Fortnum and Mason’s Retail Longevity: Once the Favourite Grocers of HRM and Other Assorted Royals

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Commerce & Business, Retailing history

That fashionable mag Harper’s Bazaar recently compiled a list (the sort of thing they do) of 10 of the favourite places in London that good Queen Elizabeth likes to shop at. They are, in no particular order, Smythson❅ (luxury leather goods and stationery for the Royal quill); Hunter (Wellington boots that QEII likes to drag on for traversing her Scottish estates); Launer London (the Royal handbag – apparently she has 200 of them); Barbour (her coats – there’s just one particular type of coat that Liz has been faithful to for the entire duration of a Diamond Jubilee and then some!); Anello and Davide of Kensington (shoes); Fulton (umbrellas); John Lewis (haberdashery and household goods); Rigby and Peller (suppliers of the Queen’s lingerie for 59 years); Corgi Hosiery (no, not stockings for HRM’s favourite “pampered pooches”, but socks for the Royal feet); Dubonnet (Liz stocks up on gin and Dubonnet⊞ for her favourite cocktails).

A household name in British retail trading since the time of Queen Anne

But there is another London retailer whose royal connexion for sheer staying power puts all of these businesses in the shade. Fortnum and Mason have long held sway as the Royals’ grocer of choice, starting with the family matriarch Queen Victoria in the 1860s, through to (until recently) the present ‘shopaholic‘ monarch.

F&M, 1957 [Source: Getty image]

The company’s history goes back even further—to the year 1707. In that year tenant (and latent entrepreneur) William Fortnum and his landlord Hugh Mason formed what was to become a momentous business partnership. At that time Mason was already operating a small store in St James Market for two years. The new store at 181 Piccadilly was the start of a retail innings that has now stretched 312 years and counting. Over that epoch of time Fortnum and Mason or F&M can (and has listed) a commendable catalogue of achievements, including:

🔸 introduced the Scotch egg in 1738— proving to be a highly portable snack/meal, just right for long distance journeys—as were F&M’s famous hampers

🔸 functioned as an official post office as well as a retail store – from 1794 up to 1839 when Britain established the General Post Office (GPO)

🔸 Queen Victoria chose F&M as her exclusive purveyor to despatch supplies of food to Florence Nightingale’s soldier patients in her field hospitals in the Crimean War (1856)

🔸 in a deal with the American HJ Heinz company, F&M in its role as stockists of tinned goods, introduced the humble baked bean to the British Isles (1886)

🔸 helped to bring variety to the British tea palate by introducing a range of south Asian teas (Indian and Ceylonese) to Britain for the first time including a new “Royal Blend” in honour of Edward VII (1902)

🔸 sent food hampers to imprisoned suffragettes (who had smashed the windows of the Fortnum store in protest, demonstrating apparently that F&M could turn the other cheek) (1911)

🔸 more predictably, they also sent hampers to soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders during WWI (1914)

🔸 one of the things F&M is most proud about is its role as a supplier of expeditions, it supplied George Mallory’s failed attempt to climb Mt Everest in 1924, as well as other expeditions in Africa. To extend the alpine theme, F&M in 1930 added a mini sky slope for promotional value to the Third floor of the Piccadilly store

21st century Fortnum, an era of belated expansion

In 2007 F&M celebrated its tercentenary with a long-overdue refurbishment of its flagship store – a makeover costing £24 million ☉.

[Photo: www.londontown.com]

Finally, during this decade F&M made the move toward a multi-store structure. In 2013 and 2014 branch stores were opened in St Pancreas International Station and Heathrow Terminal 5 respectively. This was followed by an international presence. Dubai opened an F&M store in 2014 and just this year the company made its biggest venture on the world stage yet, opening F&M Hong Kong.

The Foie gras controversy

As a grocer F&M has pursued a market strategy of providing quality (definitely not inexpensive) groceries (“posh nosh”) and luxury (and sometimes exotic) niche food items (eg, ready-to-eat luxury meals such as fresh poultry or game in aspic jelly). This has occasionally led the retailer to become embroiled in controversy. In 2010 F&M earned the opprobrium of animal rights group PETA UK who (enlisting the support of some celebrity Britons) demonstrated against F&M‘s Foie gras product. The protestors were unhappy that the retailer did not alert consumers to the cruel method of force-feeding geese and ducks to produce the product. F&M, despite the pressure exerted on it, doggedly refused to discontinue the line.

The company has been the subject of other controversies of recent. F&M has been tangled up with the brouhaha of allegations of tax avoidance by its parent company’s subsidiaries. This resulted in a mass sit-in in F&Ms Piccadilly store by UK Uncut (a lobby group protesting public service cuts and tax avoidance).

Severing of ties with the Windsors and more bad publicity

In 2018 Buckingham Palace stopped providing meat from its Royal Farms at Windsor Park to F&M…it was unhappy with F&M’s practice of bullying its suppliers to squeeze prices down. However F&M did not pass this on to consumers, continuing to assert that its bacon, pork and lamb (at double the supermarket price!) was sourced from HM’s Windsor Farms. The company had to grovel apologetically to Buck Palace, and with regal ill-will compounded, thus its 150-year tenure as the Royal family’s grocer was finito.

PostScript: A British institution but not a British-owned one

Despite its Royal association and status as a “national institution“, a part of the retailing firmament in the UK, F&M has long been foreign owned. In 1951 it was acquired by a Canadian businessman, W Garfield Weston. Today F&M is still in Canadian hands, privately owned by Wittington Investments Ltd which also owns the discount clothing store Primark.

181 Piccadilly, St James’s, W1A 1ER   

Reference material:

“Fortnum & Mason: The First 312 Years”, www.fortnumandmason.com

“10 places the Queen does her shopping”, Harper’s Bazaar, 15-May-2018, www.harpersbazaar.com

“After 150 years as the royal grocery, Fortnum and Mason is ditched by the Queen and forced to apologise over Windsor meat scandal”, Sebastian Shakespeare, Daily Mail, 29-Sep-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk

◛▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁◛

❅ Smythson’s are especially blessed by the British Crown, being the recipients of no less than four Royal warrants

⊞ a French red wine

☉ the following year F&M installed bee hives in the rooftop of the store!

A Scattering of Small Mid-Atlantic Islands Form the Setting for the “Old World’s” First Ventures to the New World

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Regional History


The Madeira Archipelago, 972 km southwest of Lisbon, Portugal, is a holiday venue with all the usual tourist trappings of an ocean getaway (beaches, nature and wildlife areas, scenic walking and hiking spots, shopping, wineries, museums, geologic formations, etc.). But Madeira and other island groupings within its range like the Açores (Azores Islands) and the Cape Verde Islands, were also the first places where Europe’s great Age of Discovery and Exploration kicked off.

The 15th century Portuguese caravel, a small, fast and manoeuvrable sailing ship tailored to meet the demands of oceanic sailing in the Atlantic

Forging a template for seafaring explorers

It all started with Portugal’s early 15th century imperial ambitions and the impetus provided by one of its Medieval Princes Henry the Navigator (Henrique o Navegador). Henry’s drive to explore, to discover, to convert others to Catholicism, and to build an empire for his small West European nation first bore fruit when two of his sea captains✥ accidentally discovered the island of Madeira while exploring the eastern realms of the Atlantic in 1418/19. Madeira was found to be uninhabited but it’s fertile soil was excellent for grain crops (principally wheat) and even better for producing sugar.

▼ Prince Henry, “The Navigator”

An island of wood and sugar

Madeira was also endowed with abundant hardwood, important to help fuel the island’s formative sugar industry (some of it was also destined for Lisbon’s housing industry)▦. Sugar production requires a labour surplus for it to continue on an upward trajectory, accordingly the island needed more labour than the pool of mainly Portuguese and Italian labourers it had. African slaves neatly filled this void (by start of 16th century they represented some 10% of the island’s population). The population of Madeira by ca 1500 was taking on a multicultural complexion (Portuguese, Genovese, Tuscan, German, Flemish, African) (with a vocational mix of priests, merchants, artisans and slave and non-slave labourers) [David Abulafia, ‘Virgin Islands of the Atlantic’, History Today, November 2019].

The production techniques mastered in the Mid-Atlantic islands provided “stepping stones” to the successful implantation of the sugar mono-cultures that evolved later in Brazil [Smith, Stefan Halikowski. “The Mid-Atlantic Islands: A Theatre of Early Modern Ecocide?” International Review of Social History, vol. 55, 2010, pp. 51–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26405418].

Global sugar

Madeiran sugar at its zenith was a “global commodity”—with the export of the product eventually stretching as far as Pera in the Black Sea, Chios and Constantinople. The lucrative trade in sugar from Madeira did not go unnoticed by the economic powerhouses in Europe. Northern Italy (Venice, Genoa) and Flanders quickly became major investors in the highly renumerative industry.

Wheat wealth and Madeira’s “third cycle”

Madeira’s fertile soil was similarly productive for grains, especially an abundance of wheat which was an alternative to Moroccan wheat. By 1455 the Portuguese were claiming a yield of 68,000 bushels of wheat from Madeira. SH Smith has drawn attention to how Madeira’s productivity advanced through a series of agricultural cycles. The early international trade focused on wheat, later this was surpassed by the ascendency of sugar. When the price of sugar on the international market dipped, the island planters turned to wine which eventually evolved into Madeira’s principal export. At its peak Madeiran wine was exported to British plantations in North America and the West Indies, and later to Brazil and Angola (Smith)ㅇ.

▼ Açores: historic map ‘Theatrum Orbis Terraum’, ca 1594

Portuguese Azores, Cape Verde and São Tomo

The success of Madeira prompted an escalation of Atlantic exploration from Lisbon. Prince Henry, with his zeal both for spreading the ‘one’ religion and ever-wider exploration (not to neglect the spoils of empire to be gained), founded a navigator’s school at Sagres on the southwestern tip of Portugal (see footnote). Over the remainder of the 15th century Portugal added the Azores, Cape Verde and Säo Tome (all uninhabited) to its imperial trophy cabinet of Atlantic prizes❆. The Azores in particular proved a valued acquisition to the Portuguese, not like Madeira for sugar but because they were ideal for cattle husbandry (to this day a main source of diary products for Portugal). In addition, and even more valuably, by the late 16th century the island group was a central point in the established trade route trans-Atlantic to South America and India (via the Cape)✪.

Way-station for human trafficking

The first Portuguese settlers found Cape Verde Islands to be arid and empty compared to the Madeira Archipelago. The Portuguese administrators talked it up as much as they could but in reality it yielded little from the ground apart from salt and lichen orchil which was used to produce a violet or purple dye (Abulafia). It’s great value was its role in meeting the seemingly inexhaustible demand for slaves, a stop-over on the Atlantic transport route for human traffic – ferrying slaves from Africa to Brazil and the Caribbean.

Portugal’s next Atlantic acquisition was São Tomo, near the Gulf of Benin. The Portuguese used this small island as a slave port, a collection point for slaves purchased from the Kongo and Angola in West Africa. Eventually São Tomo developed a sugar industry alongside this slave-handling activity, although it’s sugar was far inferior to that of Madeira and conditions on the island were harsh and susceptible to malaria. São Tomo‘s value to the slave trade was limited because it was not on the trans-Atlantic shipping route and not a re-supply route like Madeira and the Azores were. Still, it was nonetheless lucrative to the Portuguese crown, earning it up to 10,000 cruzados a year (ca 1500) (Abulafia)✧.

[Source: www.britannia.com]

Overpopulation and environmental impact of intense farming

As the colonies developed, overpopulation (superpovamento) became a chronic problem, especially on Madeira and São Miguel in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Portuguese solution, which eased if not eliminated this problem, was to siphon off surplus population on the islands into the army and ultimately to tours of military service in Brazil. The intense practice of silviculture, the unrelenting toil of farming on the Madeira soil and landform in particular wreaked massive and irreversible change. Seismic events and volcanos, the abalos de terra and other mega-eruptions were a recurring feature. As well, deforestation was an inevitable consequence of the mass pillaging of resources (Smith).

The Mid-Atlantic island colonies, especially Madeira and the Azores (and later, Spain’s Canaries), were the first successful European settlements in the Atlantic Ocean. Their success for the colonising powers became a model for the colonies to follow further west in the Americas. The Portuguese settlers possessed an acute awareness that in establishing these extra-European ‘beachheads’, they were fulfilling a pioneering role in the “New World”…it was no accident that the first boy and the first girl born on Madeira were given the names, respectively, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ [Ronald Watkins, Unknown Seas: How Vasco da Gama Opened the East, (2003)].

Cape Sagres, lighthouse [Photo: www.algarve-tourist.com]

Footnote: Prince Henry’s school for navigators

Henry the Navigator’s lasting legacy for the Portuguese and the Old World was that he took the first steps towards putting global exploration on a scientific footing. The prince’s Sagres school was intended to teach the intricacies of the then extremely precarious activity of oceanic sailing on the open seas, navigation and map-making, etc using Western science (as understood in the 15th century). Portuguese explorers who were shipwrecked and made it back to shore were routinely subjected to detailed debriefing as to what had gone wrong at sea [“Cape Sagres”, (Rick Steves), Smithsonian Magazine, 01-Mar-2009, www.smithsonianmag.com].

▴ 1787 map of Madeira

____________________________________________

✥ one, João Gonçalves Zarco, was later appointed the first administrator of Funchal (Madeira’s principal town) by Henry

▦ Madeira’s name translates as “Isle of Wood”, legname (wood, lumber)

❆ Portugal prevaricated too long and missed the gun with the nearby, inhabited Canary Islands which was eventually snared by the Spanish

ㅇ wine was also grown and exported from Pico and Fayal in the Azores and from the Canaries

✪ several alternate names were attributed to the Azores…it was initially known as “Hawk Island” because of the many sightings of this diurnal bird of prey in the islands’ vicinity. The concentration of Flemish merchants and functionaries in the Azores led many to nickname it the “Flemish Isles” (Abulafia)

✧ El Mina Fortress, founded in 1482, on the Ghana coast, became Portugal’s main base for the trade in slaves, gold and ivory

Heligoland, the North Sea’s “Border Island”: A Mini Platform for Historic Anglo-German Rivalry

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Geography, International Relations, Military history, Regional History

The small but strategic island that Britain gave away twice

Heligoland, is a tiny speck of land (a mere 0.67 sq mi) in the North Sea. The main island (Hauptinsel) is a formation of rock and stone cliffs frequently impacted by wind and storm – or as one observer described it, “an outcrop of sandstone and chalk” [Harry Campbell, Whatever Happened to Tanganyika? The place names that history left behind, (2007)]. It’s dominant geographical features are a 200-feet high Oberland (upper land) and a Unterland (lower land)✲. Just to the main island’s east is a second, smaller island known as the Düne or Sandy Island for its collection of small beaches❅. Heligoland is 40 miles from the town of Cuxhaven in the Lower Saxony region of Germany (also close to and coming under the provincial administrative jurisdiction of Schleswig-Holstein), and some 290 to 300 miles from the nearest point on the British Isles.

The remoteness and fairly nondescript appearance of Heligoland (in German and Danish: Helgoland, presumably from Heyligeland, “Holy Land”) belies a rather colourful history of fluctuating fortunes, especially over the last two centuries. Up until 1807 the island was the property of Denmark (interrupted by one or two brief periods when it fell under the control of Hamburg). ThIs “No-Man’s Land” has traditionally served as something of a haven for mainlanders – a refuge from the severe climatic conditions of the German Bight, and also occasionally from Danish taxation officials [George Drower, Heligoland: The True Story of German Bight and the Island that Britain Betrayed (2002)].

In 1807, as the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe, the British Navy under orders from Whitehall seized it from the Danes. Heligoland was of value to the British in the war against Napoleon as a means of circumventing the economic blockade imposed on Great Britain by the French emperor (the Continental system). Having Heligoland provided the British with a handy base to carry on (illegal) trade with Europe in defiance of Napoleon…between 1809 and 1811 alone, some £86 million worth of goods passed through the island and into the hands of German merchants. Heligoland’s economic activity flourished with most of the smuggled merchandise comprising tea, coffee, tobacco, rum and sugar from GB’s commodity-rich colonies around the globe [‘Heligoland’, (The British Empire), www.britishempire,co.uk/].

“The Gibraltar of the North Sea”

A spa was introduced to the island in 1826, luring visitors and holidayers from the nearby German mainland. Some came in search of a haven of a different kind, liberal Germans were attracted because it offered them, they believed, “a political retreat from the nationalistic fervour of their homeland” [‘Heligoland: Germany’s hidden gem in the North Sea’, (James Waterson), The Guardian, 24-Apr-2011, www.theguardian.com]. The new German-British trade ran hand-in-hand with the traditional island vocation of fishing (mainly for lobsters). The permanent population of Heligoland, despite the boost, has over the years remained pretty stable, never rising above 3,000 at any point (predominately the locals have been of German stock, speaking a North Friesian dialect)〥.

A coloniser’s swap: Heligoland for Zanzibar

The status quo on Heligoland remained intact till the late part of the century. In 1890 the change occurred that was to have seismic repercussions in the 20th century. As part of “the scramble for Africa” at the time, the British traded Heligoland to Germany in return for Zanzibar and part of Tanganyika◘, adding to GB’s “patch-quilt pattern” of GB’s ‘pink’ colonies on the world map. But the British were to discover that the true cost was the loss of a significant strategic asset in it’s 20th century foreign policy. Heligoland’s location on a ‘corner’ of the North Sea guarded the entrance to the port of Hamburg and was approximate to the estuary of the Elbe, the Kiel Canal and three other great North European rivers (Drower).

▵ Aerial view of Heligoland, between 1890 and 1900

With the European powers preoccupied with war preparations by the early 1900s, Imperial Germany strengthened the fortifications on Heligoland. When war (WWI) did come, Heligoland did not escape the conflict. It was the site of one of the earliest engagements of the war, the Battle of Heligoland Bight⊕, and involved in one of the first seaplane attacks, the Cuxhaven Raid (Christmas Day 1914)(ibid.). Whatever the fortunes of the British and German forces in Heligoland, the biggest losers were the island’s inhabitants who were summarily ejected from their homes on the island, having been given no say in the matter❂. They were given only six hours to pack and take only what could be transported by hand. The house-holders’s bedding and furniture was left behind. They were ‘reassured’ that they would be able to return after the war was won – in a few weeks! (ibid.). After the war Germany in accordance with the Versailles Treaty was required to demilitarise Heligoland, it was however allowed to retain the island – despite entreaties to Britain from the islanders (returned from their five year-plus exile) that it take back its former colony (ibid.).

▵ An artist’s impression of the Cuxhaven Raid

Island spring-time

The interwar period heralded something of an economic renaissance and the introduction of large-scale tourism for Heligoland. In the 1930s it annually drew 30,000 visitors with enhanced spending power to patronise the new fashionable drinking establishments and expensive gift shops. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi consolidation of power saw a rebuilding of the island’s fortifications. Hitler harboured other grand plans for Heligoland (an anti-aircraft fortress and a gigantic new naval base intended to rival the Royal Navy’s one) but these never came to fruition.

During the Second World War, Heligoland was the site of another early aerial/sea battle between GB and Germany and the onset of the global conflict in 1939. After the Allies gained the upper hand over Germany and it’s Axis partners, the British RAF subjected the fortified island to great devastation (over a two-day period in April 1945 7,000 bombs were dropped on the island, resulting in the flattening of the middle section of Hauptinsel).

Allied victory in the war did not mean a respite from the British destruction for the island. GB having taken interim charge of Heligoland, once again cleared the island of the local population and used it as a bomb-testing range over the next seven years. This assault included a British “Big Bang” (6,700 tonnes of explosives on one single day), thought to be the single largest non-nuclear explosions ever!) [Jan Rüger, Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea, (2016)].

▵ German Federal Republic stamp commemorating the 1952 hand-back

Cold War sacrifice

After the war, the devastated state of the island proved good propaganda fodder for the new West German Federal government, allowing it to represent itself as “an emblem of German victimhood and nationalism“. In 1952, the Brits, preoccupied with the wider Western imperatives of the day (the Cold War), gave the tiny archipelago back to the West Germans as an inducement to bind them and their influential chancellor Adenauer firmly to the Western anti-Soviet camp [ibid.].

In peace, once more the rocky island reverted to a pleasant holiday destination for continental (mainly German) day-trippers. In the early 1960s Heligoland rebuilt it’s tourist industry and the island was transformed yet again into a modern holiday resort with attractive duty-free benefits and a new spa complex. The present ambience of the born-again island has been likened to “the understated charm of a classic British seaside resort, a miniature Scarborough transplanted into the middle of the German Bight”. Contemporary Heligoland and it’s harbour has also resumed its earlier role as a venue for yacht races. [Waterson, loc.cit.; Rüger, loc.cit.].

Germany’s only Hochseeinsel⊞

For all they have suffered materially and emotionally as a consequence of British misrule, in war and in peace—the betrayals, the dismissive lack of consultation, the physical devastation—the Heligolanders seem to have buried that sorry chapter in the past. The German tourist spiel for the island depicts it as Deutschlands einzige meersinsel (“Germany’s only sea island”), projecting images of quaint and colourful fishermen’s harbourside cottages. Phrases such as “offshore oasis of relaxation”, “a unique natural setting…(and)…mild maritime climate” litter the pages of published promos (www.germany.travel/).

Footnote: Promised resort lifestyle aside, contemporary Heligoland eschews many of the trappings of modernity for a more minimalist if not entirely back-to-basics existence—no autos, no bicycles (push-scooters and hiking the prevailing modes of transport), no high-rise, no internet, no invasive smells, noises or sounds of industry—a diet of peace and tranquility and migratory bird-watching, befitting Heligoland’s curative, get-away-from-it-all role over much of it’s history.

▵ Heligoland crest

︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻

✲ these days the island also has a crater-shaped Mittelland (middle land), thanks to the British bomb-testing program of the Forties and early Fifties

❅ severe storm action has massively altered the geology of Heligoland over the centuries…until 1720 the two islands were connected [‘Heligoland’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

〥 today they number around 1,500-2,500

◘ Lord Salisbury, the architect of the exchange, had first had to overcome staunch internal opposition to the relinquishment of Heligoland, not least from Queen Victoria herself

⊕ three German light cruisers and one torpedo-boat was sunk

❂ this has been a recurring motif with Heligoland, GB’s disposal of the island in 1890 was likewise done without consulting the 2,000 inhabitants of Heligoland

⊞ offshore island

The Chinese Chariot: A Weapon of Ancient Warmaking Tailored for Local Conditions

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Archaeology, Military history, Regional History

When we think of the chariot and it’s association with antiquity, those of us weened on a cultural diet of Hollywood epic cinema might think about Ancient Rome and chariot racing in the Circus Maximus (such as famously featured in Ben Hur) or Ancient Egypt (imperial chariots ostentatiously ferrying proud pharaohs to some battle or conquest in The Ten Commandments). However, those that bought the Hollywood spin on ancient history might be surprised to learn that the chariot as a vehicle for hunting, racing or war in the ancient world did not have its genesis with either Rome or Egypt❋.

Traditionally, most historians of the ancient world have traced the chariot’s origins to Mesopotamia and the Near East (roughly dated as somewhere around 3,000 to 2,000 BC). More recent archaeological findings have however thrown up a rival candidate, the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. In the 1970s archaeologists unearthed the remains of chariots in the Ural Mountains of Central Russia which are thought to be as old as 4,000 years (there has some some conjecture as to whether these were chariots or carts and wagons) [‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’, Documentary, UK 2016, (aired SBS 15-Nov-2019)].

Asiatic onager ⇑

The first chariots in use, whether they were in the steppes of Central Asia and Asiatic Russia, or Mesopotamia, were not powered by horses, which were relatively late to be domesticated. Instead, other four-legged beasts, especially donkeys, onagers (Asiatic wild asses) or oxen, were initially employed. The concept of horse-driven chariots can trace its origins to those same steppes, the landscape in which the horse was first domesticated [“The Wheels of War: Evolution of the Chariot” History on the Net, (© 2000-2019), Salem Media. December 9, 2019 <https://www.historyonthenet.com/the-wheels-of-war-evolution-of-the-chariot>].

The horse’s domestication in the great steppes of Asia and evidence of early chariot-making in Russia/Central Asia are clear indicators of the pathway by which the chariot arrived in China. The oldest surviving remnants of the chariot in China dates its appearance to around 1,200 BC, coinciding with the Shang period of rule (found at Anyang in Henan Province). Other items excavated at Chinese sites reinforce the early existence of chariots in Ancient Chinese society, such as the characters inscribed on oracle bones—on some of these the image of chariots can be detected (‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’).

Oracle bone from Shang dynasty ⇓

Chariots of a different hue

The chariot in China reached its peak in the Western Zhou (1,046-771 BC) and the succeeding Eastern Zhou periods (771-226 BC), with chariots numbering in the thousands [Mark Cartwright, ‘Chariots in Ancient Chinese Warfare’, Ancient History Encyclopedia, (13-Jul-2017), www.ancient.edu]. One of the most interesting features of the Chinese chariot is it’s distinct differences from the chariots used by the earlier Sumerian, Hittite and Egyptian civilisations. Chinese chariots tended to be plus-sized compared to those from the Near East, the Caucasus, etc. The carriages were rectangular and large, with the vehicle’s axle located at the central point of the platform, giving the vehicles better balance (Near Eastern and Egyptian chariots typically positioned the axle at the end of the chariot).

But even of more striking difference was the Chinese wheels, they were huge and of a multi-stoked variety (usually comprising between 18 and 26 stokes on each wheel). The Western Asian/Near Eastern chariot wheels of antiquity by contrast were small and compact, usually with only six stokes per wheel (even earlier ones were made of heavy solid wood). The Chinese “super-size me” wheels were designed with local conditions in mind. The lighter, more flexible wheels were better suited to China’s rough terrain, accordingly they also made the horses’ task of pulling the chariot easier too [‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’; Andrew Knighton, ‘ The Rise and Fall of the Chariot – It Changed History, But Eventually Was a Victim Of Its Own Success’, War History Online, 04-Nov-2016, www.warhistoryonline.com].

A symbol of one’s class

Chariot and chariot horse ownership, much like the most expensive luxury cars today, was the preserve of the very wealthy in society✪. The archaeological evidence found in tomb pits confirms this. Chariots were a sign of great status for the nobleman. Owners needed to be well cashed-up as the vehicles were expensive to make and to maintain. Accordingly, noblemen in China, Egypt and elsewhere, when they died, would have their chariots and their horses interred with them in their burial tombs. Chariot pits such as those discovered in 2015 at Zaoyang, Hubei Province (dating to ca. 700 BC), shed light on the chariot’s significance. An aristocrat’s power was measured in the number of chariots he owned. The aristocratic class was expected, as part of their leading military role, to have the personal skills to master the chariot in warfare [‘Pictures: Ancient Chariot Fleet, Horses Unearthed in China’, National Geographic, 28-Sep-2011, www.nationalgeographic.com].

Photo: Zhang Xiaoli, Xinhua via Fame/Barcroft

The Zaoyang pit has proved particular fertile ground for chariot exhumation. Comprising a massive area of 33m x 4m, archaeological field workers divested it of 28 chariots and 49 pairs (49 x 2 = 98) skeletons of horses neatly arranged side by side [‘Archaeologists in China find 2,800-year-old tombs surrounded by 28 chariots and 98 horses’, (April Holloway), Ancient Origins, 22-May-2018, www.ancient-origins.net].

Horses for courses

The unearthed skeletons of the horses at Zaoyang and at numerous other burial sites reveal that the Chinese ‘chariotocracy’ used a specific kind of horse for their chariots – stocky, strongly-built Mongolian horses, standing about 1.4m tall, were deemed most suitable to haul the large Chinese chariots around the countryside [‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’].

Chinese chariots had some features that was different from elsewhere in the ancient world. Normally, a chariot crew (ma) in action comprised two men, this was standard. But commonly in Chinese chariots there were three men on board. The driver or charioteer⌑ and the archer were accompanied on the chariot platform by a third man. Sometimes called a rongyou, his job was to protect the other two in combat armed with a kind of spear-axe or halberd (known in China as a Ji). There were also specialist war chariots in China with a “crow’s nest” (ch’ao-ch’e) attached, a tower on an elevated chassis mounted above the platform of the chariot. This permitted an army commander to observe the field of battle more easily and to communicate orders to the army’s flag wavers (Cartwright).

Another advance in weapon technology at the time, the supplanting of the all-wood bow by a new, shorter composite bow (made of wood, horn and sinew), made the mobile archer a more effective and more potent element in battles (Knighton). The streamlining of war chariots, making them lighter and more manoeuvrable, made it feasible for them to outrun light infantry and heavier chariots. These chariots were still not without their limitations or drawbacks, they required flat ground to be effectively mobile and were prone to breaking down (armies often brought chariot repair teams with them to the battlefield) [‘Chariot tactics’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘The Wheels of War’].

Role in unification of the Chinese states

The importance of chariots as a military weapon in China coincided with the period of Warring States (Zhànguó Shídài). The kings (gúowáng, 国王) of the two strongest states Qin and Chu each had about 1,000 chariots at their command, and the vehicle certainly played its part in the eventual unification of China under the Yins. But the decisive role of chariots in war, even then, was diminishing. A combination of several developments in the military sphere undercut the chariot’s effectiveness in battles—army reforms saw increased reliance on the mobility of massed infantry and cavalry (greatly diminishing the crucial role played by nobleman). Chariots could not compete with fast-moving, well-coordinated cavalry. These developments and the introduction of iron weapons, especially the lethal eight-picul crossbow (nu), blunted the effectiveness of chariot-led warfare⌻ [‘Warring States period’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

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❋ in fact, chariot racing, so synonymous with the Romans, was a sport they copied from the Ancient Greeks (Homer’s Iliad includes a description of chariot racing in Book XXIII, ‘Chariot racing’, Britannica, www.britannica.com). Chariots were also used for hunting and funeral processions

✪ the conspicuously affluent citizens of the day paraded their chariots around town as ceremonial vehicles in much the same way as Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other prestigious luxury vehicles are ostentatiously shown off today. The chariots were decorated colourfully and elaborately with cowrie shells and bronze fittings

⌑ the charioteers were the most costly, prestigious and influential section of the army (Knighton) with entry to its ranks very competitive. The Luiu-t’ao (Six Secret Teachings), (5th-3rd BC military treatise, describes the necessity for chariot warriors to be the best and fittest in the army (age, height and agility standards had to be met) (Cartwright)

⌻ crossbows proved the nemesis of the war chariot, and once humans were successful in bending horses to obey their will, fleet-of-foot cavalry units could inflict considerably more damage on the enemy line than chariots could (‘Secrets of the Chinese Chariot’)