retired, and the next generation did not continue to sell the product. Also the government had <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavery-Abolition-Act">abolished slavery</a> in 1833, and imposed tariffs on slave sugar which meant there was no longer a need for a separate free-labour category. </p>
<p>These tariffs were lifted a few years later, however, creating a free market in sugar again. People would have been aware that the cheap sugar on the market now came from slave plantations, but they bought it in large quantities anyway. Public concerns had moved on to other issues, such as child labour and safety in British factories. </p>
<p>What does this tell us about ethical consumption in our own era? One lesson is that consumers are arguably the least powerful agents in the whole retail system: they can only buy what businesses are offering. Though there are alternatives like second-hand clothes or <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-a-sustainable-future-we-need-to-reconnect-with-what-were-eating-and-each-other-123490">sharing initiatives</a>, they are only marginal in terms of the market as a whole. </p>
<p>Ethical product lines can disappear as easily as they arrive. For instance, the fair trade model is <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-a-very-merry-christmas-for-fairtrade-chocolate-69761">under threat</a> because of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/23/fairtrade-ethical-certification-supermarkets-sainsburys">questions</a> about its purpose and effectiveness. There is a great danger here of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. </p>
<h2>Beyond ethical lines</h2>
<p>Another implication of the free-labour sugar story is that our focus should not just be on ethical products. To challenge the modern-day equivalents of slave sugar, we should be seeking to ensure that all products and services that we consumer are made, sourced, transported and sold under ethical conditions. This won’t be true of the vast majority of the gifts that we place under the Christmas tree this year. Many of them will have involved the exploitation of labour, unsafe and insecure working conditions, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-people-trapped-in-modern-slavery-are-underworked-and-they-pay-a-heavy-price-for-it-99863">more extreme forms</a> of modern slavery and human trafficking. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not really made by elves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/presents-gifts-under-christmas-tree-winter-530221042">Pro-stock Studio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not simply a question of recognising the power of businesses to create more ethical products. Firms are under pressure to generate profits for shareholders. Many will be <a href="https://www.drapersonline.com/news/further-redundancies-loom-at-asos/7038061.article">downsizing or eliminating teams</a> working on areas like ethical supply and corporate social responsibility – often without consumers knowing anything about it. </p>
<p>Government regulation can also have an effect, which underlines the need for political pressure to enforce positive change. New regulations are just as likely to make things worse as better, just like the 1830s tariffs removed slave sugar from shelves for a few years before later policy changes allowed it back again. </p>
<p>In 2015, for instance, the UK government introduced the <a href="https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JCE_2018_1_38_48-Webb.pdf">Modern Slavery Act</a>, which required supply chains to be more transparent. This did raise the profile of modern slavery, and brought it to the attention of company boards. But the new rules were framed in such a way that they effectively passed the responsibility for supply-chain monitoring from the government to companies. </p>
<p>The recent UK election would have been a good opportunity to bring this out in the open, but the three largest political parties <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative%202019%20Manifesto.pdf">barely</a> mentioned <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf">modern slavery</a> in their election <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/57307/attachments/original/1574684060/Stop_Brexit_and_Build_a_Brighter_Future.pdf?1574684060">manifestos</a>. None of them said anything about ethical consumption either. </p>
<p>In short, consumers need to make businesses and politicians care more about these issues. They can try to enact change by supporting ethical brands, or by putting pressure on businesses if they are shareholders or investors. They also need to question highly exploitative business practices that are taken as the norm. As <a href="http://awajfoundation.org/staff/nazma-akter/">Nazma Akter</a>, a Bangladeshi union leader, recently expressed to me: “If you see buy one get one free, someone is paying. It’s not you in the UK, it is the Bangladeshi workers living in slums.” </p>
<p>As we saw from the case of free-labour sugar, people should never take ethical products for granted. Advancing ethical consumption is a constant battle. We need to keep fighting, one Christmas present at a time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Johns received funding DFID/British Academy, grant number TS170023.
</span></em></p>After several decades in which many housewives turned their backs on slave sugar, it suddenly made a comeback.Jennifer Johns, Reader in International Business, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1264312019-12-06T13:04:36Z2019-12-06T13:04:36ZFrom their balloons, the first aeronauts transformed our view of the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304704/original/file-20191202-66986-najwru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C28%2C3180%2C2074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lithograph from Gaston Tissandier's balloon travels depicts falling stars.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archive.org/details/travelsinair00glaigoog/page/n328">Archive.org</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Near the beginning of the film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6141246/">The Aeronauts</a>,” a giant gas-filled balloon called the “Mammoth” departs from London’s Vauxhall Gardens and ascends into the clouds, revealing a bird’s eye view of London.</p>
<p>To some moviegoers, these breathtaking views might seem like nothing special: Modern air travel has made many of us take for granted what we can see from the sky. But during the 19th century, the vast “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/363624-it-is-a-common-belief-that-we-breathe-with-our">ocean of air</a>” above our heads was a mystery.</p>
<p>These first balloon trips changed all that.</p>
<p>Directed by Tom Harper, the movie is inspired by the true story of Victorian scientist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Glaisher">James Glaisher</a> and the aeronaut <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526221-900-histories-the-accidental-aeronaut/">Henry Coxwell</a>. (In the film, Coxwell is replaced by a fictional aeronaut named Amelia Wren.) </p>
<p>In 1862, <a href="https://digitalcollections.wesleyan.edu/object/histfp-13?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=7963dfb378b0ac8229b6&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0">Glaisher and Coxwell</a> ascended to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160419-the-victorians-who-flew-as-high-as-jets">37,000 feet</a> in a balloon – 8,000 feet higher than the summit of Mount Everest, and, at the time, the highest point in the atmosphere humans had ever reached. </p>
<p><a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/nature-exposed">As a historian of science and visual communication</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/301930?seq=1">I’ve studied</a> the balloon trips of Glaisher, Coxwell and others. Their voyages inspired art and philosophy, introduced new ways of seeing the world and transformed our understanding of the air we breathe.</p>
<h2>The first balloon flights</h2>
<p>Before the invention of the balloon, the atmosphere was like a blank slate on which fantasies and fears were projected. Philosophers speculated that the skies went on forever, while <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jKk4rtfxMgEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Christopher+Hatton+Turnor%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib1qz9l5_mAhXtlOAKHWRgAwUQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">there were medieval tales</a> of birds that were so large they could whisk human passengers into the clouds.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing from ‘Astra Castra’ depicts mythic birds that can transport people up into the skies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archive.org</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The atmosphere <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I3UMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=flammarion+the+atmosphere&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjO3oeimJ_mAhUKnOAKHQW8BwsQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=flammarion%20the%20atmosphere&f=false">was sometimes thought of</a> as a “factory of death” – a place where disease-causing vapors lingered. People <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xPsJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA233&dq=henry+coxwell+my+life+and+balloon+experiences&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjrpTxmJ_mAhXqYN8KHR6_C3IQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=henry%20coxwell%20my%20life%20and%20balloon%20experiences&f=false">also feared</a> that if they were to ascend into the clouds, they’d die from oxygen deprivation. </p>
<p>The dream of traveling skyward became a reality in 1783, when two French brothers, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Montgolfier-brothers">launched the first piloted hot-air balloon</a>.</p>
<p>Early balloon flights were difficult to pull off and dangerous. Aeronauts and passengers <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/sophie-blanchard-0011546">fell to their deaths</a> when balloons unexpectedly deflated, caught fire or drifted out to sea. Partly due to this inherent danger, untethered balloon flight <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow_xlg/public/images/collection-objects/record-images/NASM-DD09F8D80B3E2_01.jpg?itok=4yCNVHxc">became forms of public entertainment</a>, titillating crowds who wanted to see if something would go wrong. The novelist Charles Dickens, horrified by balloon ascents, <a href="http://www.djo.org.uk/indexes/articles/lying-awake.html">wrote</a> that these “dangerous exhibitions” were no different from public hangings.</p>
<p>Over time, aeronauts became more skilled, the technology improved and trips became safe enough to bring along passengers – <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Gw9LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR105&lpg=PR105&dq=british+association+for+advancement+of+science+balloon+committee&source=bl&ots=L3vaMcZiBq&sig=ACfU3U3zLidfa_wUsX2D0E3dIsjyZUd4ig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRpqTWnJ_mAhUhc98KHQKxAKgQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=british%20association%20for%20advancement%20of%20science%20balloon%20committee&f=false">provided they could afford the trip</a>. At the time of Glaisher’s ascents, it cost <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Aeronauts.html?id=nfFHPgAACAAJ">about 600 pounds</a> – roughly US$90,000 today – to construct a balloon. Scientists who wanted to make a solo ascent needed to shell out about 50 pounds to hire an aeronaut, balloon and enough gas for a single trip.</p>
<h2>The view of angels</h2>
<p>Some of the first Europeans who ascended for amusement returned with tales of new sights and sensations, composed poems about what they had seen and circulated sketches.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A glass lantern slide of a print titled ‘The View of Versailles.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection, used with permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Common themes emerged: the sensation of being in a dream, a feeling of tranquility and a sense of solitude and isolation. </p>
<p>“We were lost in an opaque ocean of ivory and alabaster,” the balloon travelers Wilfrid de Fonvielle and Gaston Tissandier <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wx5NAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22JAMES+GLAISHER+%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie78DynJ_mAhUrZN8KHWGUBggQ6AEwAHoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">recalled</a> in 1868 upon returning from one of their voyages.</p>
<p>In an 1838 book, one of the most prolific writers on the topic, professional flutist Monck Mason, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Aeronautica_or_Sketches_illustrative_of/spMJAAAAIAAJ?hl=en">described</a> ascending into the atmosphere as “distinct in all its bearings from every other process with which we are acquainted.” Once aloft, the traveler is forced to consider the “world without him.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of dreamlike clouds from the travels of Wilfrid de Fonvielle and Gaston Tissandier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Travels in the Air'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>French astronomer Camille Flammarion <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I3UMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Camille+Flammarion%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimg6eVnZ_mAhXQwFkKHT5pD-QQ6AEwB3oECAgQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">wrote</a> that the atmosphere was “an ethereal sea reaching over the whole world; its waves wash the mountains and the valleys, and we live beneath it and are penetrated by it.” </p>
<p>Travelers were also awestruck by the diffusion of light, the intensity of colors and the effects of atmospheric illumination.</p>
<p>One scientific observer in 1873 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=quWJXJ_dHI8C&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=flammarion+the+atmospheric+envelope+atmosphere&source=bl&ots=j7YKKNW6wM&sig=ACfU3U3XO1MjY2bklwkA7DeTfmYFclNdoQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU2N7O6J_mAhWnct8KHa9gD-kQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=flammarion%20the%20atmospheric%20envelope%20atmosphere&f=false">described the atmosphere</a> as a “splendid world of colors which brightens the surface of our planet,” noting the “lovely azure tint” and “changing harmonies” of hues that “lighten up the world.”</p>
<p>And then there were the birds-eye views of the cities, farms and towns below. In 1852, the social reformer Henry Mayhew <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YKhPAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=henry+mayhew++balloon+flight+over+london+illustrated+london+news&source=bl&ots=zYhicBsooH&sig=ACfU3U2iss84hrwzgk0U_cf2o0kNphdE4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZz4m0nZ_mAhXMzlkKHdyYDCQQ6AEwBnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=henry%20mayhew%20%20balloon%20flight%20over%20london%20illustrated%20london%20news&f=false">recalled his views of London</a> from the perch of “an angel:” “tiny people, looking like so many black pins on a cushion,” swarmed through “the strange, incongruous clump of palaces and workhouses.”</p>
<p>To Mayhew, the sights of farmlands were “the most exquisite delight I ever experienced.” The houses looked “like the tiny wooden things out of a child’s box of toys, and the streets like ruts.” </p>
<p>So deep was the dusk in the distance that it “was difficult to tell where the earth ended and the sky began.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A thunderstorm above Fontainebleau, France, from Camille Flammarion’s travels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Travels in the Air.'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A laboratory for discovery</h2>
<p>The atmosphere was not just a vantage point for picturesque views. It was also a laboratory for discovery, and balloons were a boon to scientists.</p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo3534836.html">different theories prevailed</a> over how and why rain formed. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Air_and_Rain.html?id=AuhxAAAAMAAJ">Scientists debated</a> the role of trade winds and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. People wondered what caused lightning and what would happen to the human body as it ascended higher.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I3UMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Camille+Flammarion%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFp62Wn5_mAhWJq1kKHaHXCTcQ6AEwB3oECAkQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">To scientists like Flammarion</a>, the study of the atmosphere was the era’s key scientific challenge. The hope was that the balloon would give scientists some answers – or, at the very least, provide more clues.</p>
<p>James Glaisher, a British astronomer and meteorologist, was already an established scientist by the time he made his famous balloon ascents. During his trips, he brought along delicate instruments to measure the temperature, barometric pressure and chemical composition of the air. He even recorded his own pulse at various altitudes. </p>
<p>In 1871 he published “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=iPQOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22JAMES+GLAISHER+%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6g7asn5_mAhUqvlkKHfXWACYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">Travels in the Air</a>,” a collection of reports from his experiments. He didn’t want to simply write about his findings for other scientists; he wanted the public to learn about his trips. So he fashioned his book to make the reports appealing to middle-class readers by including detailed drawings and maps, colorful accounts of his adventures and vivid descriptions of his precise observations. </p>
<p>Glaisher’s books also featured innovative visual portrayals of meteorological data; the lithographs depicted temperatures and barometric pressure levels at different elevations, superimposed over picturesque views.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Glaisher charted his balloon’s path from Wolverhampton to Solihull, England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Travels in the Air.'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He gave a series of popular lectures, during which he relayed findings from his trips to riveted audiences. Two years later, he published <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/3041470">an English translation</a> of Flammarion’s account of his balloon travels.</p>
<p>The trips of Glaisher and others gave scientists <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/XZtGFBAAACEAaiNB">new insights</a> into meteors; the relationship between altitude and temperature; the formation of rain, hail and snow; and the forces behind thunder. </p>
<p>And for members of the public, the atmosphere was transformed from an airy concept into a physical reality.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rm4VnwCtQO8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘The Aeronauts.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Tucker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Not so long ago, people had no idea what would happen to them – and what they would see – once they ascended into the clouds.Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of History and Science in Society, Wesleyan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.