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The Boyhood of Raleigh, the painting by John Everett Millais that frames this section To every story there belongs another, came to epitomise the culture of heroic imperialism in late Victorian Britain and in British popular culture up to the mid-twentieth century. The painting depicts the young, wide-eyed Walter Raleigh and his brother sitting on the beach by the Devonshire coast. He is listening to a story of life on the seas, told by an experienced sailor who points out to the sea. If the sailor spinning his yarn about the Spanish main is taken to be a Portuguese seafarer, then there is another foundation story at work here that alludes to what were claimed, by some ideologues, to be significant differences between the Catholic practice of Christianity, and the inheritors of a modern world shaped by the Protestant Reformation.
If the painting was, perhaps, influenced by an essay written by James Anthony Froude on England's Forgotten Worthies, which described the lives of Elizabethan seafarers, then it worth noting that Froude's historical writing was characterised by its dramatic rather than scientific treatment of history, an approach shaped by his intention to defend the English Reformation. The English Reformation was, he asserted;
"the hinge on which all modern history turned"and the;
"salvation of England".This argument was pitted against the interpretations of Catholic historians, as, in turn, he interpreted them. Froude focused on figures such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, although he became increasingly unfavorable to Elizabeth over the course of his research. Furthermore, he directly expressed his antipathy towards Rome and his belief that the Church should be subordinated to the state.
This historiographical argument has origins in Raleigh's own time:
As part of an Elizabethan campaign against Spain and the Catholic Church ...Literally hundreds of anti-Spanish publications appeared in English, Dutch, French, and German in the sixteenth century. New editions, and new works restating old accusations, would appear in the Thirty Years War and in other occasions when it seemed useful to excite anti-Spanish sentiment. Given the pervasiveness of such material, it is not surprising that the authors of scholarly histories absorbed anti-hispanism and transmitted it to later generations.Such is the continuity of this kind of historical bias it should, perhaps, be considered part of:
— William S. Maltby, The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire
The Black Legend
A black legend is a historiographical phenomenon in which a sustained trend in historical writing of biased reporting and introduction of fabricated, exaggerated and/or decontextualized facts is directed against particular persons, nations or institutions with the intention of creating a distorted and uniquely inhuman image of them while hiding their positive contributions to history. The term was first used by French writer Arthur Lévy in his 1893 work Napoléon Intime, in contrast to the expression "Golden Legend" that had been in circulation around Europe since the publication of a book of that name during the Middle Ages.
This "Golden Legend" was a collection of the Lives of the Saints, and that had, before 1501, been printed in more editions than the Bible. It included a "black" legend concerning the origins of Islam. that describes "Magumeth (Mahomet, Muhammad)" as "a false prophet and sorcerer", detailing his early life and travels as a merchant through his marriage to the widow, Khadija and goes on to suggest his "visions" came as a result of epileptic seizures and the interventions of a renegade Nestorian monk named Sergius.
Historian Manuel Fernández Álvarez defined a black legend as:
"The careful distortion of the history of a nation, perpetrated by its enemies, in order to better fight it. And a distortion as monstrous as possible, with the goal of achieving a specific aim: the moral disqualification of the nation, whose supremacy must be fought in every way possible."Though black legends can be perpetrated against any nation or culture, the term "The Black Legend" has come to refer specifically to "The Spanish Black Legend" (Spanish: La leyenda negra) when not otherwise qualified, the theory that anti-Spanish political propaganda from the 16th century or earlier, whether about Spain, the Spanish Empire or Hispanic America, was sometimes "absorbed and converted into broadly held stereotypes" that assumed that Spain was "uniquely evil."
— as cited in Alfredo Alvar's book, La Leyenda Negra
The absorption of political propaganda and outright fabrications into mainstream academic interpretations of Spanish history, along with their use to conceal or sanitize inconvenient facts about other nations, resulted in a systematic repetition of such anti-Spanish bias and distortions. Commonly cited examples of this include the Spanish Inquisition and the relationship between Spanish colonists in the New World and the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Historian Antonio Soler first used the expression "black legend" to describe the portrayal of some historical Castilian monarchs, though it was Emilia Pardo Bazán at a conference in Paris on April 18, 1899, who used it for the first time to refer to a generalized biased view of Spain as a whole. She declared:
Abroad our miseries are known and often exaggerated without balance: take as an example the book by M. Yves Guyot, which we can consider as the perfect model of a black legend, the opposite of a golden legend. The Spanish black legend is a straw man for those who seek convenient examples to support certain political theses (...) The black legend replaces our contemporary history in favour of a novel, genre Ponson du Terrail, with mines and countermines, that doesn't even deserve the honor of analysis.This conference had a great impact inside and outside of Spain. In Spain, the torch was passed to various historians making reference to the Spanish Black Legend, among them Julián Juderías. He was the first historian to describe and denounce this phenomenon in an organized way, providing the first definition of a black legend as well as the first description of "The (Spanish) Black Legend". His book The Black Legend and the Historical Truth (Spanish: La Leyenda Negra y la Verdad Histórica), a critique published in 1914, claimed that this type of biased historiography had presented Spanish history in a deeply negative light, purposely ignoring positive achievements or advances.
In his book, Juderías defines The (Spanish) Black Legend as;
the environment created by the fantastic stories about our homeland that have been published in all countries, the grotesque descriptions that have always been made of the character of Spaniards as individuals and collectively, the denial or at least the systematic ignorance of all that is favorable and beautiful in the various manifestations of culture and art, the accusations that in every era have been flung against Spain.Juderías, Julián, La Leyenda Negra (2003; first Edition of 1914)
A 1598 propaganda engraving by Theodor de Bry supposedly depicting a Spaniard feeding Indian children to his dogs. De Bry's works are characteristic of the anti-Spanish propaganda that originated as a result of the Eighty Years' War.
Later writers have supported and developed Juderías' critique. In 1958, Charles Gibson wrote that "Spain and the Spanish Empire were historically presented as cruel, bigoted, exploitative and self-righteous in excess of reality." Historian Philip Wayne Powell in Tree of Hate gives this definition of the Black Legend:
An image of Spain circulated through late sixteenth-century Europe, borne by means of political and religious propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards and their ruler to such an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness for the next four centuries. Spaniards ... have termed this process and the image that resulted from it as ‘The Black Legend,’ la leyenda Negra.Powell also provides various examples of how it was still active in modern history:
Spaniards who came to the New World seeking opportunities beyond the prospects of their European environment are contemptuously called cruel and greedy "goldseekers," or other opprobrious epithets virtually synonymous with Devils; but Englishmen who sought New World opportunities are more respectfully called "colonists," or "homebuilders," or "seekers after liberty." (...) When Spaniards expelled or punished religious dissidents that was called "bigotry," "intolerance," "fanaticism" ... When Englishmen, Dutchmen, or Frenchmen did the same thing, it is known as "unifying the nation,"...Powell, Philip Wayne, 1971, Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World. Basic Books, New York, 1971.
The long lasting, and remarkably robust continuation of the Black Legend that was applied to the Spanish World Empire, an economic, military and political power that stretched across both the western and eastern hemispheres, and often refreshed for various propagandist purposes, stands out as a particular historical phenomenon. As the Wikipedia article has it, Black Legends usually fade;
once the the next great power is established or once enough time has gone by.However, factors that would set the Spanish Black Legend apart from others might include:
- its abnormal permeation and outreach across nations;
- its racialized component;
- and its abnormal persistence through time.
- The overlap of the period of splendour of the Spanish Empire with the introduction of the printing press in England and Germany, which allowed the propaganda of such colonial and religious rivals to spread faster and wider than ever before and persist in time long after the disappearance of the Empire.
- Permanence after the dissolution of the Empire due to religious factors.
- The dismantling and substitution of the Spanish intellectual class by another more favorable to former rival France following the War of the Spanish Succession, which established the French narrative in the country.
- The unique characteristics of the colonial wars of the early contemporary period and the need of new colonial powers to legitimize claims in now independent Spanish colonies, as well as the unique and new characteristics of the British Empire that succeeded it.
Protestant propaganda?
Sverker Arnoldsson, from the University of Gothenburg, supports Juderías hypothesis of the existence of a Spanish Black Legend in European historiography, locates the origins of the Black Legend in medieval Italy, unlike previous authors who locate it in the 16th century. In his book The Black Legend. A Study of its Origins, Arnoldsson cites studies by Benedetto Croce and Arturo Farinelli to affirm that Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries was extremely hostile to Spain, and considers that the texts produced and distributed there were later used as a base to build on by Protestant nations.
Racializing the legend?
Arnoldsson offered a second alternative to the Italian origin in its polar opposite, the German Renaissance. German humanism was deeply nationalistic and longed to create a German identity in opposition to the Roman invaders. However, both Ulrich of Hutten and Martin Luther, the main authors of the movement, combine the "Roman" in a wider concept of the "Latino, or "Welsche." This Latin world includes Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy, and is perceived as;
"foreign, immoral, chaotic and fake, in opposition to the moral, ordered and German."In addition to the identification of Spaniards with Jews, heretics, and "Africans" there was a clear increase in anti-Spanish propaganda among the detractors of Emperor Charles V. The propaganda against Charles V was deeply nationalistic and identified him with Spain and Rome, even though he was Flemish-born and -raised, with origins in a German dynasty, and spoke little Spanish and no Italian at the time, and was often at odds with the Papacy.
To further the appeal of their cause, rulers opposed to Charles focused on identifying Charles with the Pope, a view that Charles himself had started as a way to force the Spanish troops to accept involvement in his personal German wars, which they very much resisted as being none of their concern. The fact that the troops and supporters of Charles included German and Protestant princes and soldiers was an extra reason to focus attention on the rejection of the Spanish elements attached to them. It was necessary to create fear of Spanish rule, and to do so a certain image had to be created. At this point, the printing press would come into full action. Among the points most often highlighted was the identification of Spaniards with Moors and Jews due to the high level of intermarriage and the number of "conversos"(Jews or Muslims who had adopted Christianity) in their society, and with the "natural cruelty of those two.
The actual level of intermarriage probably varied by region, being effected by length under Andalucian rule and Iberian Christian stigmas such as Limpieza de sangre. Additionally, the Reconquista which played a major role in creating Castile, benefited substantially from contributions both in soldiers and settlers from all over western Europe, including, but not limited to adventurers of German origin.
Some authors maintain that various incidents with the troops of Charles V in Germany during the war contributed to development of the Black Legend, while others point out that although the majority of Charles's troops were German, atrocities were attributed exclusively to Spaniards, suggesting that the Black Legend already existed prior to these events.
By the end of the 16th century, the Black Legend had acquired clear race-based elements under the influence of Flemish and French writers. By this time the power of Spain had also grown enough to threaten France´s security, and the Flemish nobles had given up all hope of extending their influence in the Castilian and Aragonese courts as they had initially tried to do. This created fear in France and discontent in the Flemish nobility, who saw their comparative power diminished and were repeatedly denied their desire to participate in the conquest of America.
There is also an anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic trope that was to emerge from the Protestant Reformation as part of a process of negative association tapping into deeply embedded European prejudices. This origin combines elements of the German origin with the proofs of the anti-Hispanic narrative existing prior to the 16th century, and with the large number of parallelisms between anti-Spanish and anti-Semitic narratives in modern Europe, and it is among the ones that are gathering most support.
Roca Barea, among others, argues that The Black Legend is founded on a spin-off, a reused version of the anti-Semitic narratives forged and circulated through England and most of Central Europe from the 13th century on.
According to this view, the Spanish Black Legend was created by transferring the already created "character" of the "cruel, gold lusty Jew" onto the Spanish nations. Since the narrative was familiar, the stereotype accepted, and the identification of Spaniards and Jews was already mainstream in Europe due to the long history of coexistence between both in Iberia, at a time in which the Jews had been expelled from most of Europe, the Black Legend was proptly believed and asimilated in central Europe.
This case has three main sources of proof, the texts of German Renaiscence Intellectuals, the existence of black legend narrative in Europe prior to the conquest of America, and the similarity of the stereotypes associated to judaism by anti-semitic Europe and those that the Black Legend attributed to the Spaniards.
Texts identifying Spaniards with "heretics" and "Jews" can be found in Germany from the 14th century, and various pieces of 15th- and 16th-century anti-Spanish propaganda are almost line by line copies of prior anti-semitic works. For example, the famous account of the mistreated Native Americans killing their oppressors by pouring melted gold on their heads is an exact copy of the same scene in the anti-semitic poem the Siege of Jerusalem. It also suggests that the deep anti-semitism in Luther´s works may have served a double function, nationalistic and anti Spanish as well as religious, if that identification between both was already in circulation.
Jews being burned alive in Cologne during 1349 after being blamed for the Black Death
Luther creates a particularly explicit correlation between "the Jew", already detested in Germany at the time, and "the Spanish", which had a growing power in the area. He describes both as "thieves, false, proud and lusty". It is hard to believe that the words of such an influentian thinker would go unnoticed. This animosity of Luther towards Spain, even though it still was not the power it would later become, is explained by Arnoldsson as follows:
- An identification of Italy and Spain with the papacy, even though the Papacy and Spain were bitter enemies at the time.
- His own antisemitism and the long history coexistence-and intermarriage-of Christians and Jews in Iberia -the Spanish royal line was known to have Jewish blood in it. Luther characterized Spaniards as "sunt plerunque Marani, Mamalucken; Jews, sons of Jews".
- Identification of Spain and Turkey, and fear to an invasion by both.
[...] Spaniern [...], die essen gern weiss Brot vnd küssen gern weisse Meidlein, vnd sind sie stiffelbraun vnd Pechschwartz wie König Balthasar mit seinem Affen.— Johann Fischart, Geschichtklitterung (1575).
The Spanish eat white bread and kiss blonde women with all pleasure, but they are as brown and black as King Balthasar and his monkey.
In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and "these poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[W]e are at fault in not slaying them"
Meanwhile in Spain, the persecution of both Jews and Moriscos, had continued under the regime of the Spanish Inquisition following the Alhambra Decree, issued in January 1492. This decree gave Jews and Muslims the choice between expulsion and conversion. It was among the few expulsion orders that allowed conversion as an alternative and, so it is argued, that this expulsion was based on a religious intolerance, rather than a racial intolerance. Nevertheless,
References to Spanish as "bad Christians", "Jews", "Moors" or racialized references associating said ancestry with lack of moral or general inferiority can be found uninterruptedly in black legend sources and political propaganda since the Middle Ages until well into the contemporary period.
White Legend and History Wars
The label "White Legend" is used to describe a historiographic approach which goes too far in trying to counter the Black Legend, and which consequently ends up painting an uncritical or idealized image of Spanish colonial practices. Such an approach has been described as characteristic of Nationalist Spanish historiography during the falangist regime of Francisco Franco, which associated itself with the imperial past couched in positive terms. This was, and is, a highly functional fake narrative that bolsters a nationalistic and nativist agenda.
A contemporary example of this misuse of history can be found in the "facts" that are used in the developing ideology of the populist political party in Spain VOX. Starting with a focus in economically liberal stances and recentralization proposals, the focus of their message shifted towards stances compatible with European right-wing populism, endorsing anti-Islam as well as criticism of multiculturalism and criticizing immigration from Muslim countries, but at the same time promoting immigration from countries of Latin America in order to repopulate Spain. Their view of European Union is that of a soft euroscepticism, arguing that Spain should make no sovereignty concessions to the EU, because they consider Spanish sovereignty to reside in the Spanish nation alone. They propose to eliminate Spain's autonomous communities. In addition, they seek the return of Gibraltar to full Spanish sovereignty.
Vox is considered antifeminist, and wants to repeal the gender violence law, which they see as "discriminant against one of the sexes" and replace it with a "family violence law that will afford the same protection to the elderly, men, women and children who suffer from abuse".
The party pleads for the closure of fundamentalist mosques as well as the arrest and expulsion of extremist imams. Vox has openly called for the deportation of tens of thousands of Muslims from Spain. In 2019, the party's leader demanded a Reconquista or reconquest of Spain, explicitly referencing a new expulsion of Muslim immigrants from the country.
According to Xavier Casals, the warlike ultranationalism in Vox, unifying part of its ideology up to this point, is identified by the party with a palingenetic and biological vision of the country, the so-called "España Viva", but also with a Catholic-inspired culture. The party discourse has also revived the myth of the Antiespaña ("Anti-Spain"), an umbrella term created in the 1930s by the domestic ultranationalist forces to designate the (inner) "Enemies of Spain".
According to Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, Vox's discourse (economically anti-statist & neoliberal as well as morally authoritarian) is similar to Jörg Haider's FPÖ or Jean Marie Le Pen's National Front from the 1980s, thus likening the emergence of the party to an archaic stage of current radical right parties, more worried about the need to modernize their image than Vox; the later's approach to cultural issues would be in line with old school Spanish nationalist parties, restricting the scope of "culture" to "language and tradition".
Vox openly endorses the State of Israel. The party has however also appealed to conspiracy theories invoking the figure of Jewish philanthropist George Soros as mastermind behind Catalan separatism and the alleged "Islamization" of Europe, as well as it features a number of former nazis in party cadres and lists.
Franco's shadow (update)
In a recent interview, Iñaki Gabilondo, perhaps Spain’s best-known journalist, was asked how he would characterise Vox.
“To me, it’s Francoism,” he told eldiario.es. “I was 33 when Franco died. That means I’d lived for 33 years … with Franco in my head, my heart, my world and my soul.”Vox’s “ultra-Spanish, ultra-centralised thinking, based on fatherland, God, Spain and old values”, he added, was Francoism pure and simple. “It’s something totally recognisable because I lived it,” he said. “It’s exactly what we wanted to get rid of.”
The satirical magazine El Jueves has drawn equally explicit parallels. A recent cover showed the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, driving a tank towards panicked citizens while wearing the uniform of the Spanish Legion, which was once led by Franco. A speech bubble read: “At last you’ve managed to get Franco out of the Valley of the Fallen!”
History Wars, and the black armband versus white blindfold debate
An example of political conflict embedded in arguments between two revisionist historical "camps", anxious to capture a national narrative, and complicated by the ramifications of a history of British colonial policy in the formation of these different "histories", is to be found in Australia.
The history wars, as they are called in Australia, are an ongoing public debate over the interpretation of the history of the British colonisation of Australia and development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to the impact on Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
The so-called "white blindfold" is a term that has been used by the so-called "black armband" camp to represent the extent to which the history of European colonisation post-1788 and government administration since Federation in 1901 may be characterised as having been a relatively minor conflict between European colonists and Indigenous Australians, and generally lacking in events that might be termed 'invasion', 'warfare', 'guerrilla warfare', 'conquest' or 'genocide', and generally marked instead by humane intent by government authorities, with damage to indigenous people largely attributable to unintended factors (such as the spread of new diseases) rather than to malicious policies.
The "black armband" camp see a different history, an invasion marked by violent conflict at the frontier, guerrilla warfare (or other forms of warfare) between Europeans and Aboriginal people, involving frequent or significant massacres of Aboriginal peoples engaged in defending their traditional tribal lands; a situation which can be said to have developed either nationally, or in certain areas, into something like a war of 'extermination' or something which accords with the term genocide as a consequence of British imperialism and colonialism involving continued dispossession, exploitation, ill treatment and cultural genocide. See List of massacres of Indigenous Australians
Politicians have been involved in shaping the debate because the versions of history being set out relate to broader themes concerning national identity, as well as methodological questions concerning the historian and the craft of researching and writing history, including issues such as;
the value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and;
the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the political or similar ideological biases of those who interpret them.
One theme is how British or multicultural Australian identity has been in history and today.
At the same time the history wars were in play, professional history seemed in decline, and popular writers began reclaiming the field. The field is now an ideological battleground, similar to the United states based Culture Wars, pitting those who seek to acknowledge a darker historical reality with those who prefer a more positive gloss on the nation's story, and blame "political correctness" as a negative influence.
In 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark. This was a study of the background of, and arguments surrounding, recent developments in Australian historiography, and concluded that the History Wars had done damage to the nature of objective Australian history. At the launch of his book, historian Stuart Macintyre emphasised the political dimension of these arguments and said the Australian debate took its cue from the Enola Gay controversy in the United States. The book was launched by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the then Prime Minister John Howard), saying that they suffered from "a failure of imagination", and said that The History Wars "rolls out the canvas of this debate."
Macintyre's critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that "its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War." Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate."
In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was "a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia."
In 2001, writing in Quadrant, a conservative magazine, historian Keith Windschuttle argued that the then-new National Museum of Australia (NMA) was marred by "political correctness" and did not present a balanced view of the nation's history.
Central "garden" of the National Museum of Australia (Garden of Australian Dreams)
In 2003 the Howard Government commissioned a review of the NMA. A potentially controversial issue was in assessing how well the NMA met the criterion that displays should:
"Cover darker historical episodes, and with a gravity that opens the possibility of collective self-accounting. The role here is in helping the nation to examine fully its own past, and the dynamic of its history—with truthfulness, sobriety and balance. This extends into covering present-day controversial issues."While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements.
The report drew the ire of some historians in Australia, who claimed that it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Government to politicise the museum and move it more towards a position which Geoffrey Blainey called the 'three cheers' view of Australian history, rather than the 'black armband' view.
In 2006 columnist Miranda Devine described some of the Braille messages encoded on the external structure of the NMA, including "sorry" and "forgive us our genocide" and how they had been covered over by aluminium discs in 2001, and stated that under the new Director;
"what he calls the 'black T-shirt' view of Australian culture" is being replaced by "systematically reworking the collections, with attention to 'scrupulous historical accuracy'".Devine, Miranda (2 April 2006). "Opinion: Disclosed at last, the embedded messages that adorn museum". Sydney Morning Herald.
Did the Bells Falls Gorge massacre happen?
PM Archive - Monday, 13 August , 2001
Reporter: David Mark
MARK COLVIN: A debate over the controversial new National Museum of Australia goes to the very heart of how we interpret Australian history by questioning whether a massacre did or didn't happen. Historian Keith Windshuttle argues that a display featuring an Aboriginal massacre in the museum's gallery of Aboriginal Australia is a complete fabrication.
He says there is no evidence to support a story which claims that women and children jumped to their deaths at Bells Falls Gorge near Bathurst after white settlers opened fire on them. But the exhibit's curator says documentary evidence isn't everything. Respecting oral histories is equally important.
David Mark reports.For some historians it seems that the 'pen' is mightier than a collective 'voice', an oral history communicated through generations. A written untruth is therefore deemed more believable than a spoken truth according to some who choose to live by the pen!
DAVID MARK: The Museum's director, Dawn Casey has decided to hold a public debate after some of the Museum's board members raised concerns over perceptions of historical accuracy. At issue is one particular display which features an Aboriginal massacre. One of the Museum's curators, Brad Manera, created the frontier warfare exhibit which includes the massacre display.
He says the exhibit contrasts the early encounters between Aborigines and Europeans. On the one hand cooperation and curiosity and on the other hand, conflict. One such conflict occurred around Bathurst in the earl 1820s following a rapid expansion of European settlement in the area.
BRAD MANERA: With the increasing European population there was a great deal of tension and conflict and competition for resources, until a number of stockmen were killed by Aboriginal people in reprisals for the killing of Aboriginal people.
And the British Military Garrison in Bathurst was increased and they began to send patrols out to the area to the north of Bathurst to try and drive off the Wiradjuri people that were living there and to open the area for European settlement and to make it safer for Europeans to live there.
DAVID MARK: There's a legend that the local Wiradjuri women, children and elderly took refuge in hilly country to the north of Bathurst.
BRAD MANERA: The legend has it that mounted settlers or the army found these people and killed them. And indeed, some suggest that the legend has it that these people were driven off the cliff and into the gorge.
DAVID MARK: What facts do we have of the massacre of the women and children jumping over the cliff and to what extent is it just relying on the oral history of the Wiradjuri people?
BRAD MANERA: Accounts by, from the European perspective are rather vague. There are stories from a missionary in the 1850s and also there are written accounts by a magistrate that was in command of a group of British soldiers. They talk about seeking the enemy and clearly he's talking about the Aboriginal population of the area.
DAVID MARK: The problem, according to Sydney historian and publisher Keith Windshuttle, is that there's no evidence of a massacre.
KEITH WINDSHUTTLE: Well I'm working on an article in Australian Historical Studies written by David Roberts in the Department of History at the University of Newcastle, who did a whole thesis on the issue.
He started out presuming that there was a massacre, but found that the story first surfaced in print in 1962, you know, 140 years after the event was supposed to have occurred. And somehow, without checking the original sources, the museum has picked up the story and put in a big display about it.
DAVID MARK: So is the display a documentary of fact or rather an interpretation of what may have been. Brad Manera.
BRAD MANERA: Well it's a good question. I think what the display wants to present is an indigenous voice. The stories that have been passed from one generation to the next about what happened on that site.
I've spoken very close - well you know, in detail - with some very highly respected law keepers, if you like, and they are quite convinced that something very tragic occurred on that place and that they are certain that members of their family, their language group died in that place in the 1820s.
DAVID MARK: But Keith Windshuttle says relying on oral history isn't good enough.
KEITH WINDSHUTTLE: Oral history of events that happened, you know 150/180 years ago can't possibly be accurate. Everybody knows from their own family history that there are rumours in family that go two generations back.
You know your grandmother or your great-grandparents told you. When you actually go and do a bit of genealogy and check up the records yourself you find that a great many of them are not true. And Aboriginal people are no different to white people in this regard.
DAVID MARK: The debate is as much about how we interpret history as the relationships between Aboriginal and European Australia. Both men see the need for debate, but for different reasons.
KEITH WINDSHUTTLE: It's obviously healthy to get the facts right because, you know, schoolchildren go through these things. People who don't know how historical evidence should be judged look at these things and presume they're true when in fact, the slightest bit of degree of investigation can show that they're false.
BRAD MANERA: He's entitled to his version of history and I think that it's a valid one, but I think that the Wiradjuri storytellers have their version of history which is equally as valid.
Publication in 2016 of "Indigenous Terminology" guidelines ("Indigenous Terminology" University of New South Wales) for the teaching and writing of history by the University of New South Wales created a brief media uproar.
- Amongst the advised language changes, they recommended "settlement" be replaced by "invasion", "colonisation" or "occupation".
- They also deemed that the generally accepted anthropological assumption that "Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for 40,000 years" should be dropped for "... since the beginning of the Dreaming/s" as it "reflects the beliefs of many Indigenous Australians that they have always been in Australia, from the beginning of time" and because "many Indigenous Australians see this sort of measurement and quantifying as inappropriate."
Q. Is the term "political correctness" necessarily an anathema to learning and scholarship?
A. To paraphrase Wittgenstein's "axiom" on meaning and language: "Don't ask the meaning. Ask the use."
In the history wars the term "political correctness" is used by conservatives and reactionaries who use the term in an effort to divert political discussion away from the substantive matters of resolving societal discrimination, such as racial, social class, gender, and legal inequality, and against people whom conservatives do not consider part of the social mainstream, and therefore not entitled to a voice.
"Political correctness" as a term was used by the New Left in the United States in the 70's as an in-joke on the left:
"radical students on American campuses acting out an ironic replay of the Bad Old Days BS (Before the Sixties) when every revolutionary groupuscule had a party line about everything. They would address some glaring examples of sexist or racist behaviour by their fellow students in imitation of the tone of voice of the Red Guards or Cultural Revolution Commissar: "Not very 'politically correct', Comrade!"Hall, Stuart (1994). "Some 'Politically Incorrect' Pathways Through PC" (PDF). S. Dunant (ed.) The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate. pp. 164–84.
Herbert Kohl, in 1992, commented that a number of neoconservatives who promoted the use of the term "politically correct" in the early 1990s were former Communist Party members, and, as a result, familiar with the Marxist use of the phrase. He argued that in doing so, they intended;
"to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox, and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people to be racist, sexist, and homophobic."During the 1990s, conservative and right-wing politicians, think-tanks, and speakers adopted the phrase as a pejorative descriptor of their ideological enemies – especially in the context of the Culture Wars.
The British journalist, Will Hutton, wrote in 2001:
Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid–1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism.... What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism – by levelling the charge of "political correctness" against its exponents – they could discredit the whole political project."Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett" —Will Hutton, 2001
The Stolen Generation(s)
Some of the most diametrically opposed contentions in these history wars have related to the inquiry established by the federal Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, on 11 May 1995, in response to efforts made by key Indigenous agencies and communities concerned about the general public's ignorance of the history of forcible removal and separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. This Federal and State policy began around 1905, continuing until 1967, known more recently in Australia as the Stolen Generation.
The National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families sought to provide an opportunity to discover the experiences of people removed from their families. It was anticipated that given the trauma witnesses had experienced that they would be at risk of further trauma if they were to be cross examined on their testimony and their evidence challenged.
Two reports were tabled in Federal Parliament on 26 May 1997, including a formal 700-page report titled Bringing them Home and subtitled Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. This was accompanied by a less formal and shorter community guide called Bringing them Home—Community Guide and subtitled "A guide to the findings and recommendations of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families".
The Community Guide summarised the report's conclusions that;
"indigenous families and communities have endured gross violations of their human rights. These violations continue to affect indigenous people's daily lives. They were an act of genocide, aimed at wiping out indigenous families, communities, and cultures, vital to the precious and inalienable heritage of Australia"Five years later, in 2002, the Australian drama film Rabbit-Proof Fence, directed by Phillip Noyce, renewed this controversy. Eric Abetz, a government official, announced the publishing of a leaflet criticising the film's portrayal of the treatment of indigenous Australians, and demanded an apology from the filmmakers. Director Phillip Noyce suggested instead that the government apologize to the indigenous people affected by the removal policy.
The film was based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara, loosely based on the true story concerning the author's mother Molly, as well as two other mixed-race Aboriginal girls, Daisy Kadibil and Gracie, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, Western Australia, to return to their Aboriginal families, after being placed there in 1931.
The film follows the Aboriginal girls as they walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong, while being pursued by white law enforcement authorities and an Aboriginal tracker.
Despite the lengthy and detailed findings set out in the 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the Stolen Generation, which documented the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by Australian State and Federal government agencies and church missions, the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated.
Despite the fact that none of the more than 500 witnesses who appeared before the Inquiry were cross-examined, to ameliorate the risk of exposing witnesses to unnecessary psychological trauma, this has been the basis of criticism. This criticism by the Coalition Government and by the anthropologist, and right wing columnist Ron Brunton, and set out in a booklet published by the Institute of Public Affairs (a conservative public policy think tank based in Melbourne, Victoria), was itself criticised in turn by the lawyer Hal Wootten, someone who has served in multiple capacities and offices, including as a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, a Chairman of the Law Reform Commission of New South Wales, and a Deputy President of the Native Title Tribunal. Wootten has been involved in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and the Australian Conservation Foundation, as its President, among other causes.
Wootten also served as the Chairman of the Australian Press Council between 1984 and 1986, so the fact that much of the controversy regarding the history of the Stolen Generation has been stoked up by sections of the Australian press owned by News Corp, the American mass media and publishing company, formed as a spin-off of the original News Corporation founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1980, is relevant.
Following Rupert Murdoch's takeover of The Herald and Weekly Times and a decision from the 15-member council against calling on the Commonwealth Government for an independent tribunal to vet proposed media takeovers and in light of the Council's failure to object to Murdoch's control of 70% of Australia's print media and the sense that both of these events were wrong and unjust, Wootten resigned in protest, alongside John Lawrence, a former federal president of the Australian Journalists Association.
“Allowing Murdoch to assume control of Australian newspapers was unparalleled outside of totalitarian countries. The Federal Treasurer could stop the takeover if he wanted to … in this case it is a man who has renounced his citizenship to further his worldwide media power, and who makes no secret of the fact that he intends to make personal use of his control of newspapers.”— Hal Wootten, Sydney Morning Herald (17 December 1986)
News Corp's newspaper the Herald Sun is the highest-circulating daily newspaper in Australia, with a weekday circulation of 350 thousand and claimed readership of 1.26 million.
An Australian Federal Government submission has questioned the conduct of the Commission which produced the report, arguing that the Commission failed to critically appraise or test the claims on which it based the report and failed to distinguish between those separated from their families "with and without consent, and with and without good reason". Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned, but also the intent and effects of the government policy.
Some critics, such as Andrew Bolt, an Australian conservative social and political commentator working for the Herald Sun, have questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt stated that it is a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children.
Robert Manne, Emeritus Professor of politics and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and a leading Australian public intellectual, responded that Bolt had not addressed the available documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations.
According to Manne this was a clear case of "historical denialism".
Manne, Robert The cruelty of denial, The Age, 9 September 2006
Bolt then challenged Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justified the claim that children were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc. He argued that Manne did not respond and that this was an indication of unreliability of the claim that there was policy of systematic removal.
In reply, Manne stated that he supplied a documented list of 250 names Bolt stated that prior to a debate, Manne provided him with a list of 12 names that he was able to show during the debate was "a list of people abandoned, saved from abuse or voluntarily given up by their parents"; and that during the actual debate, Manne produced a list of 250 names without any details or documentation as to their circumstances.
Bolt also stated that he was subsequently able to identify and ascertain the history of some of those on the list and was unable to find a case where there was evidence to justify the term ‘stolen’. He stated that one of the names on the list of allegedly stolen children was 13-year-old Dolly, taken into the care of the State after being "found seven months pregnant and penniless, working for nothing on a station".
A victory for free speech? or the peddling of "alternative facts"?
It is worth pointing out that Bolt has a track record when it comes to the accurate reporting of facts in his role as blogger and columnist at the Melbourne-based Herald Sun, a track record he shares with this employer.
In 2002, magistrate Jelena Popovic was awarded $246,000 damages for defamation after suing Bolt and the publishers of the Herald Sun over a 13 December 2000 column in which he claimed that she had "hugged two drug traffickers she let walk free". Popovic stated that she had in fact shaken their hands to congratulate them on having completed a rehabilitation program.
The jury found that what Bolt wrote was untrue, unfair and inaccurate, but cleared him of malice.
Bolt emerged from the Supreme Court after the jury verdict, stating that his column had been accurate and that the mixed verdict was a victory for free speech. His statement outside the court was harshly criticised by Supreme Court judge Bernard Bongiorno, who later overturned the jury's decision, ruling that Bolt had not acted reasonably because he did not seek a response from Popovic before writing the article and, in evidence given during the trial;
showed he did not care whether or not the article was defamatory.
Justice Bongiorno ordered that Ms Popovic be awarded $210,000 in aggravated compensatory damages, $25,000 in punitive damages and $11,500 interest.
The judge stated that the damages awarded were significantly influenced by Bolt's "disingenuous" comments he had made outside court and the Herald Sun's reporting of the jury's decision. The Court of Appeal later reversed the $25,000 punitive damages, though it upheld the defamation finding, describing Bolt's conduct as;
"at worst, dishonest and misleading and at best, grossly careless".More recently, in September 2010, nine individuals commenced legal proceedings in the Federal Court against Bolt and the Herald Sun over two posts on Bolt's blog.
The nine sued over posts titled "It's so hip to be black", "White is the New Black" and "White Fellas in the Black".
The articles suggested it was fashionable for "fair-skinned people" of diverse ancestry to choose Aboriginal racial identity for the purposes of political and career clout. The applicants claimed the posts breached the Racial Discrimination Act. They sought an apology, legal costs, and a gag on republishing the articles and blogs, and "other relief as the court deems fit". They did not seek damages. On 28 September 2011, Justice Mordecai Bromberg found Bolt to have contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. The case was controversial. Justice Bromberg had been active in Labor Party politics so this became a left/right and political bias issue.
Bolt described the decision as a "terrible day for free speech" in Australia and said it represented "a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves. I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings."
Jonathan Holmes of the ABC's Media Watch described Justice Bromberg's interpretation of the Racial Discrimination Act, and his application of it to Bolt's columns as "profoundly disturbing" because it reinforced concerns that 18C creates "one particular area of public life where speech is regulated by tests that simply don't apply anywhere else, and in which judges - never, for all their pontifications, friends of free speech - get to do the regulating."
The prominent Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson later stated:
"The essence of indigeneity ... is that people have a connection with their ancestors whose bones are in the soil. Whose dust is part of the sand. I had to come to the somewhat uncomfortable conclusion that even Andrew Bolt was becoming Indigenous because the bones of his ancestors are now becoming part of the territory."
A Culture War?
The Bolt/Manne debate is a fair sample of the adversarial debating style in the area. There is focus on individual examples as evidence for or against the existence of a policy, and little or no analysis of other documentary evidence such as legislative databases showing how the legal basis for removal varied over time and between jurisdictions, or testimony from those who were called on to implement the policies, which was also recorded in the Bringing Them Home report. A recent review of legal cases claims it is difficult for Stolen Generation claimants to challenge what was written about their situation at the time of removal.
The report also identified instances of official misrepresentation and deception, such as when caring and able parents were incorrectly described by Aboriginal Protection Officers as not being able to properly provide for their children, or when parents were told by government officials that their children had died, even though this was not the case.
The new Australian Government elected in 2007 issued an Apology similar to those that State Governments had issued at or about the time of the Bringing Them Home report ten years earlier. On 13 February 2008, Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia moved a formal apology in the House of Representatives, which was moved concurrently by the Leader of the Government in the Senate. It passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on 13 March 2008.
In the Senate, the leader of the Australian Greens moved an amendment seeking to add compensation to the apology. This was heavily defeated in a vote of 65 to 4. Having avoided inclusion of this financial burden of responsibility the motion was passed unanimously.
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
The Wikipedia article on the Stolen Generations has a photographic detail of a three dimensional diorama style portrayal entitled The Taking of the Children on the 1999 Great Australian Clock, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, created by the artist Chris Cooke.
The Queen Victoria Building (QVB) is a heritage-listed late-nineteenth-century building designed by the architect George McRae located in the Sydney central business district, in the Australian state of New South Wales.
The Great Australian Clock weighs four tonnes and stands ten metres tall. It includes 33 scenes from Australian history, seen from both Aboriginal and European perspectives. An Aboriginal hunter circles the exterior of the clock continuously, representing the never-ending passage of time.
- - Aborigines before European settlement.
- - Captain Cook landing in 1770
- - Second fleet landing 1790.
- - Crossing the Blue Mountains.
- - The taking of the children.
- - Corroboree.
- - Judgement of Myall Creek massacre
- - The black line, Tasmania, 1830.
- - Annual blessing Torres Strait islands
- - Eureka stockade.
- - Battlefields of 1861
- - Lords at London
- - Opening of Parliament 1901
- - Soldiers return to the outback 1945.
- - Unity 1999.
There is another, and older, clock in the QVB called the Royal Clock that activates on the hour and displays six scenes of English royalty accompanied by Jeremiah Clarke's trumpet voluntary.
The six scenes (in chronological order) depict:
- King Cnut commanding the tide to halt.
- King Harold dying on the field at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
- King John signing the Magna Carta in 1215. Also present in the scene is Stephen Cardinal Langton.
- Henry VIII and his six wives.
- Queen Elizabeth I knighting Sir Francis Drake aboard the Golden Hind in 1588 (an apocryphal scene as the ceremony was performed by the ambassador from France—in the Queen's presence).
- The execution of King Charles I in 1649.
Brought together in the Queen Victoria Building these clocks reflect the changing state of parallel foundation narratives, an English myth, and a more nuanced Australian, post-imperial and reflective adjustment to recent historical understandings, but both are embedded in a shared imperial past and stories rooted in the Victorian era.
While the young Raleigh was listening to the sailor tell his tales of the Spanish main Francis Drake, in 1563 aged 23, had probably already set out on his first voyage to the Americas, sailing with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins, on one of a fleet of ships owned by his relatives, the Hawkins family of Plymouth. He made three voyages with this fleet, attacking Portuguese towns and ships on the coast of West Africa. They then sailed to the Americas and sold the captured cargoes of slaves to Spanish plantations.
The Duke of Anjou was a short in stature, and who reminded the queen of a frog - so that is what she called him, her "frog".
It was this same "spirit of nationalism", a spirit that validated the imperial acquisition of territories and peoples across the world, that shaped the narrative present in Millais' picture of the Boyhood of Raleigh.
A favorite scheme of Leo Amery was to develop one or more colonies into white-ruled dominions, with special attention to Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, and Palestine. The strong opposition by the overwhelming nonwhite populations in Africa, and by the Arabs in Palestine, destroyed his plans. In India, the strong resistance of the Congress movement defeated his hopes for greater integration into the Commonwealth.
The Earl of Birkenhead served as Secretary of State for India in Baldwin's second government from 1924 to 1928. Baldwin had allegedly declined to reappoint him to the woolsack on the grounds that it would be inappropriate for the Lord Chancellor to be seen drunk in the street. His views on pre-partition India's independence movement were gloomy. He thought India's Hindu-Muslim religious divide insurmountable and sought to block advances in native participation in provincial governments that had been granted by the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. His parliamentary private secretary recalled much time ostensibly on India Office business seemed to be spent playing golf. A 1924 entry in Evelyn Waugh's diary states that an English High Court judge, presiding in a sodomy case, sought advice on sentencing from Lord Birkenhead. "Could you tell me," he asked, "what do you think one ought to give a man who allows himself to be buggered?" Birkenhead replied without hesitation, "Oh, thirty shillings or two pounds; whatever you happen to have on you."
David Low's early reputation working as a cartoonist in Sydney, New South Wales for The Bulletin, was bolstered by a 1916 cartoon satirising Billy Hughes, then the Prime Minister of Australia, entitled The Imperial Conference.
Ronald Munro Ferguson, Australia’s Governor-General, was so amused by the cartoon that he asked Low for the original. Following that success, Low published many cartoons depicting Hughes' forceful and eccentric personality. Hughes was not impressed and apparently called Low a "bastard" to his face.
Bloody Bess and her colonial rule
Between 1579 and 1583, Raleigh took part in the suppression of the second of the so-called Desmond Rebellions, which took place initially between 1569–1573 and then subsequently between 1579–1583 in the Irish province of Munster.
These were the rebellions of the Earl of Desmond – head of the FitzGerald dynasty in Munster – and his followers, the Geraldines and their allies, against the threat of the extension of their South Welsh Tewdwr cousins of Elizabethan English government over the province. The rebellions were motivated primarily by the desire to maintain the independence of feudal lords from their monarch, but also had an element of religious antagonism between Catholic Geraldines and the Protestant English state.
These rebellions culminated in the destruction of the Desmond dynasty and the plantation or colonisation of Munster with English Protestant settlers. 'Desmond' is the Anglicisation of the Irish Deasmumhain, meaning 'South Munster'
The Faerie Queene
Queen Elizabeth I played by Cate Blanchett
The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I–III were first published in 1590, and then republished in 1596 together with books IV–VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it is one of the longest poems in the English language as well as the work in which Spenser invented the verse form known as the Spenserian stanza. On a literal level, the poem follows several knights as a means to examine different virtues, and though the text is primarily an allegorical work, it can be read on several levels of allegory, including as praise, or, later, criticism, of Queen Elizabeth I.
In Spenser's "Letter of the Authors", he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices", and the aim of publishing The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline".
Spenser presented the first three books of The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth I in 1589, probably sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. The poem was a clear effort to gain court favor and as a reward Elizabeth granted Spenser a pension for life amounting to £50 a year, though there is no further evidence that Elizabeth I ever read any of the poem. This royal patronage elevated the poem to a level of success that made it Spenser's defining work.
. . . and flattery will get you everywhere!
The finished poem is composed of six books, each centred on a particular virtue. Allegory being allegory, there is plenty of scope for merging praise with a hidden critique.
In Spenser's day casuistry was name of the game. Casuistry is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence.
However, the term has also been commonly used as a pejorative term to criticize the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions, as in the modern use of the term sophistry to refer to a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive. The word casuistry derives from the Latin noun casus "case" or "occurrence".
The Oxford English Dictionary says, quoting Viscount Bolingbroke, (1749), that the word "applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty." Its textual references, except for certain technical usages, are consistently pejorative, for example:
"Casuistry destroys by distinctions and exceptions, all morality, and effaces the essential difference between right and wrong".
One way of approaching the subject of casuistry is to say that lying becomes easy only when one is dealing through a single medium like print. In dailogue, or interface, lying is much more difficult than in writing, as the legal establishment proclaims.
The variety of senses involved in oral discourse, the gestures and tonalities, make lying a kind of dramatic activity, more like making than matching. When "truth" is reduced to mere matching of inner and outer, any statement can be questioned:
"Dictionaries drive words out of their senses"
as a wag noted.McLuhan and Watson then reference Francis Bacon's essay "Of Truth".
Bacon's essay "Of Truth" opens with allusion to the new games of casuistry that had sprung up with the printed retrieval of whole worlds of conflicting opinions:
What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; And would not stay for an Answer. Certainly there be, that delight in Giddinesse, And count it a Bondage to fix a Beleefe; Affecting Freewill in Thinking, as well as in Acting. And though the Sects of Philosophers of that Kinde be gone, yet there remaine certaine discoursing Wits, which are of the same veines, though there be not so much Bloud in them, as was in those of the Ancients. But it is not onely the Difficultie and Labour, which men take in finding out of Truth; Nor againe, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's Thoughts, that doth bring Lies in favour; But a naturall though corrupt Love of the Lie it selfe. One of the later Schoole of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love Lies; Where neither they make for Pleasure, as with Poets; Nor for Advantage, as with the Merchant; but for the Lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same Truth is a Naked and Open day light, that doth not shew the Masques, and Mummeries, and Triumphs of the World, halfe so stately and daintily as Candlelights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a Pearle, that sheweth best by day; But it will not rise to the price of a Diamond, or Carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights. A Mixture of a Lie doth ever adde Pleasure.
In Shakespeare's English histories the form of the trial follows the old medieval procedure of swearing to the probity of an accused person. In later plays such as Othello and Cymbeline, Shakespeare takes a more modern approach to the credibility of a witness. He is, in a sense, a precursor of the theories of evidence which were developed at the end of the seventeenth century. In both Othello and Cymbeline the retrieval of "truth" is achieved by the new sensory stress on visual matching that was characteristic of the precision of print itself:
OTHELLO: . . . Give me the ocular proof;
Or, by the worth of man's eternal soul,
Thou hadst been better have been born a dog
Than answer my waked wrath!
IAGO:
Is't come to this?
OTHELLO:
Make me to see't; or at the least so prove it,
That the probation bear no hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!
Othello Act III Scene 3This chapter is headed . . .
Ocular proof is dependent on the isolation of one sense as basis for proof. this goes along with Iago as a Machiavellian specialist - divide and rule. iago is the knowing man who loves fragmentation, breaking people and things up into little bits, which leads to the simple formula "every man has his price."
CASUISTRY
above a decorative "C" . . .
(ART AS LIE)
followed by a chapter sub heading . . .
Casuistry and the Lie as Derived from Technologies
The Nuncstans of the Written Bond
Contrasting with the Gentleman's Word
then two quotes . . .
"I always paint fakes."
- Picasso
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
- Sir Walter Raleigh "The Lie"
From Gloriana to Victoriana
In Singapore the collaboration of the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) with Tate Britain in the exhibition “Artist and Empire: (En)countering Colonial Legacies” involved a curatorial re-thinking of Tate Britain's 2015 exhibition “Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past”. In an article, in ArtAsiaPacific Magazine, Annie Jael Kwan writes:
Tate’s version of “Artist and Empire” received criticism for its shortsighted selection of works from only British collections, with limited contemporary viewpoints from those who lived under colonial rule, in particular from Southeast Asia. The tour of the exhibition to Singapore was thus a curatorial challenge, and particularly provocative, given the NGS’s potency as site of historical, national and cultural significance. Comprising of the former Supreme Court and City Hall, the latter which was also the World War II site of the surrender of the Japanese to the Allied Forces in 1945, the NGS underwent extensive refurbishments to open in 2015, during Singapore’s 50th anniversary of its independence from Malaysia. The first curatorial redress was the retooling of the exhibition to select more than three quarters of its total of 211 works from Southeast Asian countries, India and Australia.On the inclusion of Geflowski's marble Statue of Queen Victoria she draws a stark picture of a situation where the work recreates through its reinstatement a re-colonializing of the gallery and its nation:
The NGS’s aim of presenting alternative perspectives to colonial narratives while working in collaboration with Tate Britain, an institution that has conventionally maintained an exclusionary notion of modernism, was always a challenge. The curatorial endeavor to open and recuperate postcolonial articulations via the exhibition and display choices, was further undermined by the central placement of Emanuel Edward Geflowski’s marble Statue of Queen Victoria (1888) in the main lobby of the NGS. This reinstatement of the Queen and its gesture toward re-colonializing the gallery and its nation, was exacerbated by the “Artist and Empire” exhibition poster in Singapore with its cinema-style poster that depicted the “colonial” and “indigenous” characters from the exhibition paintings as supporting characters surrounding the Queen, who is the protagonist. In addition, the NGS’s “Empire Ball”-themed fundraiser faced public criticism and lent doubt to the NGS’s ability to manage the sensitivities of contentious material within the postcolonial framework. It suggested that the NGS’s ambitions to assert itself as the authoritative art historical voice in Southeast Asia is made problematic by the competing pressures of the nation’s political and cultural realities.
Update 2019 in the Story Wars:
Update 2019 - Victoria Park, Hong Kong
