During the time of European settlement of North America there has been at least three attempts to invade Canada by Americans (or by British settlers in what was to become the United States of America). All three ended ignominiously. The first in 1690, part of the Anglo-French conflict known as King William’s War, was a naval expedition by the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Sir William Phips with the objective of seizing Québec City, the capital of New France. The English bombardment of Québec was an abject failure and Phips’ expedition was forced to return to Boston in smallpox-infested ships on which hundreds perished on the journey [‘King William’s War 1688-1697’, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, www.colonialsociety.org]<ᵃ>.
1690 assault on Québec City from Massachusetts Bay colonists
The second invasion attempt was in 1775, during the early days of the American Revolutionary War. The idea to invade came from American army colonel (and later defector to the British side) Benedict Arnold, the rationale being to try to induce French Canadians to join the war for independence against their British rulers. The assault on Québec led by Arnold was easily repulsed by a reinforced British garrison and the American patriots reduced to 100 men were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs back to the American side [‘Battle of Québec: When Benedict Arnold Tried to Invade Canada’, Patrick J. Kiger, History, Upd. 29-Sep-2021, www.history.com].
1775 invasion of Québec, brainchild of Benedict Arnold.
The third occurrence was during the War of 1812, when the Americans invaded Canada, urged on by the “war hawks” in Congress who predicted it would an easy victory (in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a mere matter of marching”)<ᵇ>.Despite making several invasion attempts, via both Upper and Lower Canada, the Americans again emerged empty-handed from their efforts (due to a combination of factors including inept US military leadership and woeful preparedness, and fierce resistance from the allied forces of British ‘Redcoats’ and First Nation warriors). In early 1813 the Vermont newspaper Green-Mountain Farmer lamented that the Canadian campaign had produced nothing but “disaster, defeat, disgrace, and ruin and death” [‘How U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago’, Jesse Greenspan, History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com].
Guernsey Is stamp, commemoratingMaj-Gen Brock, War of 1812 (Source: rpsc.org)
.
In addition there have been other unsanctioned invasions from the US, such as the Patriot War of 1837-38, a series of disjointed raids from the US borderlands in support of the Canadian rebels (Rebellions of 1837). The Americans who participated, many from the Hunters’ Lodges, were motivated both by antagonisms against what they saw as British tyranny and by a sense of adventurism (Washington under Van Buren maintained a policy of neutrality during this episode to safeguard its trade interests with Britain).
Map source: New York Almanack
.
After the American Civil War Irish-American Republicans from the Fenian Brotherhood crossed the border, raiding British military strongholds in both the west and east of Canada as part of a stratagem to force the British into negotiation for Irish independence…the most notable of these engagements was the Battle of Ridgeway (1866) in which the Fenians were victorious over inexperienced Canadian volunteers. For the Fenian militia it was a pyrrhic victory, serving only to a spur for the realisation of Canadian confederation rather than to advance the cause of Irish independence<ᶜ> . [‘An Irishman’s Diary on the Battle of Ridgeway, the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866’, Brendan Ô Cathaoir, The Irish Times, 01-Jun-2016, www.irishtimes.com].
And when Americans weren’t engaged in the process of actually invading Canada, they were often scheming and planning to annex their northern neighbour. One of the more bizarre instances of this was “War Plan Red”, this 1930 US plan to invade Canada was, unlike earlier ones, supposedly a scheme to get in first! The US military’s predessors to the Pentagon feared that Britain in the years following WWI might launch an invasion of the US from Canada. Canadians in fact had already preempted the US with the military coming up with its own “Defender Scheme No. 1”, a five-pronged attack plan to invade the US (the idea was that Canada would make the initial (surprise) strike on key American cities and then rely on Britain and it’s other dominions to follow up the invasion). Fortunately, nothing came of either of these plans and they were quietly shelved by the time North Americans managed to crystallise in their minds who the real enemy was (Nazi Germany) [‘The Time the U.S. Almost Went to War With Canada’, Kevin Lippert, Politico Magazine, 21-Jun-2018, www.politico.com].
.
Parliament ablaze in Montreal
Another odd manifestation of the tendency toward annexation came from north of the 49th Parallel in the 1840s. In 1846 Britain repealed the Corn Laws<ᵈ> ending preferential colonial trade which provoked a merchant revolt in Canada. Conservative Anglophone businessmen were fearful that without protection for their produce the Canadian economy might plummet into recession, some of them rioted, burning down the new parliament building in Montreal. 325 of the Tory businessmen, convinced that republican system of the United States would be more profitable to them, signed a document known as the Montreal Annexation Manifesto (1849), calling for the US to annex Canada. This of course never came to reality but the movement’s primary objective, reciprocal free trade with the US and access to its market, was ultimately realised with the Elgin-Marcy (Reciprocity) Treaty in 1854…by which Canadian lumber and wheat entered the US duty-free, in exchange the Americans were given fishing rights off Canada’s Atlantic coast.
╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾
<ᵃ> an unexpected consequence of Phips’ disastrous Québec adventure was Massachusetts’ introduction of the first government-backed paper currency in the American colonies, necessary to pay the near-mutinous troops, promised a share of the loot from Québec’s capture [Goldberg, Dror. “The Massachusetts Paper Money of 1690.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 1092–1106. http://www.jstororg/stable/25654034.]
<ᵇ> once again the American invaders made the error of thinking they would be received as liberators in Canada
<ᶜ> curiously, in this same year (1866) a bill—designed to appeal to American Fenians—was introduced into the US Congress to formally annex “British North America”, but it never passed the House of Reps
<ᵈ> the ‘corn’ laws in the UK encompassed all cereal grain crops
Between 1899 and 1902 Britain and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were locked in conflict in the Second South African War, more commonly known as the Boer War (or more accurately the Second Anglo-Boer War). With the overconfident British failing to secure the expected quick victory over the Boers’ “citizen army”, the war dragged on into a long guerrilla engagement. In 1901, in the middle of the conflict in South Africa, of all things a cricket team from South Africa visited England and Ireland to take part in a series of international matches. How did this sporting incongruity take place while the two countries were engaged in a controversial, bitterly fought and increasingly divisive war?
Lord Hawke’s MCC tourists to SA 1898-99
∘
Making it happen: JD Logan, the “Squire of the Southern Karoo”
In fact, the tour of Britain had been originally meant to occur in 1900ⓐ, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of hostilities, understandably enough. At this point in stepped Cape Province-based expat entrepreneur and cricket patron James Douglas Logan with his (long-cherished) plan to organise a new tour. Logan negotiated with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) through the highly influential Lord Hawke, who managed to persuade the MCC to give the tour the green light. Despite the war still very much raging and the outcome far from decided, it was rescheduled for the following year. The announcement for the tour to take place in 1901 unleased opposition and misgivings from within both countries.
Newspaper cartoon of James Logan (Source: hermanus-history-society.co.za)
∘
The South African press lambasted the team chosen–a mix of “socialite-gentleman” cricketers (including Logan’s own son who had never played first-class cricket!) and more skilful players—for being overall well below par. Moreover, the press criticised the private venture by the “Laird of Matjiesfontein” as being not legitimate because the touring players predominantly from the Cape Colony had not been officially selected by the South African Cricket Union (which had suspended the Currie Cup and disbanded with the onset of war) {Sport Past and Present in South Africa: Trans(forming) the Nation, Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grindingh (Eds.), (contributor Dean Allen) 2013; Peter Wynn Thomas, The Complete History of Cricket Tours At Home and Abroad, 1989}.
Sherlock’s creator: make war, not cricket
From the host country, probably the most vociferous critic was world renowned author (and cricket fan and amateur player) Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle, in the forefront of countering the anti-war propaganda within the British homeland with his own pro-war propaganda, was incensed that a team of predominantly English-speaking cricketers should be coming to Britain to play when they should be stay in South Africa and fight the Boers. The vexed authorof Sherlock Holmes called it “a stain on their manhood” (Cornelissen, Grindingh).
Conan Doyle in cricket gear (Source: arthur-conan-doyle.com)
Despite the dissenting voices, what ultimately clinched it for Logan’s private tour was the MCC and the major English county clubs’ agreeing to give the tour matches first-class status. Even then there were second thoughts on the South Africa side and a suggestion made that the tour should not go ahead…this was scotched by the MCC who insisted it proceed to prevent the dislocation of the 1901 English season (Cornelissen, Grindingh).
Jimmy Sinclair (Photo: Cricket Weekly Record)
The crickettour 🏏
Logan’s 14-man team was predominantly Uitlanders (‘foreigners’, immigrants, mainly British in composition but from other countries as well)…it included one Afrikaner cricketer Johannes Kotze who proved one of the more accomplished performers. The South Africans’ ‘gun’ batsman coming in to the tour was JH Sinclair, however his batting never really got going on the tour (unlike his bowling which was quite effective). Sinclair had been captured by the Boers but escaped in time to make the trip to Britain. Maitland Hathorn was the most successful “willow-wielder” on the tour (827 runs, average 35.95). Overall the team performed moderately though it did beat five of the major counties and tied one. Financially, Logan lost a substantial sum on the venture.
1901 Sth African tourists (Source: ebay.com)∘
Cricket’s special role serving the Empire
To the English, cricket, the game they invented, was the quintessential sport, and an essential companion of empire building. This was the “golden age“ of cricket (1895-1914) with WG Grace’s shadow still very much dominating the sportⓑ. The Victorians revered cricket as an established institution, it was integral to the ethos of the English gentleman and a sign of his cultural supremacy. Moreover cricket was considered educative, part of an Englishman’s training. Spreading the game to the Empire, to Australasia, the West Indies, the Indian Sub-continent and Southern Africa, symbolised the “civilising mission of the Englishman abroad”. Participation in cricket was equated with the civility of English Victorian society and an endorsement of Anglo-Saxon values. Cricket tours by the MCC, the sport’s governing body in England, stimulated the colonies‘ interest in the English game, but its deeper purpose was to “promote imperial ideology”, extolling the virtues of allegiance to Britain, Empire and patriotic duty {Dean Allen, Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa, Logan of Matjiesfontein, 2015}. Allen’s thesis is that cricket was injected by the English ruling classes into South Africa “as much for political and propagandistic reasons as for sporting ones”
War an instrument of empire with cricket the mentor
The late Victorians affirmed that “manly games” were integral to training for life. Above all the ‘school’ of cricket taught lessons of “discipline, self-abnegation, a sense of fair play and team-work”, it built character. Britain’s willingness to engage in the 1899 War to enlarge the Empire—the scramble for colonies in Africa in competition with Germany and France—brought the cricketing fraternity squarely into the frame. Cricketers, to the English mind, were “made of the right stuff” for mortal combat, they were up for martial challenges (Donaldson, Peter (2017) ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899-1902. War in History, 25(1). ISSN 0968-3445). Many cricketers enlisted in the South African War (some former teammates found themselves on opposing sides), and there were cricketing casualties in the conflict {Dean Allen (2005) ‘Bats and Bayonets’: Cricket and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902, Sport in History, 25:1, 17-40, DOI: 10.1080/17460260500073033}, including some fine players of the day like Anglo-Australian test bowling ace JJ Ferris.
Australian troops playing cricket at the front in SA (Photo: awm.org.au)∘
Endnote: Pioneering South African XI on the Sub-continent
An unintended co-occurrence of the Boer War was that it led to the staging of the first cricket match between South Africans and local cricketers on Sub-continent soil, 90 years before Apartheid sport ended in South Africa. ‘Representing’ South Africa were Afrikaner POWs incarcerated in Ceylon…Diyatalawa Camp v Colts XI, Nondescripts Club ground, Colombo 1901. The local XI won! {‘The First South Africa. side to play in the sub-continent: Boer Prisoners of War in 1901’, CricketMash, 4-Jul-2020, www.cricmash.com}.
Mafeking reported in cricketing terms (source: independentaustralia.net)∘
Postscript: 1899 South African War, cricket as antidote to physical and moral degeneration
The poor health of many Boer War recruits and Britain’s early reversals in the war added weight to prevailing concerns about national and ‘racial’ degeneration {Robb, George. “The Way of All Flesh: Degeneration, Eugenics, and the Gospel of Free Love.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 6, no. 4, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 589–603, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617222.} Some commentators of the day, bemoaning the ”neglect of an active athleticism“, called for more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen” {Anthony Bateman, Cricket, Literature and Culture: Symbolising the Nation, Destabilising Empire, 2016}.
𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽
ⓐ the English MCC side had just concluded their own tour of South Africa in April 1899, just six months before the war commenced
ⓑ Dr Grace loomed larger than life in cricket during this period as the sport’s first genuine superstar
The latest buzz phrases in economic policy in PRC under Xi Jinping are “common prosperity” and “dual circulation” (see Postscript). Actually, common prosperity (Gongtong fuyu) is not new at all to communist China, there has had two previous iterations, the expression originating with Chairman Mao as far back as 1953. Then in the late 1970s leader Deng Xiaoping co-opted the term, flipping it to help spearhead an economic reorientation from the ideologically adherent socialism of Mao to an opening towards market capitalism and private enterprise. Deng proposed a different route to common prosperity, one that allowed some peasants to get rich, which would provide the catalyst to drag the others towards the stated objective.
(Source: addicted2success.com)
First generation billionaires and millionaires; social cohesion imperilled
Beijing tell us the purpose of the Xi-led common prosperity initiative is to reverse the growing trend of the wealth gap which has dramatically increased since Deng’s day. China’s rapid economic growth made it possible to lift millions of Chinese out of poverty, but has also led to a situation where the top 1% holding 30.6% of the country’s wealth. Estimates put the number of Chinese (USD) billionaires as high as 1.1 million (second to the US) (East Asia Forum 20-Sep-2021)⁼ᵃ⁼. According to Elizabeth Economy, China’s Gini coefficient ranks it in the camp of the world’s most unequal states (quoted in Andrew Collier, ’China’s ‘Common Prosperity Campaign Is Going to Be Tough’, The Diplomat, 18-Sep-2021, www.thediplomat.com). Many middle class Chinese citizens are flaunting thbeir nouvelles richesses with luxury acquisitions, which doesn’t go unnoticed by those lower down the socio-economic strata.
Xi in Mao’s shadow? (Photo: denverpost.com)
A pivot to the left?
The Asia Society’s Kevin Rudd described common prosperity as a strategy to re-establish the prominence of the state and the party over the market. Many China-watchers don’t necessarily attribute the new move by the Xi government to the communist party having suddenly rediscovered its 1949 socialist roots. With the situation calling for change, Xi is acting also with an eye to bolstering up his leadership and legitimacy to secure a third term as president next year.
Jack Ma (Source: las2orillas.co)
Cracking down on Alibaba and Tencent
Xi and the party looked round for targets, pressure has been exerted on China’s high profile business elite, mega-billionaires such as Jack Ma and Pony Ma. In genuflect-like fashion their respective companies Alibaba and Tencent quickly came forward to pledge billions of dollars to charities (‘Chinese tech giants pledge billions to support President Xi Jinping’s ‘ common prosperity goal’, Dong Xing, ABC News, 07-Sep-2021, www.abc.net.au). Others to find themselves in the cross-hairs of the new reform agenda include private tutoring, online gaming and the entertainment industry. Critics say that leaning on big tech companies and taxing high and ‘unreasonable’ incomes won’t fix China’s structural inequality in income. What is required is a fundamental change in tax structure and state system which addresses the core problem of a lack of tax revenue. China’s share of revenue is 28.% of GDP cf. 40.3% for OECD countries, its personal income taxes loiter at just 1.2% of GDP cf. the OECD’s 8.2%. PRC’s “Achilles Heel” in tax is the paucity of its compliance, the present system results in a low number of personal tax payers in China relative to workforce size (Collier).
(Source: Brunswick Group)
No “Robin Hood” scenario at work
The Chinese government has moved quickly to reassure concerned business heavyweights (and international investors) about its motives…senior economic official Han Wenxiu’s pitch: common prosperity was “not about killing the rich to help the poor”, rather, he said, it is geared to “doing a proper job of expanding the pie and dividing the pie” (‘Assessing China’s “common prosperity” campaign’, Ryan Haas, Brookings, 09-Sep-2021, www.brookings.edu).
The outcome of such a transformation as the reforms may bring about, some fear may be a “top down Utopian China” with, as K Rudd suggested earlier, even more power and control devolving to the party (‘Changing China: How Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ may impact the world’, Kaishma Vaswani, BBC News, 07-Oct-2021, www.bbc.com).
Little appetite for property and inheritance taxes
One source of redistributing wealth on a national level is taxation on property and inheritance (and a more progressive income tax). But there appears little enthusiasm to upturn this apple cart as it steps uncomfortably on the toes of communist party elites and their vested interests (Haas).
Image: radiichina.com
Endnote: Millennial “have-nots“, in dire need of a share of the common prosperity
The effects of the free market’s dislocation of Chinese society in the early 21st century falls heaviest on the young. Young Chinese face enormous pressures on the highly competitive road to success, starting with the pressure cooker of trying to excel in the gaokao (higher education entrance exam). Even with tertiary qualifications under their belt, so many find themselves chasing the same plum jobs. with nine million-a-year university graduates, with the exception of a fortunate few “a whole generation” miss out on the Chinese good life promised by the capitalist success story (‘China’s ‘common prosperity’ goal won’t mean Robin Hood style redistribution’, Andrew Leung, South China Morning Post, 23–Sep-2021, www.scmp.com). Signs of growing millennial dissatisfaction with the uber-demanding drudgery of the “996”⁼ᵇ⁼ work culture in large Chinese companies manifest themselves—largely via Weibo the Chinese social media network—in the “lying flat” movement (píng tâng) … more twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings opting to drop-out of the competitive rat race, thus earning the state‘s opprobrium (‘The buzzwords reflecting the frustration of China’s young generation’, Fan Wang & Yitsing Wang, BBC, 14-Jun-2021, www.bbc.com). Then there’s the elusive dream of home ownership, wealthy property investors and speculators have pushed the cost of owning a home out of the reach of many millennials…squeezed out of the property market, feeling burn-out from “996”, more young Chinese are forgoing (or at least postponing) starting a family.
(Photo.thestar.com.my)
Postscript: A new economic model to narrow the income gap
“Dual circulation” dovetails neatly into the objective of common prosperity. Beijing has signalled its intent to re-gig the economic model, moving away from over-dependence on exports and capital investment favouring large enterprises, and tapping into the potential of its huge domestic market. This could lead to a refocus on services, domestic consumption and the environment, and a reliance on “indigenous innovation to fuel growth” (Leung; ‘What is China’s dual circulation economic strategy and why is it important?’, Frank Tang, South China Morning Post, 19-Nov-2020, www.scmp.com).
𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪⁼ᵃ⁼ conversely some 600 million workers live on the equivalent of US$154 or less a month (East Asia Forum)
Everyone’s heard the story of Marco Polo, his epic journey from Venice via the Silk Road to Cathay (China) and the court of Kublai Khan, and further explorations in Southeast Asia as the Great Khan’s foreign emissary, but much less well known outside the Maghreb and the Middle East are the more impressive peregrinations—in terms of immenseness of scope and distance—of the medieval Moroccan Islamic traveller Ibn Battūta.
Marco Polo’s ‘Travels’
Battūta was born in Tangier, Morocco, into a Berber family of legal scholars about 50 years after Marco Polo’s birth. In 1325 the youthful Battūta set off alone initially with the purpose of undertaking the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, but circumstance and curiosity took the Moroccan scholar on a seemingly never-ending series of extended side trips. Over the next 29 years Battūta’s travels took him on a wide arc to the East, visiting virtually all of the Islamic lands including far-off Sumatra (in modern Indonesia). Battūta’s sense of adventure and desire to learn about distant lands led him to extend his journey far beyond Dar al-Islam (the lands of Islam) to visit Dar al-Kufr (the non-Muslim world). As an Islamic scholar Battūta’s travel to ‘infidel’ lands was legitimised by the Islamic principle of Talab al-‘ilm (“search for knowledge”) (Berman, Nina. “Questions of Context: Ibn Battuta and E. W. Bovill on Africa.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 34, no. 2, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 199–205, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4618304).
Battūta’s travels (Image: ORIAS – University of California, Berkeley)
Battūta’s world
Ibn Battūta’s adventure-packed travels—sometimes on foot, sometimes by sea, often for safety in the company of camel caravans—took him to the lands occupied today by 40 modern countries. Divided into two journeys, the first encompassed North Africa, Central Asia and Russia, the Middle East and Anatolia, India and South Asia, the Maldives, East Africa (down as far as modern Tanzania), Southeast Asia and China. A later, shorter journey took him into the Mali Empire and West Africa (crossing the Sahara to Niger, Timbuktu, etc) and later to Moorish-inhabited Spain.
The top three travellers in Pre-modern history – measured by distance
• Ibn Battūta (Islamic scholar and explorer) approx. 117,000 kilometres
• Zheng He (Chinese admiral and explorer) approx. 50,000 kilometres
• Marco Polo (Venetian merchant and explorer) approx. 24,000 kilometres
(‘Ibn Battuta’, Wikipedia entry; John Parker World Book Encyclopedia, 2004)
Image: www.history.com
Unreliable memoirs
Although Battūta clocked up a phenomenal amount of mileage for a traveller in the Medieval age, many modern scholars believe that Battūta did not visit all of the destinations listed on his Rihla✡ itinerary, the narrative of his journeys. Amikam Elad for instance contends that Battūta plagerised large parts of the travel narrative including the description of Battūta’s travels in Palestine from another Muslim traveller Muhammad al-‘Abduri (Elad, Amikam. “The Description of the Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa in Palestine: Is It Original?” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2, [Cambridge University Press, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland], 1987, pp. 256–72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25212152). Doubts also exist about his visits to the city of Sana’a in Yemen, Bolghar via the Volga River and Khorasan et al. Some academics contend that in China Baṭṭūṭa only ever got as far as Quanzhou and Canton. Another false claim was that he witnessed the funeral of the Mongol Great Khan (the reality was no emperor died during Battūta‘s sojourn in China). The Moroccan storyteller borrowed liberally from hearsay evidence in the accounts of earlier Muslim explorers, and from his illustrious Venetian predecessor – the Rihla reveals many similarities in themes and commentataries to Marco Polo’s Travels.
Marco Polo, adapting to Tartar dress
Polo/Battūta overlap
Both Marco Polo and Ibn Battūta were in a sense oral historians, neither travellers penned a single word of the books they are famous for, instead dictating their travel stories to a scribe. Battūta’s tendency to rely on hearsay to describe some places he didn’t visit (eg, the Great Wall of China) mirrored the larger-than-life Venetian storyteller’s inclinations – Polo described the small island of Ceylon thus, “for its actual size, is better circumstanced than any island in the world”, despite never having set foot on Ceylonese soil (Marco’s contemporaries were well aware that “il Milione” was given to exaggeration).
Battūta/Juzayy’s ‘Rihla’
Battūta’s ghostwriter
As Ibn Battūta never kept a journal during his nearly three decades of travel, the Marinid sultan of Fez commanded him to collaborate with court poet Ibn Juzayy who wrote the manuscript of what became A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling☯ based on Baṭṭūṭa‘s recollections. The title was later shortened for convenience to the Rihla☮. The travel book has transparent shortcomings, the format is undercut by extreme chronological inconsistencies. The travelogue relies on Battūta’s memory—Morgan points out that the memory of a traveller understandably may lapse especially if the travels stretch over such a large passage of time (Morgan, D. O. “Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and the Mongols.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 11, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 1–11, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25188080).
Wives, concubines and divorce
A curious side feature of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s global footprint is the disclosure in the travelogue of various personal relationships he entered in to. Baṭṭūṭa on arriving at a new town regularly married women and took countless concubines, leaving the (divorced) wives and some of his issue as well behind when he moved on. For an observant Muslim Baṭṭūṭa includes a surprising level of sexual detail pertaining to the local women he encounters on his journeys (Singer, Rachel, ‘Love, Sex, and Marriage in Ibn Battuta’s Travels” (2019). MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference. 1. http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/madrush/2029/love/1).
Though the Rihla was in essence intended as the devotional work of a pious Islamic scholar, its real value lies in its secular insights into the world of the Middle Ages…providing descriptions of diverse and far-flung countries’ geography, personalities, politics, cultural practices, sexual mores and the natural world (‘The Longest Hajj: The Journeys of Ibn Battuta’, Douglas Bullis, Aramco World, July-August 2000, www.archive.aramco.com).
(Photo: History Extra)
In the 1350s after Ibn Battūta had finally had his fill of wanderlust and hung up his sandals for good, he settled into an altogether sedentary vocation, appointed as a Qadi (Islamic judge) in his hometown of Tangier.
(Source: Blackstone Audio Inc)
Endnote: Polo and Battūta didn’t invent fabrication and embellishment in travel writing. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (5th century BCE)—considered both the “father of history” and the world’s ur-travel writer from—was prone to mixing in ”legends and fanciful accounts” to his Histories (Euben, Roxanne L. “LIARS, TRAVELERS, THEORISTS: HERODOTUS AND IBN BATTUTA.” Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge, Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 46–89, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t5dw.7).
————————————————————————————————————————
✡ literally the ‘Travels’
☯ the travelogue’s proper title
☮ the word Rihla strictly speaking refers to a genre of Arab literature rather than the name of the travel book (Bullis)
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)
♠♣ ♠♣
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)
1690 assault on Québec City from Massachusetts Bay colonists
And when Americans weren’t engaged in the process of actually invading Canada, they were often scheming and planning to annex their northern neighbour. One of the more bizarre instances of this was “War Plan Red”, this 1930 US plan to invade Canada was, unlike earlier ones, supposedly a scheme to get in first! The US military’s predessors to the Pentagon feared that Britain in the years following WWI might launch an invasion of the US from Canada. Canadians in fact had already preempted the US with the military coming up with its own “Defender Scheme No. 1”, a five-pronged attack plan to invade the US (the idea was that Canada would make the initial (surprise) strike on key American cities and then rely on Britain and it’s other dominions to follow up the invasion). Fortunately, nothing came of either of these plans and they were quietly shelved by the time North Americans managed to crystallise in their minds who the real enemy was (Nazi Germany) [‘The Time the U.S. Almost Went to War With Canada’, Kevin Lippert, Politico Magazine, 21-Jun-2018, www.politico.com].
Deng prosperity (Wikiwand)
(Source: addicted2success.com)
Xi in Mao’s shadow? (Photo: denverpost.com)
Jack Ma (Source: las2orillas.co)
(Source: Brunswick Group)
The outcome of such a transformation as the reforms may bring about, some fear may be a “top down Utopian China” with, as K Rudd suggested earlier, even more power and control devolving to the party (‘Changing China: How Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ may impact the world’, Kaishma Vaswani, BBC News, 07-Oct-2021, www.bbc.com).
Image: radiichina.com
(Photo.thestar.com.my)
Marco Polo’s ‘Travels’
Battūta’s travels (Image: ORIAS – University of California, Berkeley)
Image: www.history.com
Marco Polo, adapting to Tartar dress
Battūta/Juzayy’s ‘Rihla’
(Photo: History Extra)
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)
Beli Dvor, Belgrade
Tito, mixing the drinks in his Brijuni villa bar
Tito with Liz Taylor & Richard Burton (who portrayed Tito on the big screen)
Gradu Brdo (Photo: siol.sl)
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)
‘Galeb’, now docked & rusting (Source: Tendanceouest)
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)
House of Flowers (Photo: Ex Utopia)
(Image: Mapsland)
⇑ Two uniformed Ustaše women (Source: Pinterest)“Greater Croatia” ⇑
Poglavnik Pavelić ⇑