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Italy’s Acute Case of Empire Envy in the Early 1900s
Invoking Italy’s heritage: the glory of Rome (photo: ISTOCK.COM/MUSTANG_79)
In the late 19th century the Kingdom of Italy was still in its infancy as a fully-fledged, unified state in Europe, nonetheless Italians were casting an envious eye over the smorgasbord of colonial possessions other European powers were snaffling up (seemingly effortlessly) in the free-for-all known as the “Scramble for Africa”. In a climate of burgeoning nationalist sentiments Italian politicians were quick to underscore the country’s historical association with Ancient Rome by way of its imperial credentials. By the turn of the century Italy had secured a minor foothold in Africa with two East African colonies, in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, but what it really wanted was a base in North Africa, a prerequisite for expanding its sway into the Mediterranean (mare nostrum – “our sea“𝟷̷). Real estate options in Africa had rapidly dried up however, France had already established colonies in Tunisia, Algeria and (shared with Spain) Morocco, and Egypt was a British “veiled protectorate”. The Italian focus turned to the one remaining Mediterranean territory in North Africa, Libya, then comprising several provinces, the principal ones being the Regency of Tripoli or Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica, both semi-autonomous vilayets of the Ottoman Empire.
Illustrated map of Italian campaign with fleet blockade of Libyan ports (source: Media Storehouse)
Italian imperialist designs: Search for a casus belli Italian nationalists and imperialists, whipped up by the frenzy created by the jingoistic Italian press, started to agitate for Italy to annex Tripoli. The territory being in close proximity to the southern tip of Italy made it attractive as a base from which to control the central Mediterranean𝟸̷. As the groundswell for war in Italian society gathered momentum and pressured by war hawks in his own cabinet, Italian Prime Minister Gioltti sounded out the European powers, most of whom voiced no objections to Italy’s plan for occupation of Libya𝟹̷. The Italian government tried to provoke the Ottoman regime into war…drumming up pretexts for intervention, eg, the small Italian community in Libya was supposedly being mistreated (highly exaggerated!). On the strength of this Gioltti issued an ultimatum to the Ottomans to immediately cede Tripoli to Italy. The Ottoman government of the “Young Turks” vacillated before asking Rome to accept a Britain/Egypt style solution (the would-be coloniser assumes real power in the colony while the former coloniser retains nominal suzerainty over the colony). Italy refused this counter-offer point blank, declared war in September 1911 and commenced preparing its invasion force.
Port of Tripoli, ca.1910 (image: delcampe.net)
A settler-colonial society Italy’s motives for acquiring a colony in Libya were not entirely about national pride and resurrecting the glory of the Roman Empire. The Italian state, post-unification, had serious social problems. The underdeveloped national economy was incapable of coping with the exponential growth in population, for which there was insufficient work and insufficient food for all the people. A new colony in North Africa just over the sea, the politicians surmised, would solve this dilemma, a receptacle to drain off surplus Italian population with the emigrants becoming small agricultural producers in Libya (‘The Italo-Turkish War’, Osprey Blog (Gabriele Esposito), 17-Sep-2020, www.ospreypublishing.com).
Italian troops in action, Libya 1911
Italian expectations, strategy and stalemate When war was declared Italy’s superior navy was easily able to intercept and prevent attempts by Ottoman naval vessels to transport troops and equipment to Libya. Turkish commanders Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal and other army personnel had to resort to smuggling themselves into Libya, mainly via Egypt. Italian forces having landed in Tripoli quickly took control of the coastal regions of Libya necessitating the Ottoman military units and Arab Bedouin fighters to withdrew to the interior. Italy had expected a quick victory in the conflict and had counted on the native Arab population welcoming the Italian soldiers as liberators from the Turks, it was wrong on both counts. Arab and Bedouin tribesmen (Muslim Senussi clan), combined together with the Ottoman units to staunchly resist the invading Christians (the Arabs’ irregular forces (hamidiye) proved to be quite effective fighters). The invasion force also found itself fighting the Libyan conditions, harsh landscape, extreme heat, wind, etc described by one historian as scatolone di sabbia (a “box of sand”) (Charles Stephenson, Box of Sand: The Italo–Ottoman War, 1911-1912, (2014)). The Italians were further hampered by the utter inadequacy of its maps of the region (relying on old maps, some of which were from the Ancient Roman era!) The Italian military strategy was to try to draw the defenders into engaging in open, full-scale, conventional battles, the Ottoman and Arab resistance refused to oblige them, rather the defenders resorted to fighting a guerrilla war, a mode of fighting which the Italians failed abjectly to adapt to (‘Italy-Turkish War’, (documentary), The Great War series (2021)). A stalemate ensued…despite putting a force in the field in Libya of up to 100,000 soldiers (including Somali mercenaries), the Italians could not make any military headway inland and yet at the same time the desert-based defenders couldn’t expel the invaders from the country.
Mustafa Kemal with Senussi tribesmen, Tobruk 1911
Air, land and sea With no progress in sight on the land front the Italians in 1912 opted for a new strategy, launching a naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman possessions in the Aegean Sea—the province of Rhodes and other islands in the Dodecanese chain—were attacked by gunboat and captured. The Italian navy heavily shelled the cities of Beirut and Smyrna in Asia Minor, blocked the Ottomans’ Red Sea ports and even made an unsuccessful assault by sea on the Dardanelles.
Ottoman surrender of Rhodes to Italians (source: La Domenica del Corriere, May-June 1912)
As the costly and increasingly unpopular war dragged on much longer than anticipated, the mounting concern of European states prompted them to initiate peace talks between the warring parties. After a few failures a peace agreement was eventually reached in October 1912 with the Treaty of Ouchy (AKA First Treaty of Lausanne) on terms favourable to Italy. The Constantinople government ceded Tripoli and Cyrenaica to Italy who promised to return the Dodecanese Islands to Turkey, however a turn of events in the region prevented this from ever happening.
Pax (source: Media Storehouse)
Fallout and Aftermath The Italo-Turkish War’s biggest consequence was to contribute to the destabilisation of the Balkans. The impact of that was felt immediately – one day after the Treaty of Ouchy was signed Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, with the other member-states of the Balkan League doing likewise a week later, setting in motion a war continuum that would lead to the catastrophic Great War in 1914 and further reversals for the Turks. The Ottoman Empire emerged from the 1911-1912 conflict with its reputation as the “Sick man of Europe” further tarnished. Italy, though the victor, must have had some mixed feelings about its decision to commit to the military adventure. The war dragged on for over a year, drained 1.3 bn lira from the Italian coffers and cost several thousand Italian lives either killed in action or from disease. Yes, it won itself a colony in the North Mediterranean but this in itself brought further headaches for Italy as Arab and Bedouin rebels in the Libyan hinterland doggedly continued their violent resistance to their new colonial masters for decades afterwards (‘The Great War’).
Footnote: A series of martial “firsts” Despite the Italo-Ottoman War being one of the lesser known international conflicts in modern history, it is significant for a number of innovations in warfare. It was the first war to utilise aircraft in combat missions, and the first to practice aerial bombing of the enemy lines. The Turco-Italian War also marked the debut of armoured vehicles. And it was the first three-dimensional war, ie, fought on land, sea and air. The Italians’ use of airplanes in warfare however was not particularly effective militarily in flight missions. It’s much greater benefit was in their reconnaissance value – aerial photographs, and intelligence allowing the Italians to spy on ground troop movements, etc (‘The Great War’).
Italian airplane raiding Turkish-Arab ground troops (source: suttori.com)
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𝟷̷ Mare nostrum, deriving from Roman antiquity, was a concept “deployed to anchor Italian imperialism in Africa” at this time and during the later Fascist period, Agbamu, S. (2019). ‘Mare Nostrum: Italy and the Mediterranean of Ancient Rome in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’; Fascism 8(2), 250-274. https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-00802001.
𝟸̷ Mussolini would later describe Libya as impero italiano’s quarta sponda (“fourth shore”)
𝟹̷ Germany and Austria-Hungary were not so positive about the Italians’ move
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Outer Mongolia and the Dream of Pan-Mongolism: Caught in a Realpolitik Power Game Betwixt Russia and China
At the onset of the 20th century nationalist feelings were on the rise in east and central Asia. For the Chinese they were fuelled by the humiliations of the First Sino-Japanese War and the intervention of foreign powers and foreigner-imposed concessions in China following the Boxer Rebellion, allied with a powerful sense of anti-Manchurism towards the ruling Qing Dynasty. To the north in Outer Mongolia, also within the realm of Qing control, nationalism was also spiking. Hastening the sense of Mongolian nationalism was the recently introduced Qing government’s policy of Sinicisation, an attempt at Han colonisation and cultural assimilation of the Mongol people (subordination of the Mongolian language to that of Chinese, exploiting Mongolian natural resources including the converting of pasture lands into agricultural production fields).
1911 Xinhai Revolution (Chinese commemorative anniversary stamp)
The spread of Chinese nationalism and aspirations to modernise China culminated in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and the collapse of the Qing monarchy in February 1912, ushering in a new political landscape in China. While republicanism gripped China Mongol nobles and lamas took advantage of the upheaval to declare the independence of “Great Mongolia”, establishing a de facto absolute theocratic monarchy under the Bogd Khan (“holy ruler” or “emperor”). The newly established Beiyang government refused its recognition, affirming that Outer Mongolia was an integral and legitimate part of China’s territorial inheritance from the former Qing rulers. Under a 1915 agreement between Tsarist Russia and China Bogd Khan was forced to accept a status of “autonomy under Chinese suzerainty”…the deal also opened the way for Russia to colonise contiguous Tannu Tuva (an enclave within northwest Outer Mongolia which Tsarist Russia had established a protectorate over).
Bodg Khan’s Green Palace, Ulaanbaatar
Russian Civil War comes to Mongolia In 1919 Chinese troops under Xu Shuzheng occupied the Outer Mongolian capital Urga (or Niislel Khüree)⧼a̼⧽, deposing the Bogd Khan and ending Mongolia’s autonomy. Mongolian revolutionaries responded by organising themselves into a resistance group and a new political force, the Mongolian Peoples Party (MPP), emerged. The Mongol activists solicited support from the new Bolshevik government which had overthrown the Russian Romanov monarchy. Meanwhile, a White Russian (anti-communist) force under Baron von Ungern-Sternberg entered Outer Mongolia, sweeping away the occupying Chinese troops. Ungern restored the Mongol Buddhist leader to the throne while setting himself up as a warlord in Outer Mongolia. Soviet Red Army units eventually routed Ungern’s White Guards in southern Siberia and he was executed.
Roman von Ungern AKA “The Mad Baron” (image source: 2.bp.blogspot.com)
Mongolian Revolution The Mongolian Revolution that took place in 1921 was, according to Fujiko Isono, “a logical outcome of the declaration of Mongolian independence in 1911” (Isono, Fujiko. “The Mongolian Revolution of 1921.” Modern Asian Studies 10, no. 3 (1976): 375–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/311912.). Mongolian rebels, both of a nationalist and a socialist bent, in unison with external assistance from Ungern’s cossacks and the Bolsheviks, defeated and drove out the remaining Chinese troops occupying Outer Mongolia. Nationalist Dogsomyn Bodoo was elected prime minister in the new provisional government and the monarch’s powers were limited (upon Bogd Khan’s death in 1924 the monarchy was allowed to lapse). The MPP (renamed the MPRP – Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party) proclaimed independent Outer Mongolia a People’s Republic. A power struggle between nationalists and communists ensued, from which the Soviet-backed communists emerged triumphant and Bodoo was removed from the PM post, tried as a counter-revolutionary and summarily executed in 1922.
1921 Mongolian Revolution
Mongolian sub-branch of the Soviet Great Terror The power struggle within the ruling MPRP for leadership and control continued, becoming increasingly violent and bloody. Purges of the party hierarchy and attacks on Mongolian Buddhism were stepped up…the upshot saw military strongman Khorloogiin Choibalsan gradually consolidate and then cement his hold on power in the 1930s. Having removed all of his political rivals one by one in classic Stalinist style Choibalsan waltzed into the leader’s job in 1939 uncontested.
Choibalsan with his role model, Stalin
Soviet satellite and internal terror The Choibalsan-led Mongolian communist regime freely aligned itself with Moscow to the point of becoming a puppet of the Soviet Union, with Choibalsan even taking direct orders from Stalin on internal Mongolian matters. Choibalsan identified with the Soviet supreme leader to the extent of almost cloning himself on the personality of Stalin…slavishly imitating the ruthless political style of Stalin right down to the cult of personality and the mass purging of “enemies of the Revolution” (including some former prime ministers and heads of state), show trials, gulags and executions⧼b̼⧽. Choibalsan’s unquestioning, all-the-way with the Kremlin stance entrapped Mongolia in a perpetual state of economic and political dependency on the USSR—a policy perpetuated after 1952 by Choibalsan’s Sovietphile protégé and successor Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal⧼c̼⧽—condemning the country to a client status relationship with Moscow. This dependency paradigm was only broken after the collapse of the Soviet Union, compelling Mongolia to move tentatively towards democracy, social reforms and economic liberalisation.
Channeling Genghis (Chinggis) Khan : Gigantic Ulaanbaatar statue (photo: Viator.com)
Footnote: The Pan-Mongolia pipe dream Pan-Mongolism was an irredentist idea that has been kicking round in Russian/central Asian circles since the late 19th century. It postulates the creation of a “Greater Mongolia”, a vast area comprising both Inner and Outer Mongolia, Buryatia, Dzungaria (northern half of Xinjiang), and sometimes including Transbaikal, Tuva and even Tibet, a theoretical geographical amalgam which has been described as a kind of “twentieth century Mongol Empire redux” (‘The Spectre of Pan-Mongolism’, Mongolink, 21-Feb-2017, https://mongoliainstitute.anu.edu.au/). One interested onlooker in the region who could appreciate the benefits of fostering a sense of Pan-Mongolism was imperial Japan. From the early 20th century it was eyeing off eastern Asia as an potential territorial acquisition to funnel surplus Japanese population into. The Japanese blueprint envisaged a client state stretching from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok which would include Outer Mongolia. Carving out one large united Mongolia, they reasoned, “would help exert pressure on China and create favorable grounds for the Japanese occupation of the Russian Far East” (‘Pan-Mongolia’, 29-Feb-2019, www.mongoliastore.com; (S.C.M. Paine, Imperial Rivals, (1996)). During WWI the Japanese gave to backing to Grigory Semyonov, a Russian Cossack ataman of Buryat descent with a Pan-Mongolian agenda…Semyonov’s plan was to unify Buryat-Mongolia, Khalkha-Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, but it floundered due to a Bolshevik counter-attack and seemingly also due to Khalkha Mongols’ suspicions of the Buryats (‘Buryatia: Residents Concerned about Moscow’s Intentions’, 23-Oct-2010, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, www.unpo.org). In the 1930s a composite, Mongol borderland state named Mengjiang was created comprising the central hub of Inner Mongolia. Supposedly an “autonomous or independent state” nominally ruled by a Mongolian nobleman Prince Demchugdongrub, it was in reality a puppet state of the Empire of Japan𓇽.
Signing of the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship & Alliance (source: Peter Chen / endofempire.asia)
Postscript: China and its interests were not represented at the 1945 Yalta Agreement (between USSR, USA and UK), leaving Stalin with the tricky task of settling Mongolia’s future directly with Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese republic. After tortuous negotiations with China’s premier Soong Tzu-wen Stalin brokered a deal – China would give up on its territorial claim to Outer Mongolia and (reluctantly) recognise Mongolia’s independence. In return Stalin gave the Chinese an assurance he would not (or no longer) support either the Chinese Communists or the separatists in Chinese Xinjiang⧼d̼⧽. Stalin’s accord with Chiang effectively snuffed out the last flicker of Choibalsan’s dream of achieving a Pan-Mongol state (‘Khorloogiin Choibalsan — Stalin of the steppe’, Sergei Radchenko, Engelsberg Ideas, 21-Jun-2021, www.engelbergideas.com). Moscow’s interests were well served by the outcome, geopolitically, an independent Mongolia would be a buffer for the USSR against China while also being open to influence from the Kremlin.
Modern Mongolia (admitted to the UN, 1961)
𓇽 for the Mengjiang story refer to the July 2019 post on this blog, “Mengjiang: The Empire of Japan’s Other East Asian Puppet State in Inner Mongolia” at https://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/07/02/mengjiang-the-empire-of-japans-other-east-asian-puppet-state-in-inner-mongolia/
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⧼a̼⧽ later renamed Ulaanbaatar (literal meaning = “red hero”) ⧼b̼⧽ called in Mongolia, Ikh Khelmegdüülelt (“Great Repression”) ⧼c̼⧽ Tsedenbal went one subservient step further than his mentor petitioning Moscow (unsuccessfully) in the 1950s for Mongolia to be incorporated into the USSR ⧼d̼⧽ when the Chinese Communists took control of the nation in 1949 Stalin had to debate the question of who owns Mongolia all over again with Mao who doggedly argued for Outer Mongolia to be unified with Inner Mongolia but as part of the PRC. Stalin refused to budge from the position that Mongolian independence was not negotiable and in the end Mao, with the PRC then a brand new Communist state needing to establish a good relationship with the world’s leading socialist state, had to acquiesce (Radchenko)
Big Troubles in Little Hong Kong: Unrepresentative Government and Civil Unrest in a British Colony in the Shadow of Communist China
Rioting in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, 1956 (source: simtang / gwulo.com)
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Social unrest has been the norm in Hong Kong over the last decade as we’ve witnessed the clash between the centre and the the periphery, between mainland China and the people (or at least a very significant chunk of the people) of its regained territory. Such polarisation and disharmony is hardly without precedence in Hong Kong however as a cursory glance at the postwar history of this long-existing Pacific colonial outpost of the British Empire reveals. Confrontation between the state as represented by the colonial government and its unrepresented Chinese citizens has erupted and spilt over into violent rioting and conflict on several occasions.
Double-10th riots (photo: scmp.com)
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“Double Tenth” Riots, 1956 In the 1950s tensions developed between right wing pro-Kuomintang settlers (many of which had fled to the British colony(𝒶) following the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949) and pro-CCP inhabitants of Hong Kong. What triggered the riots that erupted in 1956 was to observers an act of “petty officialdom”. In the middle of National Day celebrations, an official tore down a Republic of China flag and decorations in a resettlement estate in the city. Enraged Nationalists railed against the police trying to defuse the tense situation but this eventually escalated into widespread rioting by the pro-KMT protesters with gang members joining in…attacks on property, arson attempts, looting, violence against the local police and against leftist workers and trade unionists across North Kowloon and Tsuen Wan. With the HK Police overwhelmed by the rioting the colonial secretary Edgeworth B David (acting on behalf of the governor Alexander Grantham) responded by bringing in a British army unit which eventually quelled the disturbances using force. Although brief in duration the riots resulted in 59 dead (including the wife of the Swiss vice consul) and around 500 injured. Although the Nationalist agents in the riots were politically motivated in their actions, another dynamic in the riots represented protests from the anti-communist refugees forced into overcrowded living conditions and blaming Chinese politics for “forcing them into Hong Kong in the first place”. (Wordie).
(photo: toursbylocals.com)
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Star Ferry Riots, 1966 The Star Ferry riots in 1966 started innocuously enough with a peaceful protest by commuters against the government’s decision to allow the company to increase fares for the cross-harbour journey by 25%(𝒷). As with what occurred ten years earlier, a heavy-handed reaction by the authorities to a minor kerfuffle provoked many Hong Kongers, especially its youth, to protest en mass which led in turn to widescale rioting and looting in Kowloon with police stations and other public facilities attacked and fire-bombed. The police fired tear gas into the crowds. Again, British forces were parachuted in to forcibly impose and maintain a curfew in the city. As a consequence of the disorder and rioting one rioter was shot and killed by police, dozens were injured and over 200 imprisoned.
Hill-side squatter huts, Tai Hang, 1965 (photo: Ko Tim-keung)
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1966, beginning of civic activism The 1966 riots lacked the involvement of Chinese Triad gangs and rightist KMT malcontents that had been part of the 1956 troubles. Underlying its eruption was a widening disaffection of residents with the status quo in 1960s Hong Kong…in part it can be seen as a protest against the widening discrepancy in HK society between rich and poor and the appalling living and working conditions the masses had to contend with (overcrowding, ongoing housing dilemma, etc.), and a manifestation of the public distrust engendered by the corruption of officialdom and police.
Protesting tram workers clash with HK police, 1967
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The 1967 Riots The 1966 riots produced perhaps the colony’s first large-scale social movement, however they were a prelude for a much more serious disturbance to Hong Kong society just one year later. What started as a minor industrial dispute involving workers at a plastic flowers factory in San Po Kong, striking over unreasonable work conditions, escalated into full-blown demonstrations, protests and violence by the Chinese inhabitants against the “iniquities” of British colonial rule with the HK governor David Trench taking a hard line with the malcontents.
Military patrol streets after Macau riots, Dec 1966 (Video, Papa Osmubal Archive)
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Spillover from the Cultural Revolution and the Macau disturbances The political climate in Communist China at the time—Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was very much on the upswing—played its part in stirring the pot of discontent among left-leaning Hong Kongers and emboldening them to defy their imperial masters. Another source of inspiration for the leftist rioters was the recent success of their counterparts in nearby Macau (themselves encouraged by the energy of the Cultural Revolution) in what became known as the 12-3 Incident. Conflict between the Chinese and the Portuguese authorities, brewing since July 1966, exploded at the end of the year…a dispute over a school building project triggered a series of Macau Chinese protests and rioting with the active participation of Mao’s Red Guards against corruption and colonialism in Macau. The Portuguese colonial police’s violent response to the Chinese protestors resulted in eight deaths and over 200 injuries. Under pressure from Chinese business owners and Beijing Macau’s Portuguese governor was forced into a humiliating public apology for the police crackdown and had to accede to the protestors’ demands. Consequently the balance of power in Macau was altered totally and irrevocably: Red China now had de facto suzerainty over the colony, reducing Portugal’s role in its governance to a nominal one only(𝒸).
Riot police using tear gas against 1967 protestors (photo: scmp.com)
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Smouldering Pearl As the Hong Kong riots gathered momentum the demonstrators resorted first to strikes and property damage, then to the indiscriminate use of home-made bombs (branded by the government as “urban terrorism”). Governor Trench took a hardline in retailiation, imposing martial law in the colony, responding with tear gas and raiding the pro-CCP protestors’ strongholds like North Point. Whitehall took a laissez-faire approach to the 1967 riots leaving its management to the HK administration and the local police. The terrorist strategy adopted by leftist protestors—random bomb attacks coupled with some targeted assassinations—had the effect of alienating them from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese. By October 1967 Beijing had had enough, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai ordered the Communist protestors to halt the bombing campaign, and by the end of the year things were quiet again in the colony. The riots resulted in 51 dead, 832 injured, numerous arrests and some provocateurs deported to China.
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Trampling the seeds of democratisation 1967 witnessed the bloodiest, most violent riots in Hong Kong’s colonial history. The trauma of a succession of riots in the 1950s and 60s demonstrated one thing, the desperate need for reform of the political system and institutions in Hong Kong. While there was some labour reform and social improvements in the colony as a consequence of the 1967 unrest, overall HK governors overall contributed very little to this cause. One exception to this was Mark Young (governor in the 1940s) whose Young Plan called for wider political participation by creating a new Municipal Council to give the populace a greater stake in the colony. However Young’s plan was sabotaged when his successor Grantham opposed its implementation and it was blocked by the Legislative Council, never getting off the drawing board. Instead, it wasn’t until after 1984 with Hong Kong’s fate post-1997 firmly settled that HK governments made any overtures at all in that direction, by that time the horse has bolted!(𝒹).
Endnote: Chinese takeover of Hong Kong? At the height of the 1967 riots rumours were circulating in the colony that China was planning to seize Hong Kong, to which the current hostilities were a prequel. There had been such a plan however the top echelons of the Chinese regime had never seriously countenanced it. Beijing was content with adding to the HK authorities’ internal troubles by despatching Chinese villagers over the border into the New Territories to launch attacks on police stations…for Beijing it was not the time for anything more. Perhaps it was as one observer noted, “the Chinese had no desire to take over Hong Kong at that time in their history…their proxy intervention had been no more than a demonstration” (Jan Morris, Hong Kong). And a test! It’s plausible that Beijing through its proxies was testing the HK regime to see if it would bow to pressure as the Portuguese Macau authorities did six months earlier. Ironically, at the height of the riots, Whitehall investigated evacuating Hong Kong altogether but the idea was strongly opposed by Governor Trench and the British Army command in Hong Kong on the grounds that it was deemed logistically too hard to pull off. A further objection was the danger to British citizens in the crown colony if a full-on evacuation was attempted (Yep).
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(𝒶) along with a criminal element affiliated with the KMT
(𝒷) the actual trigger for the riots was the spontaneous action of one HK vicenarian—inspired by urban councillor Elsie Elliott who dissented from the price hike decision and organised a petition against it—to stage a hunger strike at the TST terminal of the Star Ferry
(𝒸) the Chinese Communists subsequently moved to eliminate all pockets of Kuomintang influence from Macau
(𝒹) Governor Murray MacLehose was also of a reforming bent but he focused more on eradicating police corruption (establishing an ICAC) than on institutional reform
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Articles consulted:
‘What sparked Hong Kong’s Double Tenth riots’, Jason Wordie, South China Morning Post, 07-Aug-2016, www.amp.scmp.com
‘Fifty years on: The riots that shook Hong Kong in 1967’, Foreign Correspondents Club, 18-May-2017, www.fcchk.org
‘Whose Sound and Fury? The 1967 Riots of Hong Kong through The Times, Haipeng Zhou, global media journal.com
Yep, Ray. “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong: The Diplomatic and Domestic Fronts of the Colonial Governor.” The China Quarterly, no. 193 (2008): 122–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192167.
Same Year, Same Subject Matter: Cinematic Happenstances
With hundreds and hundreds of feature films being churned out of Hollywood every year, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise too much when two separate and unrelated production companies find themselves working on a version of the same thing. Nonetheless it does seem something of an oddity, or at least a novelty, when it does occur, which isn’t very often in cinema history.
Source: pastposters.com
At least three instances of identical subjects being simultaneously made into features spring to mind. Who doesn’t know that the mythical or semi-mythical (depending on your point of view) English hero of Medieval fable and legend, Robin Hood, has been the subject of American and British feature films almost too many times to count? Ever since the early days of silent movies the silver screen (and later the TV screen) has been awash with iterations of Robin and his Lincoln green-daubed coterie of “Merry Men” locking horns with the Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Guy of Gisborne and other assorted knaves and villains. But in the year 1991 moviegoers got two Robin Hood sagas🄰 to choose from, a big budget Hollywood number, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner in the eponymous role. In a film stolen by Alan Rickman’s outrageously over-the-top, campy Sheriff of Nottingham🄱, apple pie American Costner’s non-attempt as an appropriate English accent was a talking point of the film. The behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt was that his initial plan to try to pull off a passable English accent was vetoed by the director (‘Actors who gave up on accents halfway through a movie’, Ben Falk, Yahoo, 13-Nov-2020, www.uk.movies.yahoo.com).
𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕔𝕙𝕠𝕚𝕔𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕒𝕔𝕖 𝕓𝕠𝕨𝕞𝕒𝕟: 𝔹𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕠𝕣 ℂ𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕒𝕟 ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕚𝕟?
𓃰𓃰𓃰
Flashy ‘Prince of Thieves’ vs gritty, shadowy ‘Robin Hood’ The other 1991 RH vehicle, simply entitled Robin Hood, a UK production, was a smaller scale, more modest affair than ‘Prince of Thieves’. The two filmic versions—Hollywood vs Britain, Kevin Costner vs Patrick Bergin—were expected to go head-to-head in a battle at the box-office, but this was averted when the producers of the UK Robin Hood decided to send their version straight to cable (Fox) TV.
A surprising lack of rivalry existed between the two concurrently-working production teams. Because a number of the shoot locations were reasonably close to each other (Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, West Yorkshire, North Wales) there was a good bit of collaboration, eg, crew swaps between each movie’s SFX and stunt teams (‘The Surprise Cooperation between 1991’s two Robin Hood films’, Dan Cooper, Film Stories, 09-Apr-2021, www.filmstories.co.uk).
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𝔻𝕦𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕤: ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕠𝕝 𝕧 ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕝
𓃯𓃯𓃯
Two films about Hollywood’s original “Platinum Blonde” 1965 saw the release of two biopics about Jean Harlow, star Hollywood actress and screen sex symbol of the 1930s, both were titled simply Harlow. The first, a Magna Distribution Corp TV biopic starred Carol Lynley in the titular role and the second, from Paramount released five weeks later with a budget more than double. Carroll Baker played the Thirties sex siren. Magna and Paramount subsequently countersued each other alleging unfair competition. Both movies were critical and box office failures with nary a good word to say by anyone about either of them…DVD Talk summed them up as “two smutty movies” with little resemblance to the real Jean Harlow (‘Harlow (1965) v Harlow (1965)’, www.realtoldmovies.blogspot.com).
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Dual Doomsday message The third concurrent double act on the screen has the most interesting relationship. In 1964 Hollywood made two Cold War-inspired films with a storyline about the US military launching a Doomsday bomb aimed at the Soviet Union. The tones of the respective movies are diametrically opposite however, Dr Strangelove is a farce and satire, comically lampooning the absurdity of the global nuclear standoff, whereas Fail Safe is a grimly serious dramatic thriller which plays it very straight. Dr Strangelove director Stanley Kubrick was alarmed to discover that Sidney Lumet was making a near identical movie…so concerned was Kubrick that Fail Safe with its similar content might undermine his pet project he got the production company Columbia Pictures to buy the distribution rights to Lumet’s film in order to delay its release for nine months. The wash-up from this head-start was that Dr Strangelove did far better business at the box office than the similarly themed Fail Safe and is the much better-known of the two movies today.
Images: Columbia Pictures
______________________________ 🄰 there were actually three Robin Hoods in the works simultaneously at that time. The third RH intended to have Liam Neeson in the role ended up being canned prior to production starting
🄱 as one critic summed it up, “While Costner had been robbing from the rich, Rickman had been stealing the movie“, ‘Behind-the-scenes trouble during ”Robin Hood”’, Garth Pearce, Entertainment Weekly, 21-Jun-1991, www.ew.com
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The Nexus between the Southwest, the Confederacy, Slavery and Camels: Redux
The Southwest, 1850
WEST BY SOUTHWEST History books tell us how the United States in the first half of the 19th century strove to fulfil its self-defined mission of “Manifest Destiny” by spreading its territorial reach on the continent ever more westwards. Having acquired the Southwest—comprising vast stretches of mainly dry, desert land—through highly profitable adventures south of the Río Grande, Washington found itself staring at a dauntingly formidable obstacle to exploration and settlement.
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Jefferson Davis⌖ ⌖ ⌖ SHIPS OF THE DESERT” FOR THE SOUTHWESTERN DESERT The idea of using camels to meet the massive challenge of traversing this harsh terrain was first floated by Quartermaster captain George H Crosman in the 1830s but it was later taken up with full enthusiasm by Jefferson Davis (later to be the breakaway Confederacy’s president during the Civil War) who advocated tirelessly for the superior efficacy of camels over mules and horses as “beasts of burden” ideally suited to the Southwest. As well as the being the optimal pack animal for the arid New Mexico territory plains, the camel, it’s proponents claimed, would help soldiers hunt down troublesome native peoples impeding westward progress (‘The sinister reason why camels were brought to the American West’, Kevin Waite, National Geographic, 27-Oct-2021, www.nationalgeographic.com). Davis, after being appointed secretary of war in the Pierce Administration, eventually got approval to purchase a caravan of 40 camels through Congress in 1855 and the US Army Camel Corps came into existence.
Pack-carrying dromedaries in the desert (Photo: Getty Images/Stockphoto)⌖ ⌖ ⌖ The plan to import camels itself was not Davis’ idea but the brainchild of Major Henry C Wayne , also an early convert to the camel cause. Wayne was selected to collect the army’s first batch of camels from West Africa, however his public role in the camel saga soon became secondary to the private capacity he fashioned for himself as the number one publicist in promoting the virtues and utility of camels for America…proclaiming a multiplicity of uses in addition to transportation, including plantation chores (eg, hauling cotton, corn, etc.) which were more cost-effective than comparable equine alternatives. Wayne’s efforts ignited a craze for camels and dromedaries especially among Southern planters (‘The Dark Underbelly of Jefferson Davis’ Camels’, Michael E. Woods, Muster, 21-Nov-2017, www.thejournalofthecivilwarerw.org).
‘Southwest Passage’, a 1950s Hollywood B-movie purportedly about the Camel Corps⌖ ⌖ ⌖ CONSPIRACY AND OPPORTUNISM With camels, if not quite thick on the ground very much conspicuously present, the Camel Corps HQ was established at Camp Verde, Texas, and army camel experiments were undertaken in the Southwest. What eventually emerged though were other, non-military uses for the importation of camels. Behind the enthusiasm of slaveholders to acquire camels lay a deeper scheme. Jefferson Davis and the slaveholders were determined to expand slavery westward into the new territories of the Southwest even to “free” states like California, and they certainly saw the camel, capable of going without water for long periods while still hauling great loads, as instrumental to the conquest of the southwestern deserts and the securing of a safe route to the far west. Though Davis himself denied this was his intention historian Kevin Waite asserts that “camels were part of his broader fantasies for the western expansion” of the slave industry. Michael Woods offers a different viewpoint, arguing that Davis did not envision this outcome when he initiated the camel project nor did he collude with the “Slave Power” which steered the scheme, but his crucial championing of the project did trigger the chain of events that led to it.
⌖ ⌖ ⌖ MASKING THE BANNED SLAVE TRADE The importation of these humped, cloven-footed creatures by Southerners likely served another, even more nefarious purpose of the slaveholding class. Suspicions were high in anti-slavery circles that the influx of camels in the 1850s was being used as a smokescreen to shield the smuggling in of African slaves—an activity made illegal in the US since the 1808 ban—probably funnelled into the country via the Texas coastline where a raft of slave traders were based (Woods).
⌖ ⌖ ⌖ With the outbreak of war between North and South in 1861 plans for their extensive use were pretty much shelved notwithstanding that the Confederacy now had sole control of the camels. Post-bellum, interest was not revived for a number of reasons – the camels didn’t catch on partially due to the creatures’ undesirable personal traits and their being not easy for Americans to handle. Besides, the completion of the Transcontinental Railway in 1869 made their utility for long distance transport more or less obsolete. Consequently, owners were quick to dispose of their stocks of camels, some were sold off to travelling circuses or zoos, others were simply released to roam into the wild leading to random sightings of the creatures decades afterwards.
Why So Few African–Americans Play Elite-Level Ice Hockey?
Non-white names and faces in North American ice hockey are conspicuously absent from the sport at the highest level. Just over five percent of players in the North American men’s National Hockey League (NHL)—the world’s premier ice hockey league—are blacks or people of colour. Compare this to basketball or American football, eighty and seventy-five percent respectively, coloured player participation at elite-level⧼a̼⧽. The absence of non-whites in the sport goes further than that. Participation in ice hockey of non-playing staff including management is similarly heavily skewed towards whites. NHL club owners and coaches have been predominantly white, in 102 years of the League only one coach has been black. The lack of diversity is reinforced by the composition of the NHL’s fan base – over seventy-seven percent are white (cf. basketball, forty-five percent), and the white supporters of ice hockey are more conservative and wealthier than non-white fans (“The NFL Says ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’. Black Players Aren’t So Sure”, Terrence Doyle, FiveThirtyEight, Upd 19 October 2020, www.fivethirtyeight.com).
Why have non-whites in American and Canadian ice hockey always been outliers in the sport? The lack of participation by players of colour starts at the beginner’s level with youngsters not taking up the game in great numbers. The prohibitive cost is a real factor. A recent survey indicates that sixty percent of the parents of young players were forking out more than US$5,000 a year on equipment, competition fees and travel. This alone immediately disadvantages many black parents whose family finances are absorbed by the basic necessities of day-to-day living. Another significant allied factor is that blacks lack prior exposure and access to the game of ice hockey…so, unlike say with basketball or ‘gridiron’, there is for them a disconnect, an absence of cultural affiliation with the sport. With the game’s full-on physical impact aspect, playing ice hockey has long been considered the epitome of “white machismoism”. Budding non-white players tend to find this stereotype of an “affluent white culture” unwelcoming and a deterrent to the majority from progressing with the sport (“Why The Ice Is White”, Wes Judd, Pacific Standard, 14 June 2017, psmag.com). Those who do make it to the NHL (only 70-odd black players in the League’s entire history), often report a feeling of isolation and alienation from the rest of their team and the club.
Underlying all of this is the basic explanation for the out-of-kilter status quo – the persistent, overarching LCD spectre of racism. Those black players who take up the sport, starting at the junior level and proceeding to the senior leagues, have consistently found themselves the targets of racial abuse – from white fans, from opposing players, from their own white team-mates, and from their own coaches and support staffs…in recent years coaches from two NHL teams Carolina Hurricanes and Toronto Maple Leafs were sacked for racially vilifying their coloured players⧼b̼⧽.
With the impulse for diversity and inclusion embracing modern sport as a whole today, the NHL has come under increasing pressure from wider North American society to reform its sport. The response from the governing body so far has been at best tokenism, bereft of any substance, the League’s ”Hockey is for everyone” sloganeering is seen as merely hollow rhetoric when there is follow-up efforts from the League’s administrators to make meaningful reforms to rectify the imbalance. The pressure for reform in ice hockey has In fact come from non-white players within the NHL — such as Matt Dumba (left) from the Minnesota Wild who have come out on record, putting the spotlight on the racial discrimination pervading the sport, in so doing trying to drag a reluctant NHL still digging its heels in towards real action to remedy the inequitable situation (Doyle). Willie O’Ree
Footnote: in 1958 Willie O’Ree, was the first black player to break into the NHL, which meant the Canadian winger was also the first non-white major league hockey player to experience the avalanche of racism hurled in his direction from fans and players alike during his two seasons with the top-flight Boston Bruins side before being traded initially to the Montreal Canadiens and then back to the minor leagues. In his post-playing days O’Ree has become a diversity ambassador for ice hockey.
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⧼a̼⧽ this is not to presume that ice hockey is “Robinson Crusoe” in the exclusion of non-whites from specific sports…sports like golf (take out Tiger Woods) and swimming (often contrasted with athletics) have been massively disproportionately lite-on for black and coloured participation at the highest professional levels
⧼b̼⧽ one of the coaches even physically assaulting their black playing staff