From it’s founding in 1788 as a penal colony Sydney served as a destination for Britain’s burgeoning surplus of convicted persons up until 1850. One of the most distinctive episodes of the transportation history in the period involved the sojourn in New South Wales of 58 French Canadians from Lower Canada (today Quebec) in the early 1840s.Their crimes, having participated in revolts against the inequities of British rule in Canada in 1837 and 1838.
(Image: Canadian Encyclopedia)
Both Lower Canada and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario province) rose up against the prevailing political “stitch-up” in British Canada. Power in Lower Canada rested firmly in the hands of a English speaking merchant oligarchy known as the “Château Clique”Ⓐ, controlling the executive and legislative councils, the judiciary and the senior bureaucracy. An additional grievance of the Francophone discontents was economic – widespread crop failures in 1836/37 had forced many into subsistence farming. The Les patriotes movement under Louis-Joseph Papineau, repeatedly thwarted by the ruling aristocracy in it’s efforts to secure a better deal, took to arms. The rebels in Upper Canada led by William Lyon Mackenzie, similarly frustrated by the denial of political reform, followed the lead of Les rébelles francophones, declaring the “Republic of Canada”. Mackenzie’s forces were aided by the incursion of American volunteers from the borderland states, partly inspired by patriotism and partly by a sense of adventure and the desire to strike a blow against the thraldom of their northern neighbours by the British (Maxine Dagenais, ‘The American Response to the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38’, The Canadian Encyclopedia, 09-Oct-2019, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca). Both insurrections however were easily and comprehensively crushed by the superior British and loyalist forces…the principal leaders of the uprisings fled to the USA but some 29 of Les patriotes were executedⒷ.
Historic map detailing extent of Longbottom area (Source: docplayer.net)
Political prisoners removed to the remote Antipodes
A further 58 French speaking Canadian rebels from Lower Canada, originally intended for the “hell-hole” of Norfolk Island, were allowed after intercession by Catholic Archbishop Polding to serve their sentences in Sydney. The patriotes were assigned to the Longbottom Stockage (formerly the Longbottom Government Farm) in Concord (map), housed in crudely-built trenches on the present site of Concord Oval. The less skilled of the exiles found themselves in a quarry gang, tasked with the back-breaking work of breaking and carting rocks for construction of Parramatta Road. Others were employed felling trees and sawing blocks of wood for house construction or firing bricks for use in public works.
“Of good character”
The French Canadians political prisoners were far from the hardened criminals that could be found in much of Sydney Town at the time. In fact they had no previous convictions before being transported, some had been skilled rural artisans in Canada. By the account of no less than Governor Gipps himself, the exiles’ behaviour during their term of imprisonment had been ‘exemplary’, though unbeknownst to the authorities some of their number were also engaging in the odd illicit activity to earn a bit of money on the side, selling purloined wood, collecting oyster shells in nearby Hen and Chicken Bay to sell (Sheena Coupe, Concord – A Centenary History, (1983)).
Ticket-of-leave from Longbottom
The French Canadian exiles were deemed sufficiently responsible that by 1842 the government started releasing them from the stockade to live with ”respectable people”, working for food and lodgings. The political prisoners were then issued with tickets-of-leave into the community so they can earn wages. By the end of 1843, early 1844, the governor awarded free pardons to all of the exiles. 55 of the patriotes took the chance to return to Quebec (once they had raised the necessary passage – which took some up to four years as jobs were scarce in the 1840s Depression) and only one, Joseph Marceau, opted to stay, marrying an Australian woman and settling near Wollongong (two of the original exiled men died while in prison). With the departure of the Canadians the Longbottom Stockade fell into disrepair, its only practical use, a makeshift lockup for ”noisy drunks apprehended on Parramatta Road” (Coupe).
1890 map identifies “Longbottom Estate” (Source: Coupe)Reminders of the Canadien exiles’ presence
While nothing remains of the stockade (above ground anyway), the exiles are remembered in the Concord locale’s nomenclature – Exile Bay, Canada Bay, France Bay, Châteauguay Walk (named after Prieur’s village in Montreal), Marceau Drive. Bayview Park in Concord—where the French Canadians disembarked at the park’s wharf in 1840 on route to Longbottom Stockade—contains a monument to the exiles. First-hand accounts of the exiles
Three of the 58 transported Canadiens left accounts of their time in Sydney—Francois-Maurice Lepailleur, Léon Ducharme and Francois Xavier Prieur—the only transported convicts in 1840s Sydney who kept daily records of their experiences (Beverley Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion , (1995)). Impression Bay Probation Station. North American prisoners did hard labour at the network of probation stations on Van Diemens Land’ (Image: UTAS)
American ‘Borderlander’ political prisoners in Van Diemens Land
The same ship that brought the Canadiens to Sydney, HMS Buffalo , also transported between 82 and 93 Upper Canada rebelsⒸ to the penal colony in Van Diemens Land. These were predominantly American ‘borderlanders’ who had invaded Upper Canada to ’liberate’ the Canadians from the British ‘yoke’. The American prisoners‘ experience ran parallel to that of their French Canadian counterparts but their suffering and hardship in the Van Diemens Land colony was much, much worse. Some of the US exiles like William Gates, Linus Miller and Benjamin Wait(e)Ⓓ later wrote accounts of their treatment in Tasmanian prison camps …chain ganged together, treated like slaves, subjected to draconian regimes of labour and living conditions (14 of the patriots died during the incarceration). And unlike the well-regarded Canadiens in Sydney the Americans were vilified by the local press as the epitome of disloyalty (“Americans of the lowest order”) (Carter, J. C. (2009). Most achieved their ticket-of-leave after three to five years although a few escaped on whaler boats ‘One Way Ticket to a Penal Colony: North American Political Prisoners in Van Diemen’s Land’, Ontario History, 101(2), 188-221. http://doi.org/10.7292/1065618ar).
Concord Oval: Longbottom trenches excavated in 1984 (Credit: Canada Bay Connections)
Endnote: Longbottom Stockage and surrounds encompassed a large area. The stockage itself sat on land which today is occupied by three recreational fields, Concord Oval, St Luke’s Park and Cintra Park.
꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~
Ⓐ the equivalent dominant entity in Upper Canada was the “Family Compact”
Ⓑ the (failed) rebellions nonetheless indirectly led eventually to responsible self-government for the Union of the two Canadian provinces (as proposed by Lord Durham)
Ⓒ accounts differ as the number, possibly due to conflation as a number of other American prisoners arrived from Canada in 1839
Ⓓ Wait (or Waite) was Canadian by birth though his father was American and Wait on return lived the rest of his life in the US
Contemporary Scandinavian society is rich and appetising fodder for sociologists and behaviouralists. The peculiar strain of egalitarianism that runs through the Nordic countries manifests itself in a concept known as Jantelagen in Swedish or Janteloven in Danish and Norwegian⊡. The origin of the word ‘Janteloven’ comes from a 1933 satirical novel by a Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose. A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks, set in a fictional Danish town called ‘Jante’, is “a thinly veiled roman à clef about his hometown Nykøbing Mors”, Denmark, in which he skewers the inhabitants for their foibles – “pettiness, envy, backbiting, gossip, inverted snobbery and small-mindedness” [‘The Law of Jante’, Michael Booth, Paris Review, 11-Feb-2015 www.parisreview.org]. One small portion of En flyktning krysser sitt spor (the Norwegian title) is of lasting significance, the “Laws of Jante”⊞, the list of ten principles designed to put non-conformists in Nordic society in their place. Sandemose’s so-called ‘Laws’ draw on long and widely held, deeply engrained Scandinavian attitudes⊟.
The 10 Laws of Jante
A society devoid of exceptionalism and ‘oneupmanship’ Janteloven/Jantelagen is a concept which celebrates Nordic self-restraint, “stoic humbleness and modesty”. Any sense of individual superiority and ambition is actively discouraged, as is talking about one’s personal success. The Jante laws are cultural codes which eschew declarations of a self-congratulatory or immodest kind. Nordic “Jante-ism” offers no haven for those seeking to stand out from the crowd. The benefits for adherence, Scandinavians assert, are collective ones, good for the nation as a whole, resulting in enhanced quality of life, a contribution to the “GNP of happiness” enjoyed by its citizens⊠ [‘Jantelagen: The Law of Jante Explained’, Swedes in the States, 22-Feb-2021, www.swedesinthestates.com].
(Source: worldlife expectancy.com)
The Jante Law instructs on what citizens need to do to fit in to the community, but it has a punitive purpose too…if an individual fails to fit in, it provides a way of “socially stigmatising anyone who break the rules”. According to author Michael Booth, it affects the everyday choices Scandinavians make, what clothes you wear, what car you buy, etc [‘Forget hygge: The laws that really rule in Scandinavia’, (BBC Ideas video, 2018, www.bbc.co.uk].
“We are all equal!”
Swedish comparisons are odious: The taboo on money and status Jantelagen is deeply rooted in the Swedish psyche, it is de rigeur for all stratum of society never to talk about one’s wealth or income. Jantelagen also prohibits people from boasting about their social status, firing off a warning shot to allay any notions they may harbour about climbing the social ladder (the codes act as a handbrake on citizens not getting above their station). The reinforcement of the appearance of an egalitarian society helps to keep the balance (ie, serving as a control mechanism, maintaining homogeneity and societal harmony). Stephen Trotter’s study of Janteloven in Norway concludes that it operates as a “form of structural censorship (where) symbolic power is exerted (in the task of) nation-building” [‘Breaking the law of Jante’, SR Trotter, Issue 23 Myth and Nation, www.gla.ac.uk].
(Source: mbastudies.com)
Anything north of average is a win!
The claimed benefits of “Jante-ism” has also been explained in terms of a state of decreased expectations – living by the ten rules installs a sense of average expectations from life, so anything that comes your way “above and beyond the average” will be a welcome bonus, value-adding to your existing store of happiness (Lindsay Dupuis)[‘The happiness of the Danes can easily be explained by 10 cultural rules’, Lila MacLellan, Quartz, 29-Sep-2016, www.qz.com].
A Millennial challenge to the Law of Jante?
The fabric of Jantelagen in a society like Sweden remains firmly intact despite the reality of growing inequalities in income since the 1990s – the top 20% of workers in Sweden earn four times as much as the bottom 20% (OECD). There are some signs in the Scandinavian countries however that the fabric is coming under strain, especially from the changing expectations of the countries’ youth. The inexorable rise of social media presages a Millennial backlash against the Law of Jante… University of Bergen academic Cornelius Cappelen points to the pervasive influence of online platforms to effect behavioural change and undermine the Jante mindset, ie, bragging on Facebook, Instagram, Vlogging, etc, all promoting “rampant individualism” (Cappelin) [‘Law of Jante’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Jantelagen: Why Swedes won’t talk about wealth’, Maddy Savage, BBC, 18-Oct-2019, www.bbc.com].
(Photo: Sveriges Radio)
Exo-group influences
Aside from pushback from a social media-fuelled Scandinavian youth, challenges to the unspoken social norms of ”Jante-ism” may emerge from other sectors of society. Sweden is increasingly a migrant society, estimates put the proportion of Swedish citizens with a foreign background at around 25%…this growing diversity exposes the community to the influence of outside cultures, many of which have very different socio-cultural norms to the ‘native’ ones, such as the celebration of achievements, skills and talents of the individual (Savage).
Helsinki: Vanha kaupunki (Source: Multi Briefs)
🇩🇰 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇫🇮 🇮🇸
Sandemose’s stern image on a Norwegian jet
Endnote: TPS
Scandinavia’s Jante Law evokes similarities with other cultural phenomenons such as the (albeit less institutionalised) “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. This millennia-old cultural phenomenon—deriving from Ancient Greek and Roman sources—is conspicuously present in but by no means unique to the cultural ethos of Australia and New Zealand. Having freed themselves of the status of British colonies far away in the South-west Pacific, Australians and New Zealanders created through war and statehood a new and separate (mythic) identity for themselves as a ‘superior’ type of Briton…one in which “Jack was as good as his master”. This sustained myth of classlessness, sometimes described as a kind of “ideological egalitarianism down under”, was a conscious attempt to distance these “New Britons” from the rigid class system of the mother country.
⊡ Jante laki in Finnish and Jantelögin in Icelandic
⊞ a sort of mock “informal Scandinavian Ten Commandments” (Booth)
⊟ Sandemose himself by all accounts was hardly a model Nordic citizen, irritable of nature, of questionable morality and thoroughly unpleasant to family according to his granddaughter Iben, also a writer (Booth)
⊠ UN World Happiness Report (2018) ranked the top three countries, in order, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Previously in 2016 Denmark topped the world poll
The former authoritarian ruler of Yugoslavia and the glue that kept the multi-national “South Slav” state together for such a long period in the postwar, (Josip Broz) Tito, had a penchant for collecting things while he ruled the roost in that erstwhile country. While some people might content themselves with collecting stamps or coins or even 17th century antique French clocks, the president’s passion for accumulating was on a much larger and lavish scale. The perks for Tito that came with the job would be the envy of any ambitious 21st century CEO.
Kumrovec (Tito’s birthplace/statue)
Balkan “head honcho” with 34 addresses
Marshal Tito’s possessions in the Yugoslav property market ensured that he was never short of a bed to sleep in for the night. At one stage the Predsednik had an estimated 34 villas scattered all over the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslav. Some were residences—official and otherwise—some were holiday homes, some he lived in substantially, some he occupied only fleetingly and some he never go round to living in. There was hunting lodges galore and a castle or three, grand and opulent living was a common denominator with the Tito properties.
Beli Dvor, Belgrade
Tito’s happy hunting grounds
There were several Tito villas in Belgrade alone, the Vila Mir (the “Oval House”), the Presidential Palace and the most famous of all, used for a different kind of hunting, “diplomatic hunts”, Beli dvor (”the White Palace”), the former Karadordević royal family residence seized by the communist government♝. Within Bosnia and Herzegovina Marshal Tito had several hunting lodges in the mountains where he apparently was very partial to hunting bears, one was close to the regional hub Sarajevo. Tito also presumably liked to be close to his roots as one residence was in Tito’s childhood village, Kumrovec in Croatia. Croatia was good for hunting grounds too. Then there was Vila Dunavka, a very spacious 100-acre estate with room for a vineyard, wine cellars, a forest and of course hunting grounds, all part of the president’s fiefdom (Tito’s Legacy: Surveying the Yugoslav Leader’s Real Estate’, Milica Stojanovic, Samir Kajosevic, Anja Vladisavljevic and Malden Lakic, Balkan Insight, 28-Jun-2019, www.balkaninsight.com).
Tito, mixing the drinks in his Brijuni villa bar
Tito’s island getaway
Tito even had his own private island retreats in the Brijuni Islands, a small archipelago on the northern Adriatic. The Brijunis have been described as Tito’s ‘Xanadu’, as evidenced by his spending on average four to six months a year at the two residences—the “White Villa” on the main island Veli Brijuni and another villa on Vanga Island—which served as both his playground and his office. The 3,000 square metre Bejila vila was Tito’s principal summer palace where he held business dealings and diplomacy with world leaders and hosted other members of the glitterati of the day (Sophia Loren was a regular visitor). When Bejila vila became too public and open, Tito had Vanga Villa built which served as “a secluded hideaway” with two purposes, to conduct “sensitive political dealings”, and for private entertainment of VIPs (Haile Selassie, Elizabeth II, etc) and celebrities (Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, Taylor and Burton, etc) (Niebyl).
Tito with Liz Taylor & Richard Burton (who portrayed Tito on the big screen) Gradu Brdo (Photo: siol.sl)
Other Tito villas were located in Split, Dubrovnik, Zagreb and in Serbia (including in Karadordević which functioned as a sort of Winter Palace for Marshal Tito), Slovenia (a villa on picturesque Lake Bled and a 16th century mansion Castle Brdo), Montenegro (including the Galeb ‘Seagull’ Villa) and North Macedonia. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia some of the myriad of residences have fallen in a state of disrepair and some have become museums (pulling in the “Yugo-nostalgic” tourists), ‘Yugo-Nostalgia Thrives at Tito Memorials’, Marisa Ristic, Balkan Insight, 25-Jun-2013, www.balkaninsight.com).
Presidential palace on wheels
In addition to the real estate there were the large moveable objects, Take Tito’s famed Blue Train (Plavi voz). The luxury train was “built as a peripatetic presidential palace to impress (visiting) international heads of state”, dictators and democratic leaders alike♗. The train had sleeper cars for over 90 people, elegant wood paneling, plush banquet rooms, conference rooms (all tastefully decorated), restaurant, bar, etc, even a specific train car to transport the president’s personal (bulletproof) Mercedes. After Tito’s demise the Blue Train wasted away in a Belgrade hangar for yonks, however in the past decade it has been resurrected and well-heeled tourists can traverse the 476-kilometre journey from Belgrade to Bar (Montenegro) on what some Yugoslavs use to call the “Blue Miracle” (‘The Return of Tito’s Train: From Serbia To Montenegro – A Track To The Past’, Michael Williams, Independent, 13-Jul-2013, www.independent.co.uk; ‘All Aboard! Explore the legendary and luxurious private train of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito’, Donald Niebyl, Spomenik Database, Upd. 13-Apr-2020, www.spomenikdatabase.org).
Tito’s Douglas DC-6B (Source: Pinterest)
Air Tito
Similarly, when travelling by air, Tito made sure he didn’t skimp on comfort and luxury. In 1958 he took possession of two specially built Douglas DC-6B planes, one for use by JAT Airways (the national carrier) and the other, his private jet. The luxury aircraft was used by Tito for diplomatic missions and state business trips…the first official mission took him to India, Africa and the Middle East to connect with potential fellow NAM leaders. When the DC-6B started to age the Yugoslav strongman traded it in for a new Soviet Ilyushin Il-14 and continued to upgrade his personal carrier, French Süd Aviation SE 210 Caravelle followed by a Boeing 727♚ (‘From Red Star to Red Bull: The History of Tito’s Douglas DC-6B’, Donald Niebyl, Spomenik Database, Upd. 16-Feb-2020, www.spomenikdatabase.org).
‘Galeb’, now docked & rusting (Source: Tendanceouest)
Have yacht, will visit
Galeb (‘Seagull’), Tito’s Italian constructed luxury yacht, rounds out the trifecta of luxurious presidential transporters. As with the personal train and aircraft, Tito used it to entertain his A-list of international political associates and celebrities on voyages. Originally acquired as as a training ship, Tito sailed it to London in 1953 for talks with British PM Churchill, a watershed meeting heralding Yugoslavia’s opening to the West, following Tito’s split with Stalin and the Eastern Bloc (‘Galeb Ship’, Muzej Grada Rijeka, www.muzej-Rijeka.hr).
Tito’s “lux-cars”
Another of Tito’s prized possessions was his 5.6m-long Cadillac Eldorado Convertible, located on Veli Brijuni, which he used to take guests (actors, artists, diplomats, politicians) on tours of the island’s national park and safari park/zoo between 1953 and 1979 (‘Tito’s Cadillac’, np-Brijuni.hr). The “Caddy limo” was just one of Marshal Tito’s 13 luxury cars including a 1960 Rolls-Royce Phantom and the Merc mentioned above (‘Ex-President Tito’s Caddy Convertible? Oh, Yes’, Eugene S. Robinson, Ozy, 03-Jun-2014, www.ozy.com).
Tito with his fourth wife Jovanka, “pressing the flesh” (Source: blis.rs)
The bulk of Tito’s possessions were not owned by the president but by the state—or so the courts say—as his relatives have now ruefully discovered. The ruling by a Serbian court in 2016 put paid to the hopes of the late president’s heirs who had pursued inheritance cases for over 30 years. Some 70,000 of Marshal Tito’s belongings have been stored in Belgrade’s Museum of Yugoslav History♔ (‘Court leaves family of Yugoslav leader Tito empty-handed’, The Daily Star (Lebanon), 25-Jan-2016, www.dailystar.lb).
House of Flowers (Photo: Ex Utopia)
⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝⍝
♝ Tito’s current ‘residence’ is also in Belgrade, his final resting place, the House of Flowers, the presidential mausoleum
♗ among the dignitaries to enjoy the extravagant palatial interiors were Gaddafi, Yaser Arafat and Mitterrand
♚ these days Tito’s personal DC-6B is owned by the Red Bull company
♔ including some moon rocks, a gift of US President Nixon from the Apollo missions
Having delved recently into the historic fascist groups in Hungary and Romania between the wars—“Arrow Cross and Iron Guard: The Native Fascist Movements in Interwar Hungary and Romania”, blog 10-Aug-2021)—I thought it’d be interesting to take a comparative look at their contemporary counterpart in Yugoslavia. The most conspicuous fascist organisation active in post-WWI Yugoslavia shared many of the features of other European far-right movements while exhibiting some characteristics that departed from the standard typology of European fascism.
(Image: Mapsland)
⇑ Alexander I, the “Royal Dictator”
Fear of a Pan-Serbia
Like all European fascist groups in the interwar period the “home-grown” fascist movement embodied in the Croatian Revolutionary Movement, known as Ustaše🆚 (or anglicised as ‘Ustasha’) evolved out of discontent with the new national arrangements following the conclusion of hostilities. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia (originally the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), came into existence from a ”polyglot mosaic of little states“. From the start there was a built-in tension between the centralism of the unitary Yugoslav state and Serbia and the federalist impulses of the other nationalities. Feeding and intensifying Croatian nationalism was Serbian control over the new state – the head of state, the king, was a Serb and the Yugoslav army was essentially Serbian. What wrangled most Croats was that “the new Yugoslavia was not a state of narodno jedinstvo (national unity) (as promised) but a greater Serbia in all but name“ (Judah). In the early years of the kingdom, the political voice of Croatian disapproval of the lop-sided state of affairs came from the moderately rightist Croatian Peasants Party (CPP), who advocated for land reform to alleviate the conditions of Croatian peasantry (75% of the kingdom’s population was agrarian-based). The assassination of the CPP leader in parliament was followed by a coup by King Alexander who installed a “personal dictatorship” and a political crackdown. In response to the crisis Ante Pavelić a former CPP member formed the extremist Ustaše Party🅾️.
Ustasé ideology
The Ustaše movement’s ideological framework contained many of the traits typically found in other European far-right groups—ultranationalism❎ (stridently advocating the uniqueness of the Croatian nation); rabidly racist (though it’s antisemitism seems to have become more visible later after prompting from the Nazis); the significance of religion (Catholicism in its case) and patriarchal life; anti-communist (rejecting Marxism for it’s interference with family life); anti-capitalist and also anti-democratic, believing that the mechanism of parliamentary democracy was corrupt; adopting the personality cult common to most fascist organisations (Pavelić under the influence of the big dictators Mussolini and Hitler styled himself Poglavnik, broadly analogous to Il Duce and Führer, and following the cult’s blueprint demanding unswerving submission to the will of the leader.
Constructing a separate racial theory
The Ustaše view of the racial origins of the Croatian people was a complicated one, but one that suited their national aspirations, to create “a completely independent, ethnically homogeneous nation-state”…this requited separating ’pure’ Croats from the melange of ethnic and religious minorities in Croatia, especially from the more numerous Serbs. Ustaše party ideologues set about trying to minimise the Croats’ Slavic roots while developing the idea that the Croats‘ hybrid stock comprised a kind of “Ayran-Nordic-Dinaric” amalgam, which they contrasted with the alleged “Balkan-Vlach” identity of the Serbs. The Ustaše identified the Croats as descending from the Goths and therefore of Germanic stock, a contrivance by Pavelić by which he hoped “to curry favour with the Nazis”Ⓜ (Bartulin, ‘Ideology of Nation and Race’). The Ustaše aped other aspects of Nazi racial vilification, applying the derogatory term Untermensch (“sub-human) to its scapegoats, Serbs, Jews, etc.
⇑ “A slave never!” (Source: Pinterest.ca)
National regeneration: Forward to the past
As we saw with the Iron Guard Movement’s Omol nou in Romania, Ustaše theory extolled the concept of Novi čovjek, the “New Man”. The movement’s mission as it saw it was to ‘reawaken’ the racially authentic (ie, ‘Aryan’) Croat—the koljenović—who had been corrupted and debased by centuries of foreign rule. The Ustaše Novi čovjek aligns with a core element of generic fascism, formulated by political theorist Roger Griffin called “palingenetic ultranationalism”, which combines “a myth of rebirth or regeneration” with a nationalism that is populist and “radically anti-liberal”, ie, ultranationalism. In the world according to Ustaše, the regenerated Croat warrior, heroic and uber-masculine, is the conduit for a new order to replace the old “decadent and decaying” one.
Ustaše and Iron Guard
Commonalities between the Ustaše movement and Romania’s Iron Guard fascists were many, both were deeply mystical organisations, preoccupied with a death cult and notions of violence and martyrdom (though the Ustašhe didnt express the same degree of intense religious ritualism as Iron Guard). Both Ustaše and Iron Cross members tended to see the world in extreme Manichean terms, regularly evoking the imagery of the ”overtly apocalyptic and chiliastic” (Yeomans).
Ustaše militias unleashed an unrestrained violent onslaught to deal with the perceived enemies of Croatia, terrorist targeting of political foes, assassinations, shootings, knifings, bombings, etc. The pattern of party violence culminated in attempts at outright genocide when Pavelić’s fascists gained power in Yugoslavia during World War One. Ustaše ‘reprisals’ were concentrated against the Serbs, Jews and Roma who came under their area of control – estimations of atrocities committed the Ustaše and the authorities vary, somewhere between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serbian civilians were slaughtered in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in just one year of an out-of-control, manic bloodlust. Another Ustaše strategy supposedly to purify the NDH or the “Independent State of Croatia”—accomplished with the collaboration of Croatian Catholic clergy—was the forcible conversion of somewhere in the vicinity of 250,000 Orthodox Serbs and Jews⛎. In a further emulation of Nazi extermination methods Ustaše built a notorious concentration camp in Slavonia, Jasenovac, where upward of 100,000 Serbs, Roma and Jews were barbarically killed during the war (consequently Jasenovac is known as the “Auschwitz of the Balkans”).
⇑ Two uniformed Ustaše women (Source: Pinterest)
Footnote: Women in the Ustaše world
Just as the Ustaše envisaged a new type of Croatian man reinvigorated with the lost values of valour and struggle, it wanted to return Croatian women to a previous, less pluralist life. The Ustaše railed against the sexual status quo, against an encroaching feminism which had liberated women from the home, becoming, in Ustaše eyes, “cafe dolls without children”, sacrificing family for their careers. The movement wanted to revive the cult of motherhood, making Croatian women submissive and dutiful home bodies again, procreating a new generation of Croats. At the same time the Ustaše hierarchy organised women into their own separate body called the “Vine of Ustaše Women”, their main task was to act as social workers of sorts, circulating among the peasant women in Croatia to bring about improvements in their lives. Interestingly, as Rory Yeomans outlined, the leadership received pushback from militant young female members of the movement who wanted the same opportunity as Ustaše men to become warriors and immerse themselves in the revolutionary activities of the cause. In any event, the drain on Croatian manpower during the war necessitated a re-expansion of female roles to fill the gaps left by men in offices and factories and even in the military ranks (Yeomans).
“Greater Croatia” ⇑
Postscript: The Ustaše fascists failed to establish a mass base of support as a precondition for its revolutionary movement that Arrow Cross and Iron Guard movements achieved in their respective countries. And in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Croatian peasantry, Ustaše never matched the appeal of CPP. Added to this, Ustaše’s growing chauvinistic stance in pursuing a “Greater Croatia” ensured it made no headway in trying to appeal to any other national group in the country. Ustaše as a consequence was forced to draw on Croatian students, right wing intellectuals and the lower clergy for its core support. An additional brake on Ustaše power was the effectiveness of opposition from the left in Yugoslavia—in stark contrast to the situation in Romania and Hungary—from the well-organised communist party (brilliantly led by Tito).
Poglavnik Pavelić ⇑
⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫⌫
🆚 = ‘Insurgents’
🅾️ the spiritual antecedent to Ustaše was probably the right wing nationalist Party of Rights (including the Frankovci cell)
❎ Ustaše‘s brand of fascism was ultranationalistic, see ’National regeneration: Forward to the past‘
Ⓜ for his part, Hitler was at best lukewarm toward Pavelić’s movement, considering them too violently aggressive, preferring a stable and neutral Yugoslavian regime to allow Germany to continue to access it’s raw materials during the war. The Nazis only reluctantly turned to the Ustaše as a “puppet government’ after civil war broke out in Yugoslavia
⛎ assistance given by the Catholic Church to Ustaše reached the highest pinnacle. At war’s end, when things turned dire for Pavelić and his cronies, the Vatican facilitated their escape to Argentina via the notorious German “Rat line” by issuing them clerical passports (Stockton)
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Texts and articles consulted:
‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth: The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies’, Roger Griffin, Library of Social Science’,www.libraryofsocialscience.com
‘Ideology of Nation and Race: The Croatian Ustasha Regime and its Policies Toward the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945)’, Nevenko Bartulin, Croatian Studies Review, 5 (2008)
Rory Yeomans. “Militant Women, Warrior Men and Revolutionary Personae: The New Ustasha Man and Woman in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 2005, pp. 685–732. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4214175. Accessed 12 Aug. 2021
Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (3rd edition, 2009)
Nevenko Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory (2014)
‘Meet the Ustaše, The Brutal Nazi Allies Even Hitler Couldn’t Control’, Richard Stockton, ATI, Upd. 6-Jun-2020, www.allthatsinteresting.com
Aleksa Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919-1953 (1991)
(Image: Canadian Encyclopedia)
Historic map detailing extent of Longbottom area (Source: docplayer.net)
1890 map identifies “Longbottom Estate” (Source: Coupe)
Reminders of the Canadien exiles’ presence
Impression Bay Probation Station. North American prisoners did hard labour at the network of probation stations on Van Diemens Land’ (Image: UTAS)
Concord Oval: Longbottom trenches excavated in 1984 (Credit: Canada Bay Connections)
