I had a school-friend called Norman, who always had one ambition, which was to become a Methodist minister. He made no secret about it: he would hum hymns rather than pop tunes, and even brought the "Methodist Recorder" into school with him every week. I don't remember him being bullied about it, or even particularly teased, though the boy who every week asked if he could have a look at the sports page must have worn his patience a bit thin. He was a good amateur actor too, playing the lead in Moliere's "Imaginary Invalid", and Professor Higgins in "Pygmalion" (where I played Alfred Doolittle). I always enjoyed talking to him, although I found his theological pronouncements rather extreme: he took a fundamentalist approach to the Bible, and refused to accept any evidence for evolution.
I once helped him prepare the food for a local Methodist function. There was also a well-meaning but dim youth who wanted to help, so we asked him to make some gravy. He read the instructions on the packet of cubes and then came asking for help. "It says, add to a pint of water", he said, "but we haven't got a pint measurer". "No", I said, "but there's milk bottle; that's a pint, so you can use that". He went away satisfied, only to return a few minutes later, complaining, "It's stuck!" He had pushed the cube down the neck of the milk bottle into the water, where it had swelled up and jammed. We took it from him and set him to put out the cutlery, where we thought he couldn't do much damage.
Eventually, after a few setbacks, Norman secured a place to train for the ministry. When I visited him at the college, he complained that more than half of his fellow-students didn't believe in God. I asked him what, in that case, they preached. "A mixture of egoism and social concern", he told me, which I thought sounded about right. While I was there he asked me if I wanted to attend a lecture on Adam Clarke, a famous Methodist theologian from the early 19th century. Since I had come across Clarke's massive Biblical commentaries (where he attempted vainly to reconcile fundamentalist belief in the scriptures with the findings of science, and, if my memory serves me right, interpreted the Book of Revelations as prophesying the final downfall of the Papacy in 1945), I decided to come. I dressed in my "student-going-to-lecture" gear of cord jeans and an orange pullover, only to find that all the rest of the audience were staid Methodists in dark suits. They sat in rigid silence during the lecture and afterwards, whereas I asked a few questions. When it was over the lecturer came up to me and asked, "Are you a minister?", which under the circumstances I thought was rather amusing.
I once spent a weekend with Norman and his wife at their church, and attended a group discussion he had organised on the Saturday evening. This was an odd experience. The church was located in what was clearly an expensive suburb, and the house where we held the meeting was quite large, but with hardly any books and very dull pictures on the walls. This ought to have prepared me for what followed. Norman's discussion was supposed to be centred round the theme of "creation", and he had put together what he hoped would be interesting and stimulating extracts from Arthur Koestler and other writers. These, however, went down like the proverbial lead balloon. At one point Norman said, "We all remember the opening words of the Bible ..." and paused for a response. Dead silence followed. I thought, "He's going to have to say them himself!", and indeed he did.
Norman eventually became quite an influential figure in the Methodist church. As far as I know, he is still at work.
Monday, 31 March 2014
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
The British in India: a brief introduction
Since the 16th century India had been a vast empire ruled by the Mughal princes, descendants of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, who had come through the Khyber Pass from Central Asia (Mughal = Mongol). They were Moslems, ruling a population which was overwhelmingly Hindu, and the official language of the court was Persian. The situation was therefore always potentially unstable and precarious. Their power base was in the north, around Delhi and Agra, where their most famous buildings, such as the Taj Mahal, were Islamic in style and owed little or nothing to Indian traditions. For a while the great Mughal emperors, Babur, Akhbar, Jehangir and others, were the richest and most powerful monarchs in the world, but after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 the empire went into rapid decline. In 1739 Delhi itself was sacked by the Persians under Nadir Shah, who carried away the Peacock Throne. Emperors continued to reign in Delhi until 1858, but their authority was little more than nominal. Power passed into the hands of local princes, the Nawabs ("Emperor's representatives"), who did their own deals with European traders, and even used European troops in their battles with each other.
Once Portugese explorers had found a way round Africa in the early 16th century, other countries wished to cash in on the fabled wealth of the Indies: originally spices, but soon other luxury goods as well: silk, tea, opium and porcelain. The British East India Company was founded in 1599-1600, with a royal charter giving it a monopoly of trade with the Far East. The original target was what is now Indonesia, but in the mid-17th century British merchants there were driven out by the Dutch, and instead concentrated on bases on the coasts of India: Calcutta in the north-east, Madras in the south-east and Bombay (now Mumbai) in the west; the latter coming from Portugal as a dowry for Charles II's wife, Catherine of Braganza. A French East India Company was founded in 1664 and established its own bases: Pondicherry near Madras and Chandanagore near Calcutta.
Robert Clive, a Shropshire man, was born in 1725. He showed early signs of the mental instability which was to recur many times in his life. He went out to India at the age of 18 as a "writer" in the East India Company; a position which carried only a miniscule salary, but offered possibilities for a young man of initiative and enterprise to make very large sums of money for himself. Such opportunities soon presented themselves. In the 1740s England and France faced each other in the War of the Austrian Succession. The governments in Paris and London had no plans for the fighting to extend to India, but the French Governor-General, Dupleix, was ambitious, and by allying with the local Nawab he was able to capture Madras in 1746. The town was restored to Britain in a peace treaty two years later, but in fact fighting in India never really stopped. Clive first made his name in 1751 when he led a raiding party which captured the Nawab's capital of Arcot and then held it against a besieging force of 10,000 French and native troops. As a result of this, a pro-British Nawab was installed and Dupleix was recalled to Paris in disgrace.
The Seven Years' War broke out in Europe in 1756, but a crisis had already erupted in India. The Nawab of Bengal (Bangladesh) had seized Calcutta and imprisoned the British residents: the famous incident of the "black hole", which oddly enough attracted little attention at the time. Clive came by sea from Madras, regained Calcutta and in July 1757 at Plassey, with just 800 Europeans and 2000 native troops (sepoys), defeated a much larger native army. The Nawab was deposed and killed, and replaced by his pro-British cousin, securing British control of Bengal. Fierce fighting followed around Madras before the French base of Pondicherry fell in 1761. These were to prove decisive turning-points in world history.
India was for Britain a remote and mysterious land, to which young men sailed to seek their fortunes. Most of them were never seen again, but a few returned many years later fantastically rich, though often suffering from strange diseases and addicted to opium. They were nicknamed the "Nabobs", a corruption of Nawab. Clive himself received the enormous "present" of £234,000 from his friend the Nawab (worth hundreds of millions in today's money). He returned to India in 1765, and persuaded the Emperor in Delhi to grant official recognition to British control of Bengal and Bihar. He entered Parliament in 1761 as M.P. for Shrewsbury, but found his methods savagely denounced, and faced a Parliamentary inquiry in 1772. He did not live long to enjoy his fortune; committing suicide in 1774.
But the East India Company did not prosper.Although its control hardly extended beyond Bengal and the other bases, it was not equipped to govern a province and maintain a private army; and it was forced to ask for government assistance. In 1773 Lord North's government passed a Regulating Act, which established a Governor-General, assisted by a Council nominated by the British government and the E.I.C.
The first Governor-General was Warren Hastings. The British government in these years was obliged to give its full attention to the war of American independence, and Hastings was left without any assistance from London as he tried to establish efficient administration and to thwart the French, who were attempting to regain their position in India while Britain was distracted. In these tasks Hastings was successful; sending an army right across India to prevent a threat to Bombay, and extending British control into Oudh. Many of his methods were undoubtedly ruthless, though he was noted for his respect for Hindu traditions and for the beliefs of the Moslems of Bengal. He was constantly undermined by enemies on his own council, who fed back horror-stories to London.
In 1783 the Duke of Portland's government, generally known as the "Fox-North coalition" proposed an India Bill which would establish greater government control. The E.I.C. was alarmed, and put out propaganda accusing the government of confiscating its wealth; Fox's enemies feared he would use the vast riches of India to keep himself in power for ever, and King George III, who hated Fox, let it be known that anyone who voted for the Bill would be considered the King's personal enemy. The India Bill was duly defeated in the House of Lords, the government was promptly sacked, and William Pitt, aged just 24, was installed as the youngest Prime Minister in British history. By this time around 15 Nabobs sat in the House of Commons, and supported Pitt over this issue.
Pitt passed his own India Act in 1784, which in fact was not very different from Fox's proposals. British India was to be under the dual control of the Crown and the E.I.C., with a Governor-General in India and a Board of Control in London, headed by a cabinet minister. This structure was to remain in place until the Indian Mutiny in 1857. The next few years were to be dominated by a sensational event: the trial of Warren Hastings.
In 1788 the great Whig orator and philosopher Edmund Burke moved for the impeachment of Hastings; that is, a state trial, with the House of Commons acting as prosecutors and the Lords as judge and jury; the charges being misgovernment, tyranny and extortion. William Pitt as Prime Minister could have prevented it from going ahead, but it seems he was genuinely shocked by the charges, and possibly he was not sorry to see his Whig opponents being distracted from criticizing his government.
Here are two cartoons by James Gillray. The first is entitled "The Political Banditti assailing the Saviour of India". Edmund Burke (with blunderbuss), Charles James Fox (with dagger) and Lord North (with battered sabre labelled "American subjugation") are attacking Warren Hastings, who is defending himself with the "shield of honor".
The second is much more ambivalent. Under the sign of the crown the "State Jugglers" are performing their tricks. The Prime Minister, William Pitt, is producing awards and medals from his mouth, in the centre Warren Hastings vomits out a stream of gold, and Lord Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, breathes out fire and brimstone. Below, government supporters clamour for rewards. Fox, as leader of the opposition, creeps up onto the platform from behind, hoping to grab a share of the loot. Above, King George III and Queen Charlotte play on a see-saw.
For seven years the Whig leaders, Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox and the playwright turned politician Richard Sheridan thundered their magnificent oratory against Hastings. But gradually public interest waned, until in 1795 only 29 lords had followed the proceedings sufficiently to give their verdict, which was overwhelmingly for acquittal. By this time Hastings, who had had to spend vast sums organizing his defence, was bankrupt. The result was therefore unsatisfactory for all sides, but at least it demonstrated that officials in India were answerable for their actions. Hastings was awarded a handsome pension by the East India Company, and lived till 1818.
As yet Britain controlled only a few scattered areas of India, but this was soon to change. The French East India Company collapsed in the French Revolution, but with the renewal of war between Britain and France in 1793 the French placed their hopes on the anti-British prince Tipu, Sultan of Mysore in southern India. The new Governor-General was Lord Mornington, an Irish nobleman, who brought out to India his younger brother, Arthur Wellesley, later to become the Duke of Wellington. Wellesley had at this time no experience of battlefield command, but in 1799 he defeated and killed Tipu at Seringapatam, and then in 1803 gained a stunning victory at Assaye, when heavily outnumbered, against the Maratha princes who dominated central India. For the first time, Britain was now the dominant power on sub-continent. Arthur Wellesley returned home a rich man, and was soon to employ on the European continent the military experience he had gained in India.
Footnotes:
1. The first of the nabobs, back in the early years of the 18th century, was Thomas Pitt, nicknamed "Diamond" Pitt. He had gone out to India at the age of 20 in 1673, had risen to be Governor of Madras, and brought back home an enormous diamond which he eventually sold to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, for £125,000. He then bought the notorious "rotten borough" of Old Sarum and went into politics. He became the grandfather of William Pitt the elder and great-grandfather of William Pitt the younger, both of whom served as Prime Minister.
2. Back in the 1960s the Indian cricket captain was a nobleman, the Nawab of Pataudi. After Mrs Gandhi abolished the noble titles, he had to revert to his name, which was Mansur Ali Khan; showing that he was a Moslem, and of Mughal descent.
Robert Clive: a 19th century statue, in Shrewsbury
Once Portugese explorers had found a way round Africa in the early 16th century, other countries wished to cash in on the fabled wealth of the Indies: originally spices, but soon other luxury goods as well: silk, tea, opium and porcelain. The British East India Company was founded in 1599-1600, with a royal charter giving it a monopoly of trade with the Far East. The original target was what is now Indonesia, but in the mid-17th century British merchants there were driven out by the Dutch, and instead concentrated on bases on the coasts of India: Calcutta in the north-east, Madras in the south-east and Bombay (now Mumbai) in the west; the latter coming from Portugal as a dowry for Charles II's wife, Catherine of Braganza. A French East India Company was founded in 1664 and established its own bases: Pondicherry near Madras and Chandanagore near Calcutta.
Robert Clive, a Shropshire man, was born in 1725. He showed early signs of the mental instability which was to recur many times in his life. He went out to India at the age of 18 as a "writer" in the East India Company; a position which carried only a miniscule salary, but offered possibilities for a young man of initiative and enterprise to make very large sums of money for himself. Such opportunities soon presented themselves. In the 1740s England and France faced each other in the War of the Austrian Succession. The governments in Paris and London had no plans for the fighting to extend to India, but the French Governor-General, Dupleix, was ambitious, and by allying with the local Nawab he was able to capture Madras in 1746. The town was restored to Britain in a peace treaty two years later, but in fact fighting in India never really stopped. Clive first made his name in 1751 when he led a raiding party which captured the Nawab's capital of Arcot and then held it against a besieging force of 10,000 French and native troops. As a result of this, a pro-British Nawab was installed and Dupleix was recalled to Paris in disgrace.
The Seven Years' War broke out in Europe in 1756, but a crisis had already erupted in India. The Nawab of Bengal (Bangladesh) had seized Calcutta and imprisoned the British residents: the famous incident of the "black hole", which oddly enough attracted little attention at the time. Clive came by sea from Madras, regained Calcutta and in July 1757 at Plassey, with just 800 Europeans and 2000 native troops (sepoys), defeated a much larger native army. The Nawab was deposed and killed, and replaced by his pro-British cousin, securing British control of Bengal. Fierce fighting followed around Madras before the French base of Pondicherry fell in 1761. These were to prove decisive turning-points in world history.
India was for Britain a remote and mysterious land, to which young men sailed to seek their fortunes. Most of them were never seen again, but a few returned many years later fantastically rich, though often suffering from strange diseases and addicted to opium. They were nicknamed the "Nabobs", a corruption of Nawab. Clive himself received the enormous "present" of £234,000 from his friend the Nawab (worth hundreds of millions in today's money). He returned to India in 1765, and persuaded the Emperor in Delhi to grant official recognition to British control of Bengal and Bihar. He entered Parliament in 1761 as M.P. for Shrewsbury, but found his methods savagely denounced, and faced a Parliamentary inquiry in 1772. He did not live long to enjoy his fortune; committing suicide in 1774.
But the East India Company did not prosper.Although its control hardly extended beyond Bengal and the other bases, it was not equipped to govern a province and maintain a private army; and it was forced to ask for government assistance. In 1773 Lord North's government passed a Regulating Act, which established a Governor-General, assisted by a Council nominated by the British government and the E.I.C.
The first Governor-General was Warren Hastings. The British government in these years was obliged to give its full attention to the war of American independence, and Hastings was left without any assistance from London as he tried to establish efficient administration and to thwart the French, who were attempting to regain their position in India while Britain was distracted. In these tasks Hastings was successful; sending an army right across India to prevent a threat to Bombay, and extending British control into Oudh. Many of his methods were undoubtedly ruthless, though he was noted for his respect for Hindu traditions and for the beliefs of the Moslems of Bengal. He was constantly undermined by enemies on his own council, who fed back horror-stories to London.
In 1783 the Duke of Portland's government, generally known as the "Fox-North coalition" proposed an India Bill which would establish greater government control. The E.I.C. was alarmed, and put out propaganda accusing the government of confiscating its wealth; Fox's enemies feared he would use the vast riches of India to keep himself in power for ever, and King George III, who hated Fox, let it be known that anyone who voted for the Bill would be considered the King's personal enemy. The India Bill was duly defeated in the House of Lords, the government was promptly sacked, and William Pitt, aged just 24, was installed as the youngest Prime Minister in British history. By this time around 15 Nabobs sat in the House of Commons, and supported Pitt over this issue.
Pitt passed his own India Act in 1784, which in fact was not very different from Fox's proposals. British India was to be under the dual control of the Crown and the E.I.C., with a Governor-General in India and a Board of Control in London, headed by a cabinet minister. This structure was to remain in place until the Indian Mutiny in 1857. The next few years were to be dominated by a sensational event: the trial of Warren Hastings.
In 1788 the great Whig orator and philosopher Edmund Burke moved for the impeachment of Hastings; that is, a state trial, with the House of Commons acting as prosecutors and the Lords as judge and jury; the charges being misgovernment, tyranny and extortion. William Pitt as Prime Minister could have prevented it from going ahead, but it seems he was genuinely shocked by the charges, and possibly he was not sorry to see his Whig opponents being distracted from criticizing his government.
Here are two cartoons by James Gillray. The first is entitled "The Political Banditti assailing the Saviour of India". Edmund Burke (with blunderbuss), Charles James Fox (with dagger) and Lord North (with battered sabre labelled "American subjugation") are attacking Warren Hastings, who is defending himself with the "shield of honor".
For seven years the Whig leaders, Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox and the playwright turned politician Richard Sheridan thundered their magnificent oratory against Hastings. But gradually public interest waned, until in 1795 only 29 lords had followed the proceedings sufficiently to give their verdict, which was overwhelmingly for acquittal. By this time Hastings, who had had to spend vast sums organizing his defence, was bankrupt. The result was therefore unsatisfactory for all sides, but at least it demonstrated that officials in India were answerable for their actions. Hastings was awarded a handsome pension by the East India Company, and lived till 1818.
As yet Britain controlled only a few scattered areas of India, but this was soon to change. The French East India Company collapsed in the French Revolution, but with the renewal of war between Britain and France in 1793 the French placed their hopes on the anti-British prince Tipu, Sultan of Mysore in southern India. The new Governor-General was Lord Mornington, an Irish nobleman, who brought out to India his younger brother, Arthur Wellesley, later to become the Duke of Wellington. Wellesley had at this time no experience of battlefield command, but in 1799 he defeated and killed Tipu at Seringapatam, and then in 1803 gained a stunning victory at Assaye, when heavily outnumbered, against the Maratha princes who dominated central India. For the first time, Britain was now the dominant power on sub-continent. Arthur Wellesley returned home a rich man, and was soon to employ on the European continent the military experience he had gained in India.
Footnotes:
1. The first of the nabobs, back in the early years of the 18th century, was Thomas Pitt, nicknamed "Diamond" Pitt. He had gone out to India at the age of 20 in 1673, had risen to be Governor of Madras, and brought back home an enormous diamond which he eventually sold to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, for £125,000. He then bought the notorious "rotten borough" of Old Sarum and went into politics. He became the grandfather of William Pitt the elder and great-grandfather of William Pitt the younger, both of whom served as Prime Minister.
2. Back in the 1960s the Indian cricket captain was a nobleman, the Nawab of Pataudi. After Mrs Gandhi abolished the noble titles, he had to revert to his name, which was Mansur Ali Khan; showing that he was a Moslem, and of Mughal descent.
Robert Clive: a 19th century statue, in Shrewsbury
Saturday, 1 March 2014
Evangelists
Saints are always portrayed in such a manner that we can easily recognise them. Some are shown with their instruments of martyrdom (Saint Catherine with her spiked wheel), and others with well-known attributes (Saint George in full armour). Pictures of the evangelists who wrote the four gospels, not surprisingly, show them writing; but they are also distinguished from each other by each being attended by his own particular animal.
Saint Mark's emblem is a lion
Saint Mark was also the patron saint of Venice, and the Venetian empire at its height left the sign of the winged lion throughout the Greek islands. ("They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of Saint Mark" - G. K. Chesterton: "Lepanto")
This one is from Corfu.
Saint Luke's emblem is a bull. But there is the unusual tradition about Saint Luke that he once painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary, so he is sometimes depicted doing that rather than writing his gospel. (How he was able to paint the young Mary and the infant Jesus from the life is not explained) In this picture it is only the bull in the bottom left-hand corner that tells us that the painter is meant to be Luke.
Luke's painting is said to be in a monastery in Cyprus. It is so sacred that it is kept covered, and only unveiled once a year.
Saint John has an eagle
and Saint Matthew has a man; though with his wings he could be mistaken for an angel.
We can add to these Saint Peter and Saint Paul, who are also easy to identify. Saint Peter has a bushy white beard and hair, and he always carries a pair of large keys. These are the keys of heaven and hell, given to him by Christ himself; which has been the foundation of the Papal claim to supremacy.
Saint Paul, by contrast, has a rather thin black beard and a bald forehead, often with a single lock of hair upon it. He often carries a sword as well as a book, referring to the tradition that he was beheaded during the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Nero.
I hope to describe more saints in a later post.
Saint Mark's emblem is a lion
This one is from Corfu.
Saint Luke's emblem is a bull. But there is the unusual tradition about Saint Luke that he once painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary, so he is sometimes depicted doing that rather than writing his gospel. (How he was able to paint the young Mary and the infant Jesus from the life is not explained) In this picture it is only the bull in the bottom left-hand corner that tells us that the painter is meant to be Luke.
Saint John has an eagle
and Saint Matthew has a man; though with his wings he could be mistaken for an angel.
We can add to these Saint Peter and Saint Paul, who are also easy to identify. Saint Peter has a bushy white beard and hair, and he always carries a pair of large keys. These are the keys of heaven and hell, given to him by Christ himself; which has been the foundation of the Papal claim to supremacy.
Saint Paul, by contrast, has a rather thin black beard and a bald forehead, often with a single lock of hair upon it. He often carries a sword as well as a book, referring to the tradition that he was beheaded during the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Nero.
I hope to describe more saints in a later post.
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