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How does international human rights law apply during armed conflict?

Although the relationship between international human rights law and the law of armed conflict has been the subject of significant recent academic discussion, there remains a lack of comprehensive guidance in identifying the law applicable to specific situations faced by military forces. The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) is the law (by treaty or custom) that regulates the means and methods used in the conduct of armed hostilities.

In this video, Daragh Murray, editor of the Practitioners’ Guide to Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict, talks about international human rights law in armed conflict, including examples such as the use of armed force and military activities.

Featured image credit: Desert War by DariuszSankowski. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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A glimpse at the 2017 solar eclipse [excerpt]

The United States mainland has not experienced a total solar eclipse in 38 years, and the upcoming 2017 eclipse promises to be the most-watched total eclipse in history. Why are millions of Americans travelling to witness this event?

In the following excerpt from Eclipse: Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon, author Frank Close gives us a glimpse into the allure of the total eclipse.

Anyone who has experienced the diamond ring effect that heralds the start of a total solar eclipse will tell you that it is the most beautiful natural phenomenon that they have ever seen.

That this marvel happens is thanks to a cosmic coincidence: the sun is both 400 times broader than the moon and 400 times further away. This makes the sun and moon appear to be the same size. So if the moon is in direct line of sight of the sun, it can completely and precisely block it from view.

A total eclipse of the sun happens about once every 18 months. As the moon moves slowly across the face of the sun, it casts a shadow on the earth’s surface, about 100 miles in diameter. As our planet spins in its daily round, the moon’s silhouette rushes across land and sea at about 2000 miles an hour. The moon is totally eclipsed on the average twice every three years. The event lasts for several hours and can be seen by everyone on the night-side of the earth, weather permitting. Even under cloud, the darkening would be apparent. In addition to these total eclipses there are partial eclipses of the moon, which happen about every eight months. Totality is rare, and most people pass their whole lives without seeing one.

The propaganda benefit of associating eclipses with singular events touches our psyche profoundly. If a total eclipse of the sun occurred in the homelands of a primitive tribe, it would be a singular event, long remembered and passed down in folklore. Partial solar eclipses, however, might occur half a dozen times in a lifespan. Most of those partial eclipses won’t dim the light, and might escape notice entirely other than by sages, witch-doctors, and astrologers. Total eclipses, by contrast, would create fear and panic when the source of light, heat, and life itself was suddenly blotted out. Minutes later there would be relief as daylight returned. Reprieved by the gods, the audience would be ripe for exploitation by charlatans, or by those ‘in the know’.

[image error]Resources provided by NASA.

On 21 August 2017, up to 200 million people will gather in a narrow belt across the USA, from Oregon to South Carolina, to witness the most watched total solar eclipse in history.

There is a slow build-up to the totality show, as the moon gradually covers the sun, which becomes a thin crescent as twilight falls. As the climax approaches, excitement mounts. The temperature drops, and then, in the west, a wall of darkness like a gathering storm rushes towards you. This apparition is the moon’s shadow.

In an instant you are enveloped by the gloom. The last sliver of sun disappears and, as from nowhere, a diamond ring flashes around a black hole in the sky, vibrant, like a living thing. For those beneath the shadow as it passes, the sounds of animals cease, and life seems in suspended animation as for a few minutes night comes to the dome of the sky directly overhead, and covers the land from one horizon to the other. Look up myopically, and you would see stars as if it were normal night, accompanied by an awesome sight: that inky circle, surrounded by shimmering white light, like a black sunflower with the most delicate of silver petals.

One watcher has described it to me as like ‘looking into the valley of death with the lights of heaven far away calling for me to enter’. After the thrill of an eclipse you can’t wait to do it again, but wait you must until that exquisite alignment of sun, moon, and earth comes around once more. When it does, you must go to the thin arc where the moon’s shadow momentarily sweeps across a small part of the globe. For a total eclipse is only visible at special places on earth; a mere 0.5% of the earth’s surface is totally obscured by the moon’s shadow for just a few minutes, while the remaining 99.5% sees either a partial eclipse or nothing at all.

Anyone who hasn’t experienced totality might struggle to understand why people are prepared to adventure to the far side of the earth, by plane, ship, even on the hump of a camel, to be there. I didn’t anticipate that I would spend the latter years of my life planning expeditions throughout the globe to watch them.

Featured image credit: “Totalsolareclipse2001cmp” by Fred Espenak . Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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The presence of the past: selective national narratives and international encounters in university classrooms

In mid-February 2017, the BBC started airing SS GB, presenting viewers with an alternate outcome of the Battle for Britain, this time won by Nazi Germany. This dramatised version of a 1978 novel is only the latest in a series of (British) cultural products engaging with World War II history and its persistent cultural narratives. More than 70 years after World War II ended across Europe and Asia, it continues to have a strong hold on national imaginations both in terms of popular culture and governmental narratives.

The question of how to remember past events such as World War II has long become official business. Governments, intent on sustaining unifying national narratives, therefore choose what and how the past should be remembered and told, for example through teaching history at secondary schools and memorials/museums.

These choices have become the subject of an academic debate in the fields of memory and reconciliation studies. For how states choose to remember tells us something important about how they see themselves which can have decisive effects on how they are seen by others. The fact that France or the United Kingdom are still struggling to integrate self-critical examinations of their colonial histories into official remembrance and the history curriculum therefore points to the deep unease states may feel when it comes to the negative sides of their past. It is obviously more attractive to celebrate heroic achievements of the past than to bring the harsh reality of colonialism into the open. As Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum, remarked when talking about the UK: “Maybe we mention a little bit of slave trade here and there, a few wars here and there, but the chapters we insist on are the sunny ones.”

Apart from allowing us to access state identity, how states deal with their past can also have important consequences for their interactions with each other. In the context of World War II remembrance, Japan remains uneasy in engaging with its role as an aggressor in the Asia-Pacific, a position that continues to have an adverse influence on its relations with South Korea and China. Ironically, in East Asia, disputes about the past and ways of remembering it appear more current in 2017 than they did in the immediate aftermath of World War II, as reports on anti-Japanese sentiment in China illustrate.

Holocaust Memorial [explored] by Jaime Pérez, CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Interestingly, much academic and public debate on memory concentrates on the role of political elites. But we cannot simply assume that the general public accepts and shares whatever narrative of the past is presented to them. People’s understandings of past events will be influenced by the chosen portrayals of their governments because they have been socialized into ways of understanding. The German government’s decision to build a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin, which opened in 2005, therefore certainly affects the German public’s way of understanding their country’s violent past. But socialization into official historical knowledge does not by necessity equal a simultaneous acceptance of that knowledge.

These types of questions are particularly relevant for academic staff teaching politics and international relations at increasingly internationalized higher education institutions. In classrooms that often feature 20+ different nationalities, the teaching space becomes a room for encountering different versions of history. While currently enrolled university students, often born after 2000, are far from temporally proximate to past violent events such as World War II, they may exhibit entrenched views derived from official selective versions of history. This can lead to elements of surprise when students realize that there are “other” versions of “what happened” while discussing history and current issues with students from opposite sides of the world.

The significance of this encounter comes out in a piece of student artwork produced in the context of a university seminar on reconciliation (taught by Seunghoon Emilia Heo at Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University). Entitled “The Others in Us”, this picture highlights how borders drawn in the national imagination of the past create distinctions between “us” and “them” and often serve to conceal commonalities.

The Other in Us by Nguyen Huu Phu Gia, designed by Vo Ha Chi. Used with permission

Selective and often exclusively positive portrayals of national pasts can therefore work to the detriment of encouraging thoughtful historical dialogues that already include multiple ways of understanding. These can then become the basis for reflective insights. Similar sentiments are echoed in Bill Clinton’s recent tribute to Martin McGuiness, a key figure in the Northern Ireland peace process: “He expanded the definition of ‘us’ and shrunk the definition of ‘them’”. Realizing the part that relinquishing non-reflective understandings of the past play in this makes for an important learning experience for students of politics in increasingly international classrooms. It can also provide clear insights to countries still dealing with the legacy of World War II today.

Featured image credit: “classroom” by wokandapix. Public Domain via Pixabay .

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Photographer Helen Muspratt through the eyes of her daughter

Helen Muspratt (1905–2001) was a pioneering photographer. Her unique techniques with different forms of exposure made her a driving force in naturalistic portraiture and social documentation. Throughout her illustrious career, Helen photographed the likes of Dorothy Hodgkin, Nobel Prize winning chemist; Roger Fry and Julian Bell of the Bloomsbury Group; painter Paul Nash; journalist Alistair Cooke; and many others. Some of her work is still on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in London, United Kingdom.

And in honor of Mother’s Day, Jessica Sutcliffe, reflects on her mother’s work, inspirations, and influences in photography.

Helen with husband Jack Dunman and children: Mark Kate and Jessica. Photo by Joan Muspratt. Used with permission.

When/why did your mother begin her photography career?

My mother was encouraged to study photography by a family friend, Francis Newbery who had come to live in Dorset after he retired from being head of the Glasgow School of Art. She studied photography at the Regent Street Polytechnic and then returned to Swanage to set up her own studio, specializing in portraiture.

What was it like for her as a photographer in the 1930s, knowing that most women photographers were unknown or overlooked?

The 1930s proved to be the most creative time of her life. Newbery introduced her to Lettice Ramsey and together they set up a second studio in Cambridge where, inspired by the work of Man Ray, they began to experiment with innovative techniques such as solarisation and multiple exposures. I don’t think she was aware of how unusual it was for women to be doing this. In Cambridge she was mixing in left-wing academic circles and having a stimulating time both socially and in her work.

What do you believe your mother would want people to think about her work today?

She would be justly proud, both of her experimental work, the documentary photographs she took of ordinary people in the Soviet Union and the Welsh mining valleys and of the enduring studio portraits she created throughout her working life.

What impact does your mom’s work have on you?

As an architect, I am steeped in art and design and have come to understand how significant the contribution of Helen Muspratt and Lettice Ramsey was in this field. It was studying her work which inspired me to write my book. I gradually realized that here was an exceptional body of work which deserved to be seen by a larger audience.

Walk us through some of your Helen’s work and influence?

This is a self-portrait by my mother, taken approximately in 1930 and it demonstrates many of the qualities which made her stand out as an innovative and skilled artist. In it she used two experimental techniques mentioned above: triple exposure where several images are superimposed on one negative and solarisation where the negative is exposed to light during the development process giving an ambiguous effect of positive and negative with a dark outline to enhance the image.

Equally important were the documentary records she made while travelling in the Soviet Union in 1936 and the devastated Welsh mining valleys in 1937. Both experiences lead her to join the communist party and she remained a socialist all her life.

Critical to all her work was her preoccupation with the face—its “shape and angle”—and she became an eminent portrait photographer recording some of the leading figures of the twentieth century.

The artist Paul Nash 1935. Used with permission.

My book combines a record of her work both a personal memoir and story of her life.

Helen discussing her work for the BBC Television series “Women of Our Century.” Used with permission.

Featured image credit: Portrait of Helen Muspratt. Used with permission. 

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The role of women in the life of Frederick Douglass

Although Frederick Douglass captures his journey into freedom and political influence in his autobiographies, he reveals little about his private life. Douglass’s carefully crafted public persona concealed a man whose life was more complicated than he would have liked us to think. Women played key roles in guiding him throughout his turbulent life—from helping him escape slavery to solidifying his role as an abolitionist and suffragist.

In the following excerpt from Women in the World of Frederick Douglass, author Leigh Fought examines these relationships to reveal the significant influence women had over Douglass.

“I belong to the women,” declared Frederick Douglass at the mid-point of his life. More so for him than for any other prominent man of his time, this was true. His race, his enslaved status, his ability to read, his self-emancipation, his success as a speaker and newspaper editor, the way he lived every aspect of his life in opposition to racism, his understanding of equality between the sexes, his intellectual development, and even the very documents that later generations use to reconstruct his life all emerged from the world of women. At key points in his life women ensured that he realized his ambitions; and, in some instances, no man could have played the same type of role in his resistance to racism. Nevertheless, aside from platitudes, they have not found their way into the telling of his life in any way that would reflect their influence.

Photograph of Anna Murray Douglass, circa 1860. First published in “My Mother As I Recall Her” by Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 1900. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The artistic term “negative space”—the space around an object—seemed to be the best method to use in addressing questions about the role of women in Douglass’s life and the role of his in theirs. The negative space, in this case, is the feminine space. Focusing on the women who surrounded him illuminated nuances in his activism and his perceptions of human rights, race, gender, and himself. Although of lesser stature than Douglass, they saw themselves as engaged in the same questions. Like him, they had their own ambitions and navigated restrictions placed on them because of the body and circumstances into which they were born. With a few exceptions, he and they sympathized with one another and understood themselves as collaborators rather than as potential competitors, as occasionally became the case with his male colleagues. Honing in on this feminine space revealed three intersecting themes.

First, family was of paramount importance to Douglass and a necessary component of his politics. His first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, began with a family shattered by slavery and ended with the foundation of a new one in freedom. In nineteenth-century America, not only did masters commonly break apart families, but stereotypes of African-Americans also depicted them as incapable of forming and maintaining the emotional bonds of marriage and parenthood. Seizing the right to marry, have children, protect the integrity of a family, and raise the next generation to lead a better life was both a personal desire and a political statement in opposition to racism. Much of the Douglasses’ adoption of middle-class norms of behavior and comportment also fell into this category. Yet, Frederick could not have accomplished this without Anna. She was not simply any wife. She was a woman who, despite having been born free, faced limited opportunities for marriage and children. Like her husband, she too lived in a society that devalued her, even in the circles of her husband’s antislavery colleagues. Thus, accusations of marital infidelity leveled against Douglass by rumormongers, anti-abolitionists, and abolitionists alike all must be understood within this context of cultural hostility toward black families and stereotypes about the sexuality and morality of African-Americans.

Furthermore, charges of adultery focused only on Douglass’s associations with white women, a second theme of this feminine space. There is no escaping the fact that he spent much time in the company of white women and that he exuded a charisma that was attractive to them. He seemed most at home in the company of women, and those women were most often white because they comprised the majority of women in the middle-class, activist world in which he moved and because they had greater access to the resources that he needed.

Frederick Douglass with his second wife Helen Pitts and her sister Eva. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

A third theme concerned the control of boundaries between public and private life, an issue that has resonated across the centuries. Privacy was a privilege not granted to the Douglasses as African-Americans. Masters and employers claimed access to all aspects of black people’s lives and bodies as a means of total control. When Frederick’s celebrity grew, he and Anna found that they had to repulse those who might pry into their lives and make judgments about the Douglasses’ marriage and family that would be used to discredit him personally and African-Americans generally. Private time also allowed Frederick the space to think, read, and write. Therefore, the Douglasses claimed such space for themselves as a right, and much of the responsibility of maintaining it fell to Anna. Frederick and Anna controlled the extent to which different individuals had access to that space, and their marital friction resulted partly from differences of opinion as to who should be granted admission.

While the Douglasses insisted on the right to shield their family life from the world, Frederick’s friendships with white women were characterized by defiant transparency. Douglass and his female colleagues understood the rules that applied to them along the intersections of race, gender, and class. More than speak out, they engaged in a demonstration that required them to live in opposition to restrictions.

The women did not simply play the role of helpmeet to the Great Man in this; they saw themselves as partners in a type of protest that only had meaning because of their gender and race in relation to his gender and race. Only a black woman could be his partner in challenging attacks on black families. Only white women could be his partners in challenging the particular charged color line between black men and white women. Their middle-class status, or aspirations to such, armed them with a respectability that would not allow class prejudices to discredit them. They were not just the women behind the man. They worked together to live out an ideal of racial equality in the face of constant attack.

In his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, he famously insisted that “when the true history of the anti-slavery cause shall be written, woman will occupy a large space in its pages; for the cause of the slave has been peculiarly woman’s cause.” The same should be said of him, for a true history of Frederick Douglass requires that women occupy a large space, from beginning to end.

Featured image credit: “Elizabeth Cady Stanton before the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections.” Featured in New York Daily Graphic, 1878. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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The historical roots of Iran: an interview

In April 2017 Bridget Kendall, former BBC diplomatic correspondent and now Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, interviewed Michael Axworthy, author of Iran: What Everyone Needs to Know® about the history of Iran, the characterization of Iran as an aggressive expansionist power, and the current challenges and developments in the country today. Below is a transcribed version of part of the interview. To learn more, listen to the complete podcast at the bottom of the post.

The answers to some of the questions that you pose in Iran: What Everyone Needs to Know® —a lot of them have very deep historical roots. If you want to understand Iran, you have to go back. Can you give some examples?

There are several examples one can give. I suppose the most immediate example is trying to understand Iran’s rather lonely and often rather hostile position towards the west at the moment. It’s necessary to understand the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between Iran and particularly the UK, but also the United States; foreign interference in the country then, and also previously; a long history of invasions before that time ranging from Alexander the Great to the Islamic conquest; and then the Mongols. It’s a long, long history and invasion is one perspective from which to look at it. But there is also the religious history: the Shia-Sunni schism, the turning of Iran into a Shia country in the sixteenth century. All of those things are very present and very important in understanding Iran now. And unless you understand something about the historical background, you don’t really get a feel for that.

The big turning point in modern day-Iran was the 1979 Islamic Revolution which swept away the shah and brought in Ayatollah Khomeini and a new Islamic Republic which is what we have today. It does seem as though it totally changed the name of the game in Iran, so doesn’t that mean that there was somewhat of a break with the past; that perhaps history becomes less important?

The other day I watched the film, The Leopard again. And there’s a great phrase in that: “everything must change, so that everything can stay the same.” And really, there are lots of different ways to look at the Iranian Revolution of 1979. There were winners and losers and there where people who expected to be winners who turned out to be losers, as happened with other great revolutions. But the successful group in the end was the group of clerics around Ayatollah Khomeini. And in many ways what they were trying to achieve was a solidification and a re-establishment of patterns of social and religious authority that have very deep roots in Iran.

So not a break with the past, actually but a reaffirmation in many ways, of some parts of the past.  

Through a revolution—yes.

Satellite map of Iran. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Most people think of Iran as one of the big regional powers in the Middle East, currently Islamic, part of the Muslim world—and perhaps some people don’t realize that the Iranian language is nothing like Arabic. Persian is, in fact, an Indo-European language. It’s a member of the same family as French and German and English and Russian – so how important is that cultural point of understanding Iran?

It is it is very important, and as you say, it’s often neglected and misunderstood. And when that is neglected and misunderstood by Westerners, the Iranians can be quite upset because many of them feel they actually belong with the west, belong with Europe, more than they belong in the Middle East. And some Iranians indeed are quite xenophobic towards other people in the Middle East.

So that feeling of identity through language is important. Also the feeling of cultural depth that goes back to the origins of Iranian language is also very important. And it’s also important because the Iranian language is the chief thing that gives a continuity to Iranian history, back through all those invasions and in particular the Islamic conquest, the Arab conquest.

How much of a sense of cohesion, now and historically, is there in Iran?

Iran has quite a strong cultural identity and that, again, has deep historical roots. It’s partly because of the deep historical roots that the identity is so strong. And that is partly about language, also very much about Persian literature, the great tradition of Persian poetry, the enormous contribution that Iranians made to the great wave of Islamic cultural development, and scientific intellectual development in the eighth, ninth, tenth centuries. All of that is very present in the minds of Iranians and is also influential on people, who, in one time may have been called the Iranian space or the Persian space.

In the sixteenth, seventeenth centuries, Persian was the diplomatic language used by the Ottoman Empire. It was the court language in the Mogul empire. And when the British began to take over in India, British administrators had to learn Persian in order to make the administration work with the Persian-speaking administrators that they inherited from the Mogul Empire. So Iran and Iranian culture have had an influence way beyond certainly the present-day borders of Iran and actually way beyond the widest borders that Iran ever had, practically.

Do Iranians see themselves as a big power or do they see themselves as a victim of geography?

I think the answer probably is both, of course. The long history of invasions, and particularly the history of the last 100-150 years of foreign meddling in the country before the revolution in 1979 tends to make many Iranians think about Iranian history in terms of victimhood and being vigilant for the danger of further meddling and further positioning Iran as a victim, and that makes Iran sometimes appear quite defensive. But the other side of appearing defensive, if your defense is active, it can make Iran look aggressive as well. And there are definitely some people who do see Iran as a great power in the region and a power to expand and wield influence. I would tend to think those people in general are a minority even within the Iranian regime. Iranians place a great emphasis on their culture, on intellectual achievements, and on education. And those things very much go together. And that’s just the sort of country that many Iranians see themselves as having rather than a militaristic or an aggressive kind of nationalism. And the periods where Iran has been an aggressive expansionist power in the recent history is quite narrow. Iran has not been kind of power for a long time – more than 200 years at least.

https://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Bridget-Michael-Axworthy-iran-wentk-interview.mp3

Featured image credit: “Iran, Flag” by Etereuti. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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George Washington: the great mind behind early America

Throughout history, George Washington has been highly regarded for his common sense and military fortitude. When it comes to the Founding Fathers, his intellectual pursuits have been overshadowed by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton—who are conventionally considered the great minds of early America.

Despite his relative lack of formal education, Washington remained an avid reader throughout his life. Through comprehensive research, historian Kevin J. Hayes has identified Washington’s devotion to self-education. In the following excerpt from George Washington: A Life in Books, Hayes examines the evidence behind Washington’s overlooked intellectual life.

A hundred years ago Ezra Pound criticized American history textbooks for ignoring George Washington’s intellect. More often than not Washington has been seen as a shelf-filler, someone who decorated his home with books, but seldom read them fully or deeply. Here’s an alternate theory: though George Washington never assembled a great library in the manner of, say, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, he did amass an impressive and diverse collection of books that he read closely and carefully and that significantly influenced his thought and action.

No one has ever written an intellectual biography of George Washington. Though Washington’s surviving comments about books and reading are not nearly as extensive as those of other Founding Fathers, he did leave many different types of evidence that, in the aggregate, can help to reconstruct his life of the mind. The evidence takes many different forms:

“Washington at Verplanck’s Point” by John Trumbull, circa 1790. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Surviving books

Though Washington’s library was widely dispersed during the nineteenth century, many of his books do survive. The Boston Athenaeum holds the single largest collection of books formerly in his possession. Additional books survive at Mount Vernon. Other libraries—the Firestone Library at Princeton University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Library of Congress, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the Morgan Library, the New York Public Library, the Virginia Historical Society—all hold books from Washington’s library in their collections, most of which I have examined.

Marginalia

With the notable exception of his copy of James Monroe’s View of the Conduct of the Executive of the United States, Washington’s surviving books contain little marginalia, but he did write in his books occasionally. Most of the time he did so to correct typographical errors, but sometimes his marginal notes reveal how he read. Occasionally his notes in one book indicate other books he read. The fact that Washington wrote in his books has gone largely unnoticed, because uncovering these notes requires work that some find tedious. One must examine the surviving books meticulously, turning over one page after another in search of the slightest pencil marks showing that Washington did read the volumes that bear his bookplate.

Library catalogues

Much evidence survives to identify books from Washington’s library that do not survive. Mainly it comes in the form of library catalogues. Washington himself compiled two such catalogues, which not only list what books he had at Mount Vernon, but also demonstrate his level of bibliographical expertise. Lund Washington, his cousin and plantation manager, compiled a list of books at Mount Vernon toward the end of the Revolutionary War. Washington’s library was inventoried with his estate after his death. When many of his books went up for sale in the nineteenth century, the booksellers described them in considerable detail. All these various catalogues provide much additional information about Washington’s books.

Published writings

The story of the books in Washington’s life includes not only those he owned and read; it also includes those he wrote and published. Washington was a reluctant author, but sometimes his professional responsibilities compelled him to publish what he wrote. Occasionally editors, both friends and enemies, took charge and edited Washington’s writings, especially his letters, for publication.

Correspondence

As a writer, Washington was at his best when he was writing letters. Like any good letter writer, he shaped his tone and persona to suit individual readers. Though he seldom discussed his reading with his correspondents, sometimes he did provide bookish advice, especially when it came to recommending what military manuals to read or what agricultural manuals were useful. Washington’s correspondence, which fills dozens of volumes in the standard edition of his papers, contains numerous references that shed light on his books and reading. His literary allusions are often subtle, and many of them have gone unnoticed previously.

Diaries

Washington kept a diary through much of his life, but his individual diary entries are frustratingly brief. He says where he was and what he did, but seldom does he reveal the inner man. He rarely mentions what he read or what he was thinking. Every once in a while, he does provide a tantalizing clue indicating the importance of one particular book or another.

Extracts, abstracts, and notes

Washington filled many blank quires of paper with notes he took while reading. Some of these notes come from practical manuals. Others come from books of history and travel. Several of these notebooks survive at the Library of Congress. Amounting to a total of nearly 900 pages, Washington’s manuscript notes supply a wealth of information about his reading process. Other notebooks survive in fragmented form. The owner of one such notebook disbound it and distributed its individual holograph leaves to friends. Now only three leaves from the original notebook survive.

The image of George Washington as a man of letters is much different from the accepted image of George Washington as a man of action. Like any new interpretation, this new view may take some getting used to, so I ask the reader’s patience and indulgence.

Featured image credit: “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States” by Howard Chandler Christy, circa 1940. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Godzilla of the Galápagos and other speciation stories

Stoic, scaled, and spiny, with a distinct air of prehistory, the marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) makes a formidable impression on all that visit the Galápagos archipelago. Early visitors found them almost demonic, Hollywood turned them into monsters and even the father of evolution was repelled. In his diary of the Beagle voyage, Darwin refers to them as a “hideous-looking creature”, whilst describing his experimental attempts to drown them, and recalling that their meat is quite good for those “whose stomachs rise above all prejudices”. Yet despite their brutish appearance, marine iguanas are extremely placid herbivores, posing a threat only to the algae upon which they feed. We now know that these creatures represent one of the oldest living lineages of the archipelago and as such, their evolution is deeply intertwined with the history of the islands themselves, a discovery foreshadowed by Darwin‘s observation that “They assuredly well become the land they inhabit”. By studying the marine iguana we may therefore illuminate the processes of diversification and selection that drive the generation of species there.

The Galápagos archipelago is a highly dynamic and complex habitat, with islands continuously forming, moving, and finally submerging below the sea. The evolution of its native organisms can be equally complex, and this is certainly the case with the marine iguana. Recent genetic work has revealed that the single marine iguana species is made up of a network of distinct populations across the archipelago, with most islands harboring its own genetic unit. However, these units do not match up with the seven subspecies that were formally described. The old marine iguana taxonomy, based entirely on the morphology of relatively few animals, was in clear need of a reevaluation. Having an accurate taxonomy is vital, because taxonomy describes the biological entities that we use to conceptualize biodiversity, and crucially to legislate for and protect. When these taxa don’t represent biologically meaningful units, what are we actually protecting?

A new study ‒ employing a combination of traditional and modern approaches ‒ has addressed this issue. Using genetic data from almost 1,500 individuals, and morphological data from over 150, the study outlines a new integrative taxonomy of 11 subspecies that accurately reflects the natural divisions within the marine iguana species. Why, you might wonder, do we speak of subspecies rather than species? Whilst the divergence between these units is obvious, the pattern is neither deep enough nor clear enough to warrant full species designation. But actually, the far more interesting question is: why isn’t this divergence deeper?

Distribution of subspecies according to the classification of Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1962; left) and the newly proposed taxonomy (right). Credit: A. Miralles. Used with permission.

The Galápagos is famous for its speciation events. On this archipelago, multiple distinct forms of finches and tortoises inspired the thinking that revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Why then, would one of the oldest and mostly widely distributed lineages of the archipelago steadfastly refuse to speciate? Again, genetic data can shed some light. Recent work explored the question of interbreeding between iguanas of different island populations. In doing so, it found that though they are relatively rare, migrant iguanas experience rather high mating success on other islands, a fact illustrated by the numerous inter-island hybrids found. As conservationists, we may be concerned about this – hybridization homogenizes biodiversity and it is considered one source of extinction.

A female marine iguana: fearsome in appearance, placid in nature. Credit: A. MacLeod. Used with permission.

But hybridization can also produce more subtle effects. On the Galápagos, we find several examples where hybridization results in ‘lineage fusion’. This is where organisms from distinct lineages interbreed, thereby fusing lineages and reversing the formation of species. When this process is caused by human activity, e.g. by artificially moving organisms, we are right to be concerned. Yet in some cases, this fusion is undoubtedly a natural process, and it may even be vital in supporting long-term survival in a changing world.

In Darwin’s finches, hybridization is creating individuals whose novel genetic combination gives them a significant advantage in the face of a deadly introduced parasite. A species might be lost this way, but increased hybrid fitness means that some variant of the finch should persist. In marine iguanas, hybridization may be augmenting the genetic diversity of local populations, thereby enhancing their ability to rapidly adapt and survive the swift environmental changes brought about by El Niño events, where population crashes of up to 90% occur. Whilst hybridization has likely prevented the marine iguana from radiating into multiple fully-formed species, it could also underlie its ability to persist in this dynamic environment for millions of years. These events reminds us that lineages and even species can be transient entities, that one branch of the evolutionary tree may well be absorbed into another, often leaving no trace. Yet these ‘lost lineages’ are still important, since they generate genetic variation, which is the raw material of evolution. As such, protection of not only species, but also subspecies and other units of evolutionary significance against man-made threats is important. For the marine iguana, the new taxonomy will allow this, and should help ensure the persistence of this fascinating creature well into the foreseeable future.

Featured image credit: An adult male marine iguana from San Cristobal Island by A. MacLeod. Used with permission. 

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Ottonian queenship: powerful women in early medieval Germany

In 2008, archaeologists working on the cathedral at Magdeburg, in eastern Germany, opened an ancient tomb and rediscovered the bones of an Anglo-Saxon princess called Edith. She had died in the year 946, aged only about 30. Her remains were brought across the North Sea for scientific tests which verified the identification via tests on her tooth enamel, indicating that the bones belonged to someone who had grown up drinking water from the chalky landscapes of southern Britain. This Edith was none other than the granddaughter of Alfred the Great (871–99), the king of Wessex who had defeated the Vikings and laid the foundations for his successors to create by conquest the first kingdom of the English. The find was therefore celebrated in the British media as a window onto this legendary moment of English state formation.

It’s understandable that the British press should focus on the local angle: after all, the skeleton represents the oldest complete set of remains from any English royal family. But Edith was not only an Anglo-Saxon princess. She was also an Ottonian queen. The Ottonians were one of the great dynasties of medieval European history, and are traditionally regarded as the founders of Germany. They began as mere dukes of Saxony (of which Magdeburg was the key ecclesiastical centre), but in 919 acquired the kingship and gradually became the most powerful and successful of all the royal dynasties who ruled Europe in the tenth century. Five members of the family ruled East Francia—the common contemporary name for the territory now called Germany—between 919 and 1024. They added the northern half of Italy, and acquired the imperial title, in the 960s. On top of that, they intermittently wielded informal influence in West Francia (proto-France), and in parts of eastern and northern Europe. The names of these five kings are mercifully easy to remember (a Henry, three Ottos, then another Henry) and their deeds are well documented. But what makes the Ottonian family really stand out is the remarkable power of their wives and daughters.

Otto II and Theophanu. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

There were six Ottonian queens, and they rank among the most famous and powerful female rulers of the entire Middle Ages. With her marriage to Otto I in 936, Edith became the second of the queens. Unfortunately, she is the one about whom we know the least, though contemporary sources do celebrate the depth of her English royal heritage and the prestige that it brought to her husband’s nouveau-royal family. Edith’s mother-in-law Mathilda was the matriarch of the family, ruling as queen from 919 and outliving her husband Henry I by three decades. She founded several important monasteries (which also acted as political centres) and shortly after her death in 968 was the subject of two biographies. These were the first biographies of a contemporary queen for around three centuries.

The third and sixth Ottonian queens were Gerberga (d. 969), a sister of Otto I who was married first to a duke of Lotharingia and then to one of the kings of West Francia, and Cunigunde (d. 1040), the wife of Henry II. Both these queens are very prominent in contemporary sources, controlling succession, defending cities, and manipulating the levers of politics.

But the real stars of the dynasty were the empresses Theophanu and Adelheid. Theophanu was a Byzantine princess who at the age of 12 in 972 married Otto II and became in effect the ruler of the Ottonian empire in place of her infant son between her husband’s death in 983 and her own in 991. So extraordinary was her status that we have a document from 990 dated to the years of her reign as “Theophanius imperator”: “Theophanu the [male] emperor”. Her mother-in-law Adelheid was not only Otto I’s second wife but also a daughter, sister, mother, and widow of kings. She presided over three generations of Ottonian power in East Francia and Italy before her death in 999. The lives of these two women were transformed into legends in the centuries after their deaths, thanks to the mythologizing efforts of a plethora of artists, novelists, and composers (including Handel). The power of these six queens was not just a matter of their ability to influence their powerful husbands. They were rulers: that is how they saw themselves, and that is how contemporaries respectfully and fearfully described them. Little wonder that Pauline Stafford, a pioneering historian of early medieval queenship, argued that the European tenth century was “a century of women”.

But what was it about the tenth century that enabled Ottonian queens to wield such enormous power? This question has no settled answer. Formidable personalities are often given as the reason, but we do not have the kinds of sources give reliable personal information, so this is not much more than a guess. Another explanation has been sought in attitudes to gender in the Ottonian homeland of Saxony, where female monasticism was very prominent. A third common argument is that tenth-century queens inherited a strongly institutionalised version of queenship from the Carolingian Empire which had spanned Western Europe during the ninth century and established many of the political categories which would define the region’s politics until the end of the Middle Ages and beyond.

While there is something in all of these perspectives, my own argument is that powerful Ottonian queenship was a product of the peculiar conditions of tenth-century politics. This was an era in which the old certainties of the Carolingian era were breaking down, and in which territories once ruled by members of the same family were now ruled by unrelated dynasties who had to fight to convince others to regard them as royal. In this competitive dynastic environment they married already-royal women who could bring them prestige—and they activated that prestige by insisting on the high status of the queen. Elevating queenship into a central category of political action was a strategy that helped kings to dominate their rivals and their own families in a period where the established patterns of Carolingian politics had broken down. But it was a category that was ultimately inhabited, manipulated and lived by the queens themselves. This is how, in the fluid and uncertain world of tenth-century Europe, outsiders like Theophanu, Adelheid, and Edith became rulers of kingdoms and empires.

Featured image credit: Genealogy of the Ottonians, Chronica St Pantaleonis. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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American healthcare: are you an expert? [Quiz]

As technology and education become more broadly accessible, people are being exposed to more information than ever before. It’s easier than ever to choose convenience over reliability or accuracy—to search for symptoms on WebMD instead of asking a doctor, or consult Wikipedia for definitive answers to every question. All this newly accessible yet unreliable information has produced a wave of ill-informed and angry citizens.

Inspired by The Death of Expertise, in which Tom Nichols explores the dangers of the public rejection of expertise, we’ve created a series of quizzes to test your knowledge. Take this quiz to see how much you know about the American healthcare system. Then watch the video below to see how OUP employees fared against political scientist expert Lawrence R. Jacobs.

 

Featured image credit: Medical Documents – Hospital Patient Records by wp paarz. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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