Rise Above the Railway Tracks

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So it looks like Melbourne might be getting some more elevated rail. I’ll mostly keep out of the debate as to whether it’s a good idea or not,1 and instead will note that elevated rail is pretty clever. Getting trains out of the way of roads is safer and much more efficient, but mostly, I think I have to marvel a little at the structure that can carry tonnes of moving steel at high speeds (or moderate speeds, this is Melbourne, after all), even under the threat of constant vibration. As a bonus, the space underneath can even be utilised for parks or even small businesses like cafes and bars.

Technically it's 1837.
I can’t tell if it’s 2020 or 1820.
It should come as no surprise then that we’ve only had the engineering ability to build such a structure for a mere 180 years… Or that the world’s first passenger railway was actually on elevated track… And they rented out the spaces underneath the arches to businesses. Ok, maybe we need to explore this a little more.

Whilst the London-Greenwich Railway (LGR) was the first passenger railway, it was not the first railway to take passengers. There are a number of contenders for this particular honour, but what is remarkable about early railways was that they were almost universally designed for freight, with passenger cars as almost an after thought. This is a little odd, as almost universally the demand for passenger services on these lines far exceeded what was predicted. Apparently the idea that people would want to get somewhere in rather a hurry did not occur to rail’s early proponents. What marks the London-Greenwich Railway as unique, however, is that it was the first railway to be solely constructed for passengers.

The answer is ME. I would want to ride on something like that. Right now.
Yeah. I mean, who would ever want to ride on something like this?
Credit: Barry CC2.0

The main figures behind the scheme were Colonel George Landman and Geroge Walter. They floated a company in 1831 (floating companies seems to be the way everything was done at that time) and raised £400,000. The track was relatively short, running only 3¾ miles, but because of its elevation, involved almost 900 arches. Its construction used more than 60 million bricks, which was more than any other structure up till that time.

Whilst the majority of arches ran over fields—though these would disappear in a few decades—the original plan was to make a small amount of extra income by renting out the space under the arches at the London end of the line as houses. Somehow, in spite of the assurance of Penny Magazine that the sound and vibration (which could be felt, mind you) of the trains passing overhead “did not disturb [the] comfort” of the resident of one of the archways (p. 249), the scheme never really took off. Instead, the spaces were used primarily for storage.

Londoners appeared to be extremely excited by this development, and regularly lined the tracks just to see the work that was going on. One can only assume that for them, this was the future slowly coming to London. Never one to miss an opportunity for a few extra pounds, while the railway was under construction, George Walter opened the path that ran alongside the railway to the public, charging one penny’s admittance. At first, the walkway didn’t do the business that management had expected. It was set two to three feet below ground, which made the viaduct the train ran along look quite impressive, but meant people couldn’t see out over the boundary wall. In response, Colonel Landman paid 1 shilling for rubbish to be spread along the path to raise it up. To be honest, I’m impressed they were still able to charge a penny to walk on it after they had spread the rubbish.

As these projects do, it ran both over time and over budget. A particular issue arose when one of the test trains derailed. We take trains for granted these days, but the amount of fear around them during their earliest stages is quite palpable. A good friend of Lord Nelson and fellow officer, Sir Thomas Hardy,2 refused to ride, for fear of the boiler exploding. Keep in mind this is a man who fought through the Battle of Trafalgar. Fortunately, the boiler didn’t explode, and no one was seriously hurt, but it did result in a field day for the papers. In particular John Bull had always been against the railways and used this as an excuse to discuss their dangers, describing them as a matter of “Tom-foolery” (p. 250). The president of No Sky Rail would have felt right at home with her fear of freight train derailments. I’ve found no evidence if locals were concerned of paedophiles looking out over their fields.

Apologies for the quality of the photo, but this is the most wonderful letter of complaint. It really helps if you can imagine a rural English accent.
Apologies for the quality of the photo, but this is the most wonderful letter of complaint. It really helps if you can imagine a rural English accent.
London’s First Railway, p. 57

In spite of set backs and critics, the project was completed, with an opening ceremony on the 14th of December 1836, which sounds as if it were full of appropriate pomp and ceremony. A lot of toasting is also mentioned by contemporary reports, so I think we can assume a good time was had by all. Having said that, the first train departed and hour and three quarters late, setting the standard for all future passenger services. Five trains ran the line from London Bridge to Deptford on that day, and all the local parish churches arranged so that their bells rang out as the first trains went by. Though as their top speed was 20mph, this probably did not require the military precision that it appears. Nevertheless, 20mph was enough to astonish many of the passengers. They were probably even more astonished to find that, the press of people was so fierce that they couldn’t get off at the Spa Road stop and had to continue on to Deptford, where they were unable to reboard the trains. Subsequently, many people that day caught the train out to Deptford, but had to take a stage coach home. I’m sure any who have experienced Metro’s disruptions will be sympathetic.

A good time being had by all.
A good time being had by all.

And so the first authentically passenger line came into action. In doing so it predicted much of the future of building mass transit systems: delayed, over budget, and controversial. In fact, it ended up being the centre of a vary public smear campaign between two rival railway companies, but that’s a great story in its own right, and I think I’ll save it for another day.

Academic Sources

Aslet, C 1999, The Story of Greenwich, Fourth Estate, London.

Simmons, J & Biddle, G 1999, The Oxford Companion to British Railway History: From 1603 to the 1990s, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Thomas, RHG 1972, London’s first railway – the London & Greenwich, Batsford, London.

  1. Though my money’s on “good idea”, for the record. ↩
  2. Yes of “Kiss me, Hardy” fame. ↩

The most annoying noise to make and break history

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So I’m sure by now you will have heard of the Zika virus. An obscure virus discovered in the late 40s, it has sky-rocketed to everyone’s attention recently with its potential links to the birth-defect microcephaly and the neurological disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome. In response, a number of South American nations have asked women to not get pregnant, apparently taking a leaf from the the US’s famously successful absitence campaign.

Yes, I had to double-check that this was just a costume.
Yes, I had to double-check that this was just a costume.
Credit: Marie Carianna CC2.0

In response, some are predicting that the extremely conservative governments in the region will have to loosen their restrictions on abortion. If this were to occur, it would be a large change for the region. It would not, however, be the first time mosquitoes have played a significant role in the course of history.

One of the most deadly mosquito borne diseases is Yellow Fever. These days, 85% of those who contract it have no or mild symptoms. For the other 15%, there is no treatment and even with modern medicine, up to 50% will die. Horribly. Vomiting blood, which one scholar describes as looking “like coffee grounds” (p. 110). Charming.

Mmm... Enjoy that next cup.
Mmm… Enjoy that next cup.
Nevertheless, whilst unfortunate for sufferers, that symptom is great for historians as it is distinctive.1 This allows historians to track its effects across history, particularly in the Caribbean.

For our purposes, the most important thing about Yellow fever is that although it has a high mortality rate, if you manage to live through it, you will be immune to it for life. This, combined with the fact that children generally only get minor symptoms of the disease, means that any population that has grown up around it will largely be immune, whilst any population that enters a Yellow Fever area is going to have a bad time. This is broadly similar to malaria where, while you don’t get immunity for life, each time you get it, you become a little more resistant to the disease.

What does this mean for history? In the Early Modern Period,2 for a variety of reasons that I don’t have time to go into here, the British Empire was waxing in the Americas, whilst the Spanish Empire was waning. Nevertheless, gold and silver were still flooding out of Spain’s colonies.

One its key possessions was Cartagena in Colombia, a bustling port city. Knowing it was a prime target, the Spaniards had the city well defended. Fortifications were layered, with troops able to give ground in pieces during the course of the siege. This was crucial, for while the fortifications at Cartagena were strong, the British were arriving with 29,000 men against just over 4,000 Spaniards, of which just over half were professional soldiers.

This isn't even the city. This is just one of the forts protecting the city.
This isn’t even the city. This is just one of the forts protecting the city.
By Martin St-Amant (S23678) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6384027

The attack began on the 13th of March 1741. At first the British out gunned the Spanish, blasting two minor forts into submission. Then they began to falter. The British forces launched a spectacularly inept assault against the key fort guarding the city. Many of the soldiers abandoned their ladders on the trek through the jungle. Those that did bring their ladders quickly found that they weren’t tall enough to scale the walls.

Even so, it was disease that took the real toll. By the time the fighting ceased, the British had lost over 8,000 men, and McNeill estimates that only 6% of casualties were due to fighting. And things only got worse. After retreating from Cartagena, “unaccountably undeterred” (p. 166) the British forces attempted to raid several other Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. Again, disease continued to scour the British ranks. By the time the British returned home, of the 29,000 in the force, 22,000 are thought to have perished. Only 1,000 of them are thought to have been direct casualties of war.

Remember, amidst that compassion, that the preferred treatment for Yellow Fever was still blood letting (Yes, this photo is from much later, but it's one of the few known photos of the procedure).
Remember, amidst that compassion, that the preferred treatment for Yellow Fever was still blood letting (Yes, this photo is from much later, but it’s one of the few known photos of the procedure).
The Burns Archive – Burns Archive via Newsweek, 2.4.2011., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14762725.
Possibly the most astounding aspect of the whole affair is, despite Erica Charters’s counter-claim, the utter lack of compassion shown for the rank and file. Admittedly, they did often build hospitals and, where possible, provided fresh fruit. Though as pointed out by Harrison, this was largely for reasons of economics more than anything else—as warfare became more specialised, training new troops became more expensive. Nevertheless, such mortality was generally seen as “the inevitable cost of war and commerce in a hot climate” (p. 16).

Whilst this has been a single example of the effects of mosquito borne viruses on history, it is far from the only one. Mosquitoes proved a valuable ally to the home side in almost every conflict in the Caribbean, from assaults on the French possessions of Martinique and Guadeloupe, to the American Revolution itself. Even when the British were victorious, such as with the invasion of Havana in 1762, after victory, the troops garrisoned there lost so many men to disease during the occupation, that Britain had to trade it back as a concession after the war had ended.

And to think, all of that didn’t even include the fact that mosquitoes make the single most annoying sound in the world. Nevertheless, they serve as an excellent reminder that for all we tend to focus on the movers and shakers of history, often the smallest things can have gigantic impacts.

EEEEeeeEeEEeEEEEEe
¡Por la patria!

Academic Sources

Charter, E 2014, Disease, war, and the imperial state : the welfare of the British armed forces during the Seven Years’ War, University of Chicago Press, London.

Harrison, M 2010, Medicine in an age of Commerce and Empire: Britain and its Tropical Colonies 1660-1830, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

McNeill, JR 2013, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, Cambridge University Press, New York.

McNeill, JR 2013, “Mosquito Revolutions: Disease, War, and Independence in the U.S. South, Haiti, and Venezuela, 1776-1825”, Juniata, vol. 14, 2014, pp. 107-123.

  1. I’m going to fess up and say I owe a great debt to that article. It’s not quite what I’d consider academic standard, but it does an excellent job of whittling down the central arguments of his book into something more wieldy. It’s also a good read, if you’ve got a moment. ↩
  2. Strictly speaking, the late Early Modern period, but that sounds ridiculous. ↩

A Land Worth Dying For

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I have no idea what the term “militia” conjures up inside the minds of Americans. But outside of the US, it tends to make us think of crazy right-wing extremists, the kind of gun-loving red blooded American who genuinely believes that it is essential to own a gun as a last resort to protect the American people from the tyranny of their own government. This lets us easily dismiss the recent actions of the so called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and their occupation of the wildlife refuge in Oregon as actions of some ring-wing nut jobs. At first we’re shocked. Then we scoff. Then we send them a box of dildos. And then we move on with our lives.

You thought I was being rhetorical about the dildos?

Nevertheless, whether these groups are crazy or not (and make no mistake they are crazy), there are always reasons that their apparent craziness takes that particular form. With one member of the militia shot dead by police, and another four still occupying the facility, it is worthwhile to ask how have we ended up in a situation where a wildlife refuge is worth dying for.

In essence, the conflict is about land—who owns it and how they can use it. Currently, the US government own almost 30% of the land in the United States. However, the vast majority of this is concentrated in the West with the government owning as much as 85% of some states.

Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a blood-splatter pattern out of CSI?
Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a blood-splatter pattern out of CSI?
As the federal government basically operates out of the East Coast of the US, this leads to more than a few conflicts over how the land should be used. Specifically, conflicts between the needs of ranchers and conservationists; but we’ll get to that later. The first thing we need to look at is how the federal government ended up with such a disproportionate ownership of the West.

The secret is that the federal government never set out to own so much land, it simply couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. The US was colonised from the east.1 It took colonists about 160 years to move inland from the Appalachian mountains, somewhere between 400-500km from the coast. In this time, settlers tended to run ahead of the government (still the crown, at this stage). First some settlers who were trying to escape the law would settle down somewhere beyond the reaches of the government, but then the law would inexorably catch up, like a colonial T-1000. So they would have to move again.

An accurate portrayal of colonisation.
In fact, the British had signed treaties with the Native American population guaranteeing them everything west of the Appalachians. Subsequently, they deployed the army in an attempt to stop settlers moving over the mountains. In spite of “burning cabins and herding inhabitants eastward” (p. 156), settlement continued in waves until settlers were piled up against the banks of the Mississippi river in the early 1800s.

This is a distance of some 600km in about 40-50 years, so you’ll notice this is getting faster; although at this stage it is the settlers who are still leading the (now) US government in a merry chase. The final push was effectively lead by the government, however. Firstly, the US government constantly renegotiated treaties with Native Americans, pushing them further and further West, or isolating them in pockets of unwanted land and building the basis for much of the United States’ agricultural wealth. Secondly, the US “bought” much of its lands off Mexico. These two prongs of expansion let Americans tell themselves “We take nothing by conquest… Thank God” (p. 169). Of course, the fact that the deal was signed as part of the conclusion of the US-Mexican War and Mexico ended up ceding half its territory was purely coincidental.

This is Daniel Freeman, the first Homesteader. Yes, he looked exactly like you'd picture him.
This is Daniel Freeman, the first Homesteader. Yes, he looked exactly like you’d picture him.
Therefore, by 1853, the mainland of the US had finally assumed its present boundaries. Considering the last 2,500+ km between the Mississippi and the West Coast were covered in the space of about 40 years, the government was now left with so much land it had no idea what to do with it. So like someone who’s just won the lottery, the US government did its best to give away the land as fast as possible. With the Homestead Act of 1863, Americans were able to claim 160 acres of cheap land, so long as they occupied it for five years. Whilst this did spark a massive wave of migration westwards, proper government divestment was thwarted by the sheer size of the US and the unsuitability of the western states for farming. What the government wanted, was an enormous number of small-holding individuals; however, the geography of the West simply didn’t allow for this style of land-intensive farming. Instead, you ended up with cattle, lots of cattle, being grazed over huge tracts of land.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
As the majority of farmers could afford to purchase sufficient land to graze cattle, they leased the rights of the federal government. A system that has by and large continued to this day.

The final piece of the conflict is conservation. Slowly, as the US finally filled out its borders, it slowly came to realise it was going to have to come to terms with “a closed space existence” (p. 755). You can see the first signs of this change with the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the first national park in the US and possibly the world. Of course, the further down the road of conservation the US government went, the more difficult the livelihoods of ranchers became. Even on the great swathes of land ranchers were allowed to lease, the restrictions were ever growing.

And so we arrive at the present day conflict. Just as the ranchers were once the first wave of a new philosophy of land management, displacing the Native American ways of life with treaty after treaty, now they find themselves as a holdout against yet another new philosophy, with their own ways of life being threatened by legal restriction after legal restriction.

One has to wonder whether they see the irony in it.

Although one can't help feeling any direct comparison to the signing of this treaty and grazing restrictions being enforced on ranchers in Oregon is probably a little exaggerated.
Although one can’t help feeling any direct comparison to the signing of this treaty and grazing restrictions being enforced on ranchers in Oregon is probably a little exaggerated.

Academic Sources

Anderson, TL & Hill, PJ 1975, “The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West”, The Journal of Law & Economics, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 163-179.

Billington, RA 1949, Westward Expansion: a history of the American frontier, The Macmillan Company, New York.

Zinn, H 2010, A people’s history of the United States, HarperCollins, New York.

  1. This is hardly surprising, as this is the side that’s closest to England. ↩

What has lamb got to do with Australia day?

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Another Australia Day, another Lambassador ad.

After a ten year stint, the irascible Sam Kekovich has been replaced by modern multi-cultural icon Lee Lin Chin. I’ll leave an analysis of the marketing implications of the swap to Gruen. Instead, I want to look at the central claim of these ads and ask why the heck eating lamb is supposed to be Australian. After all, it’s not as if they’re native to Australia. Although Australia Post seems confused on the issue as in 1938 in a series of stamps celebrating Australian native animals, the 5d stamp was of a Merino.

An ancient statue erected by prehistoric Australians to the lamb Gods.
An ancient statue erected by prehistoric Australians to the lamb Gods of old.
Credit: WikiWookie CC3.0

For better or worse (and often worse when you think of the environmental impact), sheep have changed Australia irrevocably. You have to wince through CEW Bean’s constant references to “the blacks”, but his 1910 book On the Wool Track offers an amazing glimpse into a land on the cusp of changing.1 Bean chases the slow disappearance of Old Australia in front of the steady roll out of Modern Australia; although his Modern Australia is basically our Old Australia and ours would be his Sci-fi Australia.
Natural. Totally natural.
Natural. Totally natural.
Credit: Tim J Keegan CC2.0
Although he doesn’t seem overly concerned about it, he reports on wide-spread ecological changes that had happened within the lifetimes of his interviewees: scrub being trampled into dust and pine forests taking its place, land turning so barren all the soil is blown away and deposited so high on abandoned shearing sheds you could drive a horse and buggy up onto the roof.

Not only that, but he reports on the men (and sorry, but it really is the men he reports on) that sheep made and broke. He talks about how boundary riders, a legendary figure to modern Australia, at the time of his writing, had only just replaced the “hatters”—slang for Australian shepherds. These men were apparently “almost wild” and “feared neither God nor man” (p. 53). But just as the sheep made those men, they discarded them. In quests for ever greater profits, great stretches of Australia were fenced off from dingos, removing the need for hatters. Wells were sunk and tanks erected in (often unsuccessful) attempts to drought proof the farms. Those who constructed these works brought civilisation with them, and left traces of it behind like a muddy footprint when they departed.

Herding them was a nightmare.
Herding them was a nightmare.
Credit: Yathin S Krishnappa CC3.0
In contrast with Australia Post’s ideas, the first sheep to Australia arrived with the first fleet, some 100 of them, from the Cape of Good Hope. For the first few years of the colony, the majority of sheep seemed primarily to be African and Indian breeds, slowly being interspersed with purchases from Europe. This seems to be about as multi-cultural as the Australian diet got until the 1950s.

It was the wide-scale introduction of the Spanish Merino that made the Australian sheep industry really come into its own and drove this expansion of “civilisation”. Although Governor Macarthur is often credited with the introduction of the Merino to Australia from South Africa, he didn’t import enough to have a great impact. Instead, credit needs to go to George Hall Peppin, who bought merinos from Germany and France to form on of the world’s most successful studs.

At this point, you may be wondering why, if the Merino is a Spanish breed, do all these sheep appear to be coming from anywhere but Spain? In essence, the history of the Merino is full of a surprising amount of subterfuge and espionage… For sheep.

One could almost say a wolf dressed as something it's not...
One could almost say a wolf dressed as something it’s not…
Credit: State Library of Victoria CC2.0
Up until the end of the 17th century, it was widely acknowledged that Spain produced the best wool in the world. Consequently, in spite of several flocks being given out as gift by the royal family (from which the Saxony sheep are descended), it was prohibited to export sheep from Spain. Like an upstart teenager, upon knowing they couldn’t have any, Britain immediately needed to have some. This involved smuggling sheep overland from Portugal through continental Europe, sending sheep back as spoils of the Napoleonic Wars, and even allegedly a sting operation involving the Spanish ambassador’s wife.

Nevertheless, after laying his hands on some fine quality merinos (and, controversially, possibly some other breeds) George Hall Peppin and his family set about breeding a finer class of sheep for Australia. They were astonishingly scientific in their approach, considering Mendel was only just doing his punnet squares at the same time, and a thorough theory of genetics wouldn’t be discovered for another forty-odd years. This exacting patience led to what many seem to believe is nearly the perfect sheep. Amazingly, one of the factors that was most important about the Peppin merino was that its wool was long and bulky, and so perfect for the mills of Europe. Consequently, the merino sheep is arguably the first industrial animal.

I've just spent about half an hour watching industrial era spinning machinery in action.

Which I suppose gives a nice sort of symmetry to this entry—it turns out we created the merino just as much as it created us.

(Assuming you’re reading this from Aus)

Academic Sources

Bean, CEW 1910, On the wool track, John Lane Company, New York.

Parsonson, I 2000 The Australian ark: A history of domesticated animals in Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Clayton.

Lee, T 2011, Wanganella and the merino aristocrats, Hardie Grant Books, Richmond.

Verhoeven, D 2006, Sheep and the Australian cinema, Melbourne University Press, Melborune.

  1. That’s a link to a beautifully preserved, scanned, full-length copy of the book. I haven’t made it the whole way through yet, but it’s definitely worth a read. ↩

The Olympic-sized problem of cheating in sport

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They could have at least won something.
They could have at least won something.
So, I’m an Essendon fan. Needless to say, I’m unhappy about 34 players being suspended, but I’m even less thrilled about the doping happening in the first place. The problem, as far as I can tell, is modern professional sports. People much smarter than I have pointed out that as a society we worship these athletes, who do little of use for society. They destroy their bodies in their quest for glory. And when the inevitable cheating and fall from grace occurs, the scandal can literally stand as a token of their shame for hundreds of years. These critics, for the record, were: Xenophanes, Euripides, Galen and Pausanias. Considering that the most recent died in 180 AD, perhaps we shouldn’t use the word “modern”.

The scale of ancient athletics is difficult to grasp. Firstly, although the Olympics are the most famous of the ancient games, with 40,000 plus people attending them at their height, there were actually four key events held in Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and the Isthmus of Corinth. Apart from these, there were many other local games. The origins of the games are unclear, but they were held regularly from 776BC. They ran for over a thousand years until about the turn of the fifth century AD. To put that in perspective, it would be the equivalent of the modern Olympics running until the year 3066.

Yes, this is definitely more rewarding than a giant golden statue of my likeness.
Yes, this is definitely more rewarding than a giant golden statue of my likeness.
Much is made of the ancient tradition of competing not for money but for olive wreathes. This is a lovely ideal, and something to be aspired to, if it weren’t for the fact that not only could athletes expect monetary prizes at all the other games, but an athlete who won at the Olympics would likely be greatly paid and possibly set up for life once they got home. Surprise, surprise, where there was big money, the temptation to cheat proved just that bit too hard to turn down.

Doping, it must be admitted, wasn’t really a big deal. There are all sorts of stories floating around the internet about the various potions athletes were supposedly taking in order to improve performance, but I can’t find much academic evidence for most of them.1 Additionally, the idea that “doping” is wrong is a relatively recent phenomenon, but I’ll save that history for another entry when the next doping scandal rolls around.2

Instead, when it comes to cheating, it seems good old fashioned bribery was the most popular form. In fact, the first recorded conviction for cheating was of Euopolus of Thessaly in 388BC for bribing his opponents, so bribery might literally be “the oldest trick in the book”. Though first, Eupolus was far from last, and many athletes were subsequently convicted of cheating, almost universally bribery.

Strangely enough, giant piece of bronze didn't exactly linger a long time in the ancient world...
Strangely enough, giant pieces of valuable bronze didn’t exactly linger a long time in the ancient world…
These athletes were fined large amounts of money, which was used to build bronze statues of Zeus outside the stadium, each bearing an inscription of the name of the athlete and their infraction.3 According to ancient accounts, there seems to have been quite a number. Curiously, even if convicted of cheating, the athlete got to retain their wreath and title for those particular games. So much for “Cheaters never win and winners never cheat”.

Other offences included one competitor who arrived late to the games. He provided the excuse that he had been delayed by pirates and so was allowed to compete. Subsequently, it was discovered that he’d actually been making a few extra drachma on the side at the Ionian games. Sarapion, from Alexandria, has the dubious honour of being the only Olympian to be immortalised for his cowardice. He was due to fight at the Olympics, but was so afraid of his opponent that he fled the day before his bout. In fairness to Sarapion, he was due to fight in the pankration. This was a mix of boxing and wrestling which had exactly two rules: no gouging, no biting. If I found myself due to fight in that event, I’d probably rethink my decision to compete.

Of course, the fiddle hadn't been invented in Nero's day, which rather ruins the whole saying.
When it comes to ridiculous things done in world history, this man crops up a lot.
Possibly the most spectacular case of cheating was by our old friend Nero, Emperor of Rome. Firstly, in 67BC, he managed to have poetry reading added to the competition, as he thought this would be his strong point. Then, not content with this, Nero entered the four-horse chariot race with a 10-horse chariot. In spite of falling off his chariot and nearly killing himself, Nero was still awarded the wreath for the event. Of course, his magnificent victory was short-lived, as Nero was dead the next year and had his name stricken from the victors’ roll. And the judges were forced to repay the bribes they accepted.

As far as I can tell, it’s the ancient equivalent of having a movie made about your corrupt practices and inevitable downfall.

Academic Sources

Crowther, N 2002, “The Salt Lake City Scandals and the Ancient Olympic Games”, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 169-178.

Euripides, Ancient Olympics, accessed 18/1/2016 at http://ancientolympics.arts.kuleuven.be/sourceEN/D180EN.html.

Hyde, WW 1921, Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington DC.

Kotynski, EJ 2006, The athletics of the ancient Olympics: a summary and research tool, University Vanderbilt, Nashville.

Pausanias, Description of Greece, translated by WHS Jones, accessed 18/1/2016 at http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias5B.html.

Perrotet, T 2004, The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, Random House Publishing Group, New York.

Xenophanes, Ancient Olympics, accessed 18/1/2016 at http://ancientolympics.arts.kuleuven.be/sourceEN/D179EN.html.

  1. Lizards “prepared a certain way” (without specifying what way) crops up everywhere. Also, “the rear hooves of an Abyssinian ass, ground up, boiled in oil, and flavoured with rose hips and rose petals” was supposedly prescribed by Galen, but considering he’s on record as being quite cynical about ancient athletics, I’m somewhat sceptical of this story. ↩
  2. Isn’t it sad that I can just assume there’ll be another opportunity? ↩
  3. When I said “literally”, I meant literally. ↩

The ideology of North Korea: What drives the “Hermit Kingdom”?

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We may all be wiped out one day, but it'll look insanely cool while it's happening.
We may all be wiped out one day, but it’ll look insanely cool while it’s happening.
So you may have seen that last week North Korea let off a hydrogen bomb. Or maybe it didn’t. Or maybe we’ll never know. Whatever the truth may be, as this journalist points out, rather than take them more seriously, we’ll probably continue to treat North Korea as light entertainment. Which makes sense, as they are hilarious.1 Nevertheless, in our mockery, we often fail to ask ourselves “Why does North Korea behave in a way that seems crazy to the rest of the world?”

Nope. I don't see anything religious about this.
Nope. I don’t see anything religious about this.
Credit: yeowatzup CC2.0
The short answer is juche. This word translates roughly to “self-reliance” and is an ideology that revolves around total and utter independence for North Korea from other nations. Juche is such a strong ideology that it is often referred to as a “quasi-religion,2 with North Korea as a theocratic state.

To understand juche and its absolute desire for self-determination, you need to consider North Korean history, specifically its history of being stuck between rivalling powers. Apparently many Koreans like to boast that their country has been invaded over 900 times in recorded history (p.35). Whilst I don’t quite see how this is a matter of pride, it does offer an insight into how a country might become paranoid about their neighbours.

Japanese troops marching near Pyongyang during the Russo-Japanese war. It was honestly one of the least depressing photos I could find of the occupation.
Japanese troops marching near Pyongyang during the Russo-Japanese war. It was honestly one of the least depressing photos I could find of the occupation.
Juche finds its formative years around the Japanese occupation. Whilst the Japanese might have lacked Europe’s experience at running oppressive colonial states, they proved to be quick learners, building a thoroughly oppressive regime in less than 35 years. At this early stage, juche was basically anti-Japanism. Kim Il Sung, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea and credited as the creator of juche,3 was a renowned guerrilla fighter in WWII. It is difficult to separate the truth from propaganda, but considering Japanese military records have them placing a $100,000 bounty on his head, it seems this reputation might actually be deserved (what a surprise!). Either way, it is here that we can see juche’s earliest emphasis on avoiding the influence of other nations.

After WWII, in the eyes of North Korea the United States easily slipped into the mould of “oppressor” shaped by Japan before them. Whilst I’m not trying to say that the US stationing of troops on the South Korean Peninsula was as oppressive as the Japanese occupation, the fact that the US dropped more bombs during the Korean war than in all of the air campaigns of WWII combined means this fear might not have been entirely unreasonable.

Furthermore, North Korea has always been afraid of atomic weaponry. Kim Il Sung appears to have been certain the US would drop atomic bombs on North Korea. The subway in Pyongyang is between 70 and 100 meters deep4 and probably designed to be bomb shelters. Apparently almost every village in the country has its own bomb-shelter. In a turn of logic eerily reminiscent of the US gun-ownership debate, North Korea seems to believe it exists in a nuclear filled wild-west, in which the only way to be safe is to “pack heat”. A lot of heat, in this case.

For North Korea, this isn't satire, it's a documentary.

What might be more surprising is that juche also served as a way of gaining independence from both the USSR and China. Although both states have been sponsors of North Korea, the extreme antipathy between the two regimes, and North Korea’s position bordering both, left it desperately not wanting to antagonise either. Hence, when North Korea speaks of juche, they truly mean self-reliance from all other nations. This allowed them to be an unironic member of the Nonaligned Bloc during the Cold War, in spite of being a central member of the Soviet Bloc as well. History has by and large shown North Korea that the only one it can truly rely on is itself.

All of this goes to show that the scars of history take a long time to fade, for nations as well as for individuals. Whereas most of the world seems content to leave the Cold War behind, many North Koreans consider the height of the Cold War the “best of days” for their country. Few know this now, but until the 70s, North Korea was by far the richer and more industrialised of the two Koreas. This is believed to be a large part of the apparent recent efforts of the regime to return to a more hardcore version of juche from the 50s and 60s. They’re trapped. For a nation that considers “self-reliance” a fundamental goal of any nation, modern globalisation must seem a nightmare. So instead, the regime would prefer to return to a time when their very existence was under nuclear threat, but the place of Korea in the world was clear. Cha calls this “back to the future” thinking.

Of course, the architecture completely fails to reflect North Korea's desire to return to the 60s...
Of course, the architecture completely fails to reflect North Korea’s desire to return to the 60s…

That’s generous. To me it sounds more like a sad middle-aged man trying to recapture his youth. A sad middle-aged man with nuclear weapons, that is. It certainly gives more of a thrill than a convertible.

Academic Sources

Harrison, B 2007, “Through the Eyes of the Hermit: The Origins of North Korea’s Quest for the Bomb”, Stanford Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, accessed 11 January 2016 from: http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal71/Korea.pdf.

Cha, V 2013, The impossible state: Nort Korea, past and future, HarperCollins, New York.

Jonson, R 2012, “Juche’s Transformation from a Tool for Ethnic Nationalism to a Quasi-Religion in Divided Korea”, Stanford Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, accessed 11 January 2016 from: http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal121/Korea3.pdf.

Park, HS 2002, North Korea: the politics of unconventional wisdom, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder.

  1. I like Cracked.com, ok? It’s not a crime. ↩
  2. For some reason I could never get it to show page 7. If you can, please let me know. ↩
  3. Actually, it was likely formally written up by Hwang Jang yop, but that’s a story for another time. ↩
  4. Can you imagine climbing the stairs? ↩

Atlas shrugged while Rome burned

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CFA Fire Station Nathalia
When you consider all of human history (and a bit too much recent history), this is actually a rarity.
Credit: Mattinbgn CC3.0
We’re in bushfire season again. I’m sure you noticed. With huge bushfires raging along the Great Ocean Road, quite a number of locals had what I imagine was a less-than-merry Christmas. Nevertheless, when they’re not leaving adorable notes, the CFA and fire-fighters around Australia are doing a pretty amazing job of saving lives and property on behalf of anyone and everyone. We take this for granted; however, public fire brigades actually haven’t existed for the majority of history.

Ayn Rand fans will be thrilled to know that the first serious fire brigade seems to have been a private affair. It was established in Ancient Rome by a charming gentleman named Crassus.1 He established a force of some 500 slaves. At the first sound of alarm they would race directly to the blaze and, once they had arrived, do absolutely nothing. Whilst they waited, Crassus would seek out the owners of the property, and possibly nearby properties, and buy them up cheaply. After all, what was a building worth if it was about to be burnt down? After purchasing the property at a steal, Crassus would have the fire put out and the enterprising capitalist would be left with a property whose value was far more than what he paid. Although not really an appropriate historical source, I think this is best summed up by Wilson and Wilson:

You're telling me you wouldn't trust this face?
You’re telling me you wouldn’t trust this face?

Crassus had collected his fortune by inventing both the fire brigade and, simultaneously, a legal extortion racket.

Surprisingly, this was too overtly rapacious even for the Romans, and a few different ways of organising fire response seem to have been tried. In 6AD Augustus got fed up with this and established the vigiles urbani. This was one of the most extensive fire brigades ever established. It began with 3,500 men and was later doubled to 7,000. By way of comparison, the current London Fire Brigade consists of just over 5,000 personnel.2 In fact, it seems that the vigiles had more fire fighters per square acre than any other fire brigade in history.3

These numbers aren’t entirely surprising. As is pointed out repeatedly by Rainbird, if you don’t have modern technology to deliver water, you have to make up for it with man power. According to the previous source cited, bucket chains can deliver about 180 litres of water per minute, pushing up to over 500 in the initial burst. Additionally, the Romans had actual pumps at their disposal and even ballistas. If you’re wondering what this last item was for, until the invention of modern pumps, the only way to fight any real conflagration was to simply demolish anything in its path. I imagine local home-owners would have been thrilled.

Someone once looked at this and thought, "I can fight fire with that!"
Someone once looked at this and thought, “I can fight fire with that!”
Nevertheless, what seems to be the primary reason for the large numbers is the need for a quick response. When your only strategy for dealing with a large fire is demolishing large swathes of the city, it is fairly understandable that the priority is catching fires early. To this end, the vigiles kept regular night patrols and enforced fire safety regulations.

Yes, the Romans had fire safety regulations. The primary ones seem to have been ensuring your fire is not being kept negligently, and to keep supplies of water upstairs. There may have been other regulations around maintaining other fire fighting equipment on the premises. These men were not to be trifled with. If you were found to be negligent in your duty, the vigiles had the authority to beat you. This is something I’m sure all fire fighters will have wished for at some stage.

Whilst there were several disastrous fires under the watch of the vigiles (they operated under Nero, for example) Rome seemed to have suffered fewer fires than other major ancient cities, and the fact they were maintained for over four-hundred years is likely good evidence of their effectiveness. Score one, publicly funded services.

Of course, the fiddle hadn't been invented in Nero's day, which rather ruins the whole saying.
Of course, the fiddle hadn’t been invented in Nero’s day, which rather ruins the whole saying.
Nevertheless, proving the need for this blog, no one seems to have learned from this experience. There was no formal fire fighting service in London prior to the Great Fire. So after 1666, what form of fire fighting service was introduced? Private fire insurance companies, of course. I suppose this is so that instead of one large, publicly funded, inefficient mistake from the past, they could all have a series of smaller, efficiently allocated, private mistakes.

Academic Sources

Dickson, PGM 1960, The Sun Insurance Office, 1710-1960: the history of two and a half centuries of British insurance, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Plutarch 1st century AD, “The Life of Crassus”, Parallel Lives, sourced from: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Crassus*.html, accessed 4 January 2016.

Rainbird, JS 1976, , doctoral thesis, Durham University, sourced from: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7455/, accessed 4 January 2016.

Robinson, OF 2003, Ancient Rome: city planning and administration, Routeledge, London.

Wilson, C & Wilson, D 2015, An end to murder: humans beings have always been cruel, savage and murderous. Is that all about to change?, Hachette, London.

  1. Sorry, I promise this blog isn’t going to all be about Rome, but I keep picking topics, and Rome keeps cropping up as the oldest antecedent. ↩
  2. Referencing Wikipedia. I know, I feel dirty. ↩
  3. Yes, I know that’s a doctoral thesis. But you should read it. It’s genuinely a fascinating read and a crime it wasn’t picked up to make a book. ↩

Just what is Boxing Day?

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For those of you who have been reading the blog from the beginning (ie. two posts ago). You’ve hopefully realised that my aim is to link what is currently happening in the world back to its historical antecedents. So for this post I’m tackling a pressing issue: Just what the heck is Boxing Day?

Hint: These aren't the origins of Boxing Day.
Hint: These aren’t the origins of Boxing Day.
Credit: Reml DU CC2.0

If you’re hoping for a definitive answer on this, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. The origins of this holiday appear to be lost in the mists of time, and as you can probably tell by the quality of my references, the academic establishment really doesn’t seem to consider this a pressing mystery to solve.

The first explanation is the one that I was most familiar with (ie. the one my mother told me): On Christmas, lords and ladies and the well-to-do exchanged gifts, as you would expect. On the day after Christmas they would then give presents to their various servants. A lovely gesture, but these gifts were presented in unwrapped boxes (hence the name) because it wouldn’t do for servants to get any ideas.

This explanation gets the broad ideas correct, but misses out on some of the details. Firstly, actual boxes weren’t given to anyone. Instead, “Christmas boxes” were boxes generally made from earthenware, with a slot on the top or side to pop in money. The oldest recorded use of “Christmas box”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1611 in a French-English Dictionary. According to that dictionary Christmas boxes were used in France “by begging Fryers, and here by Butlers, prentices, etc.” So from here we can see that Boxing day wasn’t actually about giving gifts, but blatantly giving money right from the start. So please point this out to anyone who complains that people don’t put any thought into gifts “these days”. Also, if they keep complaining, threaten to give them an Egg Master next year. What hasn’t changed is that even in 1668, people were whinging about how much getting presents cost.

This has no right to exist.

The second key aspect my mother’s explanation hits on, is that the giving crossed social classes or in the blunt words of a nineteenth century writer: “Christmas boxes are given by superiors to inferiors” (p. 327) (Can you guess which the author considered himself?). However, the social norms around this are a little confusing. Money is given from higher to lower status individuals, but it’s not necessarily the servants of one’s house. Instead, it’s “to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered… for which he has not directly paid them”. (“Christmas Box”, OED).

What the heck does that mean? The potential list of those to donate to are also quite confusing: “letter-carriers, policemen, lamp-lighters, scavengers, butchers’ and bakers’ boys, tradesmen’s carmen, etc.” (“Christmas Box”, OED). In essence, these are all people who may have done you (filthy-rich member of the upper-crust that you are) a service, but one which you haven’t necessarily paid them for.

Remember, it's not a bribe if it's a centuries-old tradition.
Remember, it’s not a bribe if it’s a centuries-old tradition.
Credit: Chris Potter CC2.0
So a lamp-lighter has kept London lit at night for you, a carman delivered your goods and a policeman kicked those dirty guttersnipes off your front doorstep—each one a crucial service for which you are thankful. It’s that wonderful old-school thinking of reciprocity that really warms the heart: You’ve slaved away all year on my manor house and I’ve given you some loose change. Equal.

The last thing I’d like to end with is not at all relevant to the main question, but something I found damn interesting. The original name of Boxing Day was the Feast of St Stephen. That means Good King Wenceslas is not actually a Christmas carol, but a Boxing Day carol. Which is fine by me, as that’s one more day to sing what is objectively the best carol ever. It also means, Good Ol’ Wendeslas was actually a bit of a tight arse and was basically giving that peasant leftovers. Then again, considering the level reciprocity shown on Boxing Day, maybe that’s just keeping with the tradition of things?

BEST. CAROL. EVER. I will brook no arguments.

Academic(ish) Sources

“ˈChristmas-box, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 27 December 2015

Cotgrave, R 1611, A dictionarie of the French and English tongues, A. Islip, London (?).

Parley, P (psued.) 1838, Tales About Christmas, Thomas Tegg and Son, Oxford (?).

Pepys, S 1893, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Henry Wheatley, located at The diary of Samuel Pepys: daily entries from the 17th century London diary, www.pepysdiary.com accessed 28 December 2015.

Environmentalism’s dark, troubled past

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So this time I'm writing from the perspective that this isn't a total charade.
So this time I’m writing from the perspective that this isn’t a total charade.

In last week’s post, in response to the Paris Climate Change Conference, I looked at some of the historic origins for our environmental troubles—basically, why humanity has spent so much of its time not caring about the environment. Before I move onto another topic, I feel I should balance it out with the other side of the coin: If we’ve cared so little for the environment for so long, where do we find the motivation for conferences like Paris—times when our nations’ governments come together and actually think they can do something about the environment? Surely there can’t be that much hot air in the world, or else the greenhouse effect would already be far more progressed.

Many, including CNN apparently, seem to believe the environmental movement began in the 60s. To be fair, if you click on that article, it opens with the story of a river so polluted it literally catches fire. That sticks out in your memory.

Others, such as the illustrious Encyclopaedia Britannica, are willing to trace modern environmentalism back to the Industrial Revolution.1 People who are choking to death under the pollution from the factories they’re working in wanting to clean things up a little? That seems pretty accurate and intuitive to me.

Sorry, what's wrong with living here? Credit: explorePAhistory.com
Sorry, what’s wrong with living here?
Credit: explorePAhistory.com
So instead, I’d like to talk about a much lesser known influence on environmentalism—colonialism.

Now, one of the hallmarks of modern environmentalism—that the state has an important role to play in protecting the environment via regulation and legislation—is literally ancient. Rome, for instance, had laws around the protection of water sources that were so elaborate that apparently we’re still discussing their finer legal ramifications today. Though this seems a little redundant, as they managed to pollute the Tiber River to the point where it was undrinkable. These were relatively piecemeal however, not even conceiving of the environment as a whole, let alone attempting to tackle environmental degradation holistically or systematically.

Richard Grove places large importance on the early colonial experience of tropical islands.2 He talks quite romantically about the experiences of the tropical paradises and the differences between utopias, edens, etc.. I’d explain the difference, but to be honest I skipped over it. His main argument, however, is basically this: as Western powers colonised tropical islands and exploited their resources, they devastated the local environment. Hardly controversial. Grove’s novel insight is that due to a variety of factors, most prominently that said islands were seen as self-contained paradises (or edens, or utopias—I lose track), colonial authorities, particularly those of a scientific bent, were suddenly able to imagine this devastation on a worldwide scale (or a quater-of-the-worldwide scale, in the case of the English). In fact, due to the widespread belief at the time that trees encouraged rainfall, this forms one what seems to be one of the earliest antecedents for modern conceptions of climate change, certainly on a global scale.

I'm not even going to try for a joke.
I’m not even going to try for a joke. Just go to Old Maps Online. Seriously, it’s a really cool website.
In response, according to Grove, the wide-ranging practice of forestry was established. Mauritius is the example he uses, as it’s where the “early environmental debate reached its most comprehensive form” and where local authorities displayed “the kind of rigorous scientific empiricism associated with mid-eighteenth-century French Enlightenment botany” (p. 9). Which is big surprise, as early-eighteenth-century French Enlightenment botany is renowned for its slap-dash scientific empiricism. Nevertheless, credit where credit’s due, local authorities did introduce a level of planning around land use hitherto unseen, with very specific restrictions on how much land could be felled and where.

At a time when a new scientific understanding of the world was expected to sweep-away old superstitious beliefs and usher in an age of Enlightenment, the idea that these great (white, middle-aged, wealthy) men could exert supreme control over their environment and in doing so save the civilised world held an understandably strong appeal (for white, middle-aged, wealthy men). Subsequently, via rather indirect routes, this trend of practising forestry and conservation spread to colonial authorities in India, where one of the largest-scale programs of forest conservation was undertaken. Truly, the amount of area set aside for this was phenomenal. According to Barton, in 1936 the British Empire covered a quarter of the land surface of the world, and a quarter of the Empire was set aside as forest reserves (the word “forest” here is fairly all-encompassing). I question his maths, but he finally offers us the figure of 8% of the world’s land surface being theoretically protected by the British Empire alone.

If you can imagine his hands spreading seeds rather than telephone wires, I think this gives a decent impression—Rhodes' boots stomping down on Africa are certainly accurate.
If you can imagine his hands spreading seeds rather than telephone wires, I think this gives a decent impression—Rhodes’ boots stomping down on Africa are certainly accurate.

In this way, colonialism forms an important, if unacknowledged, precedent for the modern environmental movement in the role it gave the state in creating “scientifically sound” plans around land and environmental use to preserve the environment and avoid catastrophic environmental disasters and even climate change (please do remember we’re talking about 18th century science, so “scientifically sound” is definitely a relative term in this context). Now, if only we could somehow gloss over the way colonial authorities used this somewhat noble ideal for oppression and social control…

Academic Sources
Barton, GA 2002. Empire forestry and the origins of environmentalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Grove, RH 1996. Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Guha, R & Gadgil M 1989. “State forestry and social conflict in British India”, Past & Present, no. 123, pp. 141-177.

Hughes, JD 1997. “Rome’s decline and fall: ecological mistakes?”, Capitalism Nature Socialism, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 121-125.

Wacke, A 2000. “Protection of the environment in Roman law”, Fundamina, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 1-24.

  1. Jokes aside, that’s actually a really great page for a summary of environmentalism, its many aspect and history. ↩
  2. A note on some of the authors I’m looking at today: Grove and Barton both read as strong apologists for colonialism, and this is coming from someone who’s happy to argue that colonialism=evil is a gross oversimplification. Nevertheless, I think within their works they raise some interesting issues that are well worth addressing. ↩

Why did we even need the Paris Climate Change Conference?

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So apparently the disparate forces of democracy have come together at the Paris Climate Change Conference and saved us all from our own damn smog-filled mess. Or maybe not. But here’s the question: “Why did we even need the conference?” I’m sure you understand the science of what’s going on, but how did we let it come to this? We can’t really ignore the fact that we’re stuck on this planet, so treating it like a tip makes little logical sense. And we can’t claim we didn’t know this was coming, the hypothesis and the science have been around for a long time now.

I was around in 1995, I know what the future holds!

Of course, Paris is just the most recent iteration of a theme that has run alongside the human race forever and a day. It’s obvious that many ancient cultures have had strong relationships with their surroundings. Indigenous Australians are often cited as an example. You always have to be a little wary of such claims (strangely enough, cultures do change over the course of 40,000 years), but they do make a fair point in that early “environmentalism” was extremely spiritual; perhaps not so surprising when you think of the hippie movement. Though perhaps being an environmentalist was easier when you could only have a fairly limited impact on the environment. Although academic debate around the extinction of nearly all the megafauna in Australia does show that you don’t need petrochemicals to ruin your backyard.

Diprotodon—a large extinct marsupial
Apparently we could have had this walking around today. Though I’m not sure that’s a thing we want…
Credit: Dmitry Bogdanov CC3.0.

But if they’re so important, then how did we become so detached from our surroundings? In his book, An Environmental History of the World, Johnson Hughes sets out to show off all the cool things he’s done, from a hot air balloon ride over the Massai Mara National Reserve in Kenya to watching wildlife off the river Napo in Peru. In passing, he also offers a fairly solid history of how humanity has interacted with the environment. Hughes traces our modern attitudes towards the environment back to ancient times, locating the distant origins of our destructive tendencies mostly in two key developments: cities and empires.

The argument behind the first is pretty straight forward. As we began to live in cities, we slowly became divorced from the natural environment which sustained us. People stopped feeling a part of their surroundings and instead felt they needed to impose their will on a hostile environment. This sounds a little “hippie” to my ear, but Hughes does make a fairly convincing argument, particularly in his analysis of the mythologies of ancient Mesopotamia. He notes how culture and civilisation became all that was good and nature and the wild became that which was evil and feared and needing to be controlled.

Lion tearing throat out of a man
THIS. Specifically, this is what they were afraid of.
Credit: CC3.0.
He also describes how this “struggle between nature and culture” (p. 35) was also highly gendered and related to the increasing separation of labour between men and women, because if writing an insightful history of the interaction between humans and their environment is too easy, why not tackle the origins of the modern patriarchy?

Either way, what you’re left with is a view of the environment that is entirely instrumental. It exists to serve people and little more. Not a particularly nice sentiment, but it becomes a real problem when combined with empire. With empire, you’re suddenly organising people on a never before seen scale. So what do you do with all that manpower? If you’re an ancient Sumerian, you attempt to overcome the erratic forces of nature and cut channels for irrigation in excess of 300km in length.

Nature's Round Up.
Nature’s Round Up.
Credit: FreeImages.com/ettina82.
Of course, this plays havoc with the water table and creates salinisation so terrible that parts of ancient Mesopotamia still haven’t recovered. In essence, cities increased our willingness to destroy the local environment, and empires gave us the ability to do it properly (keep in mind I’m using a fairly broad definition of “empire” here, pretty much any large-scale organisation of people will do).

What’s really difficult to understand is that it’s not like the ancients didn’t know what they were doing. Rome’s deforestation was so intense that the subsequent soil erosion moves an entire town miles inland. And because nothing is ever new, the Romans continued to do this in full knowledge of the fact what they were doing was screwing over their own empire. Seriously, you have all the great thinkers of the age complaining about how deforestation was leading to all these problems, including poorer water supplies, soil erosion, silting of rivers and the degradation of farmland… And an (almost) utter failure to do anything about it.

Hmm… All talk on the environment, but no action… Now why does that sound familiar?

...
Ancient Ostia: and you complained when your parents rented a campsite ten minutes from the beach.
Credit: 0x010C CC3.0.

Academic Sources

Hughes, J D 2004 An environmental history of the world: humankind’s changing role in the community of life, 2nd ed., Taylor and Francis, London.

Hughes, J D & Thirgood, J V 1982, “Deforestation, erosion and forest management in Ancient Greece and Rome”, Journal of Forest History, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 60-75.

Jacobsen, T & Adams, R M 1958, “Salt and silt in ancient Mesopotamian agriculture”, Science, vol. 128, no. 3334, pp. 1251-1258.

Montgomery, D R 2012, Dirt: the erosion of civilisations, 2nd ed., University of California Press, Berkeley.