tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/daniel-defoe-10897/articlesDaniel Defoe – The Conversation2023-08-24T20:20:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2065802023-08-24T20:20:46Z2023-08-24T20:20:46ZFriday essay: ‘black bile’, malaria therapy and insulin comas – a brief history of mental illness<p>Possibly the earliest account of a disturbed mind is recorded in a 3,500-year-old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas">Hindu text</a> that describes a man who is “gluttonous, filthy, walks naked, has lost his memory and moves about in an uneasy manner”.</p>
<p>In the Bible’s Old Testament, in the first <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Books-of-Samuel">Book of Samuel</a>, we read that King David simulated madness to gain safety: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And he changed his behaviour … and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.</p>
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<p>In the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Book-of-Daniel-Old-Testament">Book of Daniel</a>, we find a vivid description of King Nebuchadnezzar’s mental state: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws.</p>
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<p>The ancient Greeks made early attempts to explain madness. In the 5th century BC, <a href="https://fherehab.com/learning/humors-ancient-mental-health">Hippocrates</a> viewed it as seated in the brain and influenced by four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. </p>
<p>The Greek physician Galen, who practised in Rome 600 years later, argued that depression was caused by an excess of black bile (hence the term “melancholia”, from <em>melan</em>, black, and <em>khole</em>, bile). </p>
<p>His contemporary, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aretaeus-of-Cappadocia">Aretaeus of Cappadocia</a>, colourfully described how, if black bile moves upwards in the body, “it forms melancholy; for it produces flatulence and eructations [or, belches] of a fetid and fishy nature, and it sends rumbling wind downwards, and disturbs the understanding”. </p>
<h2>A troubled mind, possessed</h2>
<p>During the Middle Ages, monasteries preserved the view of madness as an illness, and of those afflicted as sick rather than sinful. At the same time, the more sinister belief that the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25208453/">principal cause</a> of the troubled mind was possession by spirits or the devil prevailed.</p>
<p>Sufferers were taken to sanctioned healers for <a href="https://theconversation.com/exorcisms-have-been-part-of-christianity-for-centuries-107932">exorcisms</a>, a practice still carried out today in some cultures. People who failed to respond to such treatment might then seek out a celebrated expert. </p>
<p>Consider Hwaetred, a young man living in what is now England in the 7th century, who became tormented by an “evil spirit”. So terrible was his madness that he attacked others with his teeth and killed three men with an axe when they tried to restrain him. Taken to several sacred shrines, he obtained no relief. His despairing parents then heard of Guthlac, a monk who lived a hermit life north of Cambridge. After three days of prayer and fasting, Hwaetred was purportedly cured.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent – Goya (1788)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over time, the role of religious authorities in mental illness dwindled, and the medical profession claimed the exclusive practice of the healing arts. Insanity once more came to be seen more as a physical malady than a spiritual taint. Even so, life for the mentally ill could be appalling. </p>
<p>During the 17th century, religiously inspired persecution of the mentally ill was justified by the clerical hierarchy, and treatment was often some combination of neglect and bestial restraint. </p>
<p>Psychiatrists Martin Roth and Jerome Kroll <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Reality_of_Mental_Illness.html?id=pCQ4AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">describe</a> the insane in this period as “miserable individuals, wandering around in village and in forest, taken from shrine to shrine, sometimes tied up when they became too violent”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-invention-of-satanic-witchcraft-by-medieval-authorities-was-initially-met-with-skepticism-140809">The invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was initially met with skepticism</a>
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<h2>A watershed: asylums</h2>
<p>The late 18th century was a watershed in the history of psychiatry. The insanity of England’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22122407">King George III</a> revealed society’s ambivalence to the mentally ill (vividly captured in the 1994 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110428/">The Madness of King George</a>). </p>
<p>In France, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Philippe-Pinel">Philippe Pinel</a> released the chains that had fettered the “lunatic” for centuries, ushering in an unprecedented phase of benevolent institutional care. </p>
<p><a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/moral-therapy">Moral therapy</a>, a form of individualised care in small hospital settings, was promoted by English Quakers at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Retreat">York Retreat</a> and gradually supplanted inhumane physical treatments such as purging, bleeding and dunking in cold water.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BHNSAK8d3qc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">English society’s ambivalence to the mentally ill in the 18th century is depicted in the 1994 film, The Madness of King George.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As populations grew and urbanised, the sheer numbers of mentally ill people in burgeoning city slums demanded action. An institutional solution emerged. </p>
<p>Asylums (from the Greek word meaning “refuge”) were built in rural settings with the best of intentions, planned to be havens in which patients would receive humane care. In the serenity of the countryside, and through carrying out undemanding tasks, they could be distracted from their internal torment and find dignity far from the bustling crowd. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Defoe">Daniel Defoe</a>, the English writer, remained unconvinced: “This is the height of barbarity and injustice in a Christian country; it is a clandestine Inquisition, nay worse.”</p>
<p>Although conceived in a spirit of optimism, asylums tended to deteriorate into centres of hopelessness and demoralisation. They soon became overcrowded dumps. Institutions built for a few hundred people were soon holding thousands. Very few residents were discharged; many stayed for decades. Brutal oppression replaced anything that might have resembled treatment; malnutrition and infectious disease became rife.</p>
<p>In the grim environment, people were shut away and forgotten. With them out of sight and out of mind, a loss of public interest and political neglect became the norm.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Asylums were conceived optimistically, but more often housed oppression than treatment. Picture: The Hospital of Bethlehem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The brooding building on the hill came to symbolise the stigma and fear attached to mental illness. By the mid-19th century, critics were voicing concerns that asylums had become human warehouses that entrenched mental illness rather than curing it. </p>
<p>The combination of powerless patients, hospitals run more for the convenience of staff than for the benefit of the sick, inadequate inspection by state bodies, and lack of resources led at times to quite disgraceful conditions. Unwittingly, the spread of asylums also triggered the movement of psychiatry away from the mainstream of medicine.</p>
<p>The conditions of the asylums are evocatively described in Henry Handel Richardson’s Australian novel <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-fortunes-of-richard-mahony">The Fortunes of Richard Mahony</a>. We read of Richard’s decline, probably from syphilis affecting the brain, which at that time afflicted a large proportion of mental patients.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the novel, his wife comes to visit him in the asylum:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She hung her head … while the warder told the tale of Richard’s misdeeds. 97B was, he declared, not only disobedient and disorderly, he was extremely abusive, dirty in his habits … he refused to wash himself, or to eat his food … she had to keep a grip on her mind to hinder it from following the picture up: Richard, forced by this burly brute to grope on the floor for his spilt food, to scrape it together, and either eat it or have it thrust down his throat … There was not only feeding by force, the straitjacket, the padded cell. There were drugs and injections, given to keep a patient quiet and ensure his warders their freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-the-fortunes-of-richard-mahony-by-henry-handel-richardson-24474">The case for The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson</a>
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<h2>Great and desperate cures</h2>
<p>In the asylum, psychiatry turned into a modern medical discipline. The
accumulation of thousands of patients provided the first opportunity
to study mental illness systematically and to develop theories about its
causes. </p>
<p>The idea that these conditions were due to brain alterations, and especially degenerative processes, became dominant, encouraged by the discovery of the cerebral pathology associated with <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/neurosyphilis">neurosyphilis</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-causes-alzheimers-disease-what-we-know-dont-know-and-suspect-75847">Alzheimer’s disease</a>. A similar degenerative process was proposed by the great German psychiatrist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emil-Kraepelin">Emil Kraepelin</a> to cause <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/dementia-praecox">dementia praecox</a> – later renamed “schizophrenia” – leading to pessimism about the possibility of recovery.</p>
<p>But the priority for asylums was to relieve the suffering of overwhelming numbers of disturbed patients. Psychiatrists grasped for “great and desperate cures”. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_R._Rollin">Henry Rollin</a>, an English psychiatrist and medical historian, captures the intense zeal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The physical treatment of the frankly psychotic during these centuries makes spine-chilling reading. Evacuation by vomiting, purgatives, sweating, blisters, and bleeding were considered essential […] There was indeed no insult to the human body, no trauma, no indignity which was not at one time or other piously prescribed for the unfortunate victim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Treatments were sometimes based on rational grounds. Malaria therapy, for instance, was launched as a treatment for neurosyphilis by the Viennese psychiatrist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Wagner-Jauregg">Julius Wagner-Jauregg</a> in 1917, earning him a Nobel Prize ten years later. </p>
<p>The high fever caused by the malarial parasite disabled the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/spirochete">spirochete</a> that caused neurosyphilis, but the hope that it would be equally effective for other forms of psychosis was soon dashed. The wished-for panacea was not to be.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.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">Malaria therapy, a treatment for neurosyphilis, earned its inventor a Nobel Prize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jimmy Chan/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/insulin-shock-therapy">Insulin-coma therapy</a> was introduced by Manfred Sakel in the 1930s in Vienna and was soon being used in many countries to treat schizophrenia. An insulin injection was administered six days a week for several weeks, producing a state of light coma lasting about an hour, because of reduced glucose reaching the brain. </p>
<p>Many years later, an investigation carried out in the Institute of Psychiatry in London, a leading research centre at the time, showed conclusively that the coma itself was of no therapeutic value. Any positive change was probably due to the staff’s painstaking care.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/girl-interrupted-interrogates-how-women-are-mad-when-they-refuse-to-conform-30-years-on-this-memoir-is-still-important-199211">Girl, Interrupted interrogates how women are 'mad' when they refuse to conform – 30 years on, this memoir is still important</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>ECT and lithium</h2>
<p>The first widely available and effective biological treatments for mental illness were developed in the asylum. The discovery in 1938 of <a href="https://theconversation.com/electroconvulsive-therapy-a-history-of-controversy-but-also-of-help-70938">electroconvulsive therapy</a> (ECT) by <a href="https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/ugo-cerletti">Ugo Cerletti</a> and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, led to a dramatically effective treatment for people with severe depression. </p>
<p>ECT was eagerly adopted in practice, but its history illustrates a typical pattern of treatment in psychiatry: unbridled early enthusiasm is later tempered by a protracted process of scientific evaluation. </p>
<p>The same can be said of the use of brain surgery to modify psychiatric symptoms. This was pioneered in 1936 by Portuguese neurologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Egas-Moniz">António Egas Moniz</a> (another Nobel Prize winner in the field of psychiatry) and surgeon Almeida Lima, and remains controversial in psychiatry to this day.</p>
<p>A momentous breakthrough was the discovery in 1949 by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02480-0">John Cade</a>, an Australian psychiatrist, of lithium as a treatment for manic excitement. The lithium story reveals how the incorporation of a new medication into psychiatric practice is not always smooth. </p>
<p>Several US and Danish psychiatrists had experimented with lithium in the 1870s and 1890s, only to have their work ignored until Cade’s rediscovery. It was another 18 years before lithium was shown to prevent the recurrence of severe changes of mood, its primary clinical use now.</p>
<p>Major tranquillisers were added to the growing range of psychiatric medications after being discovered fortuitously in 1953. An antihistamine used to calm patients undergoing surgery was shown to reduce the torment of psychotic patients, but without making them sleepy. </p>
<p>Shortly after this, the US psychiatrist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/14/obituaries/nathan-kline-developer-of-antidepressants-dies.html">Nathan Kline</a> discovered that a drug being tested for its effect in patients with tuberculosis had antidepressant properties — the forerunner of medications for depression. All these drugs radically transformed the practice of psychiatry. </p>
<h2>Freud, ‘talking cures’ and shell shock</h2>
<p>A very different aspect of mental health care arose in the 1890s, outside
the asylum. Concerned with neurotic conditions, the new treatment grew chiefly out of neurology but was also influenced by a scientific interest in hypnosis and the unconscious. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Max Halberstadt/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Sigmund Freud conceived a dynamic model of the mind in which, through the mechanism of repression, painful or threatening emotions, memories and impulses are prevented from escaping into conscious awareness. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dangerous-method-in-defence-of-freuds-psychoanalysis-5989">Psychoanalysis</a> grew to become an integrated set of concepts about normal and abnormal mental functioning and personality development, and spawned a new method of psychologically based treatment. Psychoanalysis emerged as a major theoretical underpinning of contemporary “talking cures” (psychotherapies), and its influence spread far beyond treating mental ill-health.</p>
<p>Both world wars profoundly influenced the field. The high incidence of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/shell-shock-treatments-reveal-the-conflict-in-psychiatrys-heart-29822">shell shock</a>” in World War I drove home the lesson that mental illness could affect not only those genetically predisposed, but even the supposedly robust. It soon emerged that anyone exposed to traumatic experiences was vulnerable. </p>
<p>A positive outcome from World War II was the development of techniques for screening large numbers of recruits, which revealed the substantial prevalence of emotional problems among young adults. </p>
<p>The need to treat numerous psychiatric casualties led to the development of group therapies. These paved the way for the so-called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_community">therapeutic community</a>, based on the idea that an entire ward of patients could be an integral part of treatment.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ehPcYibzUKc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Group therapy, as depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The idea of deinstitutionalisation began to gather pace in the 1960s, driven by a burgeoning civil-rights movement. <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/asylums-9780241548004">Asylums</a>, an influential book at the time by sociologist Erving Goffman, containing his minute observations of the sense of oppression experienced by patients in these “total institutions”, was one catalyst for their closure. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of long-stay patients began to be transferred to alternative accommodation and specialist care in the community, a process that is still in progress.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-body-keeps-the-score-how-a-bestselling-book-helps-us-understand-trauma-but-inflates-the-definition-of-it-184735">The Body Keeps the Score: how a bestselling book helps us understand trauma – but inflates the definition of it</a>
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</em>
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<h2>What is mental illness?</h2>
<p>It is challenging to define what makes a pattern of behaviour and experience a mental disorder. Generally, such a pattern – or “syndrome” – is considered to be a disorder if it is associated with psychological distress, such as intense and prolonged anxiety or sadness, or significant dysfunction, such as a serious impairment in functioning in one or more key areas of daily life. </p>
<p>If the pattern is short-lived, relatively mild, or entirely understandable in light of the trials and tribulations of the person’s life, it should be seen as a problem in living rather than a mental disorder. Such problems may still benefit from consultation with a mental health professional despite not being diagnosable disorders.</p>
<p>This definition of what counts as a mental disorder also clarifies what is not a mental disorder. Merely being unusual or violating social norms does not mean a person has a disorder. </p>
<p>It is difficult sometimes to decide whether a new kind of behaviour is a mental disorder. For instance, should <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-youre-probably-not-addicted-to-your-smartphone-but-you-might-use-it-too-much-89853">excessive smartphone use</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/gambling-on-pokies-is-like-tobacco-no-amount-of-it-is-safe-51037">compulsive gambling</a> be counted as diagnosable addictions?</p>
<h2>Troubling cases</h2>
<p>These decisions about what to include under the umbrella of mental illness are fraught, and there have been some troubling historical cases when disturbing decisions were made or proposed. </p>
<p>In the 1850s, for example, Samuel Cartwright, a physician from Alabama, proposed a new diagnosis called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/15/arts/bigotry-as-mental-illness-or-just-another-norm.html">drapetomania</a>” to explain why African-American slaves would wish to escape their servitude. </p>
<p>He recommended slaves should be treated kindly and humanely to prevent the disorder, but whipped if this treatment failed. A more patent abuse of the concept of mental illness would be hard to imagine, and it should be noted that other physicians ridiculed Cartwright’s proposal at the time.</p>
<p>Two other controversial cases date to the last century. In the early 1970s, one of us (Sidney) stumbled across disturbing media reports that many political and religious dissenters and human-rights activists in the Soviet Union were being labelled as mentally ill and detained in mental hospitals indefinitely or until they renounced their “disturbed ideas”. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Grigorenko">General Pyotr Grigorenko</a> criticised the privileges of the Soviet elite and publicly espoused the rights of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars">Crimean Tatar</a> ethnic minority group. He was diagnosed with paranoid tendencies, one symptom being his “reformist ideas”, and forcibly committed to a psychiatric facility. </p>
<p>In effect, Soviet psychiatry’s definition of mental illness, and psychosis in particular, was so broad that political beliefs about the desirability of social change were recast as delusions.</p>
<p>The second case comes from the US. <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-activists-got-homosexuality-out-of-the-dsm/">Until 1973</a>, homosexuality was defined as a sexual deviation and included in the set of recognised mental disorders. Under pressure from civil, women’s and gay rights activists, it was removed from the diagnostic manual.</p>
<p>Noting such cases, whenever the boundary of a mental illness is expanded to include new diagnoses or loosen old ones, some critics will worry we are treating normal behaviour as a pathology and that we will harm people by labelling them. And whenever the boundary contracts, others will worry that people with psychological troubles are being excluded from clinical care. </p>
<p>Deciding what is and isn’t a mental illness is difficult, but has marked consequences.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/troubled-mindSees-9781922585875">Troubled Minds: Understanding and treating mental illness</a> by Sidney Bloch and Nick Haslam (Scribe Publications), published 29 August 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sidney Bloch 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>Humans have attempted to understand and treat mental illness for centuries – from ancient Greek medicine, Middle Ages exorcisms and the rise of asylums, to modern medical breakthroughs.Sidney Bloch, Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry, The University of MelbourneNick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2087212023-07-17T12:26:03Z2023-07-17T12:26:03ZWildlife wonders of Britain and Ireland before the industrial revolution – my research reveals all the biodiversity we’ve lost<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535634/original/file-20230704-26-m7f9is.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C11%2C1570%2C879&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The extinction of the wolf in Britain was widely celebrated as an achievement towards the creation of a more civilised world.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/">Biodiversity Heritage Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Travel back with me a few hundred years to before the industrial revolution, and the wildlife of Britain and Ireland looks very different indeed. Take orcas: while there are now less than ten left in <a href="https://hwdt.org/west-coast-community-catalogue">Britain’s only permanent (and non-breeding) resident population</a>, around 250 years ago the English cleric and naturalist John Wallis gave this extraordinary account of a mass stranding of orcas on the north Northumberland coast:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sixty-three of them came on shore at Shorestone, 29th July 1734, about noon – 60 of which were between 14 and 19 feet long, and the other three about eight feet. They were all alive when they came on shore and made a hideous noise, but they were soon killed by the country people, who removed them one by one with six oxen and two horses, and made about ten pounds by their blubber. The same kind of noise was heard in the sea the night before by the shepherds in the fields, when it is supposed they were sensible of [the orcas’] distress in shoal-water.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If this record is reliable, then more orcas were stranded on this beach south of the Farne Islands on one day in 1734 than are probably ever present in British and Irish waters today. In his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yo4_AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">natural history of Northumberland</a>, Wallis describes the orca as a “great enemy to the whale” and waging fierce battles with common thresher sharks, which use their long tails as weapons.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of an orca near the shore" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535604/original/file-20230704-26-9y63n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1843 illustration of a grampus, then the common name for orca.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Whales_(Plate_XX)_(8618218985).jpg">Robert Hamilton via Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other careful naturalists from this period observed orcas around the coasts of Cornwall, Norfolk and Suffolk. I have spent the last five years tracking down more than 10,000 records of wildlife recorded between 1529 and 1772 by naturalists, travellers, historians and antiquarians throughout Britain and Ireland, in order to reevaluate the prevalence and habits of more than 150 species for my new book, <a href="https://pelagicpublishing.com/products/the-atlas-of-early-modern-wildlife?variant=41915269087403">The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife</a>.</p>
<p>In the early modern period, wolves, beavers and probably some <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lynx-may-have-survived-in-scotland-centuries-later-than-previously-thought-new-study-suggests-167250">lynxes</a> still survived in regions of Scotland and Ireland. By this point, wolves in particular seem to have become re-imagined as monsters, looming around every corner in the imaginations of writers such as <a href="https://digital.nls.uk/scottish-history-society-publications/browse/archive/125651991#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=544&xywh=-321%2C6%2C2392%2C2898">Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The violence and numbers of most rapacious wolves … prowling about wooded and pathless tracts causing great loss of beasts and sometimes of men, are such that, driven from almost all the rest of the island, they seem to have fixed their lairs and their homes [in Strathnaver]. Assuredly, they are nowhere so plentiful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Elsewhere in Scotland, the now globally extinct great auk could still be found on islands in the Outer Hebrides. Looking a bit like a penguin but most closely related to the razorbill, the great auk’s vulnerability is highlighted by writer <a href="https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usebooks/martin-stkilda/chapter02.html">Martin Martin</a> while mapping St Kilda in 1697:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The stateliest as well as the largest of all the fowls here … stands stately, its whole body erected, its wings short. It flieth not at all, and lays its egg upon the bare rock which, if taken away, it lays no more for that year.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of a great auk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535605/original/file-20230704-21-4l7slx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of a great auk drawn on St Kilda (1776).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_zoology_(1776)_(14802996353).jpg">Thomas Pennant via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While white-tailed eagles, bustards and cranes were also all much more common than they are today, some other now-ubiquitous species were much less common before the industrial revolution. Rabbits were still mainly a coastal species except in lowland England, and roe deer were found wild only in the north of Scotland and Eryri (Snowdonia) in north-west Wales. There were no grey squirrels, and brown rats were only introduced at the very end of the period.</p>
<p>On the other hand, red squirrels and ship rats were still widespread, and pine martens and “Scottish” wildcats were also found in England and Wales. Fishers caught burbot and sturgeon in both rivers and at sea, where they also pulled in plentiful amounts of tuna and swordfish, as well as now-scarce fishes such as the angelshark, halibut and common skate. Threatened molluscs like the freshwater pearl mussel and oyster were also far more widespread.</p>
<p>However, despite the abundance and diversity of wildlife at this time, the authors of my sources were not what I would call conservationists. In many ways, they had more in common with modern game hunters and anglers, in that they often fished and shot, and they valued wildlife as a resource and for recreation, rather than recording it in order to help preserve it. </p>
<h2>Britain’s early naturalists</h2>
<p>From the early 16th century to the late 18th, the prevailing belief was that God had furnished Britain and Ireland with wildlife to serve human needs. Animals were valued as food, medicine and for the “services” they could provide, including pest control and lawn mowing.</p>
<p>Scholars today sometimes describe our current era as the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/anthropocene/">Anthropocene</a> – the period in Earth’s history when humans dominate the planet’s natural systems. While the question of <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-still-dont-understand-the-anthropocene-and-theyre-going-about-it-the-wrong-way-70017">when, exactly, this period started</a> is really for geologists and climate scientists, the naturalists writing 250-500 years ago do already show evidence of “Anthropocene-thinking”.</p>
<p>Most of the sources I have read demonstrate an unequivocal belief in humans’ rightful domination of nature. These authors can be called “naturalists”, in that they were writing natural histories, but their interest in wildlife was very utilitarian. Many describe refining their methods to produce higher yields in farming and fishing, while others are fascinated by the opportunities presented by discovering new natural resources.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.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>
<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Naturalists travelling outside Europe in this period commonly <a href="https://natsca.org/sites/default/files/publications/JoNSC-Vol6-DasandLowe2018.pdf">used slave trading routes and vessels</a> to sail, <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/sir-hans-sloane">raised money for their collections</a> via the slave trade, and wrote descriptions of foreign lands partially in the hope <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TFHpAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA51&vq=deepak%20kumar&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q&f=false">they could be exploited for profit</a> as colonies and plantations. In the accounts of these naturalists, the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ingd/hd_ingd.htm">obsession with finding gold</a> displayed in the earlier journals of Christopher Columbus had blossomed into a general mania for cataloguing the natural resources of the Earth.</p>
<p>Predators such as wolves that interfered with human happiness were ruthlessly hunted. Authors such as Robert Sibbald, in his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1-vwDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+wild+plants+of+scotland+and+the+animals+of+scotland&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=wolves&f=false">natural history of Scotland</a> (1684), are aware and indeed pleased that several species of wolf have gone extinct:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There must be a divine kindness directed towards our homeland, because most of our animals have a use for human life. We also lack those wild and savage ones of other regions. Wolves were common once upon a time, and even bears are spoken of among the Scottish, but time extinguished the genera and they are extirpated from the island.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing wolf sightings in Britain and Ireland, 1529-1772" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535613/original/file-20230704-17-gc5fli.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Records of wolf in Britain and Ireland between 1529 and 1772.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lee Raye</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The wolf was of no use for food and medicine and did no service for humans, so its extinction could be celebrated as an achievement towards the creation of a more civilised world. Around 30 natural history sources written between the 16th and 18th centuries remark on the absence of the wolf from England, Wales and much of Scotland. Of these, the 17th-century text by Sibbald, a physician based in Edinburgh, is notable for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00033799600200111">using a network of correspondents</a> based across Scotland and beyond. He invited responses to the following <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/B05868.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext">questionnaire</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. What the Nature of the County or place is? And what are the chief products thereof? </p>
<p>II. What Plants, Animals, Mettals, Substances cast up by the Sea, are peculiar to the place, and how Ordered?</p>
<p>III. What Forrests, Woods, Parks? What Springs, Rivers, Loughs? With their various properties, whether Medicinal? With what Fish replenished, whether rapid or flow?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sibbald was one of a handful of authors to use the so-called Baconian method of natural history inquiry, inspired by the “father of empiricism” <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Bacon-Viscount-Saint-Alban">Francis Bacon</a>. Bacon used specific research questions to focus his observations and experiments, and this method was further developed by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Boyle">Robert Boyle</a> into a natural history survey which could be given to travellers. Sibbald circulated his questionnaire to educated people across Scotland, then compiled the data in a manner which I and others have compared to modern crowd-sourced citizen science.</p>
<p>Much like Sibbald’s natural history, the writing of <a href="https://www.dib.ie/biography/pococke-richard-a7398">Richard Pococke</a>, bishop of Ossory in southern Ireland in the mid-18th century, was informed by people he met on his travels. He writes in a style thick with detailed descriptions and local curiosities, so that readers can imagine travelling with him and stopping to study the landscapes, buildings and ruins along the way.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of a lynx" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535639/original/file-20230704-20097-7242ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of a lynx circa 1550.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/">Biodiversity Heritage Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Pococke’s 1760 Tour of Scotland, he describes being told about a wild species of cat – which seems, incredibly, to be a lynx – still living in the old county of Kirkcudbrightshire in the south-west of Scotland. Much of Pococke’s description of this cat is tied up with its persecution, apparently including an extra cost that the fox-hunter charges for killing lynxes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They have also a wild cat three times as big as the common cat. They are of a yellow-red colour, their breasts and sides white. They take fowls and lambs, and brede two at a time … It is said they will attack a man who would attempt to take their young ones, but (men) often shoot them and take the young. The country pays about £20 a year to a person who is obliged to come and destroy the foxes when they send to him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Strikingly, unlike <a href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/anh.2017.0452">earlier possible accounts of the Scottish lynx,</a>, there is no celebration of the animal’s fur in this passage. Pococke’s informants simply seem to have thought of the animal as an annoyance which needed to be hunted out of existence – which soon afterwards, it was. Based on Pococke’s description, I think the loss of the lynx would have been celebrated by locals as much as the loss of the wolf.</p>
<h2>Early concerns about species decline</h2>
<p>The early modern environment was hardly a pristine wilderness. Almost every part of Britain and Ireland was regularly visited and, to differing degrees, exploited by human inhabitants.</p>
<p>This period also had its own climate crisis. The “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-original-climate-crisis-how-the-little-ice-age-devastated-early-modern-europe-178187">little ice age</a>” was a period of very cold weather that affected the North Atlantic region, in particular between 1550 and 1700. The growing season was typically three weeks shorter, there were severe famines in some decades, and there are accounts of sea ice off the coast of southern England.</p>
<p>The change was almost certainly not caused by humans, and was not nearly as severe a phenomenon as modern global heating is likely to become over the next century – but it nevertheless had a noticeable impact on the countries’ wildlife.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a frozen river Thames with many people playing in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535616/original/file-20230704-27-1lnlig.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&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 Frozen Thames (1677), painted during the little ice age.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Frozen_Thames_1677.jpg">Abraham Hondius via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One important witness of its effects was Hugh Leigh, a minister based on Bressay in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland">Shetland Isles</a> and correspondent for Sibbald’s Scotia Illustrata at the end of the 17th century. Clergymen often contributed to scientific research in this period because they were literate, had university degrees, and had time to pursue such interests as writing about wildlife.</p>
<p>Leigh, who wrote an especially detailed account of Bressay, Shetland’s fifth-largest island, would probably have been shocked to hear us praise the 17th century as a time of great biodiversity in Britain. His writing shows how concerned he was, in particular, about the <a href="https://archive.org/details/publicationsofsc5331scot/page/252/mode/2up?view=theater&q=%22podlines%22">decline of fish stocks</a> in the waters around his home:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In old time the sea about this Coast was well stored with all common sort of fishes, as Mackerels, Herrings, Lings, Cods, Haddocks, Whiting, Sheaths, but especially with Podlines – young Sheaths which in fair weather would come so near to the shore that men and children, from the Rocks with Fishing-rods, could catch them in abundance. But all kinds of Fishing is greatly decayed here, notwithstanding that greater pains is taken by the Fishers now than ever before, who with small Norway Yoolls, two or three men in each of them, will adventure to the far sea and oft times endure hard weather.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leigh is writing near the height of the little ice age, which I think explains his description of “greatly decayed” fish stocks. Cod in particular need temperatures of 3–7°C to breed, and we know that <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hZuZDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=fagan%20little%20ice%20age&pg=PT103#v=onepage&q&f=false">the cod fisheries also failed off Iceland</a>, Norway and the Faroe Islands between the 1680s and 1700s.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map recording presence of cod around Britain and Ireland, 1529-1772" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535629/original/file-20230704-13229-p21zne.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Records of cod around Britain and Ireland between 1529 and 1772.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lee Raye</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The decline of cold-sensitive species would likely have had a complicated impact on more cold-hardy species – many marine fishes have an exact isotherm preference, so would have moved to deeper or shallower water, or north or south, in response to changing water temperatures. The end result seems to have been significantly reduced fisheries around Shetland for some time, although Leigh would never learn the explanation for the changes he was observing.</p>
<p>Other writers did, however, propose a range of explanations for the changes in fish stocks. For example, Hector Boece, a 16th-century historian with a flair for the dramatic, describes the loss of the herring fishery near Inverness as being due to <a href="https://philological.cal.bham.ac.uk/boece/fronteng.html#17">“divine wrath”</a> against the town.</p>
<p>Later observers came up with more scientific explanations. In the 18th century, Dublin authors Walter Harris, a pensioned historian, and Charles Smith, a prolific author of natural histories, write of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jPg9AAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=charles%20smith%20county%20down&pg=PA247#v=onepage&q&f=false">five possible explanations</a> for the loss of herring fisheries around County Down. These include burning too much kelp or polluting the ocean with “garbage of fish” and other “offensive things”; marine mammals such as seals or whales eating all of the herring; and fishing vessels interfering with the fish immediately after spawning, or catching juveniles before they are ready to be caught.</p>
<p>Some of these explanations feel startlingly modern, as do some of the mitigations these two authors suggest in response – including introducing a minimum mesh size of one inch, and avoiding catching fish that have just spawned. Both measures would not be seem out of place in a modern fisheries management plan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Trail Nets with narrow meshes are great Engines for the Destruction not only of the profitable Herring (which is allowable) but of the Cobbs and young Fry, which are of little Value. To which may be added the common Practice in most Places of taking up the Cobbs in Sieves and using them as Food, when Hundreds of them are scarce equal in Value to one full grown Herring. These Practices therefore should be reformed as much as possible, and the Nets, wherein the Fish are drawn, should have their Meshes an Inch square, that in taking the larger Fish the Fry may escape.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Early illustration of a capercaillie" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535619/original/file-20230704-13229-3l9tq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of a capercaillie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Picture_Natural_History_-_No_157_-_The_Capercaillie_or_Cock_of_the_Woods.png">Mary E. C. Boutell via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The capercaillie is another example of a species whose decline was correctly recognised by early modern writers. Today, this large turkey-like bird – famous for the males’ elaborate courtship rituals – is found <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/17/capercaillie-bird-tentative-comeback-scotland">only rarely in the north of Scotland</a>, but 250–500 years ago it was recorded in the west of Ireland as well as a swathe of Scotland north of the central belt.</p>
<p>At the start of his 16th-century history of Scotland, John Lesley, then the bishop of Ross who made his career as a senior advisor to Mary Queen of Scots, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QdwTedUNgyUC&vq=rosse&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false">describes the capercaillie</a> as a delicious bird with “a gentle taste, maist acceptable” that could be found in Ross-shire and Lochaber – but only among woods of native Scots Pine.</p>
<p>Charles Smith, the prolific Dublin-based author who had theorised about the decline of herring on the coast of County Down, also <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=4z9IAAAAMAAJ&q=grouse#v=onepage&q=urogallus&f=false">recorded the capercaillie in County Cork</a> in the south of Ireland, but noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This bird is not found in England and now rarely in Ireland, since our woods have been destroyed. The flesh is highly esteemed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite being protected by law in Scotland from 1621 and in Ireland 90 years later, the capercaillie went extinct in both countries in the 18th century – due, according to these accounts, to the combined pressures of deforestation and hunting. It was successfully reintroduced to Scotland a century later, and the modern population is descended from these reintroduced animals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A turkey-like bird." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537756/original/file-20230717-241443-e17pa4.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">Capercailles were successfully reintroduced in Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/capercaille-271647758">Shutterstock/MarkMedcalf</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Excitement for the ‘book of nature’</h2>
<p>Nowadays, the popularity of bird watching as a hobby means these are the best-recorded species of animal in Britain and Ireland. In contrast, the best-recorded wild animals 250-500 years ago were mainly fish – from common freshwater species such as salmon, eel, trout and pike to the sea-dwelling herring, cod and oyster.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book frontispiece and title page" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535608/original/file-20230704-24271-cwk6cv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Willughby and Ray’s De Historia Piscium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Willughby,_Francis;_De_Historia_Piscuim._Wellcome_M0012484.jpg">Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of the greatest scientists of the age were passionate about fish and the hobby of angling. Francis Willughby and John Ray devoted much of their lives to studying nature, and their <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/531965">De Historia Piscium</a> (1686) includes more than 170 illustrations, drawn by Willughby and perhaps others, of the fish they describe with meticulous accuracy. Commercially, <a href="https://royalsociety.org/blog/2013/06/the-horrible-history-of-fishes/">the book was a disaster</a>, but the copies that remain today are a tribute to the increasing interest in ichthyology (the study of fish) during the 17th century.</p>
<p>Willughby and Ray’s canonical, illustrated handbooks – also on <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/129443">birds</a> and <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/91492#page/7/mode/1up">quadrupeds and snakes</a> – would later impress the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus for their advanced taxonomy and close physical descriptions. </p>
<p>Other books were even more ambitious. Another of the most famous naturalists of the period, Martin Lister, included more than 1,000 illustrations in his <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/253538#page/72/mode/1up">Historiae Conchyliorum</a> – essentially, volumes of scientific illustrations of molluscs, all shown in taxonomic order. The cost to hire an illustrator for this would have been prohibitive so Lister made it a family project, with his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mCfrtAEACAAJ&dq=martin+lister%27s+daughters&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y">two teenage daughters, Susanna and Anna</a>, completing the illustrations over a number of years. Lister closely supervised their work, sometimes demanding corrections if their sketches were not accurate enough.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of a sea snail shell" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535610/original/file-20230704-30-mniw5c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Conus marmoreus</em> (marbled cone) from Historiae Conchyliorum by Martin Lister, c.1685-1692.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Conus_marmoreus_from_Historiae_Conchyliorum_by_Martin_Lister%2C_engraved_by_Anne_Lister.jpg">Illustration by Anna Lister, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Naturalists in this early-modern period prided themselves in not just repeating the observations of earlier writers, but consulting local informants and studying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature">“the book of nature”</a> for themselves. At times, the authors’ excitement for their field observations seems to jump off the page.</p>
<p>In 1713, Francis Nevill, a member of the Ulster gentry, wrote a letter published in the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rstl.1713.0029">Philosophical Transactions</a> of the Royal Society of London. Nevill describes Lough Neagh – the largest lake on the island of Ireland – with mounting enthusiasm for its trees (“some of them have lain there some hundreds of years”), the healing quality of its water (“I look upon it to be one of the pleasantest bathing places I ever saw”), and its fish:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It does not abound with many sorts of Fish, but those there are are very good, such as Salmon, Trout, Pike, Bream, Roach, Eels and Pollans, with which last it does abound.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As well as hinting at a growing appreciation of nature “for its own sake”, rather than its utility for humans, records like this suggest some revisions are needed to the accepted narratives of species expansion in Britain and Ireland.</p>
<p>For example, the pike is normally considered to be an invasive species in Ireland, naturalised relatively recently. Yet the enthusiastic naturalists of early-modern Ireland record it widely – there are 15 records of it occurring on the island in the 17th century alone. This suggests it had been introduced, or perhaps even colonised, much earlier than previously suspected.</p>
<p>The plentiful “pollan” that Nevill describes is also noteworthy. At first, I thought his reference referred to the strange fish now known as the Irish pollan, which is a relic of the ice age most commonly found in Siberia, Alaska and Canada. Across western Europe, it lives exclusively in five loughs in Ireland. </p>
<p>However, Nevill goes on to describe his pollan as migrating to the sea, which makes that identification very improbable. Closer reading of this passage and others suggests that the name pollan at this time in fact referred to the saltwater <a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/shad">shad</a>. For such an important species, proper identification of historical records is vital.</p>
<p>Excitement about local creatures was not only the purview of enthusiastic academics like Nevill. Travel writers often incorporated passages of nature writing too – none more famous than Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, who published his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b2MIlbEm6FYC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=A%20tour%20through%20the%20whole%20island%20of%20Great%20Britain&pg=PT600#v=onepage&q&f=false">Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain</a> between 1724 and 1726.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Page from A Tour Through the Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535642/original/file-20230704-28004-v3pdoo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From A Tour Through the Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe (1778)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_tour_through_the_island_of_Great_Britain_Fleuron_T070856-1.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Almost 300 years later, it remains a much-admired source for historians studying this period – and Defoe’s descriptions are certainly more exciting (and succinct) than Pococke’s subsequent accounts. When crossing into the north-west Highlands of Scotland, for example, Defoe pauses to exclaim with wonder on the wildlife, including what he seems to have taken to be the last of the great eagles of Britain:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The mountains are so full of deer, harts, roebucks etc. Here are also a great number of eagles which breed in the woods, and which prey upon the young fawns when they first fall. Some of these eagles are of a mighty large kind, such as are not to be seen again in those parts of the world. Here are also the best hawks of all the kinds for sport which are in the kingdom, and which the nobility and gentry of Scotland make great use of – for not this part of Scotland only, but all the rest of the country abounds with wild-fowl.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sea eagles were being recorded much more widely than they are today around Britain and Ireland – including around East Anglia and Cornwall, in the uplands of Eryri, and throughout an inland swathe from Peebles in south Scotland down into England as far south as Derbyshire. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A White-tailed Sea Eagle in flight" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537754/original/file-20230717-200541-huiepr.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">White-tailed Sea Eagle in flight on the lsle of Skye, Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/whitetailed-sea-eagle-haliaeetus-albicilla-flight-124526707">Shutterstock/MarkCaunt</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But by Defoe’s time, their numbers were declining rapidly – and by the end of the 18th century, sea eagles were essentially extinct across England and Wales. He and other authors wrote wistful accounts about the loss of the species, but like the capercaillie before it, people were powerless to prevent the extinction of these “mighty large” species. The sea eagle, though, has been the subject of several reintroduction projects over the last few decades, and with luck may yet recover much of its former range.</p>
<h2>Early signs of ecological protest</h2>
<p>Defoe was far from the only literary author interested in the environment at this time. John Taylor, also known as the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4209/chapter/146028548">Water Poet</a>, published entertaining poetic accounts of his trips along the rivers of England – most famously his trip to the mouth of the Thames <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_RRfAAAAcAAJ&lpg=RA3-PA73&">in a boat made of brown paper</a></p>
<p>Within mainstream literature, plays written in London often engaged with <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=o3W47yAw2fQC&lpg=PR1&ots=8c6PL8d-i7&dq=environmental%20writing%20sixteenth%20century%20drama&lr&pg=PA166#v=onepage&q&f=false">environmental issues</a> including food, water and timber shortages; air, water and noise pollution; the growing population level; and the decline of game animals.</p>
<p>Among all the accounts I have studied, while it is rare for naturalists to question humans’ right to dominion over nature, the most radical, ecologically sustainable philosophies come from poets of this time. They often wrote poems to trees and animals, and would sometimes even <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KgCjDwAAQBAJ&">assign nature its own voice.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Early illustration of a burbot fish." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535641/original/file-20230704-23-s5yi4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=307&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 burbot’s perspective is adopted in the poem The Powte’s Complaint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/">Illustration from De Historia Piscium (1686) by Francis Willughby and John Ray via Biodiversity Heritage Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/angling-for-the-powte-a-jacobean-environmental-protest-poem">The Powte’s Complaint</a> is a protest ballad probably written in 1619 to bewail the drainage of the Fens around Ely and Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. Attributed in one manuscript to a “Peny” of Wisbech, it is written from the perspective of a burbot, a freshwater species of cod commonly found in the Fens at this time. (This fish is now nationally extinct, but may be <a href="https://www.anglingtimes.co.uk/news/stories/burbot-are-coming-back-its-official/">soon be reintroduced</a>.)</p>
<p>The ballad summons the “brethren of the water” – probably meaning local people as well as fish and other animals – to fight against the drainage scheme, which sought to create new pasture land:</p>
<p><em>Come, Brethren of the water, and let us all assemble,</em></p>
<p><em>To treat upon this matter, which makes us quake and tremble;</em></p>
<p><em>For we shall rue it if ’t be true that Fenns be undertaken,</em></p>
<p><em>And where we feed in Fen and Reed, they’ll feed both Beef and Bacon.</em></p>
<p>According to <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/74252543.pdf">research</a> by Todd Borlik and Clare Egan, the subject of complaint here was a <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/697753">plan to cut a canal</a> through an area of common land south of Haddenham. This scheme would remove the ability of local people to catch fish, and also to transport their produce and fuel on the water. Protests against the scheme apparently culminated in a demonstration of some 2,000 people who lit bonfires, banged on drums and fired guns all night during a meeting of the Commission of Sewers in 1619.</p>
<p>Within the poem, the alliance of the “brethren of the water” seems to recognise the interdependence of humans and wildlife on each other, and on the environment of the Fens. A comparable example (I would be interested to hear of others from this period) is the Welsh poem <a href="https://historyandnature.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/guest-blog-post-vote-for-bobbe/">Coed Marchan</a> (Marchan Wood), written around 1580 by Robin Clidro, a wandering poet from the Vale of Clwyd in Denbighshire, known for his humorous rhymes.</p>
<p>Clidro’s poem tells the story of a group of red squirrels who go to London to present a petition against the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/flk.1986.25.1.47">felling of Marchan Wood for charcoal</a>. As with The Powte’s Complaint, the use of the squirrel as narrator is a conceit, and the poem is really a protest against deforestation on behalf of human interests. But again, the author re-imagines the world from the perspective of animals:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Odious and hard is the law, and painful to little squirrels. They go the whole way to London, with their cry and their matron before them. Then on her oath she said, “All Rhuthyn’s woods are ravaged; my house and barn were taken one dark night, and my store of nuts.” The squirrels all are calling for the trees; they fear the dog.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Both poems suggest the existence of empathy for the wildlife being affected by human activity. Indeed, as the era of great industrialisation grows closer, some fascinating accounts emerge of new relations between humans and wildlife. In his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JlFfAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PA241&ots=kWtJIxtaN5&dq=%22drowned%20coal-pit-open-works%22&pg=PA241#v=onepage&q=%22drowned%20coal-pit-open-works%22&f=false">Natural History of Stafford-shire</a> (1686), for example, Robert Plot describes being told of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Very unusual observations concerning scaled, as well as smooth fish … such as their breeding and living in Coal-works. There is an indisputable instance in the drowned Coal-pit-open-works S.W. of Wednesbury, into which Pike, Carp, Tench, Perch, etc. being put for breed, they not only lived but grew and thrived to as large a magnitude as perhaps they would have done any where else, and were to the palate as grateful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Certainly, the naturalists, travel writers and poets of the 16th to 18th centuries all helped to record a wealth of wildlife throughout Britain and Ireland that is now hard to imagine – even as many also looked forward to its destruction in the quest for more stable, less hungry lives for the growing human population.</p>
<p>Our modern biodiversity crisis could be seen as the culmination of these early accounts, sped up by the arrival of the industrial revolution and the advent of farming on an industrial scale. Yet, in their glimpses of concern and excitement for the natural world, these early-modern accounts also reach across the intervening centuries to show us clear signs of the conservation movement that would emerge in parallel.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-melting-arctic-is-a-crime-scene-the-microbes-i-study-have-long-warned-us-of-this-catastrophe-but-they-are-also-driving-it-207785?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The melting Arctic is a crime scene. The microbes I study have long warned us of this catastrophe – but they are also driving it
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/prehistoric-communities-off-the-coast-of-britain-embraced-rising-seas-what-this-means-for-todays-island-nations-147879?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Prehistoric communities off the coast of Britain embraced rising seas – what this means for today’s island nations
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-gdp-changing-how-we-measure-progress-is-key-to-tackling-a-world-in-crisis-three-leading-experts-186488?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Beyond GDP: changing how we measure progress is key to tackling a world in crisis – three leading experts
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<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee Raye received small research grants from the Society for the History of Natural History to carry out some of the archive work which contributed to this article. Lee is the author of The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife (Pelagic Publishing).</span></em></p>I have spent five years tracking down more than 10,000 accounts of wildlife by naturalists, travellers, historians and even poets, all written between 1529 and 1772Lee Raye, Associate Lecturer in Arts and Humanities, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008272023-04-19T04:20:15Z2023-04-19T04:20:15ZThe politics of the castaway story<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518925/original/file-20230403-22-5lcdzh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shipwreck survivors played by, from left, Charlbi Dean, Dolly De Leon and Vicki Berlin in Triangle of Sadness.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperative Entertainment, Plattform Produktion, Film i Väst</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ruben Östlund’s 2022 film Triangle of Sadness has attracted both praise and criticism as a satire of the world’s rich. Triangle of Sadness follows the familiar plot of a castaway story. A luxury cruise ship capsizes after a disastrous drinking session between the captain (an American communist) and a passenger (a Russian capitalist) in the midst of a storm, leaves the ship vulnerable to pirates, who blow it up. Several passengers escape and fight to survive on a desert island. </p>
<p>However, their social rank, class and privilege are washed away with the shipwreck. To survive, they cannot rely on their prevailing social power: money. Instead, each person must act in self-interest. This situation provokes depravity from the survivors and it is this aspect of the film that brings the success of its satire into question. </p>
<p>Satires employ allegories and moral fables to expose social dynamics and, often, make a political critique. But the easy corruption and ruthless, self-interested competition of each character in Triangle of Sadness seem to confirm rather than confront the dominant ideologies of global capitalism: get ahead or die.</p>
<p>The trope of shipwrecked survival is probably most paradigmatic in Robert Zemeckis’ prize-winning blockbuster <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/">Cast Away</a> (2000), starring Tom Hanks. Surprisingly self-serious, the film presents the audience with a ready-made morality tale. </p>
<p>By no fault of his own, a lone individual gets stranded on a desert island. Forced to survive from the ground up in adverse conditions, Chuck Noland (Hanks), demonstrates the power of the individual to persevere, proving his strength, ingenuity and determination. The only company Chuck has on the island is a volleyball he personifies, naming it after the sports brand adorning its surface – Wilson. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LUDEjulbqzk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>More recently, Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015), had Matt Damon farming Mars, claiming “once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonised it”.</p>
<p>The castaway story has helped promulgate a view about human nature as eternal and unchanging. By taking human beings out of society, our supposedly fundamentally individualist survival instincts come to the fore. </p>
<p>However, the castaway story reflects on the relationship between individuals and society. A number of important questions arise from this relationship, including our place in nature, our autonomy as individuals, our ability to be collective and social, and the existence of different forms of power, inequality and domination. </p>
<p>The desert island story serves as an abstraction to think about what is “natural” in our interaction with others. On the island, would we fight or co-operate? </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518926/original/file-20230403-14-li9ktq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Triangle of Sadness and other modern castaway stories, reach back to one of the first English-language novels, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Today most people think of Robinson Crusoe as a children’s book and read it in a truncated edition with colourful cartoons of Robinson with a fur hat and a log canoe. </p>
<p>Robinson is overtly referenced in the works by many celebrated writers, including Alexander Pope, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and J. M. Coetzee. It might be a surprise, however, to learn that it is also one of the most referenced English language novels in the history of philosophy, appearing in works by philosophers as varied as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx and Robert Nozick. It is still used as a classic example in economic textbooks to discuss fundamental principles of production and consumption. </p>
<p>More than a survival tale of a man shipwrecked on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe is also a fascinating moral fable of individualism. While many readers see the novel as showing human beings in an ideal state of nature, I argue the book <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01914537211066863">can help shine light on capitalism as a social system</a>. </p>
<h2>Work and enslavement</h2>
<p>The general plot of Robinson Crusoe is very familiar, but the details are often forgotten. For instance, only a portion of the novel happens on the island. Robinson’s adventure starts with his success as a merchant trading slaves, a character embodying the spirit of both the history of European colonialism and the new voracious drive of early capitalism. Robinson remains true to this spirit once he is shipwrecked, claiming the island to have “no society” and declaring the land as his personal kingdom.</p>
<p>Robinson becomes a farmer (using seeds from the shipwreck), raises cattle in accordance with European agriculture, hunts with muskets and hoards gold. In one of the most shocking parts of the novel, he captures and enslaves a man, who he calls “Friday”, converting him to Christianity. Much of the novel is about work. Robinson meticulously records his daily labour and Friday becomes an instrument of production for his master. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515079/original/file-20230314-2907-w1cjw.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A first edition of Robinson Crusoe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Robinson’s fear of others is confirmed with the presence of cannibals on the island. Luckily, Robinson is able kill a great number of the “savages” with his muskets. With the help of an English ship, he returns to England with Friday, his “most faithful servant”. Robinson has been on the island 28 years, two months and 19 days. But he sails again to Lisbon to recover the profit from his business ventures in Brazil, including slave plantations, before coming back to England. Defoe wrote a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, in which Robinson and Friday return to the island, where Friday dies. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robinson-crusoe-300-years-on-defoes-unreliable-narrative-set-up-enduring-colonial-myths-126779">Robinson Crusoe 300 years on: Defoe's unreliable narrative set up enduring colonial myths</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many of the book’s early readers eluded the colonial theme, focusing on Robinson’s individual self-sufficiency. This is partly because of the historical context. Defoe lived a varied life as a merchant and political pamphleteer in the aftermath of the English Civil War, a revolutionary process started in 1642 and lasting until 1688. </p>
<p>The political contest between the Stuart monarchy and the powers of the English Parliament was interwoven with the development of capitalism, the proliferation of a commodity and wage-labour market and the growth of private ownership in agricultural production. Colonial expansion brought in bountiful resources and the slave trade developed. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518929/original/file-20230403-3931-sd708g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=901&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 Daniel Defoe, National Maritime Museum, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 17th-century was also one of the most significant in English political philosophy. The publication of Thomas Hobbes’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/91953.Leviathan?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=jATOzWFCV8&rank=3">Leviathan</a> in 1651 and John Locke’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/364550.Two_Treatises_of_Government?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=y3c9g6urHf&rank=2">Two Treatises of Government</a> in 1689 sought to offer political solutions to the new economic developments. In doing so, they helped establish distinctly modern conceptions of what it means to be an individual.</p>
<p>Hobbes thought human beings fundamentally individualistic. According to Leviathan, human beings in the “state of nature” are highly competitive, atomistic, war-like and motivated by fear. He argued that a strong political state would offer protection and he called this a “social contract”. </p>
<p>Locke followed Hobbes in his view that a social contract is the best model for individuals to form a society, focusing his attention on the justification of individual property rights. In his view, once human beings mix their labour with the natural world, we create private property. </p>
<p>Although scholars debate these issues, Hobbes supported colonialism and Locke justified the slavery of his time. Defoe was highly influenced by Hobbes and Locke, who provide the model individual for Robinson’s colonial adventure story. </p>
<h2>Beyond individualism</h2>
<p>Soon after its publication, Robinson Crusoe began its own adventure, appearing in crucial works of political and economic theory. By the middle of the 18th century, thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau identified the rising inequality of wealth as creating the ills of modern society. Rousseau envisaged a kind of democracy which allows for individuals to be free in their collective decision-making. </p>
<p>In Rousseau’s educational treatise, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Emile-or-On-Education">Émile</a> (1762), initially Robinson Crusoe is the only book the young boy is allowed to read. Rousseau thought the novel provided a helpful picture of the solitary individual in the state of nature, where he can fulfill his “authentic” needs and desires, far from the corruptions of society. Although he does not discuss slavery, Rousseau uses the novel as a moral fable to contrast the inequalities of the modern world with an idealised state of nature. </p>
<p>In 1789, the French Revolution ushered in modernity. Hierarchies of birth and privilege were overthrown and liberty was proclaimed for all based on the equality of human beings. (Although as many critics, including Mary Wollstonecraft, pointed out this idea of equality was limited, and excluded women.) The age of political revolution inspired a revolution in thought. The depiction of slavery in Robinson Crusoe and the politics of individualism were called into question by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel">G.W.F. Hegel</a>. In Hegel’s philosophy, individuals were always part of social relationships and needed to be thought of in relation to communities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mary-wollstonecraft-an-introduction-to-the-mother-of-first-wave-feminism-201046">Mary Wollstonecraft: an introduction to the mother of first-wave feminism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>If human beings are both individual and collective beings, I, for instance, require that others recognise me as a person who has value and I recognise others for their value. For a person to be free as a subject, Hegel thought there must be mutual recognition that we are free, together with political and social institutions allowing for recognition to be reciprocal. However, to recognise others collectively requires overcoming domination. </p>
<p>When teaching a famous section of his difficult, yet breathtaking, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9454.Phenomenology_of_Spirit?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=XMQ8nqiUIO&rank=1">Phenomenology of Spirit</a> (1807), Hegel used the example of Robinson Crusoe to dramatise a philosophical abstraction where recognition is not mutual. In his discussion of “mastery and servitude”, Hegel addressed the contradiction between the master who dominates the slave and makes them labour, but at the same time, desires a slave who respects their authority. In the enforcement of this power, the master denies the humanity of the slave, while also depending on their labour. In the novel, Robinson insists that Friday is his friend, but refuses to recognise Friday’s subjectivity, dominating him and gaining from his work. </p>
<p>Karl Marx dramatically challenged the politics of Robinson Crusoe. In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/325785.Capital?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=ylCw0vsHyd&rank=14">Capital</a> (1867), he pointed out that its assumptions about human nature should be examined historically. According to Marx, capitalism is not “natural”, but a social system brought into being by processes of force and colonial dispossession. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/karl-marx-his-philosophy-explained-164068">Karl Marx: his philosophy explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Even (apparently) alone on his island, Robinson’s character reflects modern class relations and capitalist economic principles. Marx analyses Robinson’s labour, pointing out that he behaves like a capitalist, despite working directly for his own survival. He acts as if he is producing commodities for the market, recording like a bookkeeper the time taken for his labouring tasks such as making tools, crafting a canoe, harvesting crops and rearing cattle. Robinson has the advantage of the instruments, ink and muskets salvaged from the shipwreck. He also goes to great pains to save the money from the wreckage despite it having no value on the island. He acts as if his survival depends on the market, not as one man in nature. </p>
<p>Although critical of Robinson Crusoe’s depiction of individual self-sufficiency, Marx uses the novel to consider human co-operation, asking the reader to “imagine, for a change, an association of free human beings, working with the means of production held in common”. Robinson’s self-directed labour, he argues, can help us think about the possibility of people socially co-operating, with the process and results of their work under their collective direction.</p>
<p>As Marx explains, labour under capitalism is inherently social since the goods and services we rely on are created by the work of many people over many discrete labour processes in one interconnected social system. No human being is an island.</p>
<p>However, the problem for Marx, is that this labour is mostly structured to accumulate profit for individuals. For Marx, co-operation allows for labour to serve social goods, decided not by market logic, but by human beings deciding what kind of society allows the best life. A “socialist Robinson” would be able to socially recognise the labour of others, not as a constraint to his freedom, but as an essential constitutive element. In Marx’s view, capitalism prevents human freedom. </p>
<p>Castaway stories are premised on the idea that the freedom of human beings is fundamentally as individuals. With the continued proliferation of such moral fables in films such as Triangle of Sadness, it can seem that self-interest is inevitable, contributing to the staggering inequality of today’s world.</p>
<p>However, when understood critically, Robinson Crusoe and its contemporary iterations illustrate the need for collective solutions and co-operation, in order to make our social relationships just. The achievement of human freedom for individuals can only be realised socially as the freedom of all. Only then can we truly rescue Robinson from his island.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Lazarus 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>By taking human beings out of society, castaway stories suggest our individualist survival instincts come to the fore. But no man (or woman) is an island. True freedom comes through co-operation.Michael Lazarus, Dr Michael Lazarus teaches politics and philosophy, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1619452021-06-10T14:25:35Z2021-06-10T14:25:35ZFrom the great plague to the 1918 flu, history shows that disease outbreaks make inequality worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405628/original/file-20210610-19-4e9jj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=150%2C1525%2C1983%2C1245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two men discover a dead body in the street during the Great Plague of London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/v5q884pm">19th-century wood engraving. Herbert Railton/Wellcome Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May 2021, virologist Angela Rasmussen <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/human-tissue-preserved-world-war-i-yields-new-clues-about-1918-pandemic">reflected</a> how “if the last 18 months have demonstrated anything, it’s that we would do well to remember the lessons of past pandemics as we try to prevent future ones”. This includes ensuring we come out stronger.</p>
<p>Witnesses of past disease outbreaks can help with this. While they don’t offer definitive answers on what to do next, they warn us rising inequality is inevitable after a pandemic and needs to be actively confronted if it’s to be avoided.</p>
<p>Consider the great plague of London in 1665. As it began to abate, naval official and diarist Samuel Pepys <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1665/12/">noted</a> that his wealth had more than tripled that year, despite the terrible times many were experiencing.</p>
<p>Even so, he regretted the expense of leaving London to avoid the danger. Pepys had had to fund lodgings for his wife and maids at Woolwich and for himself and his clerks at Greenwich. His experience stood in stark contrast to those Londoners who lost their livelihoods – and the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/education/plague.pdf">100,000</a> who died.</p>
<p>We can see the same social and economic inequalities becoming more pronounced today. Amazon’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55793575">Jeff Bezos</a> and Tesla’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/billionaires-net-worth-coronavirus-pandemic-jeff-bezos-elon-musk">Elon Musk</a> have increased their net worth by billions of dollars during the pandemic, while many of their employees <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/12/jeff-bezos-amazon-workers-covid-19-scrooge-capitalism">have faced coronavirus risks</a> in the workplace for little extra pay.</p>
<p>Similarly, during and after the 1918 influenza outbreak – in which it’s estimated a third of the world’s population was infected and around <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm">50 million people died</a> – purveyors of medicines <a href="https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/going-viral/profiting">sought to make a profit</a>. In western countries, this was accompanied by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867839/">panic buying</a> of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/1918-flu-pandemic-coronavirus-drug-trials-scientists-treatments-evidence">quinine</a> and other products for treating and avoiding the flu.</p>
<p>Today, there’s controversy as wealthy nations stockpile vaccines and promising <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717394/">potential treatments</a>. Despite Covax being created to spread vaccines equitably, distribution has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55795297">strongly in favour</a> of wealthy countries. In modern ways, we’re replicating the problems of the past.</p>
<h2>Charity increases too</h2>
<p>Yet in such crises, alongside greed and inequality there’s also the chance for acts of charity. In Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year – a fictional account of the great plague, published many years later in 1722 and written in voice of someone who lived through the event – the narrator, H.F., <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm">comments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eyewitness of, and sometimes also of the charitable assistance that some pious people daily gave to such, sending them relief and supplies both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>H.F. notes that while private citizens were sending funds to the mayor to distribute, they were also taking it upon themselves to give “vast sums” to those in need.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hall of influenza patients in bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The US was keen to consign the horrors of the 1918 pandemic to the past.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_Funston,_at_Fort_Riley,_Kansas,_during_the_1918_Spanish_flu_pandemic.jpg">US National Museum of Health and Medicine/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And according to real-life accounts of the 1918 flu pandemic, this crisis also saw many <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/03/31/sisters-work-during-1918-flu-epidemic-seen-model-crisis-today">acts of charity</a>. Such kindnesses have also been found during this pandemic, with a surge in <a href="https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/donations-surged-800m-during-national-lockdown.html">charitable donations</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51908023">projects to support those in need</a>. Around the world, giving practices have become more <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/household_generosity_during_the_pandemic">local and expansive</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/mutual-aid-coronavirus-pandemic-rebecca-solnit">mutual aid</a> – the practice of helping others in a spirit of solidarity and reciprocity – is increasing.</p>
<p>Yet such practices risk dissolving after the current crisis.</p>
<p>After the 1918 pandemic, the US <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-great-forgetting/">quickly forgot</a> the disease that had killed about 675,000 of its citizens. The economic boom that became known as the roaring 20s erased memories. Few social and historical memorials exist.</p>
<p>Katherine Porter’s 1939 short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider is an exception. It describes Miranda’s experience of the 1918 outbreak, as she becomes ill and delirious with influenza, but recovers. Yet she finds that the pale rider, or death, has taken her soldier love Adam, who probably became ill from caring for her. It’s a reminder that the trauma of pandemics is deeply personal and shouldn’t be forgotten.</p>
<h2>Inequalities persist</h2>
<p>As economies today start to recover and <a href="https://www.ey.com/en_uk/growth/ey-item-club/why-the-uk-economy-looks-well-placed-for-a-post-pandemic-recover">growth is expected</a>, we need to remember both the individual suffering and social upheaval the pandemic has caused – and use this to make better decisions about moving forward. History suggests that inequalities so recently exposed and exacerbated will simply reappear again unless we make an effort to fight them.</p>
<p>Consider, for example, a long-unresolved inequality in pandemics: that women and children are especially hard hit. Defoe’s narrator H.F., when considering that poor women had to give birth alone during the plague, with no midwife or even neighbours to help, called it one of the most “deplorable cases in all the present calamity”.</p>
<p>H.F. also argued that more women and children died of the plague than records suggest, because other causes of death were recorded even when the plague was involved. The 1918 flu pandemic also hit under-fives and those aged 20-40 hardest, leaving many <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stories-from-a-past-pandemic/">infants motherless or orphaned</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman home-schooling her daughter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.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">As with previous pandemics, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate effect on women and children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/side-view-mother-helping-daughter-doing-644960089">LightField Studios/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the current pandemic, mothers have too often had to give birth with far less support than desired. They have also borne a greater burden in terms of having to balance <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/17/upshot/women-workforce-employment-covid.html">employment, childcare and home schooling</a>. The number of children in poverty has also risen, with an estimated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/09/britains-child-poverty-exposed-by-pandemic-mps-children-commissioner">14% of British children</a> having faced persistent hunger at some point during the pandemic.</p>
<h2>Planning for the future</h2>
<p>Yet looking at the literature from the past does not mean being doomed to repeat patterns of inequality. Hopefully, it can inspire the opposite. The £20 weekly <a href="https://www.bigissue.com/latest/universal-credit-what-is-it-and-why-does-the-20-increase-matter/">universal credit uplift</a> introduced in the UK at the start of the pandemic is currently only extended until September. As we emerge from the crisis, perhaps it’s time to consider radical changes to the status quo, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/support-is-growing-for-a-universal-basic-income-and-rightly-so-161309">universal basic income</a> and heavily subsidised childcare.</p>
<p>Now is the time for policymakers and society to think big and be bold. Should we be so lucky as to have a swift and strong economic recovery as after 1918, let’s not forget that another disaster, whether a pandemic or something else, will bring the weaknesses exposed throughout history back to the fore.</p>
<p>Maybe we should not look forward to the day when normal is back, but remember the hope from early in the pandemic – that it might catalyse a new and better normal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Greenlees has received funding from the Wellcome Trust, Economic and Social Research Council, British Academy and various charities within the US and Great Britain. This piece does not directly relate to any funded projects.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Read has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This piece does not relate to any funded project.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Ford 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>Accounts of previous epidemics – by Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe and Katherine Porter – warn of mistakes that we risk repeating.Janet Greenlees, Associate Professor of Health History, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityAndrea Ford, Researcher in Medical Anthropology, The University of EdinburghSara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1376582020-05-18T01:18:43Z2020-05-18T01:18:43ZBleach, bonfires and bad breath: the long history of dodgy plague remedies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335052/original/file-20200514-77230-1cq09sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C42%2C6960%2C5898&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hippocrates refusing the gifts of Artaxerxes. Engraving by Raphael Massard, 1816.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a future researcher compiles a list of sayings of US presidents, this one from Donald Trump in April 2020 about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/trump-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus-claims-reactio">using bleach as a possible treatment</a> for coronavirus will surely make the cut: “Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Trump’s words prompted panicky warnings from bleach manufacturers to people not to drink their product and a spike in phone calls to help lines.</p>
<p>Press outlets leapt to describe Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/trump-jordan-peterson-charlatans.html">as a “mountebank</a> – an itinerant quack doctor parading his wares from a platform (in Italian classic comic theatre, or <em>Commedia Dell’Arte</em>, the character is typically called Charlatano). In Ben Jonson’s 1606 comedy, Volpone, the eponymous hero dresses as Scoto of Mantua, purveyor of Scoto’s Oil. The original "snake oil”, it’s more expensive than bleach but neither harmful nor, indeed, beneficial if ingested.</p>
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<p>Perhaps the comparison is unfair. Trump has simply joined the long line of those who, desperately seeking real cures, have found fakes. In Athens in 430BC, an epidemic struck. The air was thought to be diseased and in need of cleansing. The ancient Greek “father of medicine” Hippocrates himself is <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/article/939/the-plague-at-athens-430-427-bce/">said to have come up with a solution</a> – light bonfires, throw herbs and spices on them, and wait for the infection to pass. </p>
<p>Two thousand years later, bonfires were still in fashion. At the onset of the Great Plague in 1665, the <a href="https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/blog/cure-plague">College of Physicians pronounced</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fires made in the Streets, and often with Stink-Pots, and good Fires kept in and about the Houses of such as are visited … may correct the infectious Air.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The college added that the “frequent discharging of Guns” would have the same effect – something that might appeal to the US president’s more ardent supporters. </p>
<p>But in 1665, not everyone could agree on what to burn. Should it be coal or wood? If wood, was it better to burn a more aromatic variety such as cedar or fir? The author of Golgotha (identified only as J.V.), one of a large number of plague books published in 1665, denounced as “a costly mischief” the burning of “sweet-scented Pomanders”. That did not stop him from <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/education/plague.pdf">recommending instead</a> “Wormwood, Hartshorn, Amber, Thime or Origany”.</p>
<p>But hang on. It was already a hot summer in 1665. Wouldn’t all those fires warm up the infected air and cause the plague particles to multiply? Not necessarily. There were two kinds of heat, according to the <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/e4vdp24g">1666 work Loimographia</a>, by 17th-century apothecary William Boghurst. There was the fierce, dry sort generated by fires in chilly northern climates, and there was the soggy, exhausting sort you found in the tropics. The former was cleansing. The latter opened the pores and made you susceptible to infection (as well as lazy and deserving enslavement).</p>
<h2>Smoke to your good health</h2>
<p>If this all seems like the effusion of bad science and worse ideology, consider tobacco. Recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-nicotine-protect-us-against-coronavirus-137488">it was reported</a> that smokers might be less prone to catching COVID-19 (although <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/05/417411/smoking-nearly-doubles-rate-covid-19-progression">other evidence</a> suggests smoking makes the disease worse).</p>
<p>The idea of tobacco as protective has a distinguished heritage. Another <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A47218.0001.001?view=toc">treatise of 1665</a> recommends tobacco as “a good Fume against pestilential and infected air”, said to be effective for “All Ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old … either by chewing in the leaf, or smoaking in the Pipe.” On <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/stuart-england/cures-for-the-plague/">June 7 1665</a>, the diarist Samuel Pepys was so unnerved by the sight of an infected house that he bought <a href="http://www.pepys.info/1665/plague.html">“some roll-tobacco to smell and to chew, which took away my apprehension”</a>. It would later be claimed that no tobacconist died during the Great Plague.</p>
<p>Like Trump – but without the benefit of modern science – the bonfire lighters and tobacco chewers grasped the shadow of reality. So did the professors of heat. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335099/original/file-20200514-77239-s5bv88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&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">Fleas carry diseases including the plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Janice Haney Carr via Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Since 1894 and the identification of the bacillus <em>Yersinia pestis</em>, we have known that bubonic plague was largely transmitted by fleas. Well, certain odours may deter some types of flea. And the bacillus can survive for up to a year given the right combination of warmth and humidity. </p>
<p>What about transmission? Physicians in 1665 struggled with distinct sets of symptoms and chances of survival. How was it that some people developed buboes over many days and had a 25% chance of recovery, while others without evident symptoms suddenly keeled over? </p>
<p>They named the cause “the fatal breath”. <a href="https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp">Pulmonary or pneumonic plague</a>, we say now. It is caught like coronavirus or a common cold: the only form of the disease transmitted directly between people and is 95% deadly.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-defoes-account-of-the-great-plague-of-1665-has-startling-parallels-with-today-135579">Coronavirus: Defoe's account of the Great Plague of 1665 has startling parallels with today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Still, it was not quite as lethal as some people imagined. Defoe’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-defoes-account-of-the-great-plague-of-1665-has-startling-parallels-with-today-135579">A Journal of the Plague Year</a> reports a stubbornly held belief. If a man so infected breathed on a hen, rotten eggs would follow. In really severe cases, the hen would just drop dead.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335100/original/file-20200514-77230-18kfbqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Design for an amulet to ward off the plague, 17th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The prize for bogus medicine, however, goes to the amulets and other trinkets people of 1665 carried to ward off the plague. Defoe dismisses them as “hellish Charms”, and claims they were often seen hanging round the necks of bodies in the dead carts. He captures their essence in a word the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “deceit, fraud, imposture, trickery”. The word? “Trumpery”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Roberts has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and AdvanceHE. </span></em></p>Bleach to defeat COVID-19 or fire to dispel plague, history is full of quack medicine.David Roberts, Professor of English and National Teaching Fellow, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1351332020-04-06T12:06:56Z2020-04-06T12:06:56ZShipwrecked! How social isolation can enrich our spiritual lives – like Robinson Crusoe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325128/original/file-20200402-74900-1dflhn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C675%2C1017&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nearly lost at sea, Robinson Crusoe lands on an island only to reckon with isolation, solitude and his own life. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-life-adventures-of-robinson-crusoe-by-daniel-defoe-news-photo/171223990?adppopup=true">Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>He survived the last great plague in London and the city’s Great Fire. He was imprisoned and persecuted for his religious and political views. There was no happy ending for the journalist Daniel Defoe, author of “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm">A Journal of a Plague Year</a>.” When he died in 1731, he was mired in debt and hiding from his creditors. </p>
<p>Yet Defoe, born in 1660, left behind a work of fiction that is one of the most widely published books in history and – other than the Bible – the most <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/55a3d26cc0cd59c6afb7828db313d50a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1821481">translated book</a> in the world. Like many great works of fiction, it speaks across centuries, especially now as we face the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>The book is “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe">Robinson Crusoe</a>,” written by <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/daniel-defoe">Defoe</a> and first published in 1719. Crusoe is an Englishman who leaves his comfortable life, goes to sea, gets captured by pirates and sold into slavery. Later, he emerges from a shipwreck the sole survivor. He sustains himself alone on a tropical island for 28 years, relying on grit, imagination and the few things he salvaged from the ship. His tale offers lessons for us all. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://medicine.iu.edu/faculty/6855/gunderman-richard">physician and scholar</a>, I have taught Defoe’s novel many times to my students at Indiana University. I believe it is one of the best books to read as we endure the uncertainty and isolation due to COVID-19, because it invites us to reflect on existential issues at the core of a pandemic.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1289&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1289&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325132/original/file-20200402-74885-1ee8obd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1289&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Title page of the first edition (1719) of Robinson Crusoe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/daniel-defoe-robinson-crusoe-title-page-first-edition-1719-news-photo/171095194?adppopup=true">Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>What matters in our lives?</h2>
<p>For those hunkered down in the midst of a pandemic, one of Robinson Crusoe’s lessons is understanding the folly of <a href="https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.107.1.0065">worldly goods</a>. Crusoe finds gold but realizes it is of no value to him, not even worth “taking off of the ground.” In his former life, money had become a “drug.” Now, marooned on an island, he learns what is truly necessary and rewarding in life.</p>
<p>Like Crusoe’s shipwreck, sheltering in place during COVID-19 interrupts long-established habits and rhythms of life. With this interruption comes a chance to examine our lives. What is genuinely <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html">necessary</a> in life? And what things turn out to be little more than distractions? For example, where on such a spectrum would we situate the pursuit of wealth or caring well for loved ones?</p>
<h2>Making do with very little</h2>
<p>Crusoe quickly learns to be open to <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/55a3d26cc0cd59c6afb7828db313d50a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1821481">discovery</a>. When he first arrives on the island, he finds it barren, inhospitable and threatening, like a prison. Over time, he comes to recognize it as home. As he explores the island and learns to live in harmony with it, it protects and sustains him. The island emerges as an unending source of wonder that at first he couldn’t see. </p>
<p>As my family and I have sheltered in place, we have shared a similar experience. We are taking more walks and lingering longer at the dinner table. Now that we are not rushing as much from one thing to another, we’ve discovered what it means to be in one place and simply savor <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Family_Happiness">being together</a>.</p>
<h2>Necessity, the mother of invention</h2>
<p>Alone on an island, Crusoe can’t rely on anyone but himself to provide the things he needs. On the day of his shipwreck, he is naked, hungry and homeless. He laments that, “considered by his own nature,” man is “one of the most miserable creatures of the world.” Out of necessity, he figures out how to make the things he needs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325133/original/file-20200402-74869-1ochgog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=935&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 1900 lithograph of Robinson Crusoe building his first dwelling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/robinson-crusoe-building-his-first-dwelling-news-photo/587494064?adppopup=true">Leemage/Corbis Historical via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A pandemic renews opportunities for necessity to give <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-man-as-an-island-11574451989">birth to invention</a>. Just as Crusoe finds within himself a resourcefulness he didn’t know he had, confinement can reveal new ways of living and creating. Even simple things such as cooking, reading, handcraft, writing and conversation may turn out to have more to offer than we supposed.</p>
<h2>A wasted life and forgiveness</h2>
<p>One of the greatest challenges Crusoe faces is unburdening himself of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30225508?seq=1">guilt he bears</a> for his misspent life. It had been devoted to getting rich and dominating other people – at the time of his shipwreck, he had been on a voyage to secure slaves for his plantation. But on the island, he begins to see the beauty in simple things. For example, he finds trees indescribably beautiful, a beauty so profound that it is “scarce credible.”</p>
<p>Something similar can transpire in the lives of the homebound. Frustration and disappointment can fade, to be replaced by new and unexpected <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/">sources of fulfillment</a>. It may be something that we experience, such as a bird singing in the morning, but it can also be of our own doing. The tools lie at our fingertips – mail, phone and social media provide all we need to reach out to others with a kind word or helping hand.</p>
<h2>Gratitude for what we have</h2>
<p>One of the most profound transformations that Crusoe experiences is <a href="https://beaconlights.org/sermons/robinson-crusoes-spiritual-journey/">spiritual</a>. Alone, he begins to meditate on the Bible he recovered from the shipwreck, reading Scripture three times per day. He attributes his newfound ability to “look on the bright side of my condition” to this habit, which gives him “such secret comforts that I cannot express them.”</p>
<p>By the time Crusoe is rescued after nearly three decades, he is a new man. He has formed the deepest friendship of his life with Friday, a man he rescued from death. He has learned the most profound lesson that “all our discontents about what we want spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325135/original/file-20200402-74885-21baj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crusoe’s social isolation changed him for the better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/robinson-crusoe-views-the-new-shipwreck-illustration-for-news-photo/481659927?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A life of isolation</h2>
<p>Enforced quiet and separation because of coronavirus can reacquaint some of us with the value of peace, while solitude can whet our appetites for the joys of true fellowship. Just as the shipwrecked Crusoe is reborn, so trying times can clarify for us the true bounties of our lives. </p>
<p>A pandemic can seem like the end, but it can also serve as a beginning. We are, in a way, cut adrift. Yet a new and ultimately more fertile landfall lies ahead, at least for those of us who are not sick, broke or homeless. If we heed Defoe’s inspiration, these unprecedented challenges can <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319219667_The_virtue_of_patience_spirituality_and_suffering_Integrating_lessons_from_positive_psychology_psychology_of_religion_and_Christian_theology/link/5cb5e382a6fdcc1d499a15cd/download">transform</a> us into wiser and more caring human beings.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135133/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>Isolation. Despair. Facing our demons. What does the most-translated novel tell us about living with COVID-19?Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1355792020-04-06T10:29:40Z2020-04-06T10:29:40ZCoronavirus: Defoe’s account of the Great Plague of 1665 has startling parallels with today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325249/original/file-20200403-74216-125mov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3342%2C2345&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A street during the Great Plague in London, 1665, with a death cart and mourners.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1722, Daniel Defoe pulled off one of the great literary hoaxes of all time. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3314902/">A Journal of the Plague Year</a>, he called his latest book. The title page promises “Observations of the most remarkable occurrences” during the Great Plague of 1665, and claims it was “written by a citizen who continued all the while” in London – Defoe’s own name is nowhere to be found. </p>
<p>It was <a href="https://archives.cjr.org/second_read/the_greatest_liar_1.php">60 years before anyone twigged</a>. From oral testimonies, mortality bills, lord mayor’s proclamations, medical books and literature inspired by the 1603 plague, Defoe had cooked the whole thing up.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325255/original/file-20200403-74255-1osxope.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unreliable memoir: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Maritime Museum, London.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet this extraordinary book lies like the truth. It’s the most harrowing account of an epidemic ever published – and it really leaps off the page now in the era of COVID-19. We feel what it was like to walk up a main thoroughfare with no one else about. We read of the containment orders published by the government, and how people got round them. We share the distress of families denied proper funerals for their loved ones. </p>
<p>We learn of the mass panic as people tried to understand where the disease came from, how it was transmitted, how it could be avoided, what chance you had if you caught it, and – most modern of all – how fake news and fake practitioners multiplied answers to all those questions.</p>
<h2>Then and now</h2>
<p>Bubonic plague was, of course, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/London_s_Dreaded_Visitation.html?id=syAeAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">far nastier than coronavirus</a>. In its ordinary form – transmitted by fleabites – it was around 75% fatal, while in its lung-to-lung form, that figure went up to 95%. But in the way it was managed – and the effect it had on people’s emotions and behaviour – there are eerie similarities amid the differences. Defoe captured them all.</p>
<p>His narrator, identified only as HF, is fascinated by what happened after the lord mayor ordered victims to be locked in their homes. Watchmen were posted outside front doors. They could be sent on errands to fetch food or medicine and took the keys with them, so people contrived to get more keys cut. Some watchmen were bribed, assaulted or murdered. Defoe describes one who was “blown up” with gunpowder.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1345&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325257/original/file-20200403-74220-1qlz3iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1345&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>HF becomes obsessed with the weekly mortality figures. They charted deaths by parish, giving a picture of how the plague was moving around the city. Still, it was impossible to be sure who had died directly of the disease, just as in the BBC news today we hear people have died “with” rather than “of” COVID-19. Reporting was difficult, partly because people were reluctant to admit there was an infection in the family. After all, they might be locked in their homes to catch the disease and die.</p>
<p>HF is appalled by those who opened up taverns and spent their days and nights drinking, mocking anyone who objected. At one point he confronts a group of rowdies and gets a torrent of abuse in return. Later, exhibiting one of his less appealing traits, he is gratified to hear that they all caught the plague and died.</p>
<p>He is a devout Christian, but the stories that worry him most are the ones that still shock everyone today, regardless of their beliefs. Is it possible, he asks, that there are some people so wicked that they deliberately infect others? He just can’t square the idea with his more kindly view of human nature. Yet he hears plenty of stories about victims breathing into the faces of passers by, or infected men randomly hugging and kissing women in the street.</p>
<h2>Discriminating disease</h2>
<p>When Prince Charles and Boris Johnson fell ill recently, we were told the virus “<a href="https://news.sky.com/video/coronavirus-virus-does-not-discriminate-gove-11964771">does not discriminate</a>”. HF has something to say about that. For all his uncertainties, he is adamant about one thing. Plague affected the poor disproportionately. They lived, as they do now, in more cramped conditions, and were more susceptible to taking bad advice. </p>
<p>They were more likely to suffer ill health in the first place, as now, and they had no means of escape. Near the start of the outbreak in 1665, the court and those with money or homes in the country <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/great-plague/">fled London in droves</a>. By the time the idea had occurred to the rest of the population, you couldn’t find a horse for love or money.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325254/original/file-20200403-74225-1jds7cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Lord, have mercy on London.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Contemporary English woodcut on the Great Plague of 1665.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the journal, HF tells us he hopes his experiences and advice might be useful to us. There’s one thing in particular governments might learn from the book – and it’s tough. The most dangerous time, he reports, was when people thought it was safe to go out. That was when the plague <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-restrictions-when-does-it-end-and-could-there-be-a-second-wave">flared up all over again</a>.</p>
<p>Plague literature is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/01/plague-fiction-writers-infectious-disease">genre in its own right</a>. So what draws writers and readers to such a grisly subject? Something not entirely wholesome, perhaps. For writers, it’s the chance to explore a world in which fantasy and reality have swapped places. We depend on the writer as heroic narrator, charting the horror like the best news reporter. </p>
<p>For readers, it’s the feeling that you might sneak with him to the very edge of the plague pit and live to tell the tale. For his closing words, HF hands us a doggerel poem that sums up his feelings and ours:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A dreadful plague in London was<br>
In the year sixty five,<br>
Which swept an hundred thousand souls<br>
Away: yet I alive!</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Roberts is the co-editor of the World Classics edition of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year with Louis Landa.</span></em></p>Written 60 years after the bubonic plague swept London, Defoe’s account may have been a hoax, but it still rings true today.David Roberts, Professor of English and National Teaching Fellow, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1267792019-11-12T16:05:56Z2019-11-12T16:05:56ZRobinson Crusoe 300 years on: Defoe’s unreliable narrative set up enduring colonial myths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301315/original/file-20191112-178480-1iypy3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C11%2C2538%2C1733&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Currier and Ives 1875 print of Robinson Crusoe and his companion Friday.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett Historical via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A major new series on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/494P41NCbVYHlY319VwGbxp/explore-the-list-of-100-novels-that-shaped-our-world">100 Novels that Shaped Our World</a> has been launched in the UK by the BBC. The wide-ranging journey through English literary history takes as its starting point the publication of The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), which has been hailed as the <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/desert-island-risks-robinson-crusoe-at-300-1.3850833">first English novel</a>.</p>
<p>Despite an error-ridden plot and numerous structural quirks, Robinson Crusoe – which tells the story of a shipwrecked mariner – has had a profound impact on global literature (and the modern world at large) for the past 300 years. Despite the wealth of prose narrative that existed beforehand, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/the-rise-of-the-novel">some scholars believe</a> that Daniel Defoe’s book was the first to combine all the elements that have become the hallmarks of the novel.</p>
<p>Fiction masquerading as fact, it is so much more than a novelisation of the true-life misfortunes of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-robinson-crusoe-74877644/">Alexander Selkirk</a>, a Scottish mariner who spent four years and four months as a castaway at sea after being marooned on an island by his captain. Daniel Defoe’s novel is a gritty survival story with genuine threat. But it’s also a thought-provoking parable of Christian sin, a critique of capitalist individualism, an expose of imperialist paranoia, and even a tale of the triumph of the human spirit.</p>
<p>From the point of view of the natives, it’s a myth of invasion – Crusoe is a sunburned demon who imposes European belief systems on them. There’s no getting beyond the fact that Friday, a man the narrator “saves” from the hands of the cannibals and takes under his wing, is cloyingly subservient to the unkempt foreigner, which upholds a racist ideology of white supremacy (whether it’s Crusoe’s or the author’s own). But we might think of Friday as the true hero. His humility and grace under pressure can serve as a compelling model for anyone in any culture. And his apparent feebleness is the only logical response to seeing for the first time the explosive effect of a fully loaded gun. </p>
<p>Then there’s Xury, a cheerful and charming lad whom Crusoe casually sells to a Portuguese captain (on the apparently agreeable grounds that after ten years of service, and a conversion to Christianity, the boy will be freed). Prior to that, Xury had faced his own terrible choice: subject himself to Crusoe’s will or be tossed overboard. This all happens shortly before Crusoe is shipwrecked. Instant karma, perhaps?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301318/original/file-20191112-178511-gryhsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Defoe (1659-1731). Engraved by J.Thomson and published in The Gallery of Portraits encyclopedia, United Kingdom, 1834.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Georgios Kollidas via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Defoe is certainly the master of visual motifs – and Crusoe’s gun is an especially potent one: it at once demonstrates the technological superiority of the Europeans, while signalling their moral deficiencies. After all, warfare does not a true civilisation make. </p>
<p>Seven years later Jonathan Swift spoofed the motif in Gulliver’s Travels, where the miniature protagonist ludicrously boasts of Britain’s prowess in modern weaponry to an astonished audience of gentle giants. Like Gulliver, Crusoe embodies the failings of his home society, even when stranded in strange lands.</p>
<h2>Big footprints</h2>
<p>The most terrifying moment in Defoe’s story, however, occurs when no one is around. Crusoe stumbles across a footprint in the sand on his seemingly deserted island. The footprint causes a profound crisis of consciousness. Who left it: a friend or foe? Man or monster? Will he be saved or brutally attacked? He’s never more alone than when the threat of uncertain human interaction looms. It’s a scene that has been retold throughout world culture for centuries.</p>
<p>Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1980 short story collection, <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1980/08/14/chinese-ghost-story/">China Men</a>, a densely woven tale of the lives of Chinese immigrants in America, features a story about a sailor named Lo Bun Sun, who is seized by a debilitating fear when he stumbles across a human footprint on a beach. Even after the wind and rain had worn away the footprint, he continues to be haunted by it – it’s a poignant parable about the ceaseless emotional turmoil of an immigrant’s experience, perhaps, or even an ironic take on colonial exclusionism. </p>
<p>The scene is replayed for laughs in Willis Hall’s children’s book Vampire Island. Count Alucard, Skopka the wolf, and Peppina the parrot lazily loll on a marooned island – until they discover an unfeasibly large bootprint in the sand, which, we eventually learn, belongs to Frankenstein’s monster. </p>
<h2>‘Robinsonades’: a cult is born</h2>
<p>Defoe’s story of the 17th-century shipwrecked sailor is so famous it has led to the creation of a large and loose genre known as the “Robinsonade” – to which authors as diverse as James Gould Cozzens and John Maxwell Coetzee have contributed. A quick definition might call it a narrative in which a sole protagonist (the notional “Robinson” after whom the genre is named) is suddenly isolated from the comforts of civilisation, usually on an inhospitable island or planet. </p>
<p>But a Robinsonade does not have to be a novel: the principal characters, themes and settings of Robinson Crusoe have always been reworked into non-fictional genres, poems, plays, pantomimes, films, advertisements, and material culture at large.</p>
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<p>Outside of literature, the most famous modern example is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/">Cast Away</a>, the 2000 movie starring Tom Hanks as Chuck, a hands-on FedEx executive. Stranded on a deserted tropical island for four years, Chuck desperately seeks to return home to the arms of his girlfriend Kelly (played by Helen Hunt) who, heart-wrenchingly, has mourned and moved on. </p>
<p>Chuck could not be more different from the workshy Crusoe who – despite claiming to be a keen advocate of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Protestant-ethic">Protestant work ethic</a> that shaped England’s economic progress – had rejected the cautions of his wise and grave father in the pursuit of adventure. Paranoid, guilty, hypocritical, and much more besides, Crusoe is not a hero. But he established the model of the flawed protagonist that remains so central to English culture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Cook receives funding from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe was one of the first novels (in the modern sense) written in English. Some 300 years later, the complicated castaway and his misadventures continue to shape culture.Daniel Cook, Senior Lecturer in English, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/277802014-06-09T17:52:38Z2014-06-09T17:52:38ZA no vote may see Scots tied to a less patient England<p>It may only be Scotland that is heading to the polls on September 18, but it is not the only interested party in the results of the independence referendum. England would obviously play a dominant role in any independence negotiations. </p>
<p>And should Scotland choose to remain in the union, the role of English politicians and English public opinion should not be underestimated in the complex bargaining processes that may emerge regarding devo-max or even the establishment of a constitutional convention. What England thinks of the union and of the potential loss of Scotland will matter a great deal.</p>
<p>According to the latest findings from the <a href="http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/338789/bsa-england-reacts.pdf">British Social Attitudes survey</a>, Scotland’s southern neighbours are increasingly keen for it to remain in the union. It finds that English support for Scottish independence declined from 26% to 21% between 2011 and 2013 and that the percentage of English voters who want Holyrood abolished has fallen from 23% in 2012 to 18% last year. It finds little demand either for English independence (16%) or for some form of English devolution (combined support for an English Parliament or regional assemblies stands at 34%).</p>
<h2>Another narrative</h2>
<p>The findings on what southerners think about Scottish independence are somewhat at odds with another common narrative of recent years. It says that the English have been indifferent to the prospect of Scotland leaving the union. Journalists and commentators on either side of the political spectrum <a href="http://eprints.ulster.ac.uk/22038/">have commented</a> on a “blissful indifference” or a collective shrug of shoulders in England towards the outcome of the referendum. </p>
<p>It is worth noting that a <a href="http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/3570">YouGov poll in 2011</a> ironically found strongest support for Scottish independence not in Scotland but in England and Wales. Similarly a <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1201211/scottish-independence-46-percent-dont-mind">YouGov poll conducted for Sky News</a> in January 2014 found that 46% of voters in England and Wales “wouldn’t mind” if they woke up on September 19 to discover that Scotland had left the union, with only 34% saying they would be dismayed. </p>
<p>Colin Kidd, one of the most eminent historians on the Anglo-Scottish union, <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n08/colin-kidd/brown-v-salmond">has suggested</a> that Scottish unionism has been exposed to a battle on two fronts: first, against the forces of Scottish nationalism and second, against “the polite, blinkered non-recognition by the English that Britain is a multinational United Kingdom”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50582/original/p7nnhmtb-1402328765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=666&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">Daniel Defoe: Oi Scotland, does thee want some?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>This goes to the very heart of the union between England and Scotland. It was Daniel Defoe who <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7cbI17tKIPwC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=a+firmer+Union+of+Policy+with+Less+Union+of+Affection+has+hardly+been+known+in+the+world&source=bl&ots=44JBjtnuXT&sig=gwY9hQMFZUEeqMEcbOPQ2zDSYi8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ksWVU6CLMoqrOY7OgPgN&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=a%20firmer%20Union%20of%20Policy%20with%20Less%20Union%20of%20Affection%20has%20hardly%20been%20known%20in%20the%20world&f=false">famously noted</a> that, “a firmer union of policy with less union of affection has hardly been known in the world”.</p>
<h2>The reluctant unionists</h2>
<p>The English from the outset were reluctant unionists who had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/acts_of_union_01.shtml">rejected Scottish overtures</a> for union in 1689, among other occasions. When they did relent in the years running up to 1707, a look at the proceedings of parliament from that time highlight that union was just one of a series of control mechanisms against the Scots considered by the English to ensure security and stability in their realm. </p>
<p>Union was based on a belief that it represented the continuation of, rather than a break with, the long development of English history. Not only does this arguably explain the ease with which Englishness was subsumed into Britishness, but this idea of English predominance within the union helps us to understand more recent political developments.</p>
<p>For example if Germany is portrayed as the “chequebook of Europe”, England is often depicted as the chequebook of the union. Newspapers like the Daily Mail <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362286/Free-prescriptions-Scotland-mind-austerity-rest-us.html">regularly views</a> English taxpayers as funding a “freebie culture” elsewhere in the union while not being able to enjoy perks such as free prescriptions and free university education themselves. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/338789/bsa-england-reacts.pdf">Professor John Curtice notes</a> at the beginning of the latest survey, “We might wonder whether the residents of England have had enough of what they might regard as Scotland’s apparently endless demands for more, despite the fact that it enjoys a substantial measure of devolution when England has none and enjoys considerably higher levels of public spending per head.”</p>
<h2>The Scottish Raj and other backlashes</h2>
<p>In this context, the findings in the BSA report are rather startling. Historically, English public opinion has tended to respond in a rather negative, albeit not transformative, way to periods when the union is no longer seen as functioning effectively for England. </p>
<p>We can look back at the <a href="follonblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/scottish-independence-is-restoration_20.html">Lords debate on Scottish secession in 1713</a>; to the xenophobic reaction to the accession of Lord Bute to the Premiership in 1762 (the first Scot to be first lord of the treasury post-union); or to claims of a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/mar/18/uk.scotland">“Scottish Raj”</a> under Gordon Brown’s premiership. Or we could look at public attitude surveys such as <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">the 2011 census</a>, which found that 67.1% of respondents across England and Wales identified themselves as English (either alone as part of a dual identity), with 57.7% seeing themselves as purely English. </p>
<p>This chimes with <a href="http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/images/media/files/publication/2014/01/democracy-in-Britain_preview-Trench_Jan2013_11772.pdf">research undertaken</a> by Cardiff and Edinburgh universities and the <a href="http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/images/media/files/publication/2014/01/democracy-in-Britain_preview-Trench_Jan2013_11772.pdf">Institute for Public Policy Research</a> that suggests that the English have become increasingly assertive about their identities since devolution.</p>
<p>According to this research, while an Anglo-British identity exists, the “Anglo” component is predominant. While it finds limited appetite for regionalism or an English parliament, it also finds that support for the status quo has fallen to barely a fifth of English voters. It seems the English electorate want to regain control of the Westminster parliament, with 79% supporting English votes for English laws.</p>
<p>England may not want devolution or regional assemblies, but it seems it may want something more fundamental: a restoration of their conception of union, one that serves the English national interest. Three hundred years on from Defoe’s musings, it still seems the United Kingdom is a union where policy outweighs affection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Evans 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>It may only be Scotland that is heading to the polls on September 18, but it is not the only interested party in the results of the independence referendum. England would obviously play a dominant role…Adam Evans, PhD Student, Political Science, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.