Showing posts from: March 2019
The Tusitala of ‘Villa Vailima’: RLS in Samoa
⌂ 1890s map of the Samoan Islands
Barely four kilometres south of Apia Town, just off the Cross Island Road, is Samoa’s finest residential building, Villa Vailima (1891), the home away from the (Northern) cold built by Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (see FN below).
⌂ RLS ‘Treasure Island’ Samoan stamp
Anyone with a passing acquaintance of mainstream Western literature will have some familiarity with Stevenson’s work. Author of a host of illustrious juvenile adventure classics like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae✲, and one Gothic novella, Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, offering deep psychological insights into the human mind.
Stevenson’s voluntary exile from Britain in search of a climate less injurious to his fragile health led him to the Pacific. After sailing around the islands on an extended ‘odyssey’ (Hawaii, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Caledonia, Marshall Islands, etc), Stevenson (accompanied by his American wife) settled on Samoa as a hoped-for antidote to his chronic bronchial condition✥.
RLS in local politics When Stevenson set anchor in Samoa the islands were in the midst of a civil war over succession to the Samoan throne. Behind the stand-off between rival chieftains was a three-way struggle for control between the colonial powers, Germany, the US and Britain, each of which had despatched warships to the Samoan islands to protect it’s commercial interests. While building the Vailima home RLS embroiled himself in the political conflict, taking the islanders’ side against the colonialists…so much so that he became a sort of political advisor to the indigenous factions [‘History of Samoa’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
By the conclusion of a second civil war in 1899, the colonial powers under a Tripartite Convention divided up the islands between them – Germany retained the western islands of Upolu and Savai’i, and the US got American Samoa (Britain did a trade for the Northern Solomons) [ibid.]
The Stevenson family at the Vailima homestead ⥥
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Tusitala’s kudos Stevenson’s whole-hearted embrace of the Samoan people was reciprocated…though a palagi (white-skinned person) they afforded him a special status in Samoan society. The Samoans attributed the quality of mana (“heaven-sent” supernatural powers) to the writer. And the craft of his story-telling which he had mastered so expertly in his novels led Samoans to bestow on him the title of Tusitala, the “teller of tales” [‘Samoans Honor Adopted Son, The Teller of Tales’, (Lawrence Van Gelder], New York Times, 08-Dec-1994, www.nytimes.com]. Samoans however were nonplussed as to how RLS earned his living (being at a loss to comprehend how the activity of story-telling could amount to paid work!).
Centennary British banknote with images of RLS & Vailima ⥥
After RLS’s death of a stroke in December 1894 after decades of ill-health, his widow sold up and returned to California. Since then, Villa Vailima initially housed the German colonial administrators followed by the New Zealand ones. After decolonisation it became the residence of the Western Samoan head of state. Finally, restored to its impecable state, it was transformed into its present incarnation as the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum on the anniversary of the novelist’s death.
Recreating RLS’ treasured island haven A visit to Villa Vailima today will discover a slendid, elegant mansion of a building. A tour will reveal the scope of the interior which includes five bedrooms, a large living room, a smoking room, a library/ study and a ballroom big enough to accommodate 100 dancers. In his time there Stevenson made several additions and extensions…I was informed by our guide that the east wing of the building was added later as separate living quarters for RLS’s mother-in-law who had come to live with them◙.
The walls of some of the Villa’s rooms were adorned with incongruous items, like the bow-and-arrow set in this bedroom ⥥
RSL’s study and the smoking room are probably the highlights of the tour for several reasons…on display in the former is a bookcase full of original translations of RL Stevenson works. Even more impressive, it contains the novelist ’s original, solid wood writing desk (on which he wrote his last four novels). The pièce de résistance for me though was in the downstairs smoking room – a double fireplace had been installed (and never used!) It seems that the Scot wanted the “feel-good” reassurance of having a quintessential feature of his former Northern hemisphere life – irrespective of how incongruously impractical it seemed (and how puzzling to Stevenson’s Samoan attendants!), located in the steamy tropical climes of the South Pacific. RL’s wife Fanny had her own familiar reminder of home at the Vailima house, she had the walls of her bedroom lined with polished Californian redwood [Lonely Planet Samoan Islands, (M Bennett et al) (2003)].
⥥ The smoking room 
I was also intrigued by the contents of the spacious living room…what caught my eye immediately was this massive mega-safe in the middle of the room (too big I thought even for the XXL-proportioned Samoans to move!). The very large portrait of RLS (by Sargent?) next to it looked broodingly dark and foreboding. The guide recounted to us how Stevenson was brought into this room by his servants after he was fatally stricken out on the front lawns of the property.
Ascending Mt Vaea It is very fitting once you’ve toured the RLS residence and learnt some of his Samoan story to take in the final chapter by making the 472m trek up Mt Vaea to glimpse the “teller of tales’” final resting place. It’s a short but a very steep climb and can get very hazardous after heavy rain (I have first-hand experience of how slippery it can get having slid right off the quagmire of a track on the return descent!). When you reach the beautiful high plateau where Stevenson’s tomb is located you will appreciate just how irenic and tranquil the setting is. The great views of the island from the top are also well worth the effort of getting there.
Footnote on ‘Vailima’: There are two interpretations of the name’s etymology – in Samoan ‘vai’ means ‘water’ so Vailima is commonly rendered as “Five Waters”, however the suffix ‘lima’ can mean ‘hand’ or ‘arm’ (as well as the number ‘five), so an alternate (literal) explanation for Vailima is “water in the hand” [Theroux, J. (1981). ‘Some Misconceptions about RLS’. The Journal of Pacific History, 16(3), 164-166. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168472]
PostScript: RLS in Sydney From his Samoa base Stevenson made several trips to Sydney, staying mainly at the city’s Union Club (Bent Street) and at the Oxford Club (Darlinghurst). On one visit he stopped over in Auckland where he met the former governor and premier of NZ, Sir George Grey. Stevenson occupied his time in Sydney by mainly working on various manuscripts of novels and stories (including The Wrecker, Ebb-Tide and In The South Seas)✪ [‘RLS Website’, (2018), www.robert-louis-stevenson.org].
⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝
✲ not to neglect the personal favourite “Boys Own” RLS book of my 11-year-old self, The Black Arrow ➳
✥ the choice of Samoa as home was desirable on pragmatic terms because it had a regular mail service (allowing RLS the professional author to connect with agents, editors and publishers). He was also attracted to the place because it was not too ‘civilised’ [Prof Richard Dury, ‘RLS Website’]
◙ the anecdote goes that Stevenson sent her off to Sydney for a few months and upon her return had the new wing built so he could put some (much sought-after) distance between them!
✪ these last two books plus The Wrong Box (1889) were co-written with his American stepson (S) Lloyd Osbourne
The ‘Aggie’, Apia’s Landmark Hotel and One Legendary Samoan Entrepreneurial Hotelier
An essential part of a tour of Independent Samoa’s main island, Upolu, is a trip to Aggie Grey’s…Samoa’s historic hotel in Beach Road on the western bank of the Vaisigano River. The place is a South Pacific institution, as was its legendary eponymous founder.
Aggie Grey’s Hotel (#77) ⍗
The ‘Aggie’ of Aggie Grey’s was born Agnes Genevieve Swann✲, the offspring of an English pharmacist from Lincolnshire and his Samoan wife, a local taupou (a ceremonial maiden). Business seemed to be in Miss Swann’s DNA – in her early twenties she opened her first club in Apia, the Cosmopolitan Club, and in 1933 started a Samoan private tourism company, Grey Investments (later called the Grey Investments Group).
No luck with ‘Kiwi’ spouses
The early death of Aggie’s first New Zealand husband left her without support and with four children to care for…the addictive gambling of her second husband squandered what money they had. In addition Aggie now had three more children and desperately needed to find a way to revive and consolidate her precarious financial situation.
With the advent of the Pacific War and American involvement, the resourceful and inventive Aggie eventually found the solution in 1942. She had earlier borrowed US$180 to purchase a colonial home which previously had been the “British Club”. As New Zealand’s prohibition laws were in force in Western Samoa⊡, Aggie started ‘Aggie Grey’s’ as a snack bar selling hamburgers and coffee to US servicemen on their tours of duty [Lonely Planet Samoan Islands, (M Bennett, D Talbot & D Swaney) (4th Ed 2003)].
The Hotel, 2006 ⍐
The American GIs in the South Pacific had plenty of money to splash around on their R & R activities, but the prohibition on liquor was a hand-brake on Aggie’s capacity to grow her business. Aggie found a inventive method of circumventing the ban…although serving alcohol was illegal, Aggie got round it by dispensing “medical permit doses” of booze to the American servicemen [‘Aggie Grey: West Point Hotelier, Legend – Apia, Upolu, Samoa’, in The Samoans: A Global Family, Frederic Koehler Sutter, (1989)].
⍗ Aggie Grey: on the maiden Pan Am flight from Pago Pago (American Samoa) to Sydney International Airport, 1962 (photo: John Mulligan)
From a backwater-town bar to a tourist hub
Beyond the war, over the following years, Mrs Grey turned the Apia hotel from a modest “drinking club” to a 200-room international hotel (arguably vying with Suva’s Grand Pacific Hotel for the mantle of the South Pacific’s premier international hotel) [‘Memories of the incomparable Aggie Grey’, Samoa Observer, (Terry Dunleavy), 26-Apr-2016, www.samoaobserver.com].
An ‘aiga welcome
The key to this success can be found largely in Aggie’s management style – her warm interpersonal skills, authentic, convivial personality, and her innate “understanding of the human condition”. Through her personal example of showing hospitality she imbued “Aggie Grey’s” with an atmosphere of “laid back Samoan friendly fa’aaloalo” (‘respect), conveying to each guest a sense that they were ‘aiga (‘family’) [Dunleavy].
In the formative days the hotel thrived as a result of Aggie’s ability to network… forging business links with the world outside Samoa – with the management and crews of TEAL (forerunner of Air New Zealand), and in encouraging celebrity A-listers (especially from the US) to make Samoa and Abbie Grey’s a regular stopover on route to film assignments in French Polynesia [ibid.]. Accordingly, the likes of Hollywood stars Marlon Brando, Dorothy Lamour, William Holden and Gary Cooper✥ et al would be regular AG guests. Aggie sought to capitalise on the celebrity aura by naming each of the hotel’s fales (rooms) and bungalows after visiting movie celebs.
The Marlon Brando fale (№ 93) at AGs ⍗
The hotel’s postwar success rested on a number of contributing factors. The arrival of trans-Pacific airlines (TEAL/Air NZ, Pan Am, QANTAS, then later Virgin’s Polynesian Blue) brought increasing numbers of tourists to replace the WWII servicemen. Aggie also had the right people behind her…a son with a good head for business, and a irreplaceable and devoted handiman, a “Mr Fixit” by the name of Fred Fairman, who Aggie could always rely on to keep the ‘wheels’ of the hotel running smoothly [ibid.; Sutter, loc.cit.].
Aggie Grey’s made it’s owner very wealthy…Aggie, a stalwart of the Samoan hospitality industry, continued at the hotel’s helm into her old age. In 1988 she died age 91, having long been one of the most respected members of the Apia business community.
Footnote: In December 2012 Cyclone Evan severely damaged Aggie Grey’s, closing it down for over three years. In August of the following year, management of the hotel complex, still under repairs, passed to the Sheraton’s hotel chain. Aggie Grey’s reopened in 2016, now operating under the name Sheraton Samoa Aggie Grey’s Hotel & Bungalows. A second Aggie Grey’s complex in Upolu, Aggie Grey’s Lagoon Resort, was opened in 2005 off a coral reef in the west of the island (a joint venture between the Grey family, the governments of Samoa and New Zealand and Virgin Samoa). 🇼🇸
PostScript: Prototype for Bloody Mary?
One of the US servicemen who frequented Aggie Grey’s during the War was travel adventure author James A Michener. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific was later adapted into the hit Broadway musical South Pacific. One of it’s main characters, the loud and formidably forceful “Bloody Mary”, was widely thought to have been modelled on Aggie Grey, a comparison that didn’t endear itself to the Apia hotelier! [‘Lonely Planet’, op.cit.].
⍐ ‘Return to Paradise’ – Samoan film set & resources of ‘Aggie Grey’s’ 🇼🇸 (see below)
– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –
✲ ‘Grey’ was the surname of Aggie’s second husband from New Zealand
⊡ New Zealand administered Western Samoa as it was called at this time, under a League of Nations mandate
✥ Cooper in fact made a movie in Samoa, Return to Paradise in 1953 (pretty stock standard South Seas adventure stuff), and of course Aggie came on board to contribute to the production …Aggie Grey’s hotel providing logistical support and a base for the project’s accommodation, and the indefatigable hotelier personally supervised the catering unit for the film [Dunleavy]
Unthroned and Exiled: The Fluctuating Fortunes of some Lesser Known Royal Houses of the 20th Century
The 20th century witnessed much turbulence in the landscape of ruling monarchies…while some royal families remain extant today, quietly lingering on with diminishing relevance to the day-to-day governance of the nation-state (Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, the Scandinavian countries, etc)✲, many others have fallen out of favour in the changing political climate and been swept away by the thrust of republicanism often in the name of modernity.
▲ Tarquin “the Proud” – Last Rex Romae
We should remind ourselves that the overturning of the monarchy by republican zeal is by no means confined to modern times…the last of the line of the seven kings of Ancient Rome, by legend founded by Romulus – Lucius Tarquinius Superbus – was deposed in ca.509 BC and succeeded by the Roman Republic.
Deposed, exiled but still with us!
The rise of European totalitarianism in the interwar era saw many of the old (minor) monarchies swallowed up by the imperial expansion of Nazi German, Fascist Italian and Soviet Communist movements and the incumbents made jobless. Yet, some such monarchs of yesteryear despite the passage of time are still around …
▲ The last king of the Bulgarians
Bulgaria: the former Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria (House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry) is an interesting case of a remarkably late political comeback. With Bulgaria’s absorption into the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc, Simeon was deposed from the Bulgarian throne in 1946 and after a referendum exiled from the country. Fast-forward to the 1990s and the fall of communism – Simeon was invited back to Bulgaria and promptly re-entered politics, forming his own party. In 2001 as plain Simeon Sakskoburggottski, the one-time tsar was elected prime minister! (remaining in power until 2005)◊.
▲ Romanian stamp bearing portrait of King Mihai, 1943
Last king of the Romanians:
Prior to 2018 former King Michael of Romania (Mihai I) would have made this list (had he not died in December 2017 at age 96!). Michael was twice monarch of his country and twice abdicated – the first when his father King Carol II retook the Romanian crown in 1930, and then again when he was deposed by the communists in 1947✪.
▲ Ahmad Fouad in 2010 (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Egypt: King Fuad II (or Fouad II) is the last king of Egypt. Exiled along with his father (King Farouk) in 1952 as a result of the Free Officers’ coup. Fuad was only 17 months old when the new Nasser-controlled Egyptian regime deposed him in 1953. The infant king is the last monarch of the Alawiyya dynstasty of Egypt and Sudan. Since exile Fuad has spent the bulk of his life living in Switzerland and France.
▲ Quntet of Greek colonels who terminated the Hellenic monarchy
Greece: King Constantine II is the last monarch to reign in Greece. Constantine ascended the throne in 1964 with the title “King of the Hellenes”※. His short rule was controversial – he embroiled himself in and exascerbated the mid-Sixties political crisis over the prime ministership known as the Apostasia (‘Apostasy’), a period of political instability and unrest culminating in the 1967 “Colonels’ coup”…right-wing army officers under George Papadopoulos seized control of the country and launched a military junta regime which Constantine gave legitimacy to by recognising it. A failed counter-coup in the king’s name forced Constantine and his family to flee, first to Rome and later London. In 1973 the Colonels initiated a referendum which resulted in the abolition of the Greek monarchy. Constantine’s long exile ended around 2013 when he voluntarily returned to live in Athens.
Zanzibar: Sultan Jamshid Abdullah Al Said was the last monarch to rule Zanzibar. Al Said was sultan◘ when Zanzibar, a British protectorate since 1890, was granted independence from Britain in 1963 (with the status of constitutional monarchy). Independence was short-lived however as the following year saw the Sultanate violently overthrown by African revolutionaries and the establishment of a People’s Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba by a coalition of moderate and radical insurgents. The new Zanzibar republic was even more ephemeral, within a couple of months its leaders agreed to unification with adjacent Tanganyika under the new name Tanzania. Sultan al Said was duly exiled in 1964, initially to Oman and now lives in retirement on the English south coast.
Qu’aiti Sultanate: Ghalib II bin Awadh al-Qu’aiti al-Hadarmi was one of a multiplicity of ruling sultans at the tail-end of the British Protectorate in Aden. (Qu’aiti was in south-eastern Yemen within the protectorate). Ghalib, also known as the Sultan of Shihr and Mukalla, was forced to abdicate by communist rebels and the sultanate abolished during the Yemen Civil War. The London-born Ghalib (last sultan of the Royal House of Hadhramaut) has spent most of his life living in Britain.
▲ Last king of Nepal
Nepal: King Gyanendra’s ousting from the throne in 2008 following the Nepalese Civil War (AKA ‘the Maoist Conflict”) ended nearly 240 years of the Hindu Shah Monarchy of Gorkha. Mahārājādhirāja Gyanendra had two spells as the king of Nepal, the second coming after the dramatic, internecine massacre of the Nepalese royal family in 2001. A republic was declared and the deposed king forced into internal exile to live as a common citizen.
▲ Pahlavi Royal crest
Footnote: The not-so-great pretenders!
Aside from the surviving “has-been” ex-monarchs of the world, there are also a scattering of “never-was” pretenders still around. These include, among the better-known, the son and uncrowned, “would-be” successor of the Shah of Iran. Mohammad Shāh Rezā was unseated by the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and fled Iran with family in tow. On the Shah’s death in exile in 1980, his eldest son, US resident Rezā Pahlavi, assumed the title of “Crown Prince of Iran”. At 21 Pavlavi symbolically styled himself as Shāhanshāh (literally “King of Kings” in Persian). Another ‘pretender’ son of a more famous regal father is Alexander Karađorđević of the former Yugoslavia. Father Peter II was the last king of Yugoslavia, forced into exile by the Nazi invasion in 1941. After the breakup of Yugoslavia Karađorđević returned to independent Serbia…since the 2000s Karađorđević who refers to himself as “Alexander II” and the “heir-presumptive to the defunct throne of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia” has been actively staking his claim to “the abolished throne of the precursor Kingdom of Serbia”.
-:———-—-:—————:————:——-—-—:-
✲ these are all constitutional monarchies (the most common type in existence today), with the monarchs fulfilling basically ceremonial roles within regimes which are democracies to a greater or lesser degree. In a handful of other surviving monarchies (Liechtenstein, Monaco and a few in Asia) the royal leader retains more individual powers but it is still limited. Absolute monarchies are a rarer form in today’s world and found mostly in Muslim-dominated countries, eg, Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and also Swaziland (this last one strictly speaking is an absolute diarchy – a co-rule of two)
◊ Simeon was not the only monarch to have his royal rule ended and then (after a long interval) return as political leader…Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk abdicated his crown in 1955 and later became prime minister and head-of-state. The ultra-malleable Sihanouk resurfaced in 1993 to re-claim the Cambodian monarchy – and later abdicated for a second time!
✪ likewise, Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, Rwanda’s last king (Mwami) died in exile in 2016. Following the eruption of Tutsi-Hutu conflict (encouraged by the then occupying Belgian military) in 1959-1960, Ndahindurwa, an ethnic Tutsi was deposed by Hutu opponents and the monarchy subsequently abolished in 1960 (in 2017 Hutsi supporters named Emmanuel Bushayij as his (symbolic) successor – king-in-exile with the title ‘Yuhi VI’) (see also FN ‘The not-so-great pretenders!’ above)
※ the Greek former king’s first cousin is the Prince of Edinburgh (Prince Philip)
◘ Arabic: ‘power’, ‘ruler’ – as distinct from Malik, ‘king’
⌱⌱⌱ ⌱⌱⌱ ⌱⌱⌱
Reference works consulted:
‘The last king of Bulgaria’, BBC News, 09-May-2018, www.bbc.com
Harry Campbell, Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?: The Place Names that History Left Behind, (2007)
Nicholas Gage & Joan Paulson Gage, ’Why is the King of Greece Living as a Commoner?’, Town and Country, 21-Aug-2015, www.townandcountrymag.com
’Life after the Throne’ (‘A Royal Flush’, 2007), Time, www.content.time.com
‘Rwandan Revolution‘, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
‘Once in line for the British throne, Prince Alexander is now a royal without a kingdom’, (Nahlah Ayed), CBC News, 15-May-2018, www.cbc.ca
Two Competing Strands of Arab Unity During the Cold War: UAR and the Arab Federation
Modern Arab nationalism doesn’t begin with Gamal Abdel Nasser✲, but the charismatic Egyptian politician’s bold and assertive leadership in the 1950s provided inspiration and the impetus to give the movement a particular vigour and purpose.
Egyptian hegemony under Nasser?
In 1952 the Egyptian “Free Officers’ Corps” (with Nasser in the driver’s seat) launched a coup, deposing the Egyptian ruler, King Farouk, and installing General Mohamed Naguib as prime minister. The following year the Egyptian-Sudanese monarchy was irrevocably abolished and guided by Nasser, a republic was established. In 1954 Naguib was cast aside and Nasser assumed full control as prime minster and later president. The new Egyptian ruler (Egypt’s first leader NOT emanating from the country’s elite), with a clear nationalistic agenda was determined to rid Egypt of foreign interference, especially from the old colonial European powers.
Nasserist brand of Pan-Arabism
Nasser, a passionate Pan-Arabist, had aspirations beyond Egypt’s national borders and was evolving a strategy for unifying the Arab world in a common struggle against the European colonial powers. One of the first tasks tackled by Nasser was to try to ingrain in his fellow countrymen and women a sense of their unique Arab identity. Accordingly, the national constitution was amended to state that Egypt was an Arab state (as well as a socialist state). The choice of the name “United Arab Republic” in 1958 imported this theme to countries outside of Egypt. To Nasser’s mind, an instrumental factor in unifying the Arab world was a common commitment to the liberation of Palestine [‘Arab Unity: Nasser’s Revolution’, Al Jazeera, 20-Jun-2008, www.aljeera.com].
On the home front Nasser introduced socialist policies, pursuing wide-reaching land reforms to lift Egyptians out of the depths of poverty. The Aswan Dam project was a key component of the reforms with the US committing itself (with the UK) to finance the massive enterprise. The prevailing Cold War intervened at this juncture with Washington reneging on its promise of aid for the project, citing Nasser’s dalliance with the Soviet Union as it’s reason [‘1956: United States withdraws offer of aid for Aswan Dam’, www.history.com].
Suez Crisis
The USSR duly rushed in to fill the void left by the US, offering to provide Egypt with the required finance. Nasser’s annoyance at the sudden US pullout led to an audacious unilateral action in retaliation…he nationalised the Suez Canal. France (owners of the Suez Canal Co) and Britain (the major shareholder) responded by invading the canal in unison with Israel. The US, outmanoeuvred, refused to join in. The ensuing action saw the combined forces inflicting a military loss on Egypt, however under US and UN pressure they were forced to withdraw by 1957. France and Britain emerged from the episode as weakened powers and US relations with the Middle East also took a hit. The diplomatic upshot was a political victory for Nasser.
The Egyptian president, having stood up to the colonial powers, emerged from the conflict with an enhanced reputation as the strongman of the Arab world. Nasser’s example inspired Arabs in other states to act, such as the 1958 Iraqi Free Officers’ coup d’état against the Hashemite monarchy; radical elements within Lebanon taking on the status quo regime (the 1958 Civil War) [Al Jazeera, op.cit.].
Groundswell for union
During the 1950s Syria underwent an upsurge of support for Arab unity…at the national conference in 1956, Syrian political parties endorsed union with Egypt, concurring with the view that any bilateral agreement between the countries should include economic, political and cultural affairs [Palmer, M. (1966). ‘The United Arab Republic: An Assessment of Its Failure’. Middle East Journal, 20(1), 50-67. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4323954]. Observers at the time noted that the Syrian government “made all the running” for union. Such was Nasser’s stature and charisma within the Middle East that the incumbent Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli was happy to stand aside for Nasser to be anointed president of the unified republic [T. R. L. (1958). ‘The Meaning of the United Arab Republic’. The World Today, 14(3), 93-101. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40393828].
Nasser’s first UAR cabinet ⟰
For his part, Nasser was initially cool on the idea of unification, his concern was that the two states had quite different political systems and experiences …Nasser’s preference at this time apparently was for a federation [Al Jazeera, op.cit.]. Under urging from the Syrian politicians Nasser eventually came round to the union idea☯.
UAR Flag (1958-61) ⟰
On the 1st of February 1958 the United Arab Republic (UAR) was proclaimed in Cairo with due fanfare (under the banner of “one flag, one army, and one people”). Nasser was confirmed as president of the new republic by referendum involving both Egyptians and Syrians. Nasser’s special position as primus inter pares (“first among equals”) was shown in his being given sole selection of the membership of the UAR’s joint assembly [ibid.]. In 1959 Nasser absorbed the Gaza Strip into the UAR.
⟰ North Yemen – at the southernmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula
UAR/MKY alliance
Later in the same year as UAR formed, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen (MKY) (North Yemen) joined the Syrian-Egyptian union (which had been preceded by a defence pact between North Yemen and Egypt). The new association was called the United Arab States (UAS). The Yemeni motives for allying itself with the UAR were security concerns about it’s larger neighbour Saudi Arabia. North Yemen and Saudi Arabia had fought an war in 1934 over territory and there was still an undemarcated border situation between the two states. The UAS, a different beast to the UAR, was a loose confederation of states only, MKY retained its sovereign independence and its separate UN membership and embassies for the duration of the confederation – which in any case, like the UAR, only lasted a short period❇.
⟱ North Yemen flag
Rivalry and suspicions: Rifts in the unitary socialist republic
What harmony there was in the Syrian-Egyptian union at its onset, did not last long. Egypt dominated the UAR, producing a grossly unequal partnership. With Cairo chosen as the UAR capital, Damascus, Syria’s traditional capital, was downgraded to provincial status only. Syria’s leading politicians were required therefore to live in Cairo, which isolated them from what was happening back in their home country.
Syrians across the board had cause to be disgruntled with life under the lop-sided union. Those now working for the UAR government found themselves on lower salaries than they had been as Syrian government employees. The three years of the UAR saw a succession of failures of the Syrian food harvest – resulting in hikes in the price of foods for locals [Arthur Goldschmidt Jr, The Middle East: Formation of a Nation State, (2004)].
With the new administrative structure in place, many Egyptian military and civilian personnel were ‘parachuted’ into Syria, taking over the important public offices that had been filled by local (Syrian) staff. This greviance was compounded by the high-handed, imperial attitudes of many Egyptians towards the Syrian population (as typified by Nasser’s right-hand man in Syria, Abd al-Hakim Amir) [ibid.].
⟰ A Syrian issue stamp celebrating the formation of the UAR
Another factor adding to Syrians’ dillusionment with UAR was that after three years everyone had come to the realisation that Iraq and the other oil-rich countries were not going to join the union [Goldschmidt, loc.cit.].
Nasser reshaped Syria’s political setup to mirror that of Egypt. Syria’s assortment of political parties were abolished and replaced with a single political instrument (the unicameral National Union) to match Egypt’s one-party state.
Many sectors of society found axes to grind with the new system – Nasser’s sweeping land reforms angered landlords, as his program of nationalisation did for business interests (in Egypt as well) [‘Egypt: Nasser and Arab nationalism’, The Socialist, 08-Apr-2011, www.thesocialist.org.au].
Syria formally disengaged from the UAR in September 1961…despite this Egypt however retained the union name “United Arab Republic” for itself until 1971.
Conservative Arab response to Nasser and proxy Cold War
The advent of Nasser’s left-leaning Arab union prompted an instant reaction from the conservative Hashemite monarchies of Iraq and Jordan (until 1949 Transjordan). In February 1958 King-cousins Faisal II (Iraq) and Hussein (Jordan) formed the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan (AFIJ) as a buffer against the rise of Nasserism. AFIJ, more a confederation of kingdoms than a unification, and UAR, represented two very different versions of Arab nationalism❂. At the same time the two Arab federations, sparring against each other ideologically, were also arranged as surrogates for the Cold War. Monarchist Iraq, the senior partner in AFIJ, took a position opposite Egypt with a clear orientation toward the West, aligning itself with the UK, and with Turkey, Iran and Pakistan as regional cogs in the American stratagem of trying to contain Soviet expansion. In contrast, Egypt, through the acquisition of economic and military aid and friendship agreements, was moving closer to the Soviet Bloc, while professing an orientation towards the Non-Aligned Movement [‘Arab Federation’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⟰ Arab Federation of Iraq & Jordan
The Arab Federation bound Iraq and Jordan together in defence and foreign policy while leaving the running of domestic affairs to each country. Though Iraq was clearly the ascendant party in the confederation, it didn’t repeat the Egyptian mistake of making the partnership too one-sided…there were more cabinet posts in AFIJ for Jordan and Amman was allowed to retain its status as a union capital, although Baghdad was de facto the centre of the confederation [Juan Romero (2015), ‘Arab Nationalism and the Arab Union of 1958’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42:2, 179-199, DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2014.994317].
”14th July Revolution”
As things transpired AFIJ didn’t get a chance to demonstrate if it could become an effective regional force in the Middle East. In July 1958 an Iraqi Free Officers coup led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the monarchy and executed Faisal and some of his senior ministers. The Sunni Arab coup leaders, drawing inspiration from Pan-Arabism and Nasser’s 1952 Egyptian coup, acted (they said) “to liberate the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by imperialism” (the dissidents’ perception was that the monarchy under Faisal had associated its interests too closely with Britain and the US) [1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East’, ‘This Day – 14 July’, (BBC Home) www.news.bbc.co.uk/]. The Hashemite kingdom was abolished and Iraq was declared a republic.
PostScript: Arab federation redux
In the 1970s Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tried several times to resurrect the idea of union in the region, first proposing a Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) in 1971◚. Comprising Libya, Egypt and Syria, the proposed merger was approved by referenda in all three countries, but in working through the details the “member states” couldn’t agree on the specific terms of the merger. The union was never implemented and remained effectively stillborn (however the federation was not formally revoked until 1977). The leaders, especially Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat, didn’t follow through because they thought Gaddafi was too radical in his aims [‘The Federation of Arab Republics’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Gaddafi refloated the concept in 1974 with the Maghreb countries to Libya’s west. Agreement (the Djerba Declaration) was reached between Libya and Tunisia to establish the Arab Islamic Republic (AIR) [‘Arab Islamic Republic ’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Tunisia’s leader Habib Bourguiba’s idea was of a confederation that retained the identity of each sovereign entity…which was at odds with Gaddafi’s notion of an seamless, homogeneous “revolutionary movement”. Algeria and Morocco were later included in the proposed AIR but again the idea never got airborne※.
There were a number of other Libyan-led proposed “Federations of Arab Republics” during the Seventies (with various combinations of states some of which included Sudan, Syria and Iraq), but all with the same result of not leading to anything tangible.
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Endnote: Common purposes and individual priorities
The idea and actuality of an “Arab League” predates the rise of Nasser by some 13 years. The original such organisation, the League of Arab States was founded in 1945 with an focus on developing cooperation between Arab states re economic matters, post-colonialism, resolving disputes and coordinating political aims [‘Arab League’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This last objective has proved wholly elusive given the key different orientations of Arab nationalism of the states of the Middle East◈. Largely because of this, the various Arab federations of the 1950s to the 1970s ultimately failed to deliver on their raison d’etre as vehicles for Pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism.
Flag of the League of Arab States ⟱
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✲ the seeds of modern Arab nationalism were sown during the Ottoman Empire and the sentiment intensified among Arabs as the empire’s decline gathered pace in the early part of the 20th century culminating in the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI
☯ the two main status quo political groupings within Syria had their own, separate reasons – Syrian army officers of a pro-Nasserist bent naturally sought to be unified under the Egyptian president, while the rival socialist Ba’ath Party was fearful of internal communist insurgency and thought that merger with Nasser’s Egypt would head off the communists’ challenge and the same time allow them to stay in power in Syria [WL Cleveland & M Bunton, A History Of The Modern Middle East, (4th Ed, 2009)]
❇ the withdrawal of MKY from the Arab Union didn’t end Nasser’s involvement with Yemen. When civil war broke out in North Yemen in 1962 Nasser committed over 70,000 Egyptian troops to fight with the Yemeni republicans in the five-year long war against the monarchy
❂ the creation of the Hashemite conferation in fact intensified the Iraqi-Egyptian rivalry [Romero, loc.cit]
◚ once again Nasser was the model exemplar for an aspiring Pan-Arabist leader…Gaddafi followed the Nasser blueprint, seizing power from the enfeebled Libyan monarchy in 1969 through a “free officers’” movement. He formed a one-party Socialist Union in Libya (á la Nasser) and in public repeatedly espoused the broad objectives of Arab nationalism
※ Bourguiba wanted a regional alliance with Gaddafi (not a de facto absorption) …strategically he envisaged Libya as a buffer against potential threats posed by Egypt [‘Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, (MJ Deeb), in The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa, DE Long and B Reich (Eds.) (4th ed. 2008)]
◈ the historic, default common cause for unity among the Arab states – the need to establish a permanent Palestinian state and homeland – has only occasionally got beyond the realm of rhetoric when the vested self-interests of individual Arab countries are on the table
“Explorers’ Corner”: Where the Great Western Road Meets the Great Southern Road – Then and Now
Most motorists who regularly drive within a 10-15km radius of the centre of Sydney have found themselves at some time at the intersection of Parramatta and Liverpool Roads – not uncommonly in heavily banked-up peak traffic. In the pioneering days of the New South Wales colony, the routes of the two major roads played a seminal role in the exploration and discovery of new areas to the west, south and north of Sydney.
The first rough tracks crudely carved out of the wilderness by the colonists in 1788 pretty much follow the routes of Parramatta and Liverpool roads as they were later constructed✲. For many of the early explorers of NSW this intersection of the Great Western Road (to Parramatta, the Blue Mountains and beyond that the Central West and the continent’s vast interior) and the Great Southern Road (to Liverpool and the Southern Tablelands), was the jumping-off point for many exploratory treks into the colony’s hinterland.
The intersection at the junction of three inner west Sydney suburbs, Ashfield, Summer Hill and Haberfield, is thus the ideal place to commemorate those early heroic efforts of exploration, endurance and hardship, and in 1988 as part of Australia’s Bicentennary of European settlement, this is precisely what happened.
If you turn from Parramatta Road into Liverpool Road, immediately on your right, between a fast food chicken outlet and the corner, you will see a small, narrow tree-lined park (about 85-90m x 35m). The most intriguing association of the park is its name – Explorers Park✪.
The park comprises as its centrepiece a long arched trellis covered with the thick, verdant vines of a climbing plant, forming a tunnel effect. On the paved floor, along the length of the trellis, are plaques which celebrate those early 19th century Australian explorers. Starting with Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, who with the inestimable help of local aboriginal trackers from various clans and tribes, made the breakthrough discovery of a viable route across the Great Dividing Range, there are plaques with brief summaries of the achievements of all those who followed – the likes of Oxley, Mitchell, Sturt, the tragic Kennedy, Hume and Hovell (one half of which gave his name to the iconic Hume Highway that has its genesis at the intersection).
At the north end of the park, there’s a dome-shaped trellis which backs on to Parramatta Road. The trellis contains a white wall with a stencil pattern depicting images of the participants who made the pioneering achievements of exploration possible – the explorers themselves, their mode of transport (the camels) and their invaluable indigenous guides.
Long before the advent of the Bicenntenary triggered the construction of Explorers Park, the location was a busy thoroughfare for mounted travellers, horse and carts and livestock, especially after Liverpool Road was opened in 1821. One hundred years later exactly, with the age of the automobile established as the dominant and future mode of transport, this exact block of land was purchased by a motor engineer Frank Dale. Two years later in 1923, he built a motor service station (Dales Garage) on the site. Over the following decades ownership of the garage regularly changed hands (Major Motors, Western Service Station, etc.). Eventually the land was acquired by the DMR (Department of Main Roads) and the garage demolished to allow for the widening of the high-traffic intersection [‘Sydney’s fork in the road’, Inner West Courier, 19-Feb-2019 (Ann O’Connell, Ashfield Historical Society)].
Dales Garage (photo: Inner West Courier) ∇
Footnote: An early landmark pub for travellers Opposite the Explorers Park site, across Parramatta Road (in what is today Haberfield), there used to be another building at this important intersection…this was a hotel called Speed the Plough Inn (often abbreviated to ‘The Plough Inn’), one of Sydney’s iconic travellers’ pubs of the early colonial era. The Inn was built by a pioneering settler of Haberfield, David Ramsey in the late 1820s [‘The Dobroyde Estate’, (Ramsey Family History), http://belindacohen.tripod.com/ramsayfamilyhistory/dobroydestate.html].
▲ An early drawing of the hotel by George W Roberts (c.1845) (State Library of NSW)
Long gone, but in it’s day the Plough Inn went far beyond merely providing food, drink and shelter…boasting extensive stabling for livery and coach horses, as well as ample enclosures and water for livestock (the yard and adjoining paddocks were used for sheep and cattle sales) [Harvest of the Years – The Story of Burwood, 1794-1974, Eric Dunlop (1974 Burwood Municipal Council)]. The Plough Inn closed down in 1911 with the land becoming part of the Haberfield subdivision.
Speed the Plough Inn, Parramatta Road ∇
—————————————————————– ✲ as illustrated in Captain (later Governor) John Hunter’s An Historical Journal of Events at Sydney and at Sea at the time
✪ Explorers Park is only metres from the larger Ashfield Park which features a statue of the popular children’s literature character Mary Poppins, commemorating the fact that the author of the Mary Poppins books, PL Travers, once lived in the suburb
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Bungan’s ‘Baronial’ Castle: 100 Years on the Headland
The northern coastline of suburban Sydney, with its abundance of picturesque beaches, is a magnet in summer for many visitors from far and near. One of the less frequented of the Northern Beaches, owing to its relative inaccessibility and lack of a rock pool✲, is Bungan Beach.
What drew me to Bungan this summer was not however the pristine waters of its uncrowded beach, but one particular unusual building standing out high up on Bungan Head…Bungan Castle, which this year celebrates 100 years since it was constructed.
Situated as one later observer noted “on a bold headland of the coast, about eighteen miles from Sydney” [1] (Newport, NSW), Bungan’s castle was built at the very pinnacle of a cliff-top by Gustav Adolph Wilhelm Albers, a German-born Australian artists’ agent. Today it is hemmed in and surrounded by a raft of modern, multi-million dollar mansions which share its unparalleled breathtaking views. But when Albers built “Bungan Castle” on what is now Bungan Head Road, the imposing high dwelling was surrounded only by bush and cleared scrub and completely neighbourless!✪
∆ [photo (ca.1928): National Library of Australia]
Albers in 1919 was considered something of a doyen of the Australian art community, he represented local artists like Sidney Long and JJ Hilder, and the castle (his abode at weekends and holidays❇) acted as a kind of 1920s arts hub, an unofficial Sydney artists’ colony. The leather-bound visitors’ book (still surviving) records the names of numerous artistic personalities of the early 20th century including the formidable and influential Norman Lindsay.
∆ [photo: NSW Archives & Records]
Aside from creating a skyline haven for practitioners of the art community, the eccentricity of Albers’ personal taste in decor is worthy of elaboration: he furnished Bungan Castle with an idiosyncratic and vast array of collectibles, a number of which the art connoisseur acquired on his regular jaunts overseas✤. The castle interior was inundated with a phenomenal “hotch-potch” of antiquated weaponry – including Medieval armour, Saracen helmets, Viking shields, sword and daggers including a Malay kris, battle-axes, muskets, flint-lock guns, Zulu rifles; convicts’ leg-irons and Aboriginal breast-plates.
∆ [photo: Fairfax Archives]
In addition to the assortment of objects of a martial nature, there were numerous other oddities and curios, such as a big bell previously located at Wisemans Ferry and used to signal the carrying out of convict executions in colonial times; a human skull mounted above the hall door (washed up on Bungan Beach below the castle); a sea chest; a variety of ships’ lanterns; “tom-toms” (drums) and various items of taxidermy [2].
This home is a castle – a “Half-Monty” of a castle
From the road below, staring up at the tree-lined Bungan Castle, it does bear the countenance of something from a pre-modern time and not out of place in a rural British landscape. Constructed of rough-hewn stone (quarried from local (Pittwater) sandstone), it contains many of the castellated features associated with such a historic piece of architecture – towers and turrets, a donjon (keep), battlements, vaults, a great hall, a coat-of-arms, etc.
This said, Bungan Castle lacks other standard features – a drawbridge with a portcullis and a barbican ; visible gargoyles; and a moat (although Edinburgh Castle also lacks a moat, being built up high on bedrock it doesn’t require one for defensive purposes); and it is also bereft of a dungeon! And of course, most telling, parts of the southern and eastern facades are clearly more ‘home’ than castle! One could easily dismiss any claim to it being thought of as an authentic facsimile of the “real thing” (some early observers described it, erroneously, as a ‘Norman’ castle), but with a bit of licence we can reasonably ascribe the descriptor (small) ‘castle’ to Bungan, much as New Zealand tourism promotes the lauded Lanarch ‘Castle’ on the Otago Peninsula (also without many of those classic features).
A family concern
GAW Albers’ prominence in the Northern Beaches area and the talking point uniqueness of Bungan Castle led many locals to dub the Sydney art dealer “the Baron of Bungan Castle”. Albers died in 1959 but the ‘baronial’ castle has remained firmly in family hands. The current owners are Albers’ nephew John Webeck and his wife Pauline. John maintains the family’s artistic bent as well, having like Uncle William had a career as an art dealer.
Artists’ Mecca? museum? both?
Webeck has signalled that he would like to reprise the castle’s former mantle as an artists’ Mecca, but I can’t help feeling that with such a wealth of out-of-the-ordinary artifacts within its walls, that its future might be most apt as an historical museum. Such suggestions have been made in the past – the Avalon Beach Historical Society referred to Bungan Castle having been an “unofficial repository for many articles, (sufficient to deem it) Pittwater’s first museum”[3].
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✲ the close proximity of larger beaches with on-site car parks (absent from Bungan) – Newport, The Basin and Mona Vale – make them a more popular choice for beach-goers
✪ at the time there was only three other homes on the entire headland
❇ Albers’ principal family home was in Gordon, not far way on the North Shore of Sydney
✤ although the bulk of the castle’s collection were donated to Albers by others who thought it an appropriate home
[1] WEM Abbott, ‘Castle on a Cliff Edge’, The Scone Advocate, 25-Mar-1949, http://nla.gov.au.news-article162719685
[2] ‘Castle Turrets on Sydney’s Skyline’ (Nobody Wants them…Our Baronial Halls), The Sun (Sydney), 08-May-1927, http://nla.gov.au.news-article223623550. The author of this article goes on to lament the fact that Sydney’s castle homes had fallen out of fashion for the well-heeled “princes of commerce” in search of a suitable ancestoral mansion…in 1927 their preference was apparently for modern Californian villas with all the latest conveniences.
[3] ‘A Visit To Bungan Castle By ABHS’, Pittwater Online News, 14-20 Oct 2018, Issue 379, www.pittwatetonlinenew.com