British History – Page 6 – General History

W.E. Gladstone, Prime Minister

/ en.wikipedia.org

William E. Gladstone lived from 1809 – 98, was Prime Minister four times (1868 – 74, 1880 – 85, 1886, & 1892 – 4). His father was a North Country merchant rich enough to send him to Eton. He was the first, I believe of at least three generations of Gladstone Etonians; Charles G. was there from 1902 – 7 and was Master from 1912 – 46, and there was also an Ernest. At school William G. was popular but stern; he remained stern all his life but lost most of his popularity during his four stints as Premier. He was disliked intensely by Queen Victoria, who said he always addressed her at their private meetings as if she were a public meeting. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-07-09T09:38:39+00:00 July 9th, 2014|British History|0 Comments

Two failed plots: Babeuf and Cato Street

Babeuf / clairdeluttes.org

Plotters and plots have been recurrent throughout history. They became famous because of the good fortune that attended them, or the bad luck which dogged them. Queen Cleopatra plotted with her lover Marc Antony to stop Octavian Caesar assuming supreme power in Rome. They failed, both died. His own officers plotted to assassinate King Philip of Macedonia (with or without the help of his wife) and they succeeded in killing the King, but failed to kill his son. They died in battle or by suicide, and Alexander became Great. During the reign of Henry VIII he and his councillors plotted to grab the entire wealth of the Roman Catholic Church in England, and the plot succeeded, while suppression of the ‘Papists’ continued during many reigns, except when the monarch was a Catholic – when Anglicans suffered instead. There was the ‘Babington’ plot to kill Elizabeth I, and the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ to blow up the Houses of Parliament with the new King and all his government with them. They too failed and the plotters paid the full price. A group of powerful aristocrats plotted to remove the annointed, crowned (and unfortunately Catholic) King James II from the throne in the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ and they succeeded. No plotter lost his head or his title, and Britain got a Dutch King (William of Orange) who was sensibly Protestant. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-06-20T19:23:41+00:00 June 20th, 2014|British History, French History, World History|0 Comments

The Czechoslovakian Crisis

The historic meeting at Bad Godesberg / collections.yadvashem.org

Many years before The Czech Republic and Slovakia freed themselves from the yoke of being simply Czechoslovakia, this crisis evolved from territorial demands made by Adolf Hitler. One of the results of the Treaty of Versailles of unhappy memory was that over three million Germans were living in the Sudetenland, bordering with Germany and Austria. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he stated that he wanted the inclusion of these three million in Germany. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-06-07T10:03:11+00:00 June 5th, 2014|A History of Poland, Austrian history, British History, Czech History, French History, German History, Italian History, Russian history, World History|0 Comments

What was Chartism?

Feargus O’Connor / cottontimes.co.uk

What was Chartism? It was by far the most outstanding political movement inspired by genuine working men in Britain in the nineteenth century. There had been radical movements, such as the Corresponding Society, since the late eighteenth century, but the worst slump in the nineteenth, plus the reforms of the Whiggish government were seen as an attack on the working classes, and the over-used word ‘rights’ began to appear. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-20T08:58:09+00:00 May 20th, 2014|British History, World History|0 Comments

Oh dear, these history books . . .

Not bad for hunchbacked, lame man with a withered arm; Richard III’s last cavalry charge / historyfiles.co.uk

Oh dear, these history books. An online bookseller I deal with kindly sent me a copy of a ‘book of history’ published in the United States, featuring long essays on three women – Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort. The writers are Philippa Gregory, a historical novelist, David Baldwin and Michael Jones, history PhDs at British universities. The men write more easily and less breathlessly than the woman, but she is the more famous writer. The book has a rather stretched title – The Women of the Cousins’ War, the Duchess, the Queen and the King’s Mother.

Before reading a book I admit to the habit of flipping through the pages to see the illustrations, but unfortunately my eye was drawn towards a line of writing in one of the three biographies: Henry Tudor, the line said, defeated Richard III at Bosworth in 1485. Then I was quite unable to read the book, and it joins hundreds of other regularly dusted hardbacks in my library. Why, the blogger may ask, should I not read a book because of one rather silly and uninformed line? I believe it is because if all three historians obviously agree with the line, which is manifestly untrue, chances are that the rest of the 342-page book is as irritating, not to say exasperating and infuriating, as G.B. Shaw would say. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-11T18:26:11+00:00 May 11th, 2014|British History, English History, English Language|0 Comments

The 21 Demands (of Japan)

Yuan Shikai of China / es.wikipedia.org

The 21 Demands (of Japan). In 1915 Japan came up with the odd idea of trying to make the whole of China a protectorate – a protectorate of Japan of course. The Great War started in 1914 and Japan promptly declared war on Germany, in order to take over that country’s leased territory in China. As a part of the so-called ‘Scramble for Possessions’ Japanese soldiers landed at Quindao Port in Shandung province, and soon controlled the important port, plus German mining and railway concessions. Having completed this with their usual efficiency, the Japanese presented China with its ‘Twenty-One Demands’, threatening total war if they were to be rejected.

The Demands included an extension of Japan’s lease of Port Arthur, and the South Manchurian Railway, and the grant of mining, commercial and residential rights in South Manchuria and parts of Mongolia; China must recognise Japan’s dominant position in Shandung province, and promise that she would not make any territorial concessions on her coasts to any other foreign power. China must also accept a huge infringement of her sovereignty, with Japanese political and military ‘advisers’, and the creation of a combined Sino-Japanese police force. The Chinese played for time, with the expectation of help to come from the United States and Britain. All these two major powers did was to protest feebly at the last demand (the mixed police force) – and Japan accepted postponement – but not for long.

In a disgraceful turn of events, both the US and Great Britain were not prepared to antagonise Japan: China was thus forced to agree to the demands, which the Prime Minister did on May 25, 1915. Chinese university students called this ‘The National Humiliation Day’, unsurprisingly, and youthful demonstrations were followed by more serious ones and a boycott of Japanese imports. The United States now showed an increasing worry about expansionism, and strongly suggested Japan should control this instinct, as America would not tolerate any infringement of China’s political and territorial integrity. Britain and France meanwhile looked through the telescope with their blind eye and approved Japanese claims in Shandong in 1917.

By Dean Swift| 2014-05-04T10:44:23+00:00 May 4th, 2014|Asian History, British History, French History, German History, History of China, US History, World History|0 Comments

George Washington

/ theguardian.com

George Washington was born in the early part of the eighteenth century (1732), a son of a planter in Virginia, he was a Southerner. At 22 he was fighting for the British in both the French and Indian Wars and was present at the taking of Fort Duquesne (later to become Pittsburgh) in 1758 when he was twenty-six. Having completed his duties as a gentleman he resigned from the army and took to planting tobacco. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-04-30T17:38:45+00:00 April 28th, 2014|A History of North America, British History, French History, Spanish History, US History, World History|0 Comments

The Myth of King Arthur

‘King Arthur’ at Camelot / wrl-inc.org

The Myth of King Arthur. Thirteenth century Europe knew much of the legends of a possibly Welsh King called Arthur, who supposedly drove away Britain’s enemies, laid the laws for honour and chivalry, surrounded himself with romantically named knights at a great Round Table, and married a beautiful but unfaithful wife called Guinevere. The myth was propagated in art and literature, exciting, inspiring and entertaining men and women everywhere from Sicily to Scotland. King Edward I of England was seduced by the stories and supposed relics of the imaginary hero. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-04-30T17:41:22+00:00 April 25th, 2014|British History, English History, English Language|0 Comments

Incident at sea, 30 October, 1942

Tommy Brown, 1926 – 1945

Incident at sea, 30 October, 1942

During the Second World War the British had been reading top-secret German codes messages sending orders to their Navy, Army and Airforce, thanks to the team at Bletchley using their Ultra machine to crack the difficult codes set by the Nazi Enigma machine. Millions of tons of shipping in the Battle of the Atlantic had been saved by the Ultra code-cracker, and the German High Command did not know until 1945 that their orders were being read by the Allies. But in February 1942 it had been the Germans’ turn; they had cracked British Naval Cipher No. 3 and soon could see the size, destination and leaving times of Allied convoys. At the same time, the Germans added an extra rotor wheel to their Enigma machines used by U-Boats in the Atlantic, thus greatly increasing the number of solutions to their encrypted text. They knew this had happened at Bletchley, even calling the new effort Shark. They set about finding a way to crack it, but for more than ten months Bletchley was in the dark, its de-codifier producing rubbish. German submarines in the Atlantic sank 7 million tons of Allied shipping in 1942 at a cost of eighty-six U-Boats. In November alone 860,000 tons of shipping went to the bottom. It was more than essential to get hold, somehow, of one of the new data and associated documents from a German submarine, but how? (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-04-03T09:23:30+00:00 April 3rd, 2014|British History, German History|0 Comments

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in 1890, of Dutch-American stock. He became a general and the 34^th President of the United States. He saw war in a quite different way than another American officer, George Patton (q.v.): ‘I hate war,’ he often said, ‘as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.’ (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2014-04-01T15:38:44+00:00 March 10th, 2014|British History, Dutch History, French History, German History, US History, World History|0 Comments