Showing posts from category: Regional History
Lisbon’s Great 1755 Earthquake, a Cataclysmic Event with Far-reaching Reverberations
When Lisbon experienced an earthquake on November 1, 1755 (sometimes called the Great Lisbon Earthquake), it was not an unique event for the city. Previous earthquakes had punctured Portugal’s capital in 1321 and 1531. The 1755 quake, measuring an estimated magnitude of 8.5-9.0 Mw, however was qualitatively worse because of the widespread nature of the damage and the ongoing repercussions.
Lisbon Pombaline Downtown street plan [Source: www.travel-in-portugal.com]
No sanctuary in the churches
The focus of the earthquake in Lisbon was on the city centre where the churches, it being All Saints Feast Day, were packed with the pious. The churches’ antiquated construction methods, leaving them incapable of withstanding violent movement of the earth, guaranteed a high death toll of the attendees. The foundations of the churches, built on soil liquefaction, only enhanced their vulnerability to violent earth movements [‘November 1, 1755: The Earthquake of Lisbon: Wrath of God or natural disaster?’, (David Bressan), Scientific American, 01-Nov-2011, www.blogs.scientificamerican.com].
Earthquake decimation of one of the city churches
Fire on the heels of five-metre wide fissures in the earth Fires were an immediate consequence of the earthquake. Some of these were firestorms triggered by the massive earth tremor, and some were a direct result of it being a day of religious significance. Scattered through the churches were lit candles in observance of the holy day, the convulsions tipped the candles over, igniting the displays of flowers and spread the fire in all directions. Buildings that managed to escape the destruction of the earthquake often were subsequently consumed by the firestorms [‘1755 Lisbon earthquake’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Tsunami triple-whammy
Because the earthquake hit the central part of the city, many Lisboeta❅ who survived the initial three-and-a-half minute-long megashock made for the docklands and the harbour. Tragically what was thought a safe move proved a fatal one for many. Just 40 minutes after the quake hit Lisbon, it was followed by a (20 foot high) tsunami which pulverised the shoreline and engulfed the Rio Tejo (Tagus River), sending the huddled crowds on the docks scurrying for their lives. The fires and the tsunami compounded the calamity of the seismic event and sent the death toll skyrocketing◘.
‘Ripples’ of the tidal wave The 1755 tsunami was a teletsunamic event with the generated tidal waves crossing the vast ocean. The mid-eastern Atlantic tsunami which hit Lisbon with such force, had amazingly far–flung ramifications. The tsunami was felt literally around the known world. Within an hour it had reached Cornwall on the south coast of England and Galway in Ireland.It was felt as far afield as Finland, North America, Barbados and Martinique in the West Indies and maybe even in Brazil.
Fallout in the region The devastation caused by the earthquake, fires and tsunami was not confined to Lisbon. Other parts of southern Portugal (the Algarve) suffered. Spain too, especially Cadiz which was hit by an even more massive tsunami (65-feet high), lost as much one-third of its population. Parts of Morocco also bore the brunt of the cataclysm with possibly up to 10,000 of its population perishing as a result [Pereira, Alvaro S. “The Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 466-99. www.jstor.org/stable/40263964].
Copper engraving, 1755
Casualty count
There have been widely diverse estimations of the human toll from the 1755 earthquake—ranging from 10,000 to anything up to 100,000. Economist AS Pereira has noted how unreliable estimates are…owing to the lack of dependable data on the Portuguese population prior to 1755 and compounded by the public authorities’ decision to swiftly bury the corpses before there was a chance of disease and plague taking root (Pereira). Pereira’s own estimate based at data from surveys in 1757 put the casualties at 30 to 40 thousand out of a possible 200,000 population at the time. Added to this is the up to 10,000 who died in Morocco from the catastrophe○.
The devastation and reconstruction It is estimated that around 85% of Lisbon’s buildings were destroyed by the earthquake and associated phenomena. Two-thirds of the city was made uninhabitable. Among the carnage, in addition to the churches already mentioned, were famous libraries and palaces. Also lost was the city’s new opera house Ópera do Tejo and many examples of distinctive 16th century Manueline architecture. The Palácio Real Ribeira was a casualty, lost were some 70,000 volumes of work including tracts on voyages of early explorers such as Vasco da Gama and art works by Titian, Corregio and Rubens, and so on.
Rua Augusta in the Baixa Pombalina [Photo: www.weheartlisbon.com]
The reconstruction was put in the hands of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later bestowed the title of Marques de Pompal by King José I (Joseph I). Pompal’s elevation to sole control of managing the reconstruction and his competence in carrying through the plan allowed him to wrest the political reins of Portugal away from the old aristocracy. Ordinary citizens were pressed into the immediate task of clearing the debris so that Pompal could commence the long and slow task of rebuilding the city largely from scratch. Erected were new, large squares, widened streets and rectilinear avenues. An entirely new lower town Baixa Pombalina (Downtown district) was created. The Pombaline buildings proved to be radically innovative, being among the earliest seismically protected constructions in Europe.
Embryonic signs of the science of seismology There is one important factor which separates the 1755 quake from those preceding it. In its aftermath Pompal coordinated systematic surveys in the nature and course of the earthquake. The preservation of data collected and archived at the time has allowed modern seismologists to better analyse the natural event and its genesis. Thus, in a very rudimentary but pioneering way, this has contributed to the development of what has become the science of seismology and the practice of earthquake engineering (‘Lisbon earthquake’, Wiki).
The phenomena, a boost to scientific enquiry, also caused religious rumblings at the time. Many in staunchly Catholic Portugal wondered if the degree of devastation was a manifestation of divine judgement, God’s wrath on flawed mortals. Discussions of theodicy and other philosophical questions abounded (Bressan).
The earthquake‘s effects on the Portuguese economy The catastrophic 1755 event presented Pompal with the opportunity to reform the country’s economy and to some extent reorganise society. Pereira‘s work has looked at the cost of the devastation to Lisbon. As he has pointed out, Lisbon at the time was “staggeringly rich” courtesy of the plunder of its colonies in Africa and the New World. The city was awash with huge stores of gold bullion, jewels and expensive merchandise✧. The economist estimated the direct cost of the earthquake at between 32 and 48% of Portugal’s GDP. Another consequence was prices and wages volatility, albeit this was only temporary (Pereira).
Pompal’s reforms To counter the deterioration in the country’s public finances✬, the Marques introduced several economic reforms and institutional changes. The state bureaucracy was streamlined and the treasury was reformed with the advent of a new tax system. Pompal’s mercantilist policies revamped the Portuguese economy. Pompal’s policies long-term had the effect of enhancing the centralist orientation of the economy and reduced Portugal’s dependence on its main trading partner Britain (Pereira).Seismologists have speculated as to whether the Lisbon Earthquake remotely triggered two other earthquakes—in Cape Ann (near Boston, Mass) and Meknes, Morocco—which followed it by just 17 and 26 days respectively [‘1755 Cape Ann earthquake’, Wikimili, The Free Encyclopedia, http://wikimili.com].
Cape Ann Earthquake (Woodcut illustration) 
Endnote: The “first modern disaster”Endnote:The “first modern disaster” The cataclysm event in 1755, so redolent of apocalyptic imagery, prompted theologians, scientists and philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau to conjecture—was causation natural or divine? It’s “modern-ness” lying in several innovative aspects of the phenomena: a concerted and systematic attempt at “crisis management”; among the “first provisions for urban disaster mitigation and earthquake resistant building design“; an attempt to “investigate and record the effects of the earthquake throughout the affected areas”, anticipating the science of modern seismology [‘From 1755 to Today—Reassessing Lisbon‘s Earthquake Risk’, (Drs Guillermo Franco & Bingming Shen-Tu), AIR Currents, (15-Jul-2009), www.air-worldwide.com; Bressan].
═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═
❅ as residents of Lisbon are sometimes called
◘ given that the earthquake’s epicentre was in the Atlantic Ocean some 350-400 km from Lisbon, it is plausible that the fires and tsunami caused the greatest havoc and devastation (Franco & Shen-Tu)
○ possibly the death toll cited for Morocco on the 1st of November has been conflated with the Meknes earthquake on 27th November 1755 which also was reported as having had 10,000 victims
✧ in India House alone the holdings in diamonds amounted to 11-12 million cruzados
✬ in the wake of the earthquake Portugal’s colonial ambitions were stalled, which would have added to the economic decline
A Scattering of Small Mid-Atlantic Islands Form the Setting for the “Old World’s” First Ventures to the New World
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
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
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].
⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞⤝⤞
❋ 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’)
Canfranc Railway: Nazi Gold Train, Spanish Ore and War-time Border Espionage
(((((((((((((((((o)))))))))))))))))
At the commencement of the world war in 1939, Francisco Franco’s authoritarian Spain was officially a neutral state in the global conflict※, this despite the Spanish dictator’s pro-Axis leanings and his debt of gratitude to Hitler and the Axis for its invaluable contribution to the Falangists’ victory in the recently-ended civil war in Spain.
The Spanish Caudillo ⇪ Because of Franco’s neutrality path, Hitler was not able to make Spain and the Iberian Peninsula a base of war operations for the Axis side [L. Fernsworth (1953). ‘Spain in Western Defense’, Foreign Affairs, 31(4), 648-662, doi: 10.2307/20030996]. Notwithstanding this Franco’s Spain still proved a useful and even vital ‘ally’ to the Axis powers, especially to Nazi Germany, during the war. This was nowhere more evident than in the role played by a single railway which linked southern France to northern Spain.
The track through the Pyrenees Before that story, first some background on the railway line and its remarkable ‘central’ station. The idea of a train line between France and Spain via the rugged and formidable Pyrenees mountain chain goes back to the mid-point of the 19th century. The first step to turn the dream into actuality started on the French side in 1904. World War I held things up, as did the fact that the project was an enormously hard, almost Herculean challenge to the railway engineering and building methods of the day. To complete the line, in excess of 80 bridges, 24 separate tunnels and four viaducts had to be hacked out of the rocky terrain of the middle Pyrenees, as well as a massive deforestation of the regional landscape [‘Urban Exploration: Canfranc Railway Station’, Forbidden-Places, www.forbidden-places.net/].
The enormity of the Canfranc rail line earned it the sobriquet, “The Titanic of the Mountains”. Finally, by 1928, it had become a reality. The line ran from Pau in France to the village of Canfranc not far inside the Spanish border▣.
Canfranc-Estacíon Canfranc was the jewel in the crown of the whole international rail network. The railway station (designed by Fernando Ramírez de Dampierre), architecturally a mix of Art Nouveau and Neo-Classicism, was built on an XXL scale. Boasting some 365 windows, a linear monolith of concrete, glass, steel and marble, it had space for living quarters for both Spanish and French customs officials, an infirmary, restaurants and bars, and (later) a hotel. Effectively, the station’s “French section” functioned as a French embassy [‘3rd Reich’s Abandoned “Highway” For Stolen Gold’, George Winston, War History Online, 17-Jul-2019, www.warhistoryonline.com]. The platforms extended for over 200 metres in length! The station has been described as “perhaps the world’s most beautiful disused railway station” [‘The most beautiful abandoned train station on the planet’, The Telegraph (UK), 02-Oct-2017, www.telegraph.co.uk].
The train line’s commercial fatal flaw: the irregular Iberian gauge Despite Canfranc’s imposing and glamorous edifice, the Pau to Canfranc line’s history is a tarnished and diminished one. Some have called it’s history jinxed. Right from the start of operation there were problems and drawbacks. The biggest structural flaw for a supposedly international railroad was that the gauges were different! Spain retained its broad-gauge rails cf. the standard-gauge in France and elsewhere on the Continent. Passengers had to change trains once inside the border, this proved even more disruptive for goods cargo…the need to move the load to another rail vehicle meant that ultimately the line was too slow (and therefore too costly) to transport goods freight. The Wall Street collapse and the Depression occurring just one year after the Canfranc line commenced didn’t help business either. And to complete the ‘cursed’ thesis, in the early years there was a devastating fire affecting the line.
Throughout its lifetime the Canfranc railway always fell short of achieving economic viability. By the early 1930’s there were as few as 50 passengers a day using the service [‘Is Europe’s ghostliest train station about to rise again?’, Chris Bockman, BBC News, 01-Oct-2017, www.bbcnews.com]. To compound matters, during the civil war Franco had the line’s tunnels sealed off to prevent arms smuggling to the Republican side from France.
(Photo source: www.canfranc.pagesperso-orange.fr)
The Nazi “Gold Highway” Following upon Hitler’s conquest of Western Europe the railway got a new lease of life, albeit one inspired by less than the purest motives. Franco reopened the tunnels to the Nazis and in 1942 deals were struck between the interested parties. Hitler and the German Wehrmacht needed the “Spanish (and Portuguese) ore”, tungsten (AKA wolfram), for producing metal and steel for the Nazi war machine—as much as they could get their hands on! And after the neutralising of France, the Canfranc line became a vital conduit for its delivery. The arrangements were mutually advantageous with plundered Nazi gold from Switzerland and French grain wending it’s way in the opposite direction to Spain and Franco⊡. US documents declassified during the Clinton years reveal that Franco returned only a portion of the stolen gold in 1948 (described as a “marginal amount”)—and that only after pressure was applied by the Allies [‘Secrets of the Railways: “Nazi Gold Highway”‘, (SBS Television, aired 03-Nov-2019)].
The reopened train line was advantageous not only to the Nazis and Spain. Refugees (Jews, communists, leftist artists like Max Ernst and Marc Chagall) and allied soldiers used the train and the Somport Tunnel route into Spain (and thence to safe destinations beyond) to escape Nazism.
The highly adaptable M. Le Lay ⇪
(Photo source: www.caminandoporlahistoria.com)
Spy and counterspy: Life imitating art Despite the railway and the key Canfranc Station being in Nazi hands, the place was a hotbed of spying and smuggling activities. At parties and events held by Nazi officials stationed at the glitzy hotel, pro-Resistance railway workers gathered important intelligence and passed it on to the Allies. A figure instrumental in the espionage activities was the hotel proprietor Albert Le Lay. Le Lay had a dual role as congenial hotel host for the Nazi guests and as head of the local border control. This allowed him, in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the movie Casablanca with Le Lay the unsuspected Resistance spy resembling a real-life “Rick Blaine”, to undermine the Germans and help smuggle many Jews out of France [ibid.]. Le Lay’s dangerous game kept him one step ahead of the Gestapo, but in 1943 he too was forced to flee as the Nazi net was closing in on him.
Decline and fall…and rise again? After the war the Canfranc railway stumbled on, still operating but never coming close to reaching the potential of its planners’ high hopes for it. An unfortunate mishap in March 1970—a train derailment on the French part of the line causing a bridge collapse—proved not just costly, but signalled the end of the road for the railway. The French authorities, despite the opprobrium heaped on them by their Spanish counterparts, flatly refused to rebuild it. The railway was discontinued, replaced by a bus service. The stock and buildings were left to be vandalised and run into the ground slowly—seemingly for good!
Recently though, a (belated) rescue plan of sorts has emerged. The Aragon municipality in Spain has signalled its wishes to resurrect the once grand Phoenix from the ashes. It has indicated it wants to open a new rail line on the location. There’s talk of a £350m restoration project to restore Canfranc to its long lost railroad glory. Encouragingly, the corresponding French provincial authority , Aquitaine, has offered to assist in the project. This life-line has prompted renewed interest in the rail relic from the public with new tourism accounting for more visitors to the train site than there had been passengers using the service in it’s heyday! [Bockman, loc.cit.; Winston, loc.cit.].
Footnote: Portugal in on the largesse
Portugal possessed the same raw material (wolfram) so prized by Hitler and Portuguese dictator Salazar was happily agreeable to a clandestine deal. Accordingly some of the stolen Nazi gold made its way to Lisbon via Canfranc and into the vaults of the Bank of Portugal. This is reflected in the figures which show a dramatic upsurge country’s gold reserves:
1939|63.4 tons
|||1945|356.5 tons
[Neill Lochery, Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945 (2011)]
António Salazar ⇪
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜ ※ after the fall of France in June 1940 the official policy was modified to one of “non-belligerence”. Franco’s position of non-involvement was basically about not antagonising the western powers, especially the USA whose exports Spain depended on at a time its economy was still brittle after the civil war ✦ for instance Franco’s ‘neutrality’ didn’t prevent him from “green-lighting” Spanish volunteer brigades to fight for the German Nazi army (the Division Azul or Blue Division) against the Soviet forces (but not the Western Allies) ▣ from Canfranc there was a further rail link to Jaca, and eventually to Zaragoza ⊡ estimated at close to 90 tonnes of gold (Winston)
The Wor(l)d According to Saul: Dictionaries and the Language Wars, Doubt versus Ideology
Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul is the secular high-priest of doubters and cynics, a non-believer in “the gospel” of the modern corporate state, constantly debunking the conventional wisdoms offered up as “absolute truths” in Western society✲. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Saul would produce a guidebook for other secular agnostics. Wedged between his treatises on his personal philosophy ‘superstar’ Voltaire, his studies of modern Canadian society and his excursions into the realm of fiction, is JR Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion, or to give it his full title:
The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (Viking, 1994)¹
Although Saul calls his volume “a dictionary”, the term applies more to the book’s format (utilising the standard A-Z form of the dictionary) than to its content or purpose. The Companion goes on to define Dictionary as “Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order”. And Answers are merely “a mechanism for avoiding questions”. Saul decries the trajectory of modern dictionaries and language (which have been captured by the forces of a rational orthodoxy), yearning instead for a return to the Humanist dictionaries of the 18th century (Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, etc)².
When I first delved into The Doubter’s Companion (around 1995), my mind took me to that other great cynic’s dictionary of the early 1900s, Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Both works, albeit very different books, are idiosyncratically unconventional takes on language and meaning in their respective societies, and both proffer a contrarian view of the established wisdom of the day. Both Saul and Bierce are provocateurs, each with their own personal axe to grind⁌.
The Doubter’s Companion, by its polemical nature is unequivocally meant to shake up orthodox thinking (TDC was described by one reader as “an abecedarium of subversion”). The dictionary form of the book is a device Saul employs to launch into short philosophical essays on topics about modern post-industrial society that concern him—corporatism, individualism, leadership and managerialism, freedom of expression, communication, public relations, advertising and the way language is distorted to control communications (see his definition of ‘ideology’). In so doing, Saul skewers the accepted veracity of many of the words, phrases and terms you will find in today’s dictionaries.
And as it is an instruction manual to help doubters navigate their way through a linguistic maze of (in Saul’s opinion) mis-defined terms, the central tenet is thus affirmed:
Doubt: The only human activity capable of controlling the use of power in a positive way. Doubt is central to understanding.
Wisdom: The purpose of doubt … wisdom is life with uncertainty, the opposite of power or ideology.
Ideology: Tendentious arguments which advance a world view as absolute truth in order to win and hold political power.
The Corporate executive “is not a capitalist but a technocrat in drag”.
Economics is “the romance of truth through measurement”.
Level playing field: An ideological abstraction adopted as a universal value by the management of large corporations.
Saul the provocateur infuses the dictionary with a regular diet of “outrageous statements and provocations”:
Marxist: The only serious functioning Marxists left in the West are the senior managers of large, usually transnational corporations.
Neo-Conservatives are the Bolsheviks of the Right (“the exact opposite of a conservative”).
Modern (that should be “post-modern”) fads of intellectual thinking such as Deconstructionism get short shrift from Saul:
Deconstructionism: Can also be seen as a school of light comedy.
Calm: A state of emotion which is overrated except in religious retreats. Calmness for Saul has a decidedly political connotation today, “it is used to control people who are dissatisfied with the way those in authority are doing their job”✬.
Public relations: A negative form of imagination. In Mussolini’s phrase, “invention is more useful than truth”.
Saul savages that that most universal institution of fast food, MacDonalds:
A Big Mac: The communion wafer of consumption. (It is) not really food but the promise of food.
He goes on sardonically to bracket it with “Perrier, one of the last sacred objects of the leading philosophical school of the late-twentieth century—public relations”…one of Saul’s greatest bête noires.
Elsewhere, in a similar vein, he brands Ronald McDonald as a “Post-modern philosopher”…the “face and voice of consumer culture”.
Contemporary education doesn’t escape a broadside from Saul, especially the American form:
SAT: A system of standardized American college entry exams designed to nurture and reward functional illiteracy.
Universities find themselves in Saul’s cross-hairs as well. Within the “exclusive territories” of the university that knowledge is divided into, the principal occupation of academics is “to invent dialects sufficiently hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories”.
Happy Hour is “a depressing comment on the rest of the day”.
At different points Saul diverts momentarily from his philosophical musings to give historical clarification on certain pertinent terms of interest to him. Having defined Depression as “a form of economic disaster common throughout history”, he goes on to contend that “in 1973 the word was deleted from all Western languages and replaced by the term recession”, a softer word which in Saul’s mind allows economists to maintain the myth of appearing to “manage real situations”. The author expands his point: “to admit to the existence of anything as uncontrollable as a depression would be to admit failure”.
The book’s dictionary entries allow space for brief commentaries on individuals from the pages of history who attract Saul’s interest. These are usually philosopher-figures but not always. He has an interesting take on the great turn-of-the-century novelist Joseph Conrad, “The essential modern writer…demonstrated that the novel could have a third century of relevance if the story was transformed into metaphysics disguised as reality”.
Sigmund Freud, who in America would be described as the “father of shrinks”, gets a guernsey in the dictionary, albeit a cynical and disparaging reference – “a man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would just listen—or better still, talk—that they’re parents were just as bad”. 
Air Conditioning: An efficient means for spreading disease in enclosed public spaces.
Muzak: A public noise neither requested nor listened to by individuals. It is the descendant of a school of public relations invented by the Nazis.
For one so articulately cynical of human nature, politics, economics, most things in the modern world (except of course doubt), Saul’s definition of that attitudinal standpoint seems contradictory:
Cynicism: An effective social mechanism for preventing communication.
Pessimism on the other hand is “a valuable protection against quackery”. More beneficial than ‘scepticism’ “which slips easily into cynicism and so becomes a self-defeating negative force”.
Whereas Optimism to Saul is double-edged. When applied to oneself it is “a pleasant and sometime useful distraction” to reality, but “when encouraged as a social attitude … it is the public tool of scoundrels and ideologues” (as is patriotism).
World Class: A phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment and sports events … to assert they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.
Saul includes in the alphabetical list a number of surprising and disparate entries for a reference book on philosophical common sense. These include Ants (Saul makes the unexpected and unverified statement that the members of the Formicidae family of eusocial insects “do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time”)⊡; Apple (the fruit not the corporation); Armpits (which is curiously cross-referenced to Reality); Nannyism (not sure why this topic warranted nine paragraphs and over 400 words but Saul interweaves a discourse on Margaret Thatcher, bullying and sex appeal into the entry); Urban weather patterns (wtf?); White bread (“the sophisticated product of a civilization taken to its logical conclusion … continually refined until all utility has been removed”).
Among the many asides Saul offers an interesting reflection on the city-state of Venice – he declares it “the original model of modern dictatorship, in which commercial power finds its cultural expression in painting, architecture and music … (but not) language”. And on Benito Mussolini: “the nascent modern Heroic leader (who) combined corporatism, public relations and sport together, while replacing public debate and citizen participation with false popularism and the illusion of direct democracy”.
JRS humorous and glib
The philosopher’s serious message aside, Saul produces a regular line of humorous explanations of terms, some of these are dazzlingly economic epigrams or bon mots:
Museums: Safe storage for stolen objects.
Cosmetic surgery: Cosmetic perjury.
Biography: A respectable form of pornography.
Other descriptors and definitions however are quite glib:
René Descartes is thus presented “gave credibility to the idea that the mind exists separately from the body, which suggests he didn’t look down while writing” [ba-dum-tss!].
Anorexia: A condition aspired to by most middle-class women (a subject taken much more medically serious today!).
JRS’s extensive catalogue of pet bugbears include ideology (and ideologues), applied corporatism, applied civilisation, conventional wisdom, , economic determinism, technocrats, absolute truth and certainty, dry, sectarian ‘definitions’, rigid scholasticism and structure, superstition, public relations and advertising.
Footnote: it’d be interesting to see an update of the Companion. A chance to find out what the perspicacious John Ralston Saul makes of early 21st century concepts such as social media, iPhones, fake news, drones. climate change deniers and the nanny state, to name just a handful.
╰━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶ ━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━╯
✲ whether that be from the left or right
⁌ though where Bierce is acerbic, Saul is out and out incendiary
✬ adding the rider that “calm incompetence” has risen to become a quality of high professionalism”
⊡ in case this isn’t enough on the subject, JRL follows up with an entry for ant-eaters (Myrmecophaga Jubata)
¹ Amazon‘s “dust-jacket” review summarises the book as full of “renegade opinions”; (it) uses “guerrilla lexicography to reclaim public language from stultifying dialects of modern expertise”
² ‘Doubter’s Companion’, www.freelistbooks.com
⏏³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰⏏