Holly Tucker's Blog, page 54

Communism on Mars

By Eric Laursen (Regular Contributor)

A Bolshevik Utopia

A decade before the Bolshevik revolution, Aleksandr Bogdanov published Red Star: Novel-utopia (1908). Known as the “first Bolshevik utopia,” it chronicles an Earth-man’s journey to the planet Mars, where he is treated to a wondrous vision of a communist future, complete with flying cars and 3D color movies. As the Bolsheviks predicted, archaic institutions such as government and family have withered away, and the Earth-man is confronted with all his fondly held principles of equality and community come to life. Children are raised communally, all important decisions are made by a large council, and people are directed to fulfilling and creative work by a central economic agency that measures planet-wide needs. Men and women have become full equals, and they have evolved so that the Earthling cannot distinguish the sex of his large-eyed comrades, causing him to become increasingly anxious about his attraction to one of them. The Earthling is greatly relieved upon learning that he is a she.

The Martians have one world-wide society and one language. All dialect variation has faded, allowing instant communication between any two citizens. Moreover, since the Martians have achieved equality, the hierarchy implicit in language etiquette is missing, and, therefore, titles, greetings, and expressions of gratitude are noticeably absent. Gender is also absent from the Martian language. Most important, since the Martians have gained a conscious understanding of all of history—past, present, and future—their nouns are declined “temporally.” Bogdanov was a proponent of adopting a universal language, and suitably Red Star was published in Esperanto in 1929.

Trouble in (Communist) Paradise

Despite the many achievements of the Martians, there is trouble in communist paradise. Mars is a dying planet whose resources are too meager to continue to support life. The Martians are running out of fuel and must choose between Earth and Venus to find more. Both planets are closer to the sun’s life-giving energy and therefore more vigorous than aging Mars, a cold, dying desert planet. Yet each planet has its unique challenges. Though Venus has vicious dinosaurs and active volcanos, Earth has something even more dangerous: capitalism! In the end they choose Venus, bowing to the argument that Earth offers something that Mars lacks. The Martian men have grown cold along with their planet, and the two main Martian men that we meet cannot satisfy their wives sexually or provide them with the children they so desperately want. Moreover, they have developed their intellects at the expense of emotion and compassion, an imbalance that allows them to consider liquidating Earth’s population in order to get the resources Mars needs. The hot-blooded Earthling’s love affair with one of the frustrated Martian women signals a happy medium, a fusion of Earth’s revolutionary heat and Mars’s intellectual and physical cold that gives hope for the upward progress of life in the universe.

Bogdanov plays chess with Lenin while Maksim Gorky looks on (1908)

New Iterations for Red Star

After the 1917 revolution, Red Star came out in multiple editions and was adapted for the stage. Bogdanov was the founder of Proletkult, the Proletarian Cultural Organization that trained workers to become artists, writers, and scientists. He published multiple volumes of philosophy, and his “tectology” is often put forth as a precursor for systems theory. Although Bogdanov was an early contender for Party leadership, he soon lost political power after the revolution and returned to his scientific research on blood transfusion full-time. In Red Star, the Martians maintain youthful vitality through frequent exchange of blood. In 1926 Bogdanov attained his dream of founding an institute dedicated to the study of blood transfusion and died two years later while conducting a blood transfusion experiment on himself.

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Published on July 02, 2014 14:52

18th Century Marriage Customs

By Stephanie Cowell (Regular Contributor)

Mozart married at the age of 25 in Vienna’s Stephansdom Cathedral, where you can still go today and kneel near the spot where he knelt with his bride. He was a city man, and sophisticated, so he may not have participated in some of the usual wedding customs…but perhaps he did. Nevertheless, we do know that he set to work at once to get his bride between the sheets (what mattered in his eyes).

Good Fortune and Good Luck

For good fortune, the bride of the late eighteenth-century must not sew the last stitch of her wedding dress until it was time to leave for the church (we hope she remembered to remove the needle); once on her way, she must not look in a mirror. Brides on the way to marriage were considered susceptible to evil spirits. As they walked, her bridesmaids, often dressed in a similar way so that such spirits could not distinguish them from each other, clustered around her protectively. It was good luck to see a chimney sweep or a black cat. Wednesday was the most propitious day for marriages; Fridays and Saturdays were bad. If snow fell on her wedding day, it would bring fertility and wealth.

On leaving her house, the bride would step over piles of broken dishes. The night before the wedding was the Polterabend, where friends and family would small all chipped crockery or glass for good luck and hurl them out the windows.

Dressing for the Day

The wedding procession was led by a fiddler and, on the wedding morning, the bride was sent a morgen-gabe–a morning gift–from her groom. She in turn sent him a shirt she had sewn for the wedding day, which he was to keep all his life.

The bride’s dress was often white, which stood for joy, not purity; she often wore a blue band at her hem, representing purity. Her veil was another way to hide her from the spirits until safely in her husband’s care. But the first one to buy anything after the marriage would dominate the relationship; brides sometimes arranged to buy a pin from a bridesmaid. (This was before you could place an order by cell phone while walking back up the aisle.)

Weddings and Married Life

During the reception, the bride danced the wreath dance, sometimes called “dancing off the bridal crown,” the wreath which symbolized her maidenhood. Married women danced about her until their circle was broken by their fatigue or roughly intruding groomsmen, who then stole the wreath. Guests tried to take home a part of the broken wreath, which mean they would be married within the year. The bride then put a matron’s cap on her likely disheveled hair. Following the wedding, the best man would often steal the bride, leaving the groom to find her. Events could turn bawdy.

After marriage, a woman’s life would consist of kinder, kleider, kirche, and kuche–children, clothes, church, and cooking. Of course, for many women, there was much more than that.

While we may not know how many of these traditions Mozart and his wife engaged in, we do know that their marriage was a joyful one despite their being poor. His love letters during their married life are tender, bawdy, and filled with the greatest love.

This post originally appeared at Wonders & Marvels on 18 December 2008.

Wonders and Marvels

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Published on July 02, 2014 05:00

Witch Deposits and Witch Bottles

By Gillian Bagwell (Guest Contributor)

My forthcoming novel about Bess of Hardwick, Venus in Winter, covers only the first forty years of Bess’s long life; but I decided to open and close the book with Bess as an old woman at Hardwick Hall, reflecting on her past.

Discovering Past Deposits

As I began to write, I found an article about the practices common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of placing a shoe within a wall or of concealing other collections of items as “witch deposits” that intended to deflect malevolent spirits or witches’ curses. Witch deposits might include “lucky” items such as family heirlooms or objects associated with someone considered spiritually powerful. Another purpose for witch deposits may have been the desire of the householders to leave their mark after they were dead and gone.

Witch Bottle

Soon I stumbled across another article, this one about the discovery of a child’s leather boot from the early years of the nineteenth century in a chimney in a house in Bedforshire, which was believed to have contained a witch deposit. And then I read about a seventeenth-century witch bottle found buried in Greenwich— a clay bottle, still sealed, which imaging technology revealed to contain human hair and fingernails, pins and nails, and the residue from urine.

Material Becomes Inspiration

The confluence of these ideas gave me exactly what I needed for my prologue. Bess summons her master builder to enclose within the walls of Hardwick Hall a collection of items with great meaning to her: one of splendid pair of shoes she receives as she prepares to leave home at the age of twelve, the first step on her long path to enormous wealth and power, and mementoes from husbands, children, and friends no longer alive as she thinks back on her life. When I learned that a child’s book had just been discovered within the walls of Hardwick Hall, I felt as if Bess was guiding me on the right track, and I included the book among the items in her witch deposit.

Gillian Bagwell’s novel Venus in Winter will be released on July 2. To find links to Gillian’s posts on other subjects related to the book, please follow her on Twitter, @GillianBagwell and on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/gillianbagwell, or visit her website, http://www.gillianbagwell.com.

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Published on July 01, 2014 00:36

Cabinet of Curiosities, vol. iv

It’s time, once again, for CABINET OF CURIOSITIES, our weekly round up of the historical and history-making headlines that drew our attention and captured our imaginations…

In a momentous performance, Tona Brown became the first openly transgender African American to play at Carnegie Hall.

This week in 1972, Title IX was enacted with the intent of preventing educational institutions from discriminating against students or staff on the basis of sex.

Last year, Alan Turing received posthumous pardon from the Queen Elizabeth II for his 1952 conviction of “gross indecency.” Now, a monument has been erected to celebrate not only his scientific contributions, but also to emphasize his identity as a part of the LGBTQ community.

Important documents held by the National Archives and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust will now be available at the UNESCO Memory of the World UK Register. The public will be able to view some of these documents in person in 2016.

What fascinated you this week? Let us know in the comments section or on Twitter @history_geek. Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to our newsletter!

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Published on June 27, 2014 23:51

Editor’s Corner: I See Dead People

Another week has flown by—as weeks often do when I’m in the thick of writing.

It’s a solitary process sometimes. I realized the other day that I had gone nearly 24 hours without real, live human contact. At least, not contact with living, breathing human beings.

Most of the people I hang out with these days are long gone. They speak only through manuscripts, memoirs, and court records. I pour over these documents for hours at a time. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to hear their voices.

What helps most are the tiny details, especially the most insignificant ones, told in passing by an observer or confessed in a letter. They are precious treasures that allow me to paint rich portraits in my writing. One person limps slightly after a horseback riding accident as a child. Another is plump and dowdy-looking. Then there is one who sweats profusely, especially when bedding women. (No kidding.)

While these details do not often impact how history unfolds, they let me view the people who inhabit the past for what they were: People, like you, like me. Each is an individual, with hopes, fears, hubris, and insecurities.

And each has the distinct and unique ability to frustrate the hell out of me.

Rules for Writing Past Lives

“There are only two rules specific to nonfiction,” Steven Pyne explains in Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction. “The rules are nonnegotiable: you can’t make anything up, and you can’t leave out something that really matters.”

I live by these rules. And that’s what made this week a challenge.

One person simply refused to be where I needed her to be. In fact, I had written several pages around the fact that she was where I thought she was. But she wasn’t. Or at least I couldn’t be sure she was. I came across a source that called everything in question. Fast forward: after several hours of research, I realized that I had to pitch not only those pages, I also had to restructure the organization of not one, but two earlier chapters.

Joining the Club

It would be fair to say that, as I research and write this book, I often get jealous of novelists. They get to make their stuff up, right?

But any novelist will tell you that that their characters can actually be a bossy bunch. Characters tell you what they need to be doing, when they want to do it, and why. They’ll also withhold secrets. (My friend and former W&M contributor, Tracy Barrett, told some great stories about this at her book launch this past week.)

So back to the person who annoyed the heck out of me last week. I did what any procrastinating author does. I took my complaint to Facebook. (Would love to see more W&M folks there by the way. Shoot me a friend request.)

I love that fellow historian Deborah Harkness chimed in. Harkness is a nonfiction writer and a New York Times bestselling novelist. (We featured the first two books in the All Soul’s Trilogy here. Watch for W&M coverage on the third next month.) Misery loves company.

Killing Them Off

Here’s where writing has its own perverse joys. By a lovely coincidence, my annoying person ends up meeting her end a few years later. And fortunately, it’s important to the story.

So it was not without some relief that she had to go. She was poisoned. It was slow, and it was horrible. Still, I felt very sad for the woman—even if she had been such a pain for me earlier in the week. She was a real person, and her suffering was also very real.

Still, she is probably fortunate that Tracy Barrett wasn’t writing her death…

Send Me Your Questions!

A big thanks to Jason, whose question in last week’s column inspired this post. I’ll be dropping you an email to see what book we can send you from the W&M stash to say thanks!

The characters in Blood Work are so real- is there one in particular who you feel like you know? How did the archives help with that?

I look forward to reading more questions in the Comments and via Twitter for next week — and, remember, whoever I feature in next week’s Editor’s Corner will also get a hand-selected a book from the W&M stash!

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Published on June 27, 2014 15:40

Man’s Best Friend: Dogs in Pharaonic Egypt

by Annie Shanley (Atlanta Science Tavern Contributor)

Dogs were popular pets in ancient Egypt and were the objects of genuine affection by kings, nobles, and laborers. While not all ancient animals were given names, over 75 dog names have been identified and usually refer to the color or character of the dog. That owners cared for their dogs in this life is apparent by the veterinary papyri uncovered from ancient Egypt. Pets also shared in the afterlife with their owners as evident by their inclusion in tomb scenes and human burials.

Tomb relief, 5th Dynasty, c.2465-2323 BCE. Limestone. MCCM 2006.10.1. Gift of Wayne and Ellen Bailey to the Michael C. Carlos Museum. Photo by Annie Shanley

When looking at depictions of dogs in ancient Egyptian art, scholars and general audiences are eager to determine what type of dog is being shown. Beginning in the Predynastic Period (c. 4000 BCE) the most commonly portrayed dog is a type of hunting hound with erect pointed ears and a short curly tail. This dog is often referred to as a Pharaoh Hound, an Ibizan Hound, or a Basenji.

But what about the actual remains of dogs? Bones recovered from archaeological sites have not been subjected to systematic studies, but those bones that have been examined belong to mutts. Recent DNA research into modern dog breeds may help point us in the right direction. Based on preliminary findings, the Basenji can be positively classified as an “ancient dog breed”, while the Pharaoh Hound and Ibizan appear to be more modern breeds. The Pharaoh Hound originates from Malta, and the name was given to the breed during the 1920’s because they look like the dogs in Egyptian art. The Ibizan Hound was first identified on the island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain. While it is true that more comprehensive DNA testing needs to be conducted, and the impact of selective breeding needs to be taken in to account as well, DNA science does offer exciting possibilities for identifying ancient Egyptian man’s best friend.

Annie Shanley is a doctoral student in the Art History Department at Emory University. Her research interests include the material culture and technology of Egypt, the Near East, and the ancient Mediterranean, Egyptian texts, and ancient trade. Annie’s current work focuses on glass and faience in Egyptian and Hittite texts.

This post first appeared at Wonders & Marvels on 14 February 2012.

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Published on June 25, 2014 23:00

Experimenting on the Innocent: The U.S. Army’s Secret Chemical Testing in the 1950s & 1960s

By Jack El-Hai (Regular Contributor)

In 1953, students at Clinton Elementary School in Minneapolis began taking part in a strange ritual. As they stood in a line outside the music room, a man passed a fluoroscope tube over their clothing and shoes. He was testing for traces of a chemical called zinc cadmium sulfide.

U.S. biological warfare researchers at work at Fort Detrick, Maryland, c. 1968

Preparations and Chemical Mimesis

For several weeks that year, the U.S. Army sprayed this chemical into the air around the school in an attempt to mimic the effects of a biological warfare attack. Simple to track with air filtering devices and easy to spread by wind currents, zinc cadmium sulfide was a “tracer” that the Army used to simulate how living microbes would spread as biological invaders in cities.

From 1952 through 1969, the Army dropped thousands of pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide in nearly 300 secret experiments conducted in such places as Fort Wayne, Indiana (1964-66); St. Louis (1953, 1963-65); San Francisco (1964-68); Corpus Christi (1962); and Oceanside, California (1967). Remote areas were also targeted: During 1964 the Army dropped zinc cadmium sulfide on Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest.

Millions of Americans who escaped these experiments received exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide in 1957-58 during the Army’s high-altitude scattering of the chemical from a cargo plane that flew from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. In all of these tests, the military kept secret the purpose of the studies.

In Minneapolis, the Army’s tests took place over 195 square blocks of the city’s south side. Brigadier General William M. Creasey had earlier told the mayor, Eric Hoyer, that the purpose of the testing would be “to conduct certain meteorological studies regarding the smoke screening of cities from aerial operations.” This explanation was itself a smoke screen for the Army’s real intent to investigate how fake germs could scatter in a northern city whose climate and geography resembled that of many cities in the Soviet Union. These were, after all, some of the darkest days of the Cold War.

(Non) Consent

A few months later, unknown to Clinton Elementary students, teachers, and their families, machines mounted in trucks and on rooftops began systematically spraying zinc cadmium sulfide into the air of the school’s neighborhood, and about 80 collection boxes on the school’s grounds recorded residue levels.

In the volumes of paperwork from the testing that has surfaced in declassified documents since the 1990s, the Army’s experimenters raise no concerns over the wisdom of exposing countless people to zinc cadmium sulfide. Even so, Army staff conducting the tests in Minneapolis wore protective garb. One resident who lived in the test area in 1953 recalled workers scattering the chemical outside late at night. “They were wearing masks and operating what looked like a big fog machine,” he said. “I asked them what they were doing, and they said they were spraying for bugs…. It was blowing all over, and there was a residue left on the cars.”

In St. Louis, Army researchers mounted apparatus to spray zinc cadmium sulfide from atop the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, a residence for thousands of low-income people. In 2012, researcher Lisa Martino-Taylor presented evidence suggesting that the Army may have mixed radioactive particles with the zinc cadmium sulfide.

Government Assertions v. Scientific Studies

The Army has long maintained that zinc cadmium sulfide is an inert substance, harmless to humans in the concentrations sprayed in the air in Minneapolis, St. Louis, and the other test sites. But at least fifteen studies published before or during the Army’s testing established the danger to human health of one prominent ingredient, cadmium. One, published in the Journal of Industrial Hygiene in 1932, concluded that “cadmium, no matter how small the amount taken into the lungs, causes pathologic changes…. There is, therefore, no permissible amount of cadmium” safe for human exposure. Cadmium is now a suspected human carcinogen that causes kidney damage, and it also can contribute to liver disorders, nervous system problems, and perhaps reproductive health problems.

In 1995 a Toxicology Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, in a Congressionally ordered review of the Army’s testing, observed that research on potential dangers was scanty and based only on animal studies. It concluded, however, that the Army did not endanger the public through exposure to the zinc cadmium sulfide. Critics of that review, however, pointed out that the chemical can persist in the soil and in homes for a long time and that its resuspension by people’s activities and the wind may have lengthened exposure times long beyond what the Army expected.

More than 60 years after the experimentation began, the U.S. Army has not acknowledged the possibility of harm from the testing and has commissioned no follow-up studies.

The Nazi Secret Ink in a Tooth Spy

By Kristie Macrakis (Guest Contributor)

My favorite secret ink story is about a Nazi spy who secreted invisible ink in his tooth. It’s probably my favorite because one of the most intriguing aspects of the history of secret writing is the inventive way in which people concealed their materials.

A Bizarre Concealment

Of course, hiding invisible ink in a tooth is one of the more bizarre concealments, but it’s a good one because border control agents usually don’t ask people to open their mouths for inspection. Even if they did, there is no reason they should suspect a filled or capped tooth contains invisible ink or poison or other dangerous things spies put in their teeth.

I discovered this story in the security service archives about German World War II secret agents files kept by British National Archives. When I hit the keyword search for secret writing, I came across a number of interesting files, including the one about a Nickolay Hansen. Hansen was a Norwegian coal miner who agreed to work for the Nazis from his home in the coal mining island of Stavanger,Norway, across the sea from Scotland. But the Nazis really wanted him to go to the United Kingdom, parachute out of a plane in Scotland, and find work in a Scottish coal mine, which he could use as a base to transmit military information.

Hansen’s Mission

By the fall of 1943, the Nazis’ vision came true. Hansen jumped out of a German plane circling above the Scottish Highlands and parachuted into a field shortly after midnight on 1 October 1943. He wasn’t the first Nazi spy to parachute into England during World War II. After the British forbade Germans and other enemy aliens from entering England, the Nazis snuck their agents onto the island with rubber boats or parachuted them in from the sky. Many of the famous double agents like Eddie Chapman parachuted into the country. The British usually expected these spies because they knew when they were coming by intercepting and decrypting radio communications.

On the night of Hansen’s parachute jump, two Scottish truck drivers taking an overnight shipment of herring to Fraserburgh, Scotland, noticed a plane circling above the woods near the town. When they drove by the field they saw someone waving a flashlight in their direction. They stopped, got out of the cab, jumped over the fence and approached what looked like a German parachute jumper. Hansen quickly confessed. He told them he had one wireless transmitter, but they quickly found a second one. He did not tell them about the invisible ink hidden in his tooth.

Interrogation, Denial, Confession

Like all the other hundreds of caught Nazi spies (many of whom became double agents), Hansen was taken to Camp 020, an interrogation center at Latchmere House in South London. Interrogators were somewhat bemused by this Norwegian coal miner from the “bowels of the earth.” His German code-name was HEINI, which isn’t exactly flattering – in German it means someone who is somewhat dimwitted. British interrogators also thought he was “dull” but had the clever cunning of a peasant. Even though interrogators asked Hansen if he had secret writing materials and a cover address where he was instructed to send messages, he denied it until several weeks of interrogation and an unfortunate incident.

Hansen finally confessed that he had learned the fine art of secret writing at the Akershus Fortress in Oslo by a rather small and fat German with fair thinning hair named Dr. Gordon. Gordon taught him how to rub the paper with cotton wool before writing and how to create his own invisible ink matches (the Heinrich method) impregnated with quinine.
When it came time to stash Hansen’s invisible ink, a German operative proceeded to fasten a tiny rubber bag of invisible ink between Hansen’s toes with glue that he then covered with grease paint. But Hansen needed to take a bath and removed the small bag from his toes. Thereafter, the Germans thought of hiding it in his hair or under his armpit, but instead decided to pay a visit to a dentist in order to secret the baggie in a tooth.

An Unusual Dental Appointment

When Hansen visited the dentist in his hometown of Stavanger, the dentist opened up one molar, placed a small bag of invisible ink in it and then sealed it with cement. He then started work on the tooth next to it; this time he didn’t seal the cavity but rather placed the small baggie in it and covered it with dental putty because it was not possible to cement it shut. Instead, he gave Hansen a small celluloid cap to place on that tooth when eating. Hansen lost the cap the same evening while slightly drunk.

Hansen had completely forgotten about the second filling until he was having lunch at Camp 020. He suddenly had a strange taste in his mouth. He spat out what he was eating and found the small rubber bag with invisible ink and threw it out the window. Although he saved some of the secret ink substance from the food, British investigators didn’t find it. As a result, a camp officer who was also a dentist opened up the other tooth and extracted the material.

The Secrets of Secret Ink

I should note that the subject of secret ink is so hidden that even though these files have been released, the description of the substance is deleted in the copy at the archives. Luckily, I had access to some American OSS files and was able to determine that the substance was, in fact, quinine.

Even though the British interrogators found this damning substance, Hansen still refused to reveal the cover address he was to send his secret messages. After more rigorous interrogation he revealed the Nazi spy address in Sweden. The British concluded that Hansen was to use the secret writing if he could no longer communicate through the wireless sets.
That hiding secret ink in a tooth might be painful is revealed by Hansen’s mugshot above: he looks like he has a toothache.

Kristie Macrakis is an author, historian, and professor whose books include Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies (Yale, 2014), Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 1993), Science Under Socialism: East Germany in Comparative Perspective (Harvard, 1997), East German Foreign Intelligence (Routledge, 2010) and Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (Cambridge, 2008) (Translated into German, Czech and Slovak and a History Book Club Selection). This article previously appeared in March 2014 at her blog.

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Published on June 24, 2014 04:33

Jezebel or Joan of Arc?

by Pamela Toler

In June, 1857, Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi, belatedly committed herself and her kingdom to the revolt variously known as the Indian Mutiny, the Sepoy Rebellion, or the First Indian War of Independence.

A Break in Tradition

The rani had long-standing grievances against the British. She was the widow of Gangadhar Rao Niwalkar, ruler of the kingdom of Jhansi. Several months before his death, the childless raja adopted a distant cousin named Damodar Rao as his son and made a will naming the five year old boy as his heir.

Adopted heirs were an accepted practice in Indian kingdoms–both Gangadhar Rao and his predecessor were adopted heirs. Unfortunately for Lakshmi Bai and her son, under the rule of Lord Dalhousie the British began an aggressive policy of annexing Indian states on what now seem flimsy excuses, most notably the Doctrine of Lapse. The British already exercised the right to recognize the succession in Indian states with which they had client relationships. Dalhousie now claimed that if the adoption of an heir to the throne was not ratified by the government, the state would pass “by lapse” to the British. Not surprisingly, few adopted heirs were so ratified.

When Gangadhar Rao died in 1853, Dalhousie refused to acknowledge Damodar Rao as the raja’s legal heir to the throne and seized control of Jhansi. Laksmi Bai, with the support of the British political agent at Jhansi and the advice of British counsel, immediately contested the decision. She continued to submit petitions arguing her case until early 1856. All her appeals were rejected.

Growing Discontent

Meanwhile, discontent had been building among the sepoys in the British East India Company’s army, thanks to a number of British decisions that appeared to be designed to undermine the faith of both Muslim and Hindu sepoys and make it easier to convert them to Christianity. The final straw was the rumor that cartridges for newly issued Enfield rifles were greased with a combination of beef and pork fat. Since the cartridges had to be bitten open, such grease would make them an abomination for both Hindu and Muslim sepoys. British officers were slow to respond to the rumors. By the time they assured their men that the cartridges were greased with beeswax and vegetable oils, the damage was done. On May 8, 1857, discontent turned to rebellion at the army garrison of Meerut. Eighty-five sepoys who refused to use the Enfield rifle were tried and put in irons. The next day, three regiments stationed at Meerut stormed the jail, killed the British officers and their families, and marched toward Delhi, where the last Mogul emperor ruled in name only.

Thousands of Indians outside the army had grievances of their own against the British. Soon Indian leaders whose power had been threatened by British reforms rose up, transforming what had begun as a mutiny into an organized resistance movement across northern India.

On June 6, troops in the East India Company army in Jhansi mutinied. Two days later, they massacred the British population and soon left for Delhi. Given Lakshmi Bai’s long-standing grievances against their government, the British were quick to blame her for the rising in Jhansi, though evidence for her initial involvement is thin. In fact, she wrote to the nearest British authority, Major Walter Erskine, on June 12 giving her account of the mutiny and asking for instructions. Erskine authorized the rani to manage the district until he could send soldiers to restore order.

With the region in chaos, Lakshmi Bai soon found herself under attack by two neighboring principalities and a distant claimant to the throne of Jhansi. Finding it necessary to defend her kingdom, she recruited an army, strengthened the city’s defenses and formed and alliance with the rebel rajas of Banpu and Shargarh. As late as February she told her advisors she would return the district to the British when they arrived.

On March 25, Major General Sir Hugh Rose and his forces arrived at Jhansi and besieged the city. Threatened with execution if captured, Lakshmi Bai resisted. In spite of a vigorous defense, on April 3, the British broke into the city, took the palace and stormed the fort.

“The Bravest and Best”

The night before the final assault, Lakshmi Bai lashed her ten-year-old adopted son to her back and escaped from the fortress, accompanied by four companions. After riding 90 some miles in 24 hours, the rani and her small retinue reached the fortress of Kalpi, where she joined three Indian leaders who had become infamous in British eyes: Nana Sahib, Rao Sahib and Tatia Tope. Defeated again and again through May and into early June, the rebel forces retreated before the British toward Gwalior.

On June 16, Rose’s forces closed in on the rebels. At the request of the other leaders, the rani led what remained of her Jhansi contingent into battle against the British. On the second day of fighting she was shot from her horse and killed. Gwalior fell soon after and organized resistance collapsed.

British newspapers named Lakshmi Bai the “Jezebel of India”, but Rose compared his fallen adversary to Joan of Arc. Reporting her death to William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, he said: “Although she was a lady, she was the bravest and best military leader of the rebels. A man among the mutineers.”

In modern India, Lakshmi Bai is a national heroine. Her story has been told in ballads, novels, movies and comic books. Rose’s praise is echoed in the most popular of the folk songs about her: “How well like a man fought the Rani of Jhansi! How valiantly and well!”

View more on Holly Tucker's website »

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Published on June 23, 2014 07:11

Cabinet of Curiosities, vol. iii

Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray (Johan Zoffany c. 1780)

Welcome back to our weekly CABINET OF CURIOSITIES — a round up of the history-related news and happenings that captured our imaginations this week.

Teasers started to appear for the 2015 Portsmouth Athenaeum exhibit on 18th century footwear. Fashionistas and material culture gurus, prepare yourselves; the exhibit looks like a delight for the senses.

While Amelia Earhart’s 1937 flight ended in the pilot’s tragic disappearance, later this month, 31 year old Amelia Rose Earhart will seek to recreate the flight in order to become the world’s youngest woman to fly the world in a single engine aircraft.

Xrays of an unopened cardboard box have revealed a cache of Christmas presents sent to World War I British soldiers by the Royal Family. The box, up for auction starting at approximately $60,000, never made it to its originally intended recipients.

Do you have a fascination with kings and queens? (We admittedly do!) This letter from James Stuart (later King James I of England) was written when he was a boy of six, living in Scotland; and it gives a glimpse into the hand he would form as an adult ruler.

Speaking of the exploits of nobility, the film Belle has been getting attention at theaters around the country. Anyone interested in the true history should look into Dido Elizabeth Belle, illegitimate daughter of Sir John Lindsay and an unknown slave, who was raised as a “companion” to the daughter of William Murray, first earl of Mansfield. The portrait of the two girls fascinates viewers today with the ambiguous relationship it shows between two cousins in very different social circumstances.

Finally, this week marked the one hundred fifty-first Juneteenth, also called Emancipation Day, which marks the abolition of slavery in the US.

What fascinated you this week? Let us know! Leave a comment below or message us on Twitter @history_geek!

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