Fountainhead of the Fermented Grape: Wine’s Ancient Origins

Archaeology, Pre-history, Regional History, Social History

Where did the story of wine and wine-making begin? As with many things whose beginnings are shrouded in the mystery of ancient and even pre-historic times, it is very hard to pinpoint a one hundred percent, definitive answer to this question. The evidence for when and where humans might have first cultivated Vitis vinifera va. sylvestris (the wild grape fruit)❈ lies in the realm of archaeology.

🔝 Today’s Transcaucasian republics – physical map

The timeline for the first experiments with wine-making, thanks to a wealth of archaeological evidence, puts it in the pre-recorded history stage of humanity, more precisely in the Neolithic Era (in Eurasia this was, very roughly, from 9,000 to 4,000 BCE). The consensus view has traditionally tended to be that the rudiments of viticulture can be located in the area around Mesopotamia and the Caspian Sea (see also footnote).

The Fertile Crescent: home of Ur-winemakers
Transcaucasia (the Caucasus), that relatively narrow strip of multi-ethnic lands separating the Black Sea from the Caspian, stretching south to include the northern parts of Turkey and Iran, has perhaps the best claim to the honour. Archaeologists have discovered early signs of wine activity and implements in southern Georgia, north-western Azerbaijan, and northern Armenia, suggesting that “Stone Age people took advantage of a temperate climate and availability of wild fruit species to experiment with cultivating grapes”[1].

Wine expert Caroline Gilby identifies three basic pre-conditions for successful wine-making in the Neolithic era, (i) a stable human population settled in the one place for some time, (ii) invention of pottery/clay vessels for storage✜, and (iii) existence of wild grapevines (plus a self-fertile plant to cross-pollinate with). Transcaucasia fits the bill – plant cultivation for most of the major agricultural crops began in the Middle East region around 10,000 years ago. Within the greater Caucasus, Georgia for which wine is a national obsession has 500 distinct varieties of the vine, whilst Turkey and Armenia have around 600 and 200 respectively[2].

🔝 Zagros Mountains

Not to be outdone, Iran itself has a claim worthy of contention for longevity of vine production. In the mid 1990’s evidence of mey (Persian: wine), dating to about 5,400 BCE, was found in excavated jars at the Hajji Firuz Tepe site in the Zagros Mountains of north-western Iran. What was especially significant about this location was that it also contained evidence of the preservation of wine (in the form of a resin from the local terebinth tree)[3].

Armenia: site of oldest known vineyard
In recent years archaeologists discovered and excavated the Areni-1 Cave – the earliest known site of wine production (pre-historic “wine-making on an industrial scale” not hitherto unearthed)[4]. Items found at the vineyard at Vayots Dzor included a wine-press, fermentation vats, jars and cups[5]. The clay receptacles with their wine traces were radiocarbon-dated after being chemical analysed at between 4100 BCE and 4000 BCE. A side-effect of the recent vinaceous archaeological discoveries has been squabbling among the various Transcasusian states as to who were the first wine-makers[6].

🔝 Egyptian winery, 2nd millennium BCE

Mediterranean wine culture
Transcaucasian wine production and consumption clearly predates those from the Mediterranean region. Egypt is closest in time to the northern Eurasian area, its oldest traces of wine (yrp or irep), found inside the Tomb of the Scorpion King (Abydos, Upper Egypt), is about 5,000-years-old. Interestingly they were found to be spiked with natural medicines (effectively herbal wine). These medicinal additives were later adopted by Greek and Roman winemakers who followed the Egyptian practice[7]. The ancient Egyptians, who had a preference for red wine, were the first to depict wine and wine-making in their hieroglyphics.

🔝 Roman wine jars – great & small

In Grecian Macedonia fragments of crockery and assorted pottery with wine traces have been found dating back to around 4,500 BCE. Evidence of wine cultivation – dating from the mid-3rd century BCE – was also found on the Greek island of Crete. For ancient Romans wine was the drink de jour … initially Roman attempts at the craft of wine-making were derivative of the established Greek (and Etruscan) methods of viticulture but the Romans later drew on the ample supply of indigenous vines in southern Italy to produce their own varieties. With the ever widening reach of Roman imperial expansion – through war, trade and settlements – the Romans spread wine consumption and viticulture to the countries and regions it conquered (especially France, Germany, Spain and Portugal)[8].

Vino in eastern Asia: China’s early wine origins
In the mid 2000s China emerged as a candidate for the world’s earliest consumers of wine. An international team of archaeologists (Chinese, American and German) dug up an early Neolithic village (Jiahu) in Henan Province, unearthing pottery with traces of “wine-like drinks”(sic) (a fermented mixture comprising rice, honey and hawthorn fruit and grape). The beverage has been dated somewhere between the year 7,000 BCE and 5,500-6,000 BCE[9].

Whether China has the bragging rights to being the earliest consumer of wine (and perhaps the first centre of wine production), or Transcaucus does, one point remains clear: the interest and active, on-going work of archaeologists in this field, ensures that ownership of the title has a fluidity to it. Yet more candidates for the world’s earliest pioneers of viticulture are likely to be unearthed in the future.

🔝 Georgian vineyard (photo: BBC Travel)

FN: A vintage Georgian drop🍷 🕸🕸🕸The fertile valleys and protective slopes of Transcaucasia and modern-day Georgia were conducive to grapevine cultivation and Neolithic wine production. Archaeological evidence from Georgia suggests wine production there at least 8,000 years ago with the recent discovery of clay pots containing the residue of wine [‘Oldest Evidence of Winemaking Discovered at 8,000-Year-Old Village’, (Andrew Curry), National Geographic, 13-Nov-2017, http://news.nationalgeographic.com; ‘Georgia’, Vinolgue, (Miquel Hudin & Daria Kholodolina, Georgia: a guide to the Cradle of Wine, 2017)].

∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
❈ the European grape-vine common to western Eurasia – between the Mediterranean and Caspian seas
✜ ceramic containers were invented around 20,000 years ago

[1] T de Waal, The Caucasus: An Introduction, (2010). For instance, discoveries in the 1960s of domesticated grape pips in N/W Azerbaijan have been dated at around 6,000 BCE; in Shulaveri, Georgia, University of Pennsylvania academic Patrick McGovern found wine residues in the shards of 8,000-year-old ceramic vessels, A Friedrich, ‘Georgia’s Vintners Thrist for the Past’, The Washington Post, 22-Feb-2004
[2] C Gilby, ‘The Birthplace of Wine?’, Decanter, (Jan. 2012), www.winesofturkey.org. The domesticated form of the grape has hermaphrodite flowers which self-pollinate, KK Hurst, ‘Wine and its Origins – The Archaeology and History of Wine Making’, (About Education), www.archaeology.about.com
[3] ibid.; M Berkowitz, ‘World’s Earliest Wine’, (Newsbriefs) Archaeology Archive, 49(5) Sep/Oct 1996, www.archaeologicalarchive.org/9609/newsbriefs/charlesfort.html
[4] Dig project co-director Boris Gasparyan, cited in Gilroy, op.cit.
[5] ‘History of Wine’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[6] Gilroy, loc.cit.
[7] the Scorpion I wine did not emanate from a local production point, but was imported to the Nile from the Levant, B Handwerk, ‘Scorpion King’s Wines — Egypt’s Oldest — Spiked with Meds’, National Geographic News, 13-Apr-2009, www.news.nationalgeographic.com; J Butler & R Heskett,
Divine Vintage: Following the Wine Trail from Genesis to the Modern Age, (2012)
[8] ‘Ancient Rome and wine’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[9] ‘Chinese People were Drinking Wine 9,000 Years Ago’, (Phys Org) 19-Dec-2004, www.phys.org

Bonaparte in America

Biographical, Regional History, Social History

The association of America with Napoléon Bonaparte for most people probably revolves round the US government’s bonanza real estate deal with Napoléon in 1803…the US cheaply acquired huge swathes of territory (the Louisiana Purchase) which the French emperor wanted to offload to build up France’s finances for war. Napoléon Bonaparte (Italian: Nabulione Buonaparte) never came to the United States or to anywhere in the New World –- although in the event of his grand scheme to conquer Europe going pear-shaped (as it ultimately and irrevocably did in 1815), his “Plan B” was just that, to make good an escape to the American Republic [1]. However it was Napoléon’s older brother Joseph (born Giuseppe) Bonaparte, formerly installed as king of Spain and the Indies, and before that, king of Naples and Sicily, who did come to the American continent and moreover lived in the US for some 17 or more years after the Emperor’s fall from power.

Sibling & HM King Joseph

Joseph succeeded in his getaway where Napoléon failed, slipping out of French waters and travelling incognito to New York, albeit narrowly avoiding detection by the British. In America Joseph styled himself the Comte de Survilliers … after living in New York and Philadelphia for a period Bonaparte purchased a palatial residence in Bordentown, New Jersey called “Point Breeze” – one of the finest country houses in the Delaware Valley. Joseph was able to afford (and subsequently vastly improve) one of the republic’s grand mansions because he had brought the Spanish Bourbons’ crown jewels with him which he had acquired when abdicating the Spanish throne. With his dubiously acquired riches Bonaparte made other land acquisitions in upstate New York on the Black River (a locale still known as Lake Bonaparte)[2].

Point Breeze’, Bordentown, NJ

Joseph AKA the Count of Survilliers largely led a quiet, uneventful and comfortable life in the US, taking no interest in a political role … when Mexican rebels and expat French supporters gave their backing to him to be made emperor of Mexico (1820), he demurred at the offer. In 1832 Bonaparte returned to Europe (although he did return briefly to the US and his much loved mansion ‘Point Breeze’❈ in 1839), living for a while in London and in Italy where he died in 1844. The ineffective, former ‘puppet’ king of Spain was never permitted to return to his native France again because of the French government’s concern that it might provoke a groundswell for a Bonapartist restoration[3].

Joseph was not the only Bonapartist to flee to America following his brother’s downfall in 1815. The return of the Bourbons with the ascension of Louis XVIII prompted a “witch-hunt” of Bonapartists in France. Many followers of Napoléon escaped to America to avoid arrest and recriminations … once there some of Napoléon’s loyal soldiers set up Bonapartist colonies in Alabama (Vine and Olive Colony) and Texas (Champ d’Asile) – which were uniformly unsuccessful and short-lived[4].

Joseph’s (Spanish) Royal Monogram 👑

PostScript: Napoleon’s “life in America”
A) Rescue plans – before exile and on St Helena
In the aftermath of the disaster of Waterloo rumours abounded about various plots and attempts to rescue Napoléon. One plot involved a mega-wealthy French-born banker Stephen (Étienne) Girard living in the US who supposedly hatched an elaborate plan to transport the deposed emperor to Virginia (a claim made in the Baltimore American, 1902). According to some sources Girard also played a role in the Louisiana Purchase machinations[5].

Napoléon’s island prison
By far the most bizarre plot involved a Brit of Irish parentage Tom Johnson, who as well as being a recidivist smuggler had a bit of a reputation as an escape expert. Johnson’s claim was that in 1820 he was offered £40,000 to rescue Napoléon from St Helena, using two primitive types of submarines he had designed as the “getaway” vessels. Johnson’s colourful account reads as highly fanciful and the plot was in any case never implemented … the one plausible element of the story being that Johnson’s underwater crafts (for which designs did exist) were inspired by Robert Fulton’s 1806 submarine -–the American engineer and inventor had earlier worked for both Napoléon and the British government on armed maritime vessel projects (what is less certain is whether Johnson had actually met Fulton as he claimed)[6].

B) Exploring the “What If …” scenario for Napoléon
Devotees of alternative history have speculated lyrically about what might have happened had Napoléon made good his escape to the Americas. One of the early imaginative conjectures (1931) came from British historian HAL Fisher who hypothesised that the exiled emperor might have established a base in New York and then gone on to Spanish America to liberate the masses, before finally drowning at sea whilst attempting to conquer India[7].

Outlawed in Europe after Waterloo, it would have been logical for Napoléon to gravitate towards America … the US had only recently engaged in hostilities with Britain (War of 1812), so the locals would probably have been disposed or at least neutral towards him, he would have been able to live as a free man. The US was a new country born of revolution (and one inspiring a revolution in his native France which promoted his own rise). An American base would position the ambiguous ex-monarch well to marshal his resources and launch an invasion of Central and South America which was ripe for revolution against the Spanish conquerors. One of Napoléon’s aides-de-camp in fact made the suggestion to him that he should make himself “emperor of Mexico”[8] (anticipating what transpired with a later Habsburg royal).

A recent alternative history (Shannon Selin, Napoléon in America) postulates three possible theoretical courses of action for Napoléon – settling on the eastern (Atlantic) seaboard, living peacefully, probably near his favoured brother Joseph (possibly biding his time, building up the necessary support for another go at overthrowing the French Bourbons and reclaim the throne either for himself or for his son); establishing a colony within the US peacefully (in fact Bonapartists later attempted to forge colonies in Alabama and Texas – both then controlled by Spain); and as with Fisher’s supposition, invading Spain’s American colonies and thereby securing a new throne[9].

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❈ as boys Frank and Charles Woolworth (the future retail empire giants) lived close to ‘Joe’ Bonaparte’s abandoned Bordentown mansion, spending lots of their leisure time playing at ‘Point Breeze’

۵~۵~۵

[1] originally Napoléon and Joseph had laid plans for the two of them to seek refuge together in America in the likelihood of a worst-case scenario. A location in New Jersey was picked out as the optimum place for settling but Napoléon missed a real chance to escape to the US by stealth, having prevaricated too long waiting for anticipated passports which did not come, and then making the fateful decision to give himself up to the British authorities, CE Macartney & G Dorrance, The Bonapartes in America, (1939), www.penelope.uchicago.edu (see also PostScript above)
[2] R Veit, ‘Point Breeze (Bonaparte Estate)’, (2015), www.philadelphiaencyclopedia.org; ‘Joseph Bonaparte at Point Breeze. New Jersey’s Ex-King and the Crown Jewels’, Flatrock, www.flatrock.org.nz
[3] ibid.
[4] ‘Bonapartist Refugees in America, 1815-1850’, www.napolun.com
[5] L Weeks, ‘What if Napoleon Had Come to America’, NPR, 10-Feb-2015, www.npr.org. Girard also underwrote the American war effort in the War of 1812.
[6] M Dash, ‘The Secret Plot to Rescue Napoleon by Submarine’, Smithsonian Magazine, 08-Mar-2013, www.smithsonian.com
[7] H.A.L. Fisher, ‘If Napoleon had Escaped to America’, (Scribner’s Magazine, Jan. 1931), www.unz.org
[8] M Price, ‘How Napoleon Nearly Became a U.S. Citizen’, History News Network, 28-Dec-2014, www.historynewsnetwork.org
[9] Weeks, op.cit.

The American Cricket Club: Golf or Tennis Anyone?

Regional History, Sport

Considering the United States of America’s origins as an English colony it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that in the 18th century the English colonists brought their emblematically English game of cricket to the “Thirteen Colonies”. But it was American citizens themselves, albeit largely those of Anglo descent, who planted the foundations of the first cricket clubs and playing grounds all over the country and in particular the Eastern Seaboard. What might come as surprising is that in the land where baseball is THE bat-and-ball sport, quite a few of these have survived, at least in name, as cricket clubs.

The game of cricket itself brightly flickered (if not entirely thrived) in different pockets of the United States for long periods of the 19th century and even briefly into the 20th century. Cricket was rooted in America long before the game of baseball was even close to capturing the nation’s imagination. By the time of the Civil War at least 20 American states played the game of cricket✿ – active US cricket-playing cities included Baltimore, Savannah, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and even as far away as San Francisco[1]. From about 1890 to the onset of WWI America experienced a “golden age” of cricket, with its epicentre revolving around the city of Philadelphia[2].

In Hollywood during the thirties and forties ex-pat film actors mainly from Britain but also from Australia (David Niven, Ronald Colman, Boris Karloff, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, etc) played for the Hollywood Cricket Club, a team formed by veteran Hollywood screen performer Sir C Aubrey Smith, a former first-class amateur player in the late 19th century who represented Sussex, the MCC and captained England in the inaugural test match against South Africa (1889).

In more recent times immigrants from the West Indies, from South Asia and elsewhere have been the lifeblood of the sport in the US, both playing and following the game … the series of exhibition matches in New York and elsewhere in 2016 between two international “All-Stars” teams, led by contemporary cricketing legends Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne, being an example of ongoing current interest within the US.

Despite the decline of cricket from having once been a national sport in the US❂ and its eventual replacement by baseball, a number of the old cricket clubs continue to exist, many transforming themselves into key venues for other mainstream sports and emphasising their social and commercial roles … what follows is a brief survey of the history of the more famous and historic American cricket clubs.

Staten Island CC of New York:
(Randolph) Walker Park (Livingston) is the home ground of the Staten Island Cricket Club (founded in 1872 as the Staten Island Cricket and Base Ball Club). The original club ground was the ‘Flats’ at St George (a different neighbourhood of Staten Is). SICC exists to this day as “the oldest cricket club in continuous use”[3]. And although world-famous cricketers such as Donald Bradman, Everton Weekes and Garry Sobers have played at the ground during visits to the US, it might be said that its fame in the US derives as least as much from its use as a tennis venue. The first national tennis tournament was held at the grounds in 1880, tracing its origins to the 1874 visit of a Staten Island resident Mary Ewing Outerbridge to Bermuda. Outerbridge observed this new game adapted by a British army major, W C Wingfield, in that North Atlantic Island. Returning to Staten Island with a net, balls and racquets, Outerbridge, with the assistance of her brother, created the first US (lawn) tennis court[4].

The Metropolitan Baseball Club used Walker Park cricket ground in the early days. The Metro BC later evolved into a baseball major league identity – first as the New York Giants and later after relocation as the San Francisco Giants[5]. These days it’s a common spectacle at Walker Park to observe cricket-obsessed immigrant club members from the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, decked out in cream or coloured flannels, wielding their “paddle-like” bats and taking “bare-handed catches” on the Staten Island oval[6].

St George’s CC Prospect Park ground, NY

St George’s CC of New York:
Among the other clubs in New York, there was one, St George’s CC (later Manhattan CC)❦, which rivalled the illustrious history of Staten Is CC in pedigree stakes. From its founding in 1838 up to the American Civil War, SGCC was one of the powerhouses of New York and American cricket. St George’s CC’s Bloomingdale Park was the venue for what was arguably the world’s first international cricket (and perhaps any sporting) contest (USA V Province of Canada, 1844). Since 1865 the Club has continuously played the game based at its Prospect Park ground, its foremost cricketer in the late 19th century was bowling star M R Cobb (who also had a formidable stint spearheading the New Jersey Athletic Club attack)[7].

Philadelphia CC:
The Philadelphia Cricket Club (the celebrated “Philly CC”, one of the oldest clubs in the US, founded 1854), today is a private country club with two locations, Flourtown and Chestnut Hill✥ – the latter was the Club’s cricket venue from 1883. PCC involvement in cricket emanated from the enthusiasms of young men of English descent who had played the game at the University of Pennsylvania. For over 40 years PCC competed with other clubs in the region for the prestigious Halifax Cup … by 1924 however the cricketing activities of PCC had been overtaken by other pursuits and came to an abrupt halt (until happily revived in Philly by immigrants from the Sub-Continent of South Asia in 1998)[8].

Philadelphia Club of gentlemen cricketers

As part of its “extra-cricketular” activities Philadelphia Cricket Club early on established itself as a centre for the hosting of top-level tennis and golf events. PCC was a founding member of the US Lawn Tennis Association (today the USTA) and hosted the US Women’s National Singles Championship from its inception in 1887 through to 1921. In addition it hosted the national doubles title for women and the national mixed doubles title during this period[9]. PCC has similar bragging rights for golf, St Martin’s was home to the US Men’s Open in 1907 and 1910, whilst Wissahickon has hosted lower-level professional tournaments on the US PGA men’s circuit.

Germantown CC:
Germantown CC is another pioneering cricket club which competed with PCC in the prestigious Philadelphia comp. Originally located in Nicetown, it relocated to West Manheim Street after merging with the Young America Cricket Club in 1890. Like a number of the other cricket clubs tennis overtook cricketing pursuits in the 20th century with GCC providing the venue for the US National Tennis Championship from 1921 to 1923. On the cricket front, by 1980 Germantown CC was one of only three surviving competing cricket clubs in the Pennsylvanian league.

Dwight F Davis, donor of the eponymous cup

The club’s main sporting activity these days is its tennis played in summer but it still fits in competitive cricket around the tennis (in spring and autumn). Tennis’ dominant position in the “cricket club” can be gauged by its total of 46 tennis courts on the complex, reflecting an important historic role played by GCC in the sport at the elite level – five times host of the Davis Cup Final, plus host of the 1964 Federation Cup (international women’s team tournament)[10].

Merion CC:
The Merion Cricket Club (Pennsylvania) played its first game in 1866 and in its early days repulsed an attempt to turn it into a baseball club. In the late 1890s-early 1900s the MCC’s Haverford ground was host to matches between the Gentlemen of Pennsylvania and Touring English XIs. But like PCC, the MCC from the 1890s moved inexorably to golf as its main sporting pursuit. Merion CC has hosted the US Men’s Golf Open five times (the latest in 2013). The Merion Cricket Club has also been the venue for elite tennis … in 1939 its Haverford courts hosted the Davis Cup (the premier men’s international teams event), the final between the US and Australia.

(J) Bart King

Belmont CC and Bart King:
Belmont Cricket Club was one of the big four clubs in Philadelphia during the cricket “Golden Age’. Founded in 1874 Belmont CC survived only to 1914 when it was disbanded (despite having America’s greatest practitioner of the sport of cricket, John Barton (Bart) King, among the ranks of its players). Bart King played in the Pennsylvanian comp for the Belmont Club from 1893 to 1913 [see also Footnote 2]. King had a first-class career record which saw the right-arm fast bowler take 415 wickets at an exceptional average of 15.66 in only 65 matches! Philadelphian King’s tally of victims included an impressive 252 wickets over three tours of Britain (heading the 1908 English season’s first-class bowling averages for all matches!)

Longwood CC (Boston):
Longwood CC was formed in 1877, some years later establishing its long-term cricket home ground at Chestnut Hill (Mass.). It was not long before tennis became the premier sport at Longwood CC (first lawn tennis court laid down the following year, 1878). That predominance of tennis was established when the Club held the first ever Davis Cup match (initially called the International Lawn Tennis Challenge) in 1900, and further consolidated by hosting the 1917 US National Doubles championship, the men’s US Pro Tournament (1964-1999), the women’s Fed Cup and 15 Davis Cup ties in total. The brothers Harry and George Wright, famous as baseball players and managers in the early professional baseball era, were also prominent in the Longwood cricket team in the late 19th century.

With the diminishing interest in cricket as an American pastime many cricket clubs including those mentioned above switched their participatory activities to the new emerging sports like golf and tennis. Other cricket clubs from the 1890s on transformed themselves into athletics clubs, eg, Longwood CC became the Boston Athletics Association. The New Jersey Athletics Association started its organisational existence as a cricket club. The Cresent Athletic Club in Brooklyn Hts (NYC) followed a different course … formed as an (American) football club in 1884, it developed multi-sport fields at its Bay Ridge location, including cricket and lacrosse. The Cresent AC hosted the second ever Davis Cup world team tennis challenge (1902)[11].

PostScript 1: Cricket V Baseball
Sports historians and other interested individuals have put forward several theories as to why baseball ultimately eclipsed cricket in the US. Baseball’s rise to the status of national game was partly an unforseen consequence of the 1860s American Civil War – during the war it was difficult to get proper cricket equipment and to mark and maintain the pitch, so it was much easier for soldiers to set up simple games of baseball which they did increasingly during their ‘downtime’ from the fighting … post-bellum the game of baseball gradually took firm hold[12]. The elaborate accoutrement of cricket compared to that of baseball was part of the answer: for a baseball game to happen required very little – a smooth, wooden bat, a ball and a few weighted bags … and no field or ground preparation!

Brian Palmer et al has pointed out the role marketing played in advancing the cause of baseball after the Civil War. The promoters of baseball sensing an opportunity at a formative point in its development, established the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871. This unified the sport as well as professionalising it (refer also to PostScript 2 for more on this), meanwhile cricket stayed regionalised and amateur, a sport of and for gentlemen and their social strata✧. Many top cricket players made the switch to baseball and the fans followed[13]. Cricket historian Tom Melville contends that a secondary element in baseball’s meteoric climb was that whilst many of the top baseballers succeeded in cricket, the opposite was less inclined to be the case[14].

Once it caught on, other factors seem to have contributed to tilting the matter in baseball’s favour … baseball was seen as faster and shorter than cricket – which could drag on for up to four or five days, whereas baseball comprised nine innings each side (around three hours all up), so you could, and they did, play “double-headers” on the same day at the same ground! Cricket with its on-going stream of interruptions – lunch, tea break, drinks breaks, stumps – contrasts sharply with the continuity of baseball[15]. Are Americans temperamentally more suited to a game that is quick, dynamic and guarantees a winner? This is hard to argue conclusively for sports across the board, because although it fits the description of baseball and for matter basketball and tennis, American football with its stop-start, TV ad break-punctuated, drawn out nature, seems to refute this – as does Americans’ favourite individual sport, golf (a standard PGA golf tournament comprising 72 holes of play over four long days (4 x 18) is the antithesis of a rapidly achieved denouement).

The utter ‘Englishness’ of cricket figures highly in the explanations of some historians for its rejection by Americans. The embryonic seeds lie perhaps with the American Revolution. After the severing of political ties with Britain from 1776 a new-found patriotism led many Americans (loyalist Anglo-Americans aside) to distance themselves culturally from the mother country and some expressed this by jettisoning the most ‘English’ of games as well. Melville concludes that cricket’s British connexions contributed to the game’s demise in the US … cricket, according to Melville, ultimately failed to “establish an American character”[16]. The popularity of baseball saw it come to embody a spirit of nationalism that was idiosyncratically and unmistakably American.

The sport of baseball as it evolved had always tended to have a less complicated set of rules relative to cricket…rules in the latter game are officially and grandly called the Laws of Cricket¶. Tom Melville makes the point that as baseball evolved from its nascent, native state to something more standardised, its exponents and practitioners tended to ignore those rules which hindered “the spirit and fun of the game”[17]. Cricket’s laws with their British imperial remnants (nothwithstanding sincere efforts in recent times to free the game up more), for the most part has tended toward rigidity. Laws (rules) on stoppages due to bad light and rain are inherently not conducive to letting the game flow…nor is the recent innovation of umpires referring dismissal decisions to a video replay system for review.

AG Spalding

PostScript 2: AG Spalding and the baseball origin myth
One of the most ardent advocates of professional baseball was Albert G Spalding. Spalding, a former MLB player and team manager, was a master of “spin-doctoring”, constantly preaching the merits of baseball and extolling its supposedly ‘democratic’ spirit, compared to the ‘elitist’ nature of cricket. In 1888 he organised an “All-Star” world tour, a series of baseball games between his Chicago White Stockings and an “All-American” side, aimed at popularising the game internationally. Spalding’s much hyped tour was personally rewarding to him as he used it to promote and sell the sporting goods that his company manufactured. Later, the influential baseballer-cum-businessman lobbied for the formation of a national commission to investigate and resolve baseball’s obscure origins (which were in dispute at the time). The Mills Commission, with Spalding’s guiding hand, erroneously credited an undeserving Union general from the Civil War, Abner Doubleday, with the invention of baseball. The myth has long been comprehensively deflated – the most likely candidates for baseball’s antecedents reside in either the archaic British game of rounders or the old monastic French game, la soule (D Block, Baseball before We Knew It)[18].

_______________________________________________________________
✿ and/or the modified regional form of it known simply as ‘Wicket’
❂ international cricket’s inaugural governing body, the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC), did nothing to aid US cricket’s development or popularity in 1909 by restricting test level cricket to member countries of the British Empire only
❦ the Manhatten Cricket Club building today is a bar in W79th Street New York, downstairs from an Australian-themed restaurant named “Burke and Wills” – after a couple of ill-fated explorers of the Australian continent in the 1860s
✥ and three golf courses, St Martin’s (in Chestnut Hill), Wissahickon and Militia Hill (both in Whitemarsh Township, Flourtown)
✧ this introduces a different factor contributing to baseball’s success, a class-based one. In becoming ‘universal’ the sport made an appeal to all Americans, to all classes – cf. the more restrictive social reach of US cricket
¶ this can be measured quantitatively as well – the MLB (Major League Baseball) has nine main rules (with subsets), compared to the MCC’s (Marylebone Cricket Club’s) 42 Laws. The “Laws of Cricket” which extend back to the 18th century tend also to have more arcane laws on its books

[1] R Noboa y Rivera, ‘How Philadelphia became the unlikely epicentre of American Cricket’, The Guardian, 28-Mar-2015, www.theguardian.com
[2] the Gentlemen of Philadelphia cricket team played first-class cricket for 35 years including three tours of England. The Philadelphians’ star player was fast bowler Bart King, a pioneering exponent of swing pace bowling. King, considered by most judges the best ever American cricketer, topped the English 1908 season bowling averages, ahead of all first-class bowlers in Britain (his record lowest average stood for 50 years!), ‘Philadelphian cricket team’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] as claimed by SICC, ‘Staten Island C.C. A Brief History’, (R Bavanandan), www.statenislandcc.org
[4] M Pollak, ‘Rocking the Tennis Cradle’, New York Times, 27-Aug-2006, www.mobile.nytimes.com
[5] ‘Staten Island C.C.’, op.cit.
[6] J Yates, ‘GET OUT: Swingers Club’, 12-Jun-2008, www.silive.com
[7] P David Sentance, Cricket in America, 1710-2000 (2006); ‘The Cresent Athletic Club’, (BrooklynBallParks.com-CAC), www.covehurst.net; M Williamson, ‘The oldest international contest of them all’, (Cricinfo), www.espncricinfo.com
[8] ‘PCC History by J S F Murdoch, Historian’, Philadelphia Cricket Club, www.philacricket.com
[9] ‘Philadelphia Cricket Club’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[10] ‘Germantown Cricket Club’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[11] Sentance, op.cit.
[12] J Marder & A Cole, ‘Cricket in the USA’, www.espncricinfo.com (Adapted from Barclays World of Cricket, (1980))
[13] B Palmer, ‘Why don’t Americans Play Cricket?’, Slate, 24-Feb-2011, www.slate.com
[14] In the second half of the 19th century there was a lot of crossover between cricket and baseball by the players (including composite matches incorporating both forms of the bat-and-ball contest), T Melville, The Tented Field: A History of Cricket in America (1998)
[15] Palmer, loc.cit.
[16] Melville, op.cit.
[17] ibid.
[18] ET Smith, ‘Patriot game’, The Guardian (UK), 02-Jul-2005, www.theguardian.com; ‘Albert Spalding’, Wikipedia, www.em.n.wikipedia.org

Nature Vs Nurture and the Unravelling of ‘Scientific Racism’

Racial politics, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture

By the mid 1930s the allure of “scientific racism” was on the wane in advanced western countries❈. Although scientists were in the thick of the movement both as eugenicists and as propagandists, significant numbers of scientists and politicians never bought the shonky scientific approach of the eugenics movement☫. Many in the science community never accepted the methodology for the eugenicists’ grand schemes[1]. Information on heredity was far from comprehensive in that era, the science was misguided and there was a vastly imperfect understanding of genetics, at best rudimentary, at the time. Eugenic hygiene organisations were unable to produce reliable statistics. As John Averell pointed out, “proof’ of research” in the field comprised “primarily statistical correlation within conveniently constructed ‘races’ rather than individual case studies to see if the desirable characteristics were actually inherited”[2].

Mendel's schema
href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/image-8.jpg”> Mendel’s schema[/
The scientific genesis of the 20th century eugenics movement was located in the rediscovered research of 19th century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel. Mendel experimented in plant hybridisation and his laws of inheritance based on the crossing of garden peas✥ were the foundation for the theories of eugenicists like American Charles Davenport. Davenport et al applied the Mendelian method to human traits such as eye colour which he argued was inherited (as the colour of Mendel’s pea plants were). The eugenicists employed an overly simplified dominant/recessive scheme to account for complex behaviours and mental illnesses, this was a fundamental flaw in their thinking (derived from ‘pedigrees’ based on Mendelian inheritance), a single-gene explanation of human characteristics and conditions. Contemporary science unequivocally accepts that these traits are in fact shaped by (many, many) multiple genes, ie, the existence of polygenic traits[3].

Although eugenics was portrayed by its adherents in the early 20th century as a “mathematical science”, a clinical method of predicting traits and behaviours and controlling human breeding, its drew criticism from scientific quarters on a number of levels. The ‘evidence’ was typically shoddy, such as the research into determining just who was to be classified as being ‘feeble’ and ‘unfit’ in society. The eugenicists relied often on subjectivity, second-hand accounts and hearsay to establish the lineages of the ‘undesirable’ gene pool (see PostScript 1), or on visible observable (physical) features (the resort to phrenology and the like). The theories of eugenics did not seem adequate to explain some traits, such as shyness – rather than being an immutable genetic condition, this could be subject to change over time (ie, some people grow out of shyness!). In addition eugenicists took no account of factors external to a person’s gene makeup in the categorisation of the ‘unfit’, such as his or her contracting a transmissible disease such as syphilis[4].

The scrutiny on eugenics, its growing characterisation as a pseudoscience unable to stand up to academic scientific rigour, prompted some proselytisers of eugenics to claim that eugenics was more than merely science, that it was tantamount to a new religion or moral code[5]. One of the eugenics practitioners who typified this was Alexis Carrel, an American-based French surgeon and Nobel Laurette biologist. Carrel’s eugenics was a strange mix of science, religion, clairvoyance and ultra right-wing politics … his extreme ideas were infused with an anti-materialist, holistic spiritual mysticism. In his 1935 international best-seller, Man, the Unknown, Carrel warned against the degenerative effect of modernity and outlined his notion of an autocratic utopia in which the dysgenic elements were eradicated from society[6].

The eugenics scene in Australasia mirrored Europe and America in questioning the correctness of the ‘science’. The scientific community although entrenched in the vanguard of the eugenic movement threw up its share of dissenters from within its ranks. One such was geographer Griffith Taylor who championed “racial hybridity” and cast serious doubts on the goal of race purity and its assumptions that underpinned eugenics. Moreover there was a lack of cohesion and camaraderie among the individual eugenicists who are often rivals of each other … this of itself did not make for a strong, lasting movement in Australia[7].

J B Watson, Behaviourist

The Behaviourist counterpoint:
The rise of behaviourism in the West as a valid analytical tool for explaining human nature was a counterweight to the biological determinism of eugenics whose advocates preached that biology was destiny. The behaviourist backlash against the persuasive eugenics ideology was led by pioneering American psychologist John B Watson▣ around the time of the Great War. Watson, rejecting Freudian concepts of the unconscious mind, or that mental states or ‘instincts’ were significant, arguing instead that observable behaviour was the key to explaining human traits and complex mental states. In doing so, Watson was also refuting the view that heredity played a role in this construct. For Watson, and for B F Skinner who later took up his mantle as a radical behaviourist, the environment, modelled behaviour, was the source of human change. The work of Watson and Skinner and other behaviourists undercut the eugenics movement’s singular reliance on nature by shifting the debate to the significance of nurture in the process[8].

PostScript 1: ‘Feeble’ family studies template
The belief of eugenicists that all social ills – poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, criminality, venereal disease, epilepsy – could be traced back to one genetic flaw, and that intelligence was determined by heredity, was shaped by seminal pioneering studies in the field. One of the most influential was by psychologist Henry Goddard (1912) who analysed the genetic pattern of one man’s lineage (known as “Martin Kallikak” – fabricated name derived from the conjunction of ‘kallos’ beauty and ‘kakos’ bad). ‘Kallikak’ produced two widely divergent types of families (one ‘good’, one ‘bad’), which despite being nurtured in two radically different environments, the patterns of which Goddard concluded was solely the result of heredity[9].

PostScript 2: Polygenism debunked
The polygenists accepted that the species had more than one origin (cf. monogenism – deriving from one, common ancestor). Morton (see FN 2 below) believed that races were arranged in order of intelligence … the fairer the skin the more intelligent. DNA evidence, tracing human markers, has disproved the theory by proving that all Eurasians, Americans, Austronesians, Oceanians and Africans, share the same, common ancestor[10].

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
❈ Scientific racism uses ostensibly scientific or pseudoscientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify racial inferiority or superiority, Scientific racism’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
☫ Scientific racism was denounced by UNESCO in a 1950 statement on race
✥ for what Mendel described as ‘factors’ (the “heredity unit”), the early eugenicists substituted the word ‘genes’
▣ Watson’s life reads like some kind of early 20th century Mad Men persona (influential ad man, marital infidelities, monumental falls from grace, self-exile, etc)

[1] for instance in the interwar period, Thomas Hunt Morgan, a Noble Prize winning evolutionary biologist, rejected the eugenicists’ inadequate methodology, ‘Eugenics in the United States’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[2] this view prescribed a hierarchical order of races, an Anglo-Saxon ‘race’, a Nordic ‘race’, and so on down the line. Polygenists in the 19th century like Samuel G Morton contended that different races were in fact different species, each with separate origins, ‘Science: 1770s-1850s: One Race or Several Species’, RACE, www.understandingrace.org; J Averell, ‘The End of Eugenics … or is it?’, Melrose Mirror, www.melrosemirror.media.mit.edu
[3] ‘Mendelian genetics cannot fully explain human health and behaviour’, DNA from the beginning, www.dnaftb.org; ‘Rocky Road: Charles Davenport’, www.strangescience.net
[4] Eugenics and scientific racism had been described as “folk knowledge validated by scientific inference”, S A Farber, ‘U.S. Scientists’ Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907-39): A Contemporary Biologist’s Perspective’, Zebrafish, 2008: December; 5(4), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
[5] A H Reggiani, ‘Drilling Eugenics into People’s Minds’, in S Currell [Ed.],
Popular Eugenics, National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s
[6] ibid
[7] D H Wyndham, ‘Striving for National Fitness: Eugenics in Australia 1910s to 1930s’ (Unpub. PhD, Dept of History, University of Sydney, July 1996), www.kooriweb.org
[8] ‘Eugenics movement reaches its height 1923’, A Science Odyssey (PBS), www.pbs.org; ‘John B. Watson’, Wikipedia, www.em.n.wikipedia.org
[9] ‘Kallikak Family’, http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/356/Kallikak-Family.html
[10] ‘Scientific Justifications for Racism’ (Polygenism), www.sites.google.com