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What historical anniversaries are in May? We round up the events, births and deaths…
1 May 1851: Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition It was a magnificent spectacle that met the young queen as she arrived, cheered on by huge crowds, at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. Trumpet fanfares, cannon fire and a 1,000-strong choir singing the national anthem all heralded the opening of the Great Exhibition, a world’s fair devised by her husband, Prince Albert, as a display of culture and industry; a testament of the age. In her remarks, the queen expressed her hope that the exhibition would be in the “common interests of the human race, by encouraging the arts of peace and industry [and] strengthening the bonds of union among the nations of the earth”. Over the next six months, millions of people came to see the objects, inventions and wonders gathered from around the British empire. 2 May 1946: A battle breaks out between prisoners and guards at Alcatraz An escape attempt from the notoriously inescapable maximum-security prison, on an island in San Francisco Bay, escalated into a firefight and a siege of one of the cellhouses. After 48 hours of the so-called battle of Alcatraz, more than a dozen people were injured and five dead: two officers and three of the escaping prisoners. 3 May 1481: Earthquakes and tsunamis batter Rhodes The Greek island suffered severe damage in a series of earthquakes throughout the year, but the worst struck in early May and also triggered a tsunami. There were an estimated 30,000 casualties. 4 May 1471: Edward IV reclaims the throne at Tewkesbury At the battle of Tewkesbury, the Yorkist king, who had been overthrown the previous year, secured a decisive victory in the Wars of the Roses against Lancastrian forces. Henry VI ended up a prisoner in the Tower of London, where he died shortly afterwards in mysterious circumstances, while his rival’s son and heir died in the fighting. Try our quiz | How much do you know about the Wars of the Roses? Coupled with his victory at the battle of Barnet less than a month earlier, Edward’s throne was now safe. There would be peace for the rest of his reign. 5 May 1862: Mexican forces win at Puebla Despite being outnumbered, inadequately trained and poorly armed, Mexican soldiers commanded by Ignacio Zaragoza defeated an invading French army at the battle of Puebla. In truth, it did not signal a breakthrough in the war, which went on for several more years, but the victory came to be commemorated in annual celebrations, known as Cinco de Mayo. 6 May 1954: Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute mile The English runner Roger Bannister easily won the mile race at Ifley Road track, Oxford, but as he crossed the finish line the large crowd on that early evening were brimming with excitement and anticipation. The question was how quickly he had won. The official, pipe in mouth and stopwatch in hand, let the tension build before declaring, “Three minutes…”, at which point the rest was drowned out by cheering. Bannister had achieved a physical feat never done before, despite the attempts of numerous athletes: running a mile in under four minutes. His actual time was 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. What’s more, the tall, loping runner had achieved the seemingly impossible in far-from ideal conditions as rain and strong winds hampered the race meet. Just 46 days later, his record time would be broken by Australian John Landy, but Bannister got his revenge by beating his rival in the so-called ‘Miracle Mile’ race in 1954. Famous births in May 1 May 1769 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, military leader in the Napoleonic Wars 1 May 1852 Martha Jane Cannary, ‘Calamity Jane’, American frontierswoman 2 May 1729 Catherine the Great, long-reigning empress of Russia 2 May 1892 Manfred von Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron’, German ace in the First World War 3 May 1469 Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, Italian political philosopher 4 May 1929 Audrey Hepburn, British actress and star of Breakfast at Tiffany's 5 May 1864 Nellie Bly, American journalist and globe-trotting traveller 6 May 1856 Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis 7 May 1919 Eva Peron, Argentine first lady 9 May 1874 Howard Carter, British Egyptologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun 11 May 1918 Richard Feynman, American theoretical physicist 12 May 1820 Florence Nightingale, English nurse in the Crimean War 17 May 1866 Erik Satie, French composer and pianist 19 May 1890 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman 19 May 1925 Malcolm X, American leader in the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement 21 May 1527 Philip II, King of Spain who launched the Spanish Armada 23 May 1707 Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist and zoologist 26 May 1951 Sally Ride, astronaut and the first American woman in space 28 May 1908 Ian Fleming, British author and creator of James Bond 28 May 1887 Jim Thorpe, Native American athlete and Olympic gold medallist 7 May 1915: RMS Lusitania is torpedoed and sunk Nearing the end of a voyage across the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was targeted by a U-boat of the German imperial navy. The First World War was raging and the Germans had recently declared a ‘war zone’ around Britain, meaning that any ship would be attacked. The Lusitania sank in 18 minutes, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people on board and widespread anti-German outrage around the world. Read more | How did Britain react to the sinking of the Lusitania? 8 May 1945: Millions celebrate Victory in Europe Day The news of Nazi Germany’s surrender, bringing an end to the Second World War in Europe after nearly six years, leads to joyous VE Day celebrations around the world. Read more | "Hooray! The war is ended": 5 people's recollections of VE Day 9 May 1662: Mr Punch makes his English debut The traditional puppet show about the antics of Mr Punch and his wife Judy has its roots in the commedia dell’arte in Italy – with the character of Punchinello – but its earliest-mention in England came in the entry for 9 May by famed diarist Samuel Pepys. That day, he saw “an Italian puppet play”, thought to have been performed by Pietro Gimonde, who was known as ‘Signor Bologna’. 10 May 1872: Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to run for US president The American activist and suffrage movement leader was nominated as the presidential candidate for the Equal Rights Party in the 1872 election. The famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass was put forward as her running mate, without his knowledge. 11 May AD 868: The world’s oldest-known dated book is printed Inside a copy of the Diamond Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist text translated into Chinese, discovered in 1900, it included the date: “the 15th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong”, or 11 May AD 868. 12 May 1789: William Wilberforce takes up the cause of abolition “I mean not to accuse anyone, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty – we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business.” Read more | 7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered So said British politician William Wilberforce in his first major speech on abolition in the House of Commons. He went on to describe in detail the conditions of the middle passage – challenging anyone to hear the account of “one of the many hundred Negroes stowed in each ship” and having the heart to bear it – and concluded by saying that he was, “from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition”. He would remain a leading figure in the abolitionist movement until the outlawing of the slave trade in 1807 and end of slavery in 1833. 13 May 1981: The pope survives an assassination attempt As Pope John Paul II passed through St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, blessing those gathered from the Popemobile, a 23-year-old Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca fired a gun four times. Hit in the abdomen and hand, the leader of the Catholic church was rushed to hospital; he would later announce that he had forgiven Agca and met with him in prison. 14 May 1796: the first vaccination is administered To test his theory of protecting people from smallpox, the English physician Edward Jenner inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with the pus from a cowpox sore. The boy fell ill, but when Jenner then infected him with a dose of smallpox, the disease did not develop. Read more | The race for a cure: how we found vaccines for 4 of history's most dangerous diseases 15 May 1905: Sin City is founded The growing settlement of Las Vegas was officially founded after 110 acres of land belonging to railroad owner William Clark were auctioned off. 16 May 1770: Marie Antoinette marries the French dauphin – for the second time The 14-year-old archduchess of Austria married the heir to the French throne, Louis-Auguste – who would be the last king before the French Revolution – in a ceremony at Versailles. This was the second wedding: she was officially married a month earlier by proxy, with her own brother standing in for her betrothed. 17 May 1954: Supreme Court makes a landmark decision for US schools In Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. A major victory of the civil rights movement, it was a pivotal challenge to the long-established doctrine of ‘separate but equal’. 18 May 1291: The fall of Acre ends crusader ambition For decades, the city of Acre (in modern-day Israel) was the most important stronghold remaining in the Kingdom of Jerusalem held by the crusaders, so when it fell to the Mamluks in a siege it signalled the end of the crusades in the Holy Land. 19 May 1536: Anne Boleyn is executed Having climbed the scaffold erected within the walls of the Tower of London, Anne Boleyn gave a short speech, ending with “I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.” Read more | The final days of Anne Boleyn: why did she die? The second of the six wives of Henry VIII, found guilty of high treason, removed her ermine-trimmed gown and knelt down, before the executioner stepped up and removed her head with a blow from a sword. Just 11 days later, the “good”, “gentle” and “merciful” king was married again, to Jane Seymour, who would be able to provide him with his much-desired son, Edward VI. Famous deaths in May 1 May 1873 David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa 1 May 1945 Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany 2 May 1519 Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance polymath 5 May 1821 Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of the French 6 May 1992 Marlene Dietrich, German and American leading lady in the golden age of Hollywood 11 May 1812 Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to be assassinated 11 May 1981 Bob Marley, Jamaican musician who popularised reggae around the world 15 May 1886 Emily Dickinson, one of the great American poets of the 19th century 16 May 1926 Mehmed II, last sultan of the Ottoman empire 18 May 1781 Tupac Amaru II, Incan revolutionary leader 19 May 1935 TE Lawrence (‘of Arabia’), British army officer, archaeologist and author 21 May 1542 Hernando de Soto, Spanish conquistador and explorer of the Mississippi River 23 May 1701 William Kidd, Scottish pirate 23 May 1910 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, American Depression-era outlaws 24 May 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus, Renaissance polymath who developed the heliocentric model of the universe 26 May AD 735 Bede the Venerable, Anglo-Saxon theologian and historian 26 May 1703 Samuel Pepys, English diarist of the Restoration period 27 May 1564 John Calvin, French leading figure of the Protestant Reformation 27 May 1964 Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India 30 May 1778 Voltaire, French writer, historian and philosopher in the Enlightenment 20 May AD 325: the Christian church holds its first ecumenical council On the command of Constantine I, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, the First Council of Nicaea was convened to define a uniform doctrine. The resulting Nicene Creed is still a part of the church to this day. 21 May 1927: ‘Lucky Lindy’ lands in Paris Some 33 and a half hours after taking off from New York, pilot Charles Lindbergh touched down his single-engine monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in Paris – completing the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in history. Overnight, ‘Lucky Lindy’ had become a darling of the press and a global celebrity. Five years later, fellow American aviator Amelia Earhart would be the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, choosing to fly on the exact same date as Lindbergh. Due to poor weather conditions and mechanical issues, however, she did not make it to Paris, but landed in a pasture in Northern Ireland. Read more | Alcock and Brown: the first aviators to fly across the Atlantic 22 May 1762: The Trevi Fountain is inaugurated One of the most famous fountains in the world, and a landmark of Rome, it took three decades to build the Trevi Fountain. The Baroque masterpiece designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi was officially opened and inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII. 23 May 1618: Catholic officials are thrown out of a Prague window The Defenestration of Prague took place amidst a climate of religious tension in Bohemia, exacerbated by the new king’s intransigent stance on undoing any changes made by the Reformation. A mass Protestant demonstration in Prague as some of their leaders prepared to meet with Catholic officials at Prague (Hradčany) Castle, but the situation turned violent when two of the Catholic men, plus one of their secretaries, were thrown out of the window. Read more | Castles, cathedrals and conflict: exploring Prague’s history Count Villem Slavata, Count Jaroslav Martinitz and the secretary plummeted 21 metres, but somehow survived the ordeal. The defenestration, however, had much wider-reaching consequences, sparking the Thirty Years’ War. 24 May 1844: the first long-distance telegraph is sent In a test of the telegraph line that ran from Washington DC to Baltimore, Maryland, American inventor Samuel Morse sent the telegraph message: “What hath God wrought?” The Bible verse had been suggested by the young daughter of one of his friends. 25 May 1935: Jesse Owens has a history-making day of competition A year before winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics – ripping apart Hitler’s intention of using the games as proof of Aryan supremacy – African-American athlete Jesse Owens had a performance at a competition that was arguably even better. At the Big Ten Championship in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the 21-year-old broke three world records (in the long jump, 220-yard dash and 220-yard hurdles) and tied another (the 100-yard dash). Owens accomplished this in just 45 minutes. What’s more, he did it injured. Five days earlier, he had fallen down the stairs and hurt his lower back so severely that it was a doubt that he would be able to compete at all. Instead, he achieved what the International Olympic Committee has referred to as “the greatest 45 minutes in sport”. Read more | 21 key moments in the history of the modern Olympics 26 May 1521: Martin Luther is declared a heretic The German priest, author of the Ninety Five Theses and leading figure in the Reformation is declared a “notorious heretic” by the Diet of Worms, an imperial assembly called by Holy Roman emperor Charles V. For not recanting his views, Luther was labelled an outlaw, as were his followers, forcing him into hiding. The Diet of Worms marked a schism in the Christian world. 27 May 1703: St Petersburg is founded As the possibly apocryphal story goes, the Russian tsar Peter the Great chose the site of his new city – on land with access to the Baltic Sea, recently conquered from the Swedes – by cutting two strips of turf with a bayonet and placing them in the shape of a cross. He then proclaimed, “Here shall be a town.” Read more | Explore St Petersburg, Russia: the Venice of the north Despite the marshy ground and threat of long, freezing winters, a log house was built for Peter, followed by the Peter and Paul Fortress, which still stands today. The city that would emerge, however, was not named after Peter himself, but the saint. 28 May 585 BC: a solar eclipse brings a halt to a battle According to the accounts of Greek historian Herodotus, a solar eclipse – thought to have taken place on 28 May 585 BC – had been predicted by the astronomer and philosopher Thales of Miletus. In his Histories, Herodotus then states that the Medes and Lydians were fighting a war at the time, and when the sky went dark they dropped their weapons and sued for peace. 29 May 1953: Hillary and Tenzing conquer Everest Edmund Hillary, a mountaineer (and beekeeper) from New Zealand, and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, are the first people to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest. They were part of a major British expedition, headed by Colonel John Hunt, determined to achieve the feat before their Swiss rivals. Hillary and Tenzing spend only 15 minutes at the top, reaching the summit of the 8,849-metre mountain at around 11.30am. That was enough time to bury some sweets and biscuits in the ice and for the Kiwi to have “no choice but to urinate”. 30 May 1431: Joan of Arc is burned at the stake The peasant girl blessed with divine visions who became a heroine of France for lifting the siege of Orleans is burned at the stake for heresy. The 19-year-old had received a politically motivated trial before an English court in Normandy, at which she was charged with numerous crimes including dressing in men’s clothing. Around two decades after her execution on a pyre, the French king Charles VII ordered an investigation into Joan of Arc’s trial, which led to her sentence being annulled. It would be almost five centuries before she was canonised as a saint, in 1922. 31 May 1279 BC: Ramesses the Great begins his historic reign Ramesses II, pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, assumed the throne. During his 66 years in power, he embarked on a number of military campaigns and ordered magnificent building projects, including colossal statues of himself and the temples of Abu Simbel. Read more | Tomb raider: the great Giovanni Belzoni Find out about anniversaries in previous months... January February March April
The profits of slavery: the dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside
We know that enslaved Africans and their descendants suffered in the distant colonies of empire. But, as Corinne Fowler explains, the colonial system also led to significant changes for the countryside and its people of the ‘motherland’
For an encounter with one of the most eye-opening legacies of Britain’s colonial projects, take a drive along the A31 in southern Dorset. On the stretch between the delightfully named villages of Winterborne Zelston and Sturminster Marshall, the road kinks nearly 90 degrees; lining the verge here you’ll notice a wall – not hugely tall, but impressively long. Reputedly stretching for 3 miles and comprising nearly 2 million bricks, it was almost certainly built with profits from slavery. This is the so-called ‘great wall of Dorset’ – one of England’s longest, built around 1841 to encircle the vast Dorset estate of Charborough Park. It belongs to the Drax family, an old propertied clan who owned tobacco and sugar plantations in Barbados – and who massively increased their wealth by boosting profits through the use of slave labour. Read more | Slavery's painful legacy: the British empire's role in the trade of enslaved people It is easy to forget that colonial governors, slave-owners and East India Company employees and their heirs commonly became rural magistrates, customs officials, industrialists and politicians in Britain. The newly acquired land and social networks of these men allowed them to hold sway over other Britons in countryside regions. So it’s important to understand that, when it comes to exploring rural history, it’s not enough to ask where the money came from to buy country houses or fund village schools. What also matters is how these figures and their descendants exercised their power, wealth and influence in such areas. Back in 2020, I undertook an audit of published academic research about National Trust properties and their colonial links. So I already knew that country estates such as Basildon Park in Berkshire and Harewood House in Yorkshire were built and landscaped with colonial profits, and that Speke Hall near Liverpool was bought and restored with money from Jamaican slavery. I’d found, too, other architectural stories of places not managed by the National Trust that are also linked to Britain’s colonial projects – including that statement wall around Charborough Park. These all highlighted the point that many of the ubiquitous colonial links in our countryside have been overlooked or forgotten. Read more | The colonial secrets of Britain’s stately homes British rural history is invariably depicted as a domestic affair that has very little to do with the empire. You don’t find many references to colonial history in local history pamphlets, for example, nor in the nature writing of many popular authors. To address this oversight, I set out to research a book of walks through regions with less-familiar histories of empire. As I ventured deeper into the countryside, empire’s impact on rural Britons was revealed in all its nuance and variety. My aim was to identify connections that were genuinely consequential to Britons who lived and worked in these places during four centuries of colonial activity. From servants to slavery That search led me, among other things, to revisit the Drax story – and I began to wonder about the family’s relationship with the ordinary inhabitants of Dorset. In the early 17th century, people from that county were shipped to Barbados plantations to work as indentured labourers, selling their employers a set number of labour years and receiving at the end of their contract a lump sum or its equivalent in sugar or land. By the middle of that century, such indentured servants were being replaced by enslaved African labourers – a system ‘pioneered’ by the Draxes. Notably, one member of the Drax family pops up in the historian EP Thompson’s account of the 1830s Swing Riots – protests by agricultural workers against poor pay, working conditions and mechanisation that threatened their jobs. In 1830, the average farm worker’s weekly wage of somewhere between seven and nine shillings was nowhere near enough to cover rent and the purchase of basics – tea and sugar, bread, potatoes, butter and cheese, candles, soap and wood – which typically came to around 13 shillings. During this period of recession and depressed wages, the Swing Riots spread west from Hampshire, and agricultural labourers in Dorset then rose up in protest. John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle-Drax (1800–87) boosted his wealth by marrying into the family, and received compensation for the loss of slave labour after the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. He met protesting labourers with beer, and offered to raise their wages – then reneged on that promise. He led an armed group of landed proprietors to quell the resultant protests and to ensure that his labourers felt the full force of the law. That episode recalls the actions of people elsewhere in Dorset who also campaigned for fairer conditions – notably the villagers from Tolpuddle, whose story became one of the most celebrated in British labour history. These six men, known today as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, started the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers – in effect, a union fighting wage cuts – led by Methodist lay preacher George Loveless. Under an obscure law prohibiting the swearing of secret oaths, they were unjustly found guilty of sedition in 1834 and sent to some of the furthest reaches of the British empire: the penal colonies in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). Read more | David Olusoga: "Thousands of Britons opposed abolition – because they owned slaves" Loveless and his fellow ‘martyrs’ were among 4,000 British political prisoners and social protesters who, between 1787 and 1868, were transported to penal colonies as punishment for fighting for their rights. Loveless wrote about his experience in Van Diemen’s Land, and his words represent a powerful indictment of the colonial system. Working on menial tasks throughout daylight hours, convicts were inadequately clothed and often stripped to the waist. Punishments were severe – 50 lashes for attempting to escape, for example. Unsurprisingly, most prisoners’ health deteriorated, and suicide attempts were common. One of Loveless’s observations was that penal colonies exposed the dangers of unfettered power wielded by the British authorities. Enslavement and enclosure The system of forced labour that caused the suffering of so many enslaved people in Britain’s colonies was also linked with hardship at home. With this in mind, I planned a walk along the Norfolk–Suffolk border. I call this route my ‘enclosure walk’, because it reveals the intertwined history of land ownership and slavery wealth. For centuries, people grazed livestock amid the water meadows and lowland lakes of the East Anglian fens, and fished the wetlands that teem with fish and eels. The names on old maps reflect the management of these landscapes: First Fen, Second Fen, the Thirteen Acres. Others, such as Bullock Shed Close and Duck Lands Lane, suggest how land was used. Names convey observations of the natural world, too: Toads Lane, Birds Hill, Thistly Close. All of these reveal people’s intimate relationship with land that was known and loved long before it was enclosed with hedges. Read more | Abolition in Britain: the link between slavery and the British national identity Enclosure – private landowners erecting barriers to deny local people access to formerly common land – is massively significant to British rural history. Over the centuries, it effected a slow transformation from peasant husbandry to capitalist farming. Enclosure was responsible for removing landless people’s right to graze livestock, catch rabbits and collect firewood on the commons. Instead, the land was allocated to a proprietor who controlled its use. This process accelerated rapidly in the 18th century: between 1750 and 1820, over 21 per cent of England was enclosed by parliamentary decree. East Anglican injustice It is no coincidence that this period coincided with the era of transatlantic slavery. A vast amount of land was purchased or enclosed using wealth from the West Indies or investments in the slavery businesses. Enclosure is not just of local and national significance – it is a global story. My enclosure walk began in the north-east Suffolk town of Bungay, from where I ambled along waterways and quiet lanes to Earsham Hall, a red-brick residence once home to Sir William Windham Dalling, an absentee slave-owner. Between 1799 and 1840, Donnington Castle, the Jamaican plantation inherited by Sir William, produced a staggering £150,000 (equivalent to well over £10m today). Together with two neighbours – George Sandby and George Day, also absentee slave-owners – he dominated the lives of 811 enslaved people. But these men’s dominance did not begin and end on their Caribbean plantations. Read more | Success, sugar and slaves: the uncomfortable story of slaveholder Simon Taylor Local Norfolk enclosure maps show that Sir William used his slavery-derived profits to consolidate and expand his East Anglian estate. He was a petitioner on the 1812 ‘Act for Inclosing Lands in the Parishes of Earsham, Ditchingham, and Hedenham, in the County of Norfolk’. The lands to be enclosed under this act included Outney Common and Dole Meadow, where the word ‘dole’ suggested lands that had been habitually given over to people without a stable income as an act of charity. With distinctly colonial overtones, and in keeping with enclosure rhetoric throughout England, Sir William and the other petitioners argued that this was “uncultivated… wasteland” that would be “improved” through enclosure. That claim is undermined by their promise to award appropriate costs to displaced land users. Compensation would, the petition stated, be awarded to the owners of cottages or buildings who could provide evidence of ongoing land use. Any objectors were instructed to employ an attorney – which was, of course, beyond the means of most ordinary country folk. Commissioners’ judgements were always final in the enclosure process, and any who disputed an unsuccessful appeal outcome would be evicted. The 1812 enclosures were, indeed, contested by locals after notices were placed on church doors and printed in the Norfolk Chronicle. A public meeting was held to hear any objections put by an attorney – but only a handful of complainants could afford such legal representation. Among those who could was a local man called Alexander Adair, who claimed 2 acres (less than a hectare) in the Dole Meadows as his by right; his claim was overruled. The enclosures went ahead, and the commissioners allocated just 5 acres (2 hectares) as “poor allotments”. These small plots were to be leased to tenants who would now be required to pay rent twice a year, having previously paid nothing. Hand-drawn enclosure maps showing Sir William’s new land resemble dense webs. Spindly demarcation lines show the proposed new plots – numbered in red – and existing buildings shaded in dark pink. Within these plots, the names of the new and former landowners are written in tiny, immaculate letters. The 1812 map shows that Sir William bought – using wealth derived from slavery – 280 acres (113 hectares) around the perimeter of his estate, gobbling up tracts around Earsham Hall that were deemed by the commissioners to have “unfixed and uncertain” boundaries. The map shows two private roads for the use of Sir William, his heirs, and two other landowners. Walking along the old Norwich Road today, thin hedges mark the edges of the Earsham estate, with its flowerless meadows and gigantic oaks. In the 18th century you could have used more direct footpaths across fields, but these were blocked during Sir William’s enclosures. Read more | Did the British royal family support slavery? Five public lanes and footpaths that previously passed through the estate were rendered off-limits to locals, who were then forced into time-consuming detours as they walked the long way round. To this day, you still have to take longer, indirect routes. Clearly, such inconveniences can’t be compared to the horrors of chattel slavery, but Sir William’s Jamaican profits were used to set in motion a series of smaller injustices in Norfolk. Thanks to that wealth, formerly common land became strictly off limits, and people could be prosecuted or fined for using it. Anybody caught fishing with nets in the broads, cutting turf or carrying off rocks or flagstones would be in trouble. Non-payment of fines would result in bailiffs recovering the full amount. Sir William also claimed exclusive rights to all timber, standing or fallen, on the enclosed commons. This was a blow for anyone who had previously collected firewood there, or used logs for building or furniture-making. Sugar and slate Another story linking slavery-derived profits with labour history can be found at Penrhyn Castle near Bangor, north-west Wales. Now owned by the National Trust, its interconnected histories of sugar and slate are persistently told as separate stories. As soon as Richard Pennant inherited his Jamaican sugar wealth in 1781, he turned local slate producers off his land and, the following year, opened Penrhyn slate quarry. Within a decade, 500 men were employed there, and it became one of the world’s largest slate quarries. In a sinister echo of conditions in Jamaica, the quarry-workers’ barracks were modelled on huts built for enslaved people on the family plantations; we know this from the work of historian Marian Gwyn, who studied regular letters that Richard Pennant received from the manager of his West Indian estates. Read more | 7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered In 2022, the BBC Radio 4 series The Museums That Make Us stated that Penrhyn Castle was “built on money from slavery, the abolition of slavery and then the slate quarry nearby”. That wording is misleading, because it implies two distinct, unconnected phases of money-making – yet the slate quarry was created with slavery-derived profits in the first place. The resultant combined sugar and slate wealth funded roads, railways, schools, hotels, workers’ houses and the local port. Bitter dispute The Pennants’ slate mines were at the centre of the great strike of 1900–03 – one of the bitterest disputes in British industrial history – sparked by the family’s opposition to the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union. The strikers lost, and 2,000 hungry, impoverished quarry workers left for south Wales. This mass movement of labour was the long-term outcome of both histories. I learned of one further local connection not too far from Penrhyn, on the sheep-grazed hillsides of north Wales. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/PXJ4F6-e98e157-e1742213030277.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Welsh wool weavers in a 19th-century illustration. Slave-owners bought Welsh ‘woollen plains’ to clothe their labourers in order to maintain productivity" title="Welsh wool weavers in a 19th-century illustration. Slave-owners bought Welsh ‘woollen plains’ to clothe their labourers in order to maintain productivity" /> In the old county of Meirionnydd, part of Eryri (Snowdonia), local people produced a rough fabric called woollen plains, which was used to clothe enslaved people in North American and West Indian plantations. In the callous minds of the enslavers, this coarse Welsh textile was desirable because it bolstered productivity: proper clothing prevented enslaved people from becoming ill, and kept them alive for longer. Listen | Browse our archive of HistoryExtra podcasts on the history of slavery Far-away transatlantic slavery was thus directly linked to the livelihoods of Welsh sheep-shearers, wool-carders, spinners and weavers. Not that wool-workers were made rich by slavery: on the contrary, their lives were often harsh. The money was being made by people far higher up the economic ladder: wool merchants and landowners with sheep-grazing pasture. Once again, two unrelated groups of people, separated by heritage and thousands of miles of Atlantic Ocean, were linked by their circumstances – bound within the colonial system of the British empire. Corinne Fowler is professor of colonialism and heritage at the University of Leicester, and founder of the Colonial Countryside research project. Her latest book is Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain (Allen Lane, 2024) This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history?
Over two decades ago, a BBC poll named the wartime British prime minister as the Greatest Briton. Now, on the 150th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s birth, David Reynolds ponders whether he deserves to remain as top dog in the pantheon of British history
In a much-publicised poll in 2002, the BBC asked viewers to rank figures from British history, as part of the television series 100 Greatest Britons. The poll was in no way scientific, but simply reflected votes – more than 1.6 million of them – from people who chose to contact the BBC, following presentations championing famous individuals ranging back in time from the 20th century to William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I. As is well known, Winston Churchill came out a clear first, garnering close to 457,000 votes. Two decades later, as we mark 150 years since he was born, it’s interesting to revisit that moment, and to reflect on how perceptions of Churchill have changed over time – and also on what is meant by historical ‘greatness’. Because Churchill’s craving to make himself ‘great’ lies at the heart of his extraordinary story. In the run-up to the BBC poll, politician Mo Mowlam – Churchill’s advocate – insisted that “he was the greatest Briton because he showed the determination and courage to protect Britain from invasion, and without his inspiring leadership the outcome of World War II may have been very different”. Let’s unpack that claim a bit. Did Churchill really make such a difference in 1940 – and, if so, how? The answer to the first part is surely: yes – most of all through his energy and drive. Although the tempo in Whitehall would have intensified anyway with the end of the ‘Phoney War’ and the German invasion of France, Churchill’s appointment as prime minister had a galvanising effect, dramatically symbolised by his famous red labels stuck on urgent documents: ACTION THIS DAY. Equally important, Churchill took a firm grip on military strategy. Mindful of the confusion and infighting of 1914–18, he appointed himself minister of defence. There was no ministry – that did not come until the 1960s. Churchill simply wanted the authority to deal with the chiefs of staff directly rather than via their politician ministers. He yearned to be a war leader, unlike Neville Chamberlain – his predecessor as PM – or Lord Halifax, the alternative when Chamberlain lost the support of the Commons. Neither of them had any appetite for such a role, whereas Churchill – a soldier by training – had dreamed of it since childhood. Read more | Neville Chamberlain is underestimated, argues author Robert Harris Churchill was also an accomplished communicator. Often he’s remembered for his soundbites – ‘fight them on the beaches’, ‘finest hour’, ‘special relationship’ – but these were only the icing on the cake. Churchill regarded his speeches as tools of public education, helping the British population understand what became known as ‘the people’s war’. When Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Churchill gave a radio address on the BBC about what he called “the Fourth Climacteric”, connecting it to three earlier turning points in the war. He spent hours preparing his speeches in a way that may seem inconceivable now in the days of tweets and social media. There isn’t space here to do full justice to Churchill’s impact, but one other point should be mentioned. Most British premiers had received a classical education, informed by Latin, Greek and philosophy; few had any grasp of science and technology. By contrast, Churchill loathed the classics but was fascinated by gadgets and science fiction – by the world of HG Wells. That’s why he quickly grasped the value of Ultra – the operation to intercept enemy signals intelligence – and ensured that the codebreakers of Bletchley Park were provided with an abundance of money and gifted personnel. Read more | Bletchley Park: Britain's wartime intelligence factory The people’s war Yet there’s another side to the story of 1940 that was not voiced by Mo Mowlam. More important than Churchill’s “courage and determination” in protecting Britain from invasion after France fell were decisions during the 1930s by governments of which he was not a part. Key among these was the development of a new generation of fast monoplane fighters – Hurricanes and Spitfires – linked to the Chain Home system of radar stations giving crucial early warning of when and where enemy bombers were crossing the Channel. Churchill was aware of these developments, and contributed to some of the discussions, but these were his ‘Wilderness Years’ when he was out of office. The decisions were made while the ‘appeasers’ were in power – and they were vital in winning the Battle of Britain. That highlights a deeper point. Technological innovations such as radar and Ultra could have been developed only by an advanced industrial state – by what historian David Edgerton has called the ‘warfare state’ – often neglected in accounts of modern Britain because of a preoccupation with the welfare state. The war that Churchill waged was possible only because of a long series of decisions and developments going back to the industrial revolution. This provides a salutary reminder that an intense focus on individual leaders can blind us to structural factors that also shape historical change. Victory or bust Surviving 1940 was one thing; winning the war was very different. Three days into his premiership, Churchill told the Commons that his goal was “victory at all costs”. Yet after the French signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June, that sounded like fantasy. France had been Britain’s principal ally throughout the First World War, its army anchoring the western front. Britain was now alone – and there was no western front on the continent of Europe. Britain and its empire – from Canada to India, from the Caribbean to Australasia – made a major contribution to the war, but eventual victory over Hitler and the Axis depended substantially on the Soviet Union and the US. Put simply, the Soviets provided the manpower, the Americans the firepower. Read more | 1942: Churchill's darkest hour Between June 1941 and June 1944 – from the opening of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union until D-Day – more than 90 per cent of the German army’s battle casualties (killed, wounded, missing and prisoners) were inflicted by the Red Army. The US was the ‘arsenal of democracy’, producing an abundance of munitions and supplies, much of which was shared with its allies through Lend-Lease aid. And the arrival of the US and Soviet armies in Germany in 1945 was a prelude to the Cold War division of Europe between these two superpowers. Read more | Churchill's evolving perspective on D-Day Of course, Churchill was no mere spectator in all of this. The stereotype of the ‘bulldog’ can easily blind us to his remarkable skills as improviser. Even before the fall of France, he was assiduously courting president Franklin D Roosevelt with messages, later followed by personal visits to the US. He did the same with Joseph Stalin from 1942, becoming the essential intermediary between the White House and the Kremlin. During a photo shoot at the Tehran conference in November 1943, when someone remarked that the ‘Big Three’ looked like the Holy Trinity, Stalin responded: “If that is so, Churchill must be the Holy Ghost. He flies around so much.” The PM’s improvisations in shuttle diplomacy helped keep Britain in the diplomatic game – but by 1945, nothing could obscure the fact that the Big Three was more like the Big 2½. Strategy for greatness All that being so, the reason why he looms so large in accounts of the war, almost obscuring anyone and anything else, is because of Churchill the historian. We remember him in part because he was utterly determined not to be forgotten. That had been true all his life. Right from the start, he had a clear strategy for greatness: hit the headlines as a soldier or a politician, then be sure to write your own account. Deeds and words: both were essential to ensure that his story became history. That’s what he did in the Second World War – a hefty six-pack of volumes published between 1948 and 1954, less than a decade after victory was won. No other war leader was a serious competitor. Roosevelt died before the war ended; Stalin published no autobiography; and the trilogy of war memoirs by Charles de Gaulle did not appear until 1954–59. So Churchill got into print quickly and in formidable detail, determined to shape the public narrative before others could do so. He was careful to say that his work was not history but “a contribution to history which will be of service to the future”, told mainly from the vantage point of Number 10. But the heavy ballast of quotation from his own minutes, memos and telegrams, and the absence of replies (partly to avoid long wrangles about copyright), had the effect, as the cabinet secretary put it, of “creating the impression that no one but he ever took an initiative”. Read more | Did Churchill and Hitler ever meet? And the choice of title – The Second World War rather than War Memoirs – enhanced the sense that Churchill’s personal story enfolded the whole global conflict. The hardback sold 2 million copies in Britain and a similar number in the US. And Churchill’s take on the war reached even larger audiences around the world through book translations and newspaper serialisations. That was not the end of Churchill’s history-making – only the end of the beginning. Before his death in 1965, he commissioned an official biography, based on privileged access to his papers. His son, Randolph, authored the first two volumes before his own death in 1968; the work was completed by the Oxford historian Martin Gilbert, with the eighth and final volume appearing in 1988. The furrows that Churchill had dug through the war were deepened further by 23 volumes of documents, a project started by Gilbert and rounded off by wealthy acolytes in the US. Screen portrayals of the 1930s and the war also kept him centre-stage, initiated by Robert Hardy in the ITV series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years in 1981, for which Gilbert was co-scriptwriter. Read more | Books interview with Boris Johnson: "Churchill was a tremendous bully in some ways, but we needed a bully" Later depictions featured Albert Finney (The Gathering Storm, 2002), Brendan Gleeson (Into the Storm, 2009) and Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour, 2017). Popular biographies took the same approach, encapsulated by Boris Johnson’s entertaining contribution, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (2014). Creating an icon As historians Allen Packwood and Warren Dockter have observed: “Churchill the writer played a key role in creating Churchill the icon,” adding that “ironically, in doing so he also raised his own profile to such a level that challenges to his reputation became inevitable.” Even before Churchill died, an edited version of the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke, wartime chief of the Imperial General Staff, revealed some of the challenges of working with this volatile genius. Within a year of Churchill’s death his doctor, Lord Moran, went into print with Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, provoking a storm of controversy about the ethics of a physician writing about his patient. And in 1970, Robert Rhodes James, formerly one of Randolph’s research assistants, published a biography of Churchill up to the Second World War. In it he argued that, had Churchill died in 1939, his life would have been deemed A Study in Failure. Seen that way, the war premiership stood out as an aberration. Like any historical personage, over time Churchill was becoming a figure of controversy, and the mass of documents published by the Churchillians fed the debate, both for and against. In any case, historical perspectives inevitably shift with time. Mo Mowlam, his BBC champion in 2002, was born in 1949. For people of that generation, and for those who lived through the war, the conflict still seemed all too present – not least in the urban wastelands and prefab housing that bore witness to the Blitz in many cities, and in the emotional power of Remembrance Sunday. Yet for ‘Gen Z’, born in the late 1990s and 2000s, the Second World War can seem almost prehistoric. Britain today is far more ethnically diverse than the predominantly white country led by Churchill in 1940–45, largely the result of postwar immigration from the former British empire. Read more | “London is the place for me”: David Olusoga on the Windrush generation Earlier statistics are not precise, but census returns for the past few decades show that the proportion of people in England and Wales identifying themselves as ‘white’ fell from 91.3 per cent in 2001 to 81.7 per cent in 2021, by which time 9.3 per cent of residents described themselves as Asian, 4 per cent as black and 2.9 per cent as mixed race. Although many of these people had been born in Britain, they often had a different sense of their heritage from Mowlam’s generation, influenced by parents or grandparents who grew up in the Caribbean or south Asia. In recent years, there has been a passionate debate about India’s war. For that nation, the focal wartime trauma was not the Blitz but the Bengal Famine of 1943–44, which killed perhaps 3 million. Causes and contributing factors are complex and hard to balance, including floods, crop disease and wartime inflation in Bengal, the disastrous fall in rice imports after Japan’s conquest of Burma, the slow reaction of the British authorities, and the shortage of shipping in 1943–44 because of the Allied build-up for D-Day. But in Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (2010), Indian-American journalist Madhusree Mukerjee blamed much of the policy failure on the PM. Churchill’s contempt for what he called (privately) in February 1945 the “foul race” of Hindus was noted by many British politicians and officials of the time, and drove his conviction that Indians were not capable of self-government. Read more | The untold story of India’s WW2 prisoners of war The debate was fanned anew by the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and the UK after 2019. Accusations of genocide were levelled at Churchill, and his statue in London’s Parliament Square was daubed with “was a racist”. Churchillians offered robust defence, but the anti-Churchill polemics – often based on ignorance of the detailed story – remind us that heroes can easily be turned into villains as perspectives change. A rival perspective It’s often said that Churchill’s attitude to India was just part of the mental baggage of Victorian England. A glance at Clement Attlee, his successor as PM in 1945, offers a useful corrective. In fact, examining Attlee’s rise to power provides an intriguing perspective on Churchill’s world view. Born in 1883 – thus also a Victorian, though eight years younger than Churchill – Attlee grew up in a prosperous professional family in the south-west London suburb of Putney. Whereas Churchill’s imperialist ideology was shaped by service as a soldier on the frontiers of Victoria’s empire, Attlee’s crucible was London’s East End. Attlee lived in a social work settlement for nearly a decade before the First World War. This opened his eyes to urban deprivation, but also to the potential of many adolescents in London’s docklands if given discipline and motivation. He became a lifelong socialist. Read more | Why Churchill’s reputation is still on the line Unlike many Labour men of that era, Major Attlee was no pacifist. He served as an officer in the Gallipoli campaign and on the western front. But he was not an imperial diehard like Churchill, who never set foot in India after the 1890s. Two extended tours around the Raj with a parliamentary delegation in 1928–29 convinced Attlee that India must follow Australia and New Zealand along the path to self-government and eventual independence. And he acted on that conviction as prime minister in 1945–51. With the death of Churchill in January 1965, Attlee penned a reflective tribute, judging him to have been “the greatest leader in war this country has ever known”. Not because he was the greatest warrior or strategist, but because “he was able to solve the problem that democratic countries in total war find crucial and may find fatal: relations between the civil and military leaders.” Attlee had in mind the 1914–18 feuds between ‘Frock Coats’ and ‘Brass Hats’, but maybe also the ‘Bonapartist’ tendency of successful war leaders to seize political power. When Churchill put himself before the electorate in 1945 and was resoundingly defeated, he accepted their verdict, despite deep resentment at being kicked out. Read more | Churchill: the ‘cry-baby’ war hero Attlee regretted the fact that Churchill did not retire from politics in 1945. “I had seen enough of him during the war to be sure that, unless there was a war on, he would not make much of a prime minister,” he wrote. Instead, “what Britain required when the war was over was an architect, somebody who could build new parts into our society, and repair damage.” Attlee was, of course, positioning himself as the architect trying to repair the damage of two world wars and rebuild British society on socialist lines. Both Churchill and Attlee were deeply patriotic, but they differed about the essence of national greatness. For Winston it was the empire, whereas Clem saw imperial overstretch as an outdated burden. Despite the eventual bloodbath over the partition of India, Attlee was proud of bringing the Raj to what he saw as a long-overdue end, and of helping transform empire into Commonwealth. At home, what mattered for him was the concept of social security he had evolved in the East End, and “the duty of the state to act as the coordinating factor in making all individual effort work for the good of the citizen”. Commonwealth and socialism defined his sense of what it meant for Britain to be great. In this piece I’ve emphasised the importance of seeing Churchill in context – against the wider dynamics of the Second World War and in relation to his contemporaries. Back in the 1890s, Rudyard Kipling rebuked those who held a myopic view of English history: “What should they know of England who only England know?” Adapting Kipling, we might ask today: “What should they know of Churchill who only Churchill know?” By definition, a biography tends to isolate its subject as good or bad. Placing a leader in context is surely the task of any historian. For me, the question of who was the greatest ever Briton makes no sense. But I’ve no doubt that, in his ‘finest hour’, Winston Churchill did win the immortality he craved. David Reynolds is emeritus professor of international history at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him (William Collins, 2023) This article was first published in the Christmas 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
The murder of James III: who killed the king of Scots?
A portentous witch, a sinister cleric, a blood-soaked shirt – Gordon McKelvie delves into the mysterious murder of a Scots king who had legions of enemies eager to see him dead
On 11 June 1488, a Scottish king gathered his army and marched to a field south of Stirling known as Sauchieburn. This man was James III – great-great-great-great grandson of Robert the Bruce, famed for his pivotal victory over the English at the battle of Bannockburn. James faced not a foreign invasion, but a rebellion by his own subjects. To counter this threat, and eager to be seen as a ‘new Bruce’, he wielded the sword of his famous ancestor. Rather than winning a heroic victory, though, by the end of the day James lay dead – killed by one of his own subjects as he fled the battlefield. But by whom? The answer is a mystery that’s endured for more than five centuries. James III was a divisive figure. He alienated many Scots with his determination to secure a marriage alliance with England, and his familial relations were little better: he fell out with one brother, Alexander, Duke of Albany, who then joined an English invasion of Scotland in 1482. He was also accused of ordering the death of his other brother, the Earl of Mar, and of being behind the alleged poisoning of his wife, Margaret of Denmark, in 1486. As ruler, James proved unable to control feuds between rival noble families and debased the Scottish coinage, causing economic problems. In summary, he fell short in almost every way imaginable. Writing perhaps three-quarters of a century later in The Historie and Chronicles of Scotland, Robert Lindsay said that James, standing on the field of battle in 1488, had “remembered the words of the witch that said to him before that he should be destroyed and put down by his nearest of kin” – a dramatic image reminiscent of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The witch was not real, but the drama certainly was. The army that toppled James III had as its figurehead none other than the king’s eldest son who, on his father’s death, became James IV. Then just 14 years old, Prince James had left his residence in Stirling Castle in February 1488 and joined a group of individuals opposed to his father. At first, he probably merely wanted his status as heir better recognised, but he remained with the rebels when things became ugly, and a military campaign ensued. Despite the family feud, the younger James did not want to see his father harmed – a wish clearly not shared by his allies, one of whom took the opportunity to stab the king to death after the battle. James IV never forgave himself for his father’s demise; in penance, he reportedly wore an iron belt to which he added extra weights every year. Yet the prince had not wielded the dagger himself. We know very little about what actually happened at the battle of Sauchieburn, as the clash was later named; reports that do exist are vague, and written many years after the event. It seems that the royalist force was quickly overwhelmed, and that James III decided to flee. After his escape from the action, however, someone recognised the king and took their opportunity to kill him – though the specifics are unclear. The culprit took the secret to their grave, so what we’re left with is essentially rumour and speculation. Enduring ambiguity The earliest surviving account of the killing comes from the journal of an Englishman living in Dublin, which simply states that people spoke about the king of Scots being dead. It contains no information about how James III died, nor who – if anyone – was responsible. Such was the prevailing ambiguity, which continued for decades. For the new king and his government, the killing of a monarch was not something to celebrate. At a parliament in October 1488, nearly four months after the battle of Sauchieburn, the first glimpses of a cover-up emerged. It was said that James III “happened to be slain” – a casual and equivocal phrase. The overall impression was that, though James IV was sad to see his father killed, everyone else just wanted to forget and move on. There were some rumblings of disquiet about the episode. In January 1489, Alexander Gordon, eldest son of the Earl of Huntly, wrote to English king Henry VII, requesting help in challenging the new regime in Scotland and citing the “treasonable and cruel slaughter of my sovereign lord”. He was not the only Scotsman seemingly appalled by the cold-blooded killing of an anointed king. At some point later in 1489, probably around Easter, Lord Forbes “carried the late king’s shirt, stained with blood, and torn with the marks of the wounds suspended upon a spear, through Aberdeen and the chief towns of the adjacent counties, and by public proclamation, called upon men to avenge the horrid deed”. Because James III’s body had already been buried in the shirt he’d worn at his death, this could not have been the actual garment worn by the king on that fateful day – shirts and blood were both in plentiful supply, of course. But the item being carried through the streets acted as a powerful reminder of the crime. Read more | To kill a king: 350 years of regicide As the year progressed, James III’s fate was weaponised in a war for public opinion that took place during a full-blown rebellion. This uprising had more to do with how James IV’s supporters had enriched themselves after Sauchieburn than with the former king’s death, but the erstwhile monarch’s uncertain fate was too good a smear to ignore. On 12 September 1489, the rebels produced a manifesto noting four grievances, the first of which was that the “treasonable and vile persons” who killed James III had not been identified. The other complaints centred around the use of royal finances, how justice was administered, and the exaction of ransoms for those taken prisoner the previous year. Continuing cover-up The revolt ended with a negotiated settlement, but no real efforts were made to identify James III’s killer – to the chagrin of those protesting to his son, who wrote that the failure to bring to justice the late king’s killers was “to the perpetual defamation of our sovereign lord [James IV] and the whole realm [of Scotland]”. They did not name the killers, but hinted that various “partial persons” had been involved in a cover-up. James IV later called a parliament to patch things up with those who rose up against him, and to try to bring back stability to his kingdom. Yet even among them there was no serious attempt to find the culprit. In reality, it was useful for the rebels to raise the late king’s fate to show how unjust the new regime was; once that purpose had been served, the matter was not raised again. This outcome did not silence everyone, however. By 1492, the government was forced to act once again in response to “the heavy rumour and gossip of the people about the death and killing of our sovereign lord’s late father”. Anyone who came forward with information about the former king’s death would be granted 100 marks of land. Even though this was a substantial amount of land that could have been of lasting benefit to the informant and their heirs, no one ever claimed the reward. Unsurprisingly, at that point James III’s fate stopped being a concern for James IV or his government, who had nothing to gain from uncovering the killer’s identity. The new king was generally more successful and popular than his father; often referred to as a “renaissance prince”, he combined an affable public image with sound financial management. He did, though, make a fatal blunder in foreign policy. Some 25 years after his own father’s death, in late summer 1513, James IV took a Scottish army over the border into Northumberland, where it was met by English troops led by the Earl of Surrey. The ensuing battle of Flodden was a disaster for the Scots, many thousands of whom were slaughtered. Among the dead was James himself – the last king in the British Isles to die on the battlefield. In the decades that followed, various writers began to embellish the story of James III’s murder – in particular, specifying the location of his death. In the 1530s, Adam Abell stated that James IV had evil counsel who ignored his orders not to harm his father, and that the king had been killed near a mill at Bannockburn. Bishop John Lesley extended the story further, saying that certain “wicked men” who hated James III waited for him to flee the battle before slaying him at the mill. Giovanni Ferreri, a well-travelled Italian monk who spent time in Scotland, claimed that James III’s horse was spotted outside the mill while he was resting. The assassins, he said, had long held grudges against the king. Read more | 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Scottish history Eventually, two chronicles provided names. In his Historie, Robert Lindsay claimed that, having fallen off his horse, James III was escorted to the mill by the miller and his wife. When the king asked for a priest to hear his confession, he was stabbed to death by an assassin dressed as a cleric – a man said to be a servant of Andrew, 2nd Lord Gray, a rebel and long-standing opponent of James III. George Buchanan, again writing in the mid-16th century, described James being pursued by three men: Patrick Gray, Andrew’s son; one ‘Stirling of Keir’; and a priest, Borthwick, who actually killed James and his companions. One other candidate for the crime suggested recently by historians is William Hepburn, whose family supported Prince James in the rebellion. He was briefly mentioned in a few records early in James IV’s reign, but disappeared after a few months – perhaps because his presence at court would be an embarrassment to his family. All of these men are plausible culprits, but nothing can be proved. We know that James III died after fleeing the battle, and that his son’s regime did not want to dwell too much on how he perished. The resulting conspiracy of silence allowed rumour and speculation to flourish, with various pet theories emerging. In truth, everyone was glad to see the back of the little-loved monarch. Though they could not openly celebrate the killing of a king in cold blood, plenty of individuals would have happily shaken the culprit’s hand and thanked him for what he’d done. James III’s murder was too good a crime to warrant punishment. Gordon McKelvie is senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Winchester This article was first published in the Christmas 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation
Slavery, exploitation and racism. These tragedies have long dominated histories of Africa. But there’s another way to tell this story, argues Luke Pepera. And it’s one that puts Africans right at the centre of their continent’s extraordinarily rich and vibrant past
In 1414, in the Chinese city of Nanjing, a giraffe caused a stir. Amid a crowd of shocked, noble spectators, an official, leading the creature via a rope tied round its face, presented it to China’s Yongle emperor. His officials said it was a qilin – an auspicious unicorn – which his sage governance had made appear. This giraffe was a gift from the sultan of Bengal. But it had originally come from Africa – specifically, the city-state of Malindi in today’s Kenya. In 1415, ambassadors from Malindi and Mogadishu sailed to China. In a special ceremony, the Malindi ambassadors gifted the Yongle emperor another giraffe. Delighted at having received his second qilin, the Yongle emperor gave an order. His senior eunuch, Zheng He, whom he’d charged with overseeing the construction of a 200-strong fleet of treasure ships, was to sail to Malindi to obtain more giraffes and other goods. With the holds of his ships full of treasures, including gold, silver, silk and ceramics, Zheng He set sail for Malindi in 1417. He exchanged what he had for goods including live animals such as leopards and zebras, frankincense and ivory. Sometime between then and 1423, Malindi’s king himself sailed to China to meet the Yongle emperor in Nanjing. He made it as far as Fujian, a province in south-eastern China, where he died, seemingly succumbing to illness. He was buried in Fujian, and the Yongle emperor decreed that his grave be given a small sacrifice every year. This is an intriguing story. But for Africa, it’s not extraordinary. For at least 2,000 years, African civilisations have been plugged into international trade networks. Third-century AD Nubia (now northern Sudan and southern Egypt) exported goods including gold, ivory and ostrich feathers to Rome and Yemen. Along Africa’s eastern coast, from northern Somalia to southern Tanzania, east African merchants exchanged similar goods for date syrup from Persian traders, swords from Yemenis and carnelian beads from Indians. Chinese pottery and Indian beads have been found as far inland as Great Zimbabwe – a stone city located in southern Zimbabwe that thrived between about 1100 and 1500 AD. Great Zimbabwe’s residents obtained these treasures from east African merchants in exchange for gold, which was plentiful around Great Zimbabwe. Chinese silk also made it as far west as Mali, whose emperors had it woven into robes. One-dimensional view Given historical African societies’ economic, political and cultural importance, why is so little of their history generally known? Quite simply, this is because of a tendency to focus on narratives of slavery, colonisation, victimisation and dominance. In the UK, when we tell stories about African peoples or their history, either in the classroom or in documentaries, books, films and TV series, we cover largely the events of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. Read more | The big question: Is Africa a prisoner of its past? We talk and tell stories about European ‘discovery’ of the Americas, the Atlantic triangle, abolition, anti-African racism, European presence in Africa, colonial wars and the British empire. In all of these narratives, the African is inevitably presented as a victim of superior European technology, economic might and military prowess. This, then, becomes our view of the African throughout history, and, arguably, even our view of Africans today. We assume that this relationship between Europe and Africa has always been the natural order of things, and we do little either to scrutinise, interrogate or contradict this view. The truth is, our conversations about African history and culture lack nuance. As far as the eras of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism are concerned, we don’t question enough how and why they happened. To our minds, it is a simple story of dominance – European over African. We think that when the Europeans arrived in Africa, they almost immediately subdued its societies, imposed their rules and regulations and captured the poor, unwitting Africans whom they stuffed in slave ships and shipped off to the Americas. We think that in this scenario Africans had only two options: capitulate and trade slaves willingly or be destroyed. We don’t consider for a moment African agency in these turning points in world history. If we dug a little bit deeper into the history of these events to look at things from the African perspective, we would see that in many places the scenario I’ve sketched out here wasn’t what necessarily happened. Read more | 7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered A war on slavery Take 18th-century Dahomey (now Benin) and arguably its best king, Agaja, as an example. Born in c1673, Agaja was crowned in 1708. From the records we have of him, including those of an English Royal African Company agent called Bulfinch Lambe (who was forced to live with Agaja for three years), we know that Agaja was handsome, majestic, intelligent and an incomparable strategist and military commander. In 1724 and 1727, Agaja invaded the nearby kingdoms of Allada and Whydah respectively. At the time, both of these kingdoms were the region’s premier slave traders. Since the late 17th century, the Europeans in the region, including the Dutch, Portuguese, English and French, had had their slaving headquarters in one or both of these kingdoms. Annually, both Whydah and Allada ‘exported’ close to 20,000 enslaved Africans, mostly prisoners of war, those who’d committed crimes or broken serious taboos. Some historians, such as Archibald Dalzel, a late 18th-century historian and also a slave trader who had spent significant time in both Whydah and Dahomey, argued that Agaja invaded Whydah and Allada because he wanted to take over their slave-trading infrastructures. However, Agaja immediately went about dismantling these structures, destroying ports, forts and castles almost with glee. He also showed little interest in preserving good relationships with the Europeans in Allada and Whydah. In fact, he took about 40 of them prisoner. Read more | Africa’s medieval golden age When he consolidated his control over Allada and Whydah, Agaja also did nothing to repair the slave-trading infrastructures he’d destroyed. Instead, he ordered his soldiers to stop slave-traders from bringing enslaved people to the coast. He also jailed Dahomeans who tried to sell enslaved people. When Europeans made to leave Allada and Whydah for kingdoms whose rulers were more hospitable to the idea of selling enslaved people, Agaja blocked them. The Europeans complained that trade dropped off a cliff and that they couldn’t see it returning to its previous levels as long as Agaja remained in power. Read more | The warrior ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey What’s more, any difficulty Agaja faced in holding on to power came not from Europeans, but largely from other great African kingdoms who, for one reason or another, disagreed with his policies. The rulers of Oyo – a city-state of the Yoruba people in what’s now Nigeria – felt that, in conquering neighbouring kingdoms, Agaja had contravened age-old customs that had for centuries governed relations between the coastal west African kingdoms. But stories like Agaja’s, where the African isn’t presented solely as an agency-less victim at the mercy of the Europeans with whom they dealt, are sorely missing from our conception and tellings of African history. Another way in which our understanding of African history lacks nuance is in a poor appreciation for the true breadth and depth of African history and culture. The earliest ancestor in the evolutionary line that produced our species, Homo sapiens, is said to be Sahelanthropus tchadensis (‘Sahel man of Chad’), who lived in around that part of Africa 7 million years ago. Until the emergence of Homo erectus some 5 million years later, early humans lived only in Africa. What’s crucial to remember is that Sahelanthropus wasn’t the only early human being who inhabited the continent. There were lots of different groups of these hominids that probably migrated back and forth across it, lived in different areas, developed differently and then mixed with others, resulting in the emergence of plenty of new groups. It is largely this deep history, diversity and mixing that means Africans today are some of the most ethnically, culturally and racially diverse peoples on Earth. Africans speak around a third of the world’s 7,000 languages. Africa boasts the largest language group in the world – Niger-Congo – which contains around 1,500 languages spoken by more than 300 million people. Africa also boasts one of the oldest language groups in the world – Khoisan – whose 35 languages emerged from one that’s said to have been spoken as far back as 20,000 years ago. A misunderstanding of the depth and complexity of African cultures is often what led 19th-century European anthropologists to dismiss certain aspects of these cultures as nonsensical or unnecessary. One such aspect that comes to mind is witchcraft. Early European anthropologists saw it largely as a universal, superstitious belief system. They mostly didn’t account for the differences in African peoples’ witchcraft beliefs, nor could they conceive of the practical purposes these beliefs served. For example, in the case of the Azande people of what’s now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, witchcraft was about diffusing tensions and restoring social harmony. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn’t know about medieval West Africa The Azande believed that you bewitched someone by feeling negatively towards them. In other words, if a Zande (the singular of Azande) was angry, hateful or resentful towards another person, they bewitched that person, causing them to suffer some kind of misfortune (falling ill, say). Therefore, when a Zande suffered a misfortune, they thought of someone with whom they had a problem. They then confronted that person, garnered sympathy by explaining what they’d been going through and asked for reconciliation. Customarily, the latter complied, and social harmony was restored. Complex cultures Another aspect that comes to mind is African female leadership. To many European observers, this represented the inverse of their societies – one in which men dominated institutions and the public sphere, whereas women were often relegated to second-class citizens. In short, these African societies represented to them Amazonia. But this wasn’t really the case. In many female-led African societies, there was actually a balance of power between men and women. From about 25 to 21 BC, the Nubians and the Romans (the latter under their first emperor, Augustus Caesar) were at war. Rome had conquered Egypt and northern Nubia. When the northern Nubians rebelled, their king, Teriteqas, and queen, Amanirenas, lent them the support of their royal army. In Nubia, the king didn’t have absolute authority. In various ways, he shared this authority with his mother (the queen mother) and his wife. The Nubians believed that duality and balance was the foundation of success in any sphere. This included in rulership, which required both male and female energies to function successfully. It was not unusual then that when Teriteqas died in one of this war’s early conflicts, Amanirenas succeeded him (their young son, Akinidad, was not yet elected king). She sacked Roman Egyptian cities, took prisoners and looted statues of Augustus, securing a victory for the Nubians and a favourable peace treaty from Augustus himself. She is the best known of the ‘Kandakes’, Nubian royal women who ruled Meröe (the last Nubian kingdom) nearly absolutely. Gaps in the story These stories represent just a fraction of the breadth, depth and nuance of African peoples’ history and cultures. If we not only want to understand truly the African past but also fill in a significant gap in the story of our species, we need to consider the African perspective even when it comes to well-trodden areas of history like the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. We need to understand and present Africans and their history more accurately. Africans haven’t historically been only the enslaved or the conquered. We’ve been emperors, sculptors, merchants, architects and scholars. We’ve navigated our continent and the globe. We’ve created world-class architecture and art. We’ve innovated, leading academic, governmental and industrial institutions. This is some of the African history we need to see in books, documentaries, films and TV series. If we fail to explore this history, we do a disservice not just to Africans, but to peoples of other societies who otherwise come away with a woefully erroneous understanding of the peoples that have inhabited our world the longest. Luke Pepera is a Ghanaian-born writer, broadcaster, historian and anthropologist. He is the author of Motherland: A Journey Through 500,000 Years of African History, Cultures and Identity (W&N, 2025) This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
"I felt very alone in a world gone horribly mad": the experiences of evacuees in WW2
It was a moment of possibilities, dislocation and dread. Dan Todman tells the story of the 1.5 million urban Britons evacuated to the countryside at the start of the Second World War
It’s October 1939, and an aristocratic couple are discussing how to manage the horde of ill-spoken, slovenly evacuees from the city who have been billeted in their house. Not to worry, the husband tells his wife: bringing the children into a more refined environment will soon civilise the youngsters. Instead, as the sketch plays out on the BBC Home Service, the couple’s lordly airs and graces disappear. It’s the evacuees – sent away from home at the behest of the authorities – who change their hosts, rather than the other way around. It’s a skit that fits with how the story of Second World War evacuation has often been constructed, both at the time and in the years since. Here is a narrative that emphasises a clash of cultures: the rural rich suddenly confronted by the urban poor – a moment replete with topsy-turvy possibilities. But the circumstances around the recording of the sketch itself reveal how evacuation was a much larger and more complex event than this straightforward narrative suggests. Read more | Persuading the people: British propaganda in the Second World War It was performed by a cast of variety performers who had also been evacuated, from London to Bristol. That move was part of the BBC’s own preparations to maintain a schedule of light entertainment to intersperse with the news bulletins and government announcements expected to dominate the airwaves over the first weeks of the war. Seen in this light, the first wave of evacuations was specifically a product of conditions in the autumn of 1939 – but it was also an event that came to have a deep significance in the British folk memory, emblematic of the longer and wider disruptions, separations and anxieties experienced by so many civilians. It was, too, part of a global phenomenon, as states and communities sought to move people out of harm’s way. Thinking about evacuation therefore helps us understand not only Britain’s war, but also a wider human experience – national and local differences notwithstanding – of the impact of mechanised conflict. Pre-emptive action In Britain, three types of evacuation were undertaken: official, organisational and private. Official schemes evacuated children, mothers with infants, pregnant women and disabled adults from cities to locations in the surrounding countryside – so-called ‘reception areas’. These were set in motion on 1 September, once war was imminent but before it had been declared. More of these evacuees came from London than any other single city but, with the exception of Northern Ireland (where evacuation didn’t start until 1940), this was a nationwide phenomenon. In total, more children were evacuated from other conurbations including Greater Manchester, Tyneside and Merseyside, than from the capital. Read more | Guernsey’s child evacuees Schemes were set up to relocate important parts of the state machinery that would run the war, too. The Air Ministry was later sent to Harrogate, the Admiralty to Bath and a new Ministry of Food was based in Colwyn Bay. At the same time, the BBC wasn’t the only organisation that evacuated its staff. Others, including banks, galleries and universities, moved part of or all their operations away from big cities. Meanwhile, many private citizens with the means to do so took it upon themselves to head to the homes of rural relatives or seaside resort hotels. In those first days of September 1939, as many as 3.5 million Britons may have been in transit by train, boat, coach or car. Being evacuated, as well as seeing evacuees depart, travel or arrive, were shared common experiences that lodged in the memories of those involved. As evacuee Donald Wharf recalled: “I will never forget standing, dazed and bemused, on the forecourt of Paddington Station… I also felt very alone in a world gone horribly mad. That was, of course, in spite of the fact that the station was virtually full, mostly with East End evacuees with labels and gas masks like me. But that was the way I felt at the time – maybe some others did too – while lots, who were similar in age to me, just put down their boxes and cried.” Anticipating attacks The rationale for these relocations was simple. There was a widespread expectation that any new conflict might start with a devastating air attack by enemy bombers. Such a raid would inflict all the horrors of the front-line trenches of the First World War – not just high explosives and slicing shards of metal but also choking and blinding gas – on civilian populations. The best way to protect vulnerable people and essential services was to move them out of danger. Such fears substantially overestimated the power of combatant air forces at the outset of the war, but it was the perception of risk that mattered. Had anything close to the worst-case predictions come to pass in Britain, the impact would have been so awful that it might have broken the country’s will to carry on. Local authorities were responsible for planning official schemes for evacuating children, some mothers and vulnerable adults. Teachers and members of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS), the civilian organisation set up under the auspices of the Home Office in 1938 to support civil defence and war work, then implemented these schemes. Local arrangements varied by area – how parents signed up their children to be evacuated, how much form-filling was involved, and how active local government officials were in communicating with families. As part of Britain’s official war history, Richard Titmuss was commissioned to study the effects of evacuation and bombing. In the resulting book, Problems of Social Policy (1950), he suggested that the varying quality of these local arrangements, and the confidence (or lack thereof) they inspired, influenced whether parents registered their children to participate in the scheme. Meanwhile, in the reception areas, WVS billeting officers arranged accommodation for evacuees. Householders with empty bedrooms could be compelled to take in evacuees, but in practice the overwhelming majority volunteered. In return, they were paid an allowance by the government. Most were not owners of stately homes or manor houses. Instead, it was typically lower-middle-class and working-class families who most often offered help. Their willingness to take in evacuees at short notice, creating considerable inconvenience, spoke to a moral acceptance of the obligation to help the needy in a time of national crisis. Unlike the wealthy, however, those of more modest means often lacked the space to separate themselves from evacuees whose manners, lifestyle and expectations were frequently very different from their own. Mass movement In some ways, the official scheme was an extraordinary success. In just a few days it moved around 1.5 million people from urban to reception areas without a single fatality. Had the expected aerial apocalypse arrived, this would have looked like an even greater achievement. Yet those journeys, and the travellers’ experiences on arrival at their destinations, did not feel so orderly to those involved. Most evacuees did not travel far, at least by modern standards. The majority went to rural areas relatively close to their home cities, though some were despatched much further afield. More than 250,000 were billeted in the Home Counties, 73,000 in East Anglia, and almost 57,000 in Wales. However, transport difficulties sometimes turned even journeys that were relatively short in miles into drawn-out tests of endurance. “I remember crying all the way to Wales,” evacuee Beryl Fermor (née Hedges) later wrote. In London, in particular, the pressure to quickly clear mainline stations saw evacuees packed onto trains as they arrived, breaking up school parties and disrupting organisation in reception areas. In some cases, it was weeks before billeting officers and teachers tracked down all their charges. Patriotically eager to bolster morale and reassure parents, journalists conjured up visions of the positive reception evacuees received. Reporting from “somewhere in Buckinghamshire”, the Daily Express painted a picture of women preparing spare rooms and putting “hot water bottles in the beds in which London children would sleep”. In practice, the situation was more varied and often chaotic. In some cases, billeting officers got the children they had been expecting and had already allocated to receiving households, and children were dropped off to their hosts in a process that was brusque but at least efficient. In others, unexpected parties of exhausted evacuees were left in draughty church halls while locals came to choose the ones they’d like. Even when things went well, there were inevitable confusions and complications that compounded the uncertainty and distress. Hostile hosts Some evacuees enjoyed warm welcomes from kind strangers who recognised the novelty and terror of the children’s situation. Having been instructed by his mother to look after his younger sister and “never let go of her hand”, one former evacuee remembered his eight-year-old self watching anxiously as all the other children in their party were found a billet. Every potential host found reasons not to take on two siblings. Finally, however, a married couple arrived who asked how they could help and, when the situation was explained, “without any hesitation they offered to take us both into their home”. Read more | Rationing, school closures and 'Blitz spirit': how did people cope in WW2? Conversely, some evacuees found themselves picked by those grudgingly looking for the least filthy or the most useful for household labour. “In retrospect,” Audrey Demers (née Jones) recalled, “we were treated in a similar fashion to cattle, as the villagers came and looked us over and selected or rejected.” Split up from friends and siblings, some children found themselves living with hosts who were abusive, neglectful or simply unwilling to tolerate for long this strange imposition on their home. Maintaining the dignity and welfare of evacuees in reception areas had been less of a concern in the planning than the need to get people out of the cities quickly. Even judged on these terms, however, the official scheme fell short. Take-up was highly variable. Only about half of London’s eligible schoolchildren were evacuated. In Newcastle, the figure was as high as 70 per cent. In Sheffield, only 15 per cent of those eligible took part. Some families could not organise themselves to meet the timetable of evacuation. Others were unwilling to trust their children to strangers. For many, warnings of the horrors of war only strengthened a protective desire to keep their families together. In the event, the UK did not come under sustained air attack until the summer of 1940 and the Blitz. As a result, adult evacuees soon left the reception areas and families brought their children home. The rate of return varied substantially. Many London children stayed away for the whole war. Conversely, in Clydebank, Scotland, from where more than half of the children had been evacuated in 1939, all but 5 per cent had returned by the end of 1940. They were still there in March 1941 when the Luftwaffe launched catastrophic raids that, according to official figures, left 528 people dead and 617 seriously injured. The initial experience of evacuation often brought differences to the fore. At the household level, the mixing of families in such close proximity inevitably exposed gaps in habits, routine and religion. Clashes of cultures released a flood of rumours in the reception areas – stories that revealed and reinforced class-based and regional prejudices about the urban poor. It was said that dirty children and slatternly mothers had arrived in inadequate and lice-infested clothing. They lazed around billets that were left increasingly filthy by their ill-mannered incontinence, it was claimed, and never contributed to household chores. In an angry Commons debate, Sir Henry Fildes, the Liberal National MP for Dumfriesshire, called evacuation “the dreadful scourge… placed upon the homes of Britain”. Head lice and bed-wetting In practice, the deplorable condition of some evacuees was usually the result of poverty, not preference. Two in five child evacuees from Liverpool and Sunderland, for example, had parents who depended either on out-of-work benefits or on very low incomes. Evacuation came early on a Friday, when wages were most stretched. Many families simply could not afford to kit out their children with new clothes or items on the packing lists supplied by schools. Problems with head lice and bed-wetting were not helped by long journeys on packed trains or by billeting at unfamiliar houses with forbidding hosts. “I can honestly say that we enjoyed being evacuees,” remembered one, almost 65 years later, adding that “we were well treated and obviously loved by our adopted parents.” For him, the experience made a lasting difference. His parents also moved out of London when they were bombed out of their home, and he never returned to the capital. Yet his words indicate that he knew others had not been so fortunate. And evacuees’ experiences did not have to be awful to be painful or to leave a lasting mark. “Home is not where one lives,” said one girl, evacuated from London’s East End to Oxford, “but where one has all the people one loves and knows.” Another evacuee, interviewed at the same time, recalled the differences between their home lives and the repressed respectability of their middle-class hosts, explaining: “I cannot do as I like in the house; I must also come in when I am told and sit down and eat my meals properly and not run out into the street with a slice of bread in my hand.” A third bemoaned the fact that “If we play ball in the streets, a window opens and an old lady puts her head out and starts telling us off.” Mothers' misery Those women who had joined their children on evacuation had a particularly miserable time. Accompanying teachers quickly sought to organise education for school-age children. In contrast, there had been no official preparation to support evacuated mothers. Their presence impinged on the private lives of host families in ways that embarrassed everybody. They had been separated not only from the family groups that formed their closest networks of support, but also from the world of urban leisure – particularly cinemas and dance halls – that offered some temporary respite from the travails of motherhood. Read more | The cruel cost of the Blitz: how did everyday Britons rebuild their lives? Devon’s Inspector of Education reported that the lack of space and privacy created “a very bad psychological disturbance for both mothers and children. They become difficult, the children cry and are irritable, and the nervous energy of the mother is sapped. Sometimes she punishes them for nothing at all and at others she is over-indulgent and sentimental.” Yet if women sought to go out, they often had to traipse the streets idly or risk further condemnation for moral lassitude. Given all this, it was little wonder that mothers returned home quicker and in larger proportions than any other evacuees. Those providing accommodation didn’t have it much easier. Having offered their homes in a crisis, they found themselves committed to sharing space with evacuees with whom they might have little in common, for the duration of a war that, the government made plain, would probably last for years. Even those for whom this proved a joyous experience found it demanding – not least because the value of the allowance they received from the government was rapidly eroded by the pace of early war inflation. A phenomenon so large inevitably involved a full range of human characteristics. There were good and bad hosts among those opening up their homes, just as there were good and bad evacuees. While acknowledging the worst and the best behaviour, we also need to recognise the stoic tolerance of the majority who just tried to get by. Second World War evacuations across Europe and Asia The UK was not the only country in which civilians were evacuated – or evacuated themselves Japanese aggression during the Sino-Japanese war (starting 1937) forced 60 million people to flee their homes in China. Evacuating industries, ministries and civilians to the west became a key part of the Chinese Nationalist government’s strategy to survive the war. When fighting broke out in Europe in September 1939, France and Germany both evacuated civilians from areas on each side of their shared border in anticipation of military operations – although, just as in the UK, the lull in action over the winter of 1939–40 encouraged some to return. The surging tide of Axis military victories in 1940–42 spurred enormous waves of mass flight. The 9 million Belgian and French refugees who took to their country’s roads and railways in May–June 1940 offered a frightening vision of social dissolution and encouraged other states to put more effort into controlling population movements. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, one of the most violent but impressive state-organised evacuations of the conflict saw the core of the Soviet war industry relocated from the path of Axis forces and rebuilt beyond the Urals. In Malaya (now part of Malaysia), Burma (Myanmar) and India. Meanwhile, the chaotic efforts to manage the flood of refugees from Japanese advances after 1941 further delegitimised British colonial rule. Allied success in reversing early Axis victories depended on massive aerial and ground campaigns that forced evacuation and refugee flight. Through an expanding programme that came to include mothers as well as children, Germany evacuated millions of its urban inhabitants from the threat of Allied bombing and the advance of the Red Army. In France, occupation authorities required non-essential civilians to leave fortified coastal towns. As the fighting fronts swept back through Europe and Asia, millions fled the demolishing force of the ground campaigns. Events at the end of the conflict, including the territorial settlements, ethnic cleansing and politically violent nation-building that underpinned the post-1945 order, displaced still more people. There were many differences between the experiences of those in flight – what forced them to move, who organised their departure, and whether they could ever return. But there were also commonalities – physical relocation, tensions with those receiving them, and a sense of powerlessness. The experience of evacuees in Britain was distinct, but it was far from unique – and indeed more common than the stories of combatants. Altogether, about 175 million people became refugees because of the conflict – far more than were mobilised into all of the militaries and munitions factories. This was an unprecedented scale of simultaneous popular displacement, involving about 8 per cent of everyone alive on the planet at the time. Clearing the coast There were further waves of evacuation – officially organised and otherwise – later in the war. Following the fall of France in June 1940, the new proximity of German air bases and the threat of invasion sparked schemes to evacuate coastal cities. And after the start of concentrated German night-time bombing raids on British cities in September 1940, fresh rounds of urban evacuations were organised, both pre-emptively before the raids and afterwards to relocate those who had been bombed out. Uptake rates on later schemes were lower than in 1939. Only in 1944 did evacuation on a similar scale occur. That summer, as London was ravaged by V1 flying bombs, more than a million people temporarily left the capital, including 307,000 children and mothers. This time the danger was immediate and real, but once again few people stayed away long. Most returned even before the government declared that it was safe to do so. Read more | The dangers of the Blitz spirit By that point, evacuation had already been the subject of numerous publications. Even as it was ongoing, the process was being narrated back to the British people by journalists, commentators and comedians. It was also analysed by social scientists and, inevitably, co-opted by politicians eager to establish their own version of what the war should mean. The public discussion that followed demonstrated the widespread appeal of the idea that the conflict ought to lead to societal change, but also the persistence of older ideas – notably the urban-rural divide and the alleged irresponsibility of the poor. The potency of both radical and conservative narratives was such that even today, when we think about what evacuation might have meant, they can colour our thinking. In truth, what evacuation meant to those who experienced it very much depended on their individual experiences. Dan Todman is professor of modern history at Queen Mary University of London. His books include Britain’s War: A New World, 1942–1947 (Allen Lane, 2020) This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“The reverberations lasted for generations” | Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry on the civil war of Charlemagne's grandsons
David Musgrove talks to Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry about the ninth-century civil war among Charlemagne’s grandsons, which shook the empire to its core and reshaped Europe
David Musgrove: Let’s begin with the battle of Fontenoy in AD 841. What happened there and why was it so important? Matthew Gabriele: Fontenoy is nowadays just a small village lying a little south-west of the city of Auxerre in central France. Even in the 840s, it wasn’t particularly significant. But it was there that a civil war erupted between the grandsons of Charlemagne, who were fighting about the fate of the Carolingian empire. After the death of their father, Louis the Pious, on 20 June 840, the three surviving brothers gathered at Fontenoy. Lothar, the eldest and the Frankish co-emperor, was trying to stitch the partitioned empire back together; his younger brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, had their own claims. Lothar was joined by his nephew, Pepin II of Aquitaine, the son of another brother, also Pepin, who had died in 838. The three brothers and their nephew basically argued about the form that the empire should take. Should it be coherent and unified under Lothar, or would Charles and Louis be able to function as independent kings in their own domains? This dispute boiled over into a massive, bloody battle fought on 25 June 841. For most medieval battles, we have just a sense of where and when they were fought. For this clash, though, we have very specific details of the day and the time when the battle started, as well as the location. That’s because – as we argue at the start of our new book – it was so horrifying for everybody involved. It shook the empire and its participants to their core, creating reverberations that lasted for generations. What’s the backstory to the dispute? Matthew Gabriele: The Franks rose to power in the fifth and sixth centuries when, after interacting with the Romans for a long time, they were finally able to establish their own realm. The resulting empire was ruled for several centuries by a dynasty called the Merovingians. They were supplanted in 751 in a coup d’état by high nobles who started a new dynasty that, over time, came to be named for one of their progenitors, Charles Martel – Charles being Carolus in Latin, hence the dynastic name ‘Carolingian’. The apogee of that empire came under Charlemagne, who ruled for a substantial length of time, taking power in 768 and dying in 814. He expanded the Frankish empire to encompass most of western and central Europe, from Denmark in the north down to central Italy, across the Pyrenees into Catalonia and east into Saxony. Read more | The legacy of Charlemagne: how the king of the Franks continues to cast a shadow over Europe But what’s really interesting to us is how quickly it fell apart – within just two generations. This myth of unity that the Franks constructed for themselves – this great empire that Charlemagne had created – was built, as we say in the book, on a foundation of lies. They weren’t just lies that the Franks told to other people, but lies they told themselves about their place in the world and the way that their empire was organised. What we find so interesting is not just the things that happened but also the stories these people told themselves about those events. How did tensions escalate after Charlemagne’s death? David M Perry: Charlemagne had a lot of sons, and Louis was the only legitimate one who happened to survive. He had to work hard to build loyalty across his dad’s empire – it was not just handed to him. Some of that was done through persuasion and gifts, but some of it was achieved through violence and torture – in particular, the blinding of his nephew, Bernard of Italy, who then died. That caused great upset and upheaval in the court. Louis tried to kick out the old guard and bring in the new. However, it turned out that the nobles comprising the old guard were still very powerful – and not super-thrilled about being kicked out. So there were these tensions right from the start. Then Louis remarried, taking as his wife a younger woman. The old guard weren’t thrilled with that, either, because she brought in her own power centres. So Louis’ was not a stable reign, suffering from various internal problems, but it was also a moment at which the Franks started losing battles on the edges of the empire. And that was a whole other crisis of legitimacy. Matthew Gabriele: The stability and greatness of Charlemagne is often contrasted with the instability and fecklessness of Louis the Pious. But if you look at Charlemagne, he actually had a lot of problems governing, too. We talk about the coups of the 830s against Louis the Pious, but Charlemagne himself faced several attempted coups. One such attempt in 792 was led by his own eldest son, Pepin, known to later historians as Pepin the Hunchback, though he certainly wasn’t called that at the time. It seems baked into the way the Carolingians ruled their empires that they had to rely upon powerful nobles around them. So when these nobles got angry about their loss of status, that was a real problem for the kings. And just because only a few coups were successful, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other coups plotted and executed along the way. What were Charlemagne’s grandsons trying to achieve at Fontenoy? Matthew Gabriele: They were trying to decide the fate of the empire. Lothar was trying to beat his brothers into submission, and ideally to restore the empire as it had been under his father and his grandfather. Charles and Louis wanted something different: they wanted their own functional kingdoms within the empire. They wanted to be free from the meddling of the emperor in their lands – Charles the Bald’s realm lying to the west, Louis the German’s to the east – and the right to act as independent Carolingians. They had, they argued, the same blood as Lothar’s flowing through their veins. Looking back, this event became – especially for 19th-century historians – the moment that made France and Germany. It was seen as the final division of Charlemagne’s empire, and the birthplace of the modern state. But today it seems clear that the debate was much more nuanced. Nobody was arguing that Lothar shouldn’t be emperor, they were just arguing about what his role should be there. It was an argument that was so important that they were willing to kill each other: brothers fought against brothers, and cousins, uncles and nephews were divided between the armies. These armies were camped across a field from each other, almost literally staring at each other. From all available sources, it seems that they exchanged emissaries, and decided that they would fight at 8 o’clock the following morning: Saturday 25 June 841. How did the battle play out? David M Perry: Lothar had a well-equipped army and probably slightly larger numbers of men, supported by Pepin’s forces. Charles the Bald had a quite large army, drawn from all over the Frankish heartland. Louis had a smaller army, but it was battle-hardened. Pepin and Charles met in the middle, Louis and Lothar met on the left, and there was a third division led by major nobles on the right. We know little about what actually happened in the battle, but it’s clear that Lothar’s forces engaged Louis and were beaten back, and then Pepin’s forces in the centre collapsed. After that, there was a pursuit that resulted in horrific killing, but Lothar got away. He headed north-east to Aachen with the imperial treasury – and, once there, he spent wildly. He launched a rumour campaign saying that one of his brothers was wounded and the other was dead, neither of which was true, and he immediately started rebuilding political support. This went on for some time. Eventually, Louis and Charles once again brought their armies together – and now they had clear military superiority, there was no dividing them again. So they brought Lothar to the negotiating table. That brings us to the Treaty of Verdun in 843. What happened then? David M Perry: I remember very clearly learning about the Treaty of Verdun while I was an undergraduate in my first medieval history class – and being taught a number of things that are not correct. I believed that there was a treaty – a document, like the Treaty of Versailles – that was written in Latin, German and French, and that it showed the division of France and Germany. I don’t want to call out my undergraduate medieval history professor, because he’s the reason I’m talking to you today – he was a wonderful professor – but I remember learning these things, and they’re just not true. We have no document. There is absolutely nothing surviving from that meeting in 843 that lays out the division of the empire explicitly. The year before the treaty, Louis and Charles travelled to the city of Strasbourg and undertook a public oath-taking. That was the moment when they came together and really made it clear they were going to sit down and talk until they reached an agreement – and where they confirmed their opposition to Lothar ruling the entire empire. As a result, Louis and Charles brought Lothar to the negotiating table, where they agreed that they would split up the empire into three parts. Then they had the problem that no one knew exactly how big the empire was, so they sent out nobles to do the accounting. Nine months later they met in Verdun, really just because it’s a convenient place where those nobles could come together. We can figure out exactly how the empire was divided up only by looking at what happened over the next couple of years – where the brothers went, and which allies got which bits of land. How did this civil war make medieval Europe? Matthew Gabriele: The nostalgia for Charlemagne’s empire animated the vast majority of continental European history through to the 15th or 16th century. The kings of France as they emerged, the emperors in what is now Germany, the rulers of Italy, even the Christian Iberian rulers, all tried to tie themselves in some ways – and in many ways it was accurate – back to the Carolingians through some bloodline that emerged there. In the 830s and 840s, there were just too many Carolingians. Whereas there had only been one Charlemagne, and then only one Louis the Pious, after that, there were too many legitimate children of Louis, and then their children, and then their children, all of whom had potential to rule. That tension, I think, was ultimately part of the problem that led to the civil war. But then, in the centuries thereafter, there was a dream of empire – and especially the dream of a sense of election, of being God’s chosen people – that never disappeared. This view guides many of the actions that these men’s descendants took, including the push for the kingdom of France to expand beyond the Île de France and to reunite with the Carolingian bloodline. Read more | Books interview with Janet Nelson: "The only way this huge regime could work was by Charlemagne trusting his own instincts" The desire to go on crusade in 1095, for example, was driven by the idea that these guys were all Franks and that they were fighting to reclaim Charlemagne’s claims to Jerusalem, which was another legend that evolved in the 10th and 11th centuries. These medieval realms were different from what we think of as modern nation states such as France and Germany – they were different things aiming for different ends. Those modern states have sought justification for their formation in these events of the European Middle Ages, but the reality is different. David M Perry: I just want to jump back into the oaths of Strasbourg, this famous moment on 14 February 842 for which we have a source written in Latin, but also French and German versions, because the men involved spoke all of these languages. Importantly, this was the first documented use of the French and German vernaculars. It’s not that there was a French troop and a German troop, and a linguistic divide between different peoples. The whole point is that there were a lot of languages spoken across this huge land mass, and the men involved wanted to make sure that everyone understood everything. In the Carolingian empire, people were able to speak all of these languages – that was just normal. It was a big, complicated empire, and people talked to each other. It was only 1,000 years later that this point became symbolic; a way of creating a narrative that linked the new French and German nation states and nationalistic identities back to that moment when the oaths were sworn. Looking at how people in the 19th century viewed events in the Middle Ages is something that Matt and I do a lot. We can definitely say that what they read into the situation was not what was actually happening in the ninth century. Did that mid-ninth-century civil war conclusively fracture the Carolingian empire? Matthew Gabriele: The short answer is: yes. The empire was never stitched back together, though there were attempts to do so, especially in the later ninth century and the 10th century. In the first and second generations after the battle of Fontenoy, these attempts failed because of the bad blood that was generated there. That wasn’t just because of the bloodiness of the battle itself, or the resentments on either side about who deserved what, but the way that the battle was pursued – the fact that Louis’ and Charles’s armies followed Lothar’s and cut down his men in their pursuit. It seems to have been a real massacre that people remembered for generations. Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech and David M Perry is a journalist and historian. They are the co-authors of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (HarperCollins, 2022) and Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers that Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe (Harper, 2024) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Lilian Lenton, the 'Elusive Pimpernel': the courageous and daring suffragette who took direct action
Some suffragettes marched with banners, or printed and distributed propaganda pamphlets. Others took more direct action. Diane Atkinson tells the story of one activist who employed arson to spark awareness of the burning issue of women’s suffrage
Recalling her career as a suffragette arsonist and Houdini-like escapologist in interviews later in her life, Lilian Lenton lit up as if a fire had been started in her heart. “To say I enjoyed making fires sounds rather awful,” she later admitted. “But it really was lovely to find that you’d been successful – that the thing really had burned down and that you hadn’t got caught. There it was blazing, and there we were in the glare of the lights…” Listen | Deeds Not Words: the suffragette story Lilian Ida Lenton was one of the youngest, yet most militant, of suffragettes in the three years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Her career was daring, dangerous and dramatic, reported in newspapers around the country. The new half-penny dailies, with their half-tone photographs and full spreads, often featured her pyrotechnic activities. Lilian was 5ft 2ins tall in her stockinged feet, with brown hair and eyes – a “tiny, china-like figure, but wiry and… wily”. She soon gained a romantic nickname, ‘The Elusive Pimpernel’, for her effective disguises and her ability to elude the policemen and detectives who guarded the places where she was kept under house arrest while released from prison on licence. With her tiny stature, she easily passed as a child, a delivery boy or a little old lady. Becoming a suffragette Born in Leicester in 1891, Lilian was the eldest of the five children of Isaac, a carpenter and joiner, and Mahalah, who had worked in a hosiery factory before her marriage. Lilian trained as a dancer, but was then inspired by hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak about women’s suffrage. As soon as she was “21 and my own boss”, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Lilian was first arrested on 4 March 1912, one of about 200 detained during a campaign of window-smashing. Frustrated at the government’s refusal to give women the vote, and outraged at the force-feeding of suffragettes in prison, activists shattered hundreds of windows in Whitehall and the West End of London. Emmeline Pankhurst called these raids the “argument of the broken pane”. Read more | 8 famous suffragettes and votes for women campaigners Under the alias Ida Inkley, Lilian was sentenced to two months in Holloway Prison for smashing the windows of the Oxford Street Post Office. The sentencing magistrate commented that “only very ill-regulated minds could conceive of such ideas”. Lilian was rarely out of the news in 1913. Telling WSPU headquarters that she wanted to progress from breaking windows, she declared that her mission was to burn down two empty buildings each week. At three o’clock on the morning of 20 February, she and a comrade, artist Olive Wharry, set fire to the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens – which was reduced to a heap of ashes. They left postcards at the scene from “Two voteless women”, offering “Peace on earth and goodwill when women get the vote”, then ran off – but dropped two suitcases containing a hammer and their combustible materials. Behind bars and forcible feeding Lilian and Olive were rapidly apprehended by two policemen, denied bail and taken to Holloway Prison. Lilian refused to be medically examined or to “give any particulars”. She was moved to a special cell after she “smashed up everything in the cell she was first placed in”, and was kept apart from all other suffragette prisoners. She was well aware of the fate that would likely befall her. “When I went to prison for fires, I knew the sentences would go into years,” Lilian later recalled during an interview with the BBC. “So I went on hunger strike for release, on the grounds they had no right to imprison women for breaking man-made laws. The forcible feeding process was extremely unpleasant. But some people managed to put up with it literally for months – which meant hundreds of times.” On 23 February 1913, it happened to Lilian. “They pushed a tube up the nostril, which went wriggling down into the stomach,” she later recalled. “Then they poured the food in through the funnel at the end of the tube. But I was determined to stop them if I could. “All the time they were trying to push this tube down, I kept coughing and coughing incessantly. They kept on trying, and after a bit I suppose they thought they’d succeeded, because they poured the food in… In almost no time I felt intense pain all round my chest and I could not breathe.” Read more | What was the difference between the suffragists and the suffragettes? Food had been forced into Lilian’s lungs, and she soon developed double pneumonia and pleurisy as a result. She was released from Holloway’s hospital wing and taken to the home of suffragette friends in north London, where she was kept under house arrest. One day, a laundry van arrived at the house. The driver was a female friend in disguise, and the laundry basket carried out was suspiciously heavy – because the extra weight was Lilian. She was whisked away, “leaving a squad of lynx-eyed detectives industriously watching an empty nest”. The Cat and Mouse Act Stories of women being force-fed created adverse publicity for the Liberal government, and in April 1913 the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act was passed. Under its terms, hunger-striking suffragettes would not be fed by force; instead, they were released when their weight dropped dangerously low, and were served with a licence specifying that they should remain at a pre-agreed address. If they then regained weight, they would be returned to prison. Read more | What was the Cat and Mouse Act? The reason why suffragettes were force-fed The suffragettes likened it to a game of cat and mouse, and the act failed spectacularly. Very few ‘mice’ were ever recaptured; instead, most went on the run and committed more militant acts. Force-feeding was reintroduced in the autumn of 1913. Master of disguise After evading authorities earlier that year, Lenton laid low until June, when ‘May Dennis’ (another alias) was found by a local reporter in a burning building in Doncaster. She managed to escape, but gave herself up when she read that a servant had been charged with arson. Lilian was sentenced to six months in Armley Gaol (now HM Prison Leeds); again she went on hunger strike, but this time was not force-fed. She was released on licence after seven days to the home of local suffragette sympathisers, effectively under house arrest. Though under close observation, Lilian escaped from under the noses of the police keeping watch on the house, this time disguised as a delivery boy carrying a hamper. Read more | From china cups to letter bombs: how suffragettes got out the message of votes for women She spent the rest of the summer dressed as a boy, on the run between Harrogate and Dundee, evading the Special Branch and other police officers who were hunting for her. She then disguised herself as an old lady, hobbling through Cardiff to escape by train to London. From there she travelled to Dover, where she boarded a yacht owned by a suffragette sympathiser and fled to France. Returning to England, during the autumn of 1913 and spring of 1914 Lilian was hugely active. She continued to burn empty buildings and, when arrested, went on three hunger-and-thirst-strikes; each time she was released and then evaded police. A life dedicated to fighting for women's rights When the First World War began in August 1914, the government granted an amnesty to all suffragette prisoners on the understanding that their militancy would end. Lilian diverted her energies to other important work, first as an orderly for Dr Elsie Inglis’s Scottish Women’s Hospital Unit in Serbia; she received a medal from the French Red Cross for her efforts. Read more | Sisters in arms: women at war during WW1 After the war she took a role at the British embassy in Stockholm, and went to Russia with the Save the Children Fund, which had been founded in 1919. She also worked as the financial secretary of the National Union of Women Teachers and, in her final years, was the honorary treasurer of the Suffragette Fellowship, founded in 1926 to keep alive the memory of the militant campaign. The earliest surviving photographs of Lilian show her lying in bed in prison, recovering from force-feeding; there are also surveillance images taken by Special Branch officers. The last known picture of her was taken in 1970 at the unveiling of the Suffragette Memorial in London’s Christchurch Gardens near Caxton Hall, which had been the venue of the ‘Women’s Parliament’ held in 1907. She had led the fundraising for the memorial. Lilian Lenton died in 1972, after 60 years of activism dedicated to improving the lives of women. Diane Atkinson is a historian and author of Rise Up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (Bloomsbury, 2018) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
Seven historians put forward their nominations for the most accomplished leader to have sat in the White House
George Washington In office: 1789–97 Party affiliation: none Nominated by: Thomas Kidd, historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale, 2022) George Washington was the first president in US history – and I’m nominating him as the best, too. I am basing this on his success as a leader, his ability to negotiate conflict in his administration, and most importantly the example he set for future presidents. Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War were enamoured with the ideal of the virtuous republican leader, in the model of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus. Washington was no perfect man, of course, and like many elite southern Americans he was a slaveholder. But in politics he came the closest to manifesting the republican ideal of any American president. Washington became president after serving as the commander of the Continental Army during the fight for independence from the British. His leadership of the army was not uniformly positive, but his tenacity ultimately led to a successful outcome. Many suspected he might simply remain in the position as a kind of benevolent autocrat, but he resigned from the army in late 1783, returning to his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. Befitting the respect that he commanded, Washington was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the US Constitution was drafted. Then he became the first president to be elected under that Constitution in 1789, in a unanimous vote of the electoral college. Washington dealt with major political conflicts in his administration, especially between the treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who bitterly disagreed over economic policy and the direction of the new republic. Washington was largely (if not completely) able to rise above the partisan bickering, and always believed that the republic and its leaders needed to manifest consensus for the public good. He assiduously reached out to minority religious groups, such as Jews, to assure them of their place in the republic. Washington was not constitutionally required to step down after his second term, but he did so once again to manifest the ideal of the public servant who did not want or need to hold onto power indefinitely. Read more | Did George Washington have wooden teeth? Abraham Lincoln In office: 1861–65 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Richard Carwardine, historian specialising in politics at the time of the American Civil War. His latest book is Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Alfred A Knopf, 2025) In his own era, Abraham Lincoln acquired a mythic status as the ‘Saviour of the United States’ and ‘Great Emancipator’. His death, from a shot fired on Good Friday, saw him canonised as the martyr of the glorious Union. Yet even stripping away the myth, most scholars still rank him the best American president. When Lincoln took office, seven slaveholding states had already launched a separate Confederacy. The American Civil War followed. Inexperienced in executive and military leadership, the wartime president faced sustained criticism but drew on formidable self-reliance and indomitable physical strength. He grew in office. Essential to his power were his tenacious nationalism, strategic wisdom, political shrewdness and skill in communication. The American republic’s unique mission, Lincoln insisted, lay in its ideological freight of liberty and equal opportunity. During the war, his nationalism fused with a deepening religious faith. He came to see that preserving the Union’s cargo demanded emancipating the enslaved, a constitutional amendment ending human bondage, and giving the vote to black soldiers. Read more | The Emancipation Proclamation: Abraham Lincoln's declaration that helped bring about the end of slavery Lincoln shrewdly calculated the Union’s strategic priorities: controlling the rich resources of the upper South; securing international support; pursuing a military plan that played to the Union’s strengths while exploiting the enemy’s limitations; and mobilising the human and natural resources of the country. Leadership demanded the deft handling of the levers of power. He controlled his party and broadened the coalition of Union loyalists. He mastered his cabinet and congress, though he was initially less confident with the military. A strong sense of self-worth meant he rarely stood on his dignity. Equally, his mental fortitude – forged through dark passages of depression – gave him resilience in extreme adversity. Sensitive to public opinion, Lincoln recognised that growing war-weariness threatened the Union cause. In the wiry prose of his memorable public addresses (he used no speechwriter), and in the skilful use of a natural sense of humour, he touched the nerve of ordinary people, believing in their educability through reason. Lincoln is the only president to have wrestled with civil war. Could any other have done it so well? Read more | Alternate history: what if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated? Teddy Roosevelt In office: 1901–09 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Jennifer Wright, popular historian and author of Glitz, Glam and Damn Good Time: Mamie Fish and the Gilded Age (Hachette, 2025) There were dull presidents… and then there was Teddy Roosevelt. If he had not been the president, he would merely have been one of the most interesting men to ever live. The 26th president was a cattle rancher, a taxidermist, a Brazilian explorer, an amateur boxer, a historian who wrote The Naval War of 1812, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his help in bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Admittedly, he did not end the American Civil War, like Lincoln. But Lincoln did not take a bullet to the chest and still finish a campaign speech, as Roosevelt did. Prior to being president, he was a war hero known for his prominent role with the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. This group of volunteer cavalrymen were comprised of anyone who could ride a horse well. That meant that polo-playing scions of New York families served alongside coal miners and Native Americans. The notion of a country in which all people could thrive, work together and have great open spaces in which to ride would go on to become defining aspects of Roosevelt’s presidency. After succeeding to office in 1901, he increasingly promoted the idea of “a square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor”. That meant breaking up some of the big business monopolies that had dominated the gilded age and mediating a coal worker strike to ensure the public’s interest was protected (Roosevelt was on the side of the workers). A square deal also meant protecting consumers. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt lobbied for congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection acts — the meat portion of that perhaps a nod to the fact that Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle [which depicted unsanitary standards in the US meat-packing industry] had been serialised the previous year before being published as a book in February 1906. Read more | 8 facts you might not know about the White House, home of the president of the United States It was also at Roosevelt’s behest that the Forest Service was created. Roosevelt, who is known as ‘the Conservation President’, was passionate about nature. He used his presidential powers to establish 230 million acres of public land that could not be exploited. His presidency was defined by the notion of creating an America wherein the common man might find prosperity, safety and pleasure. It’s not essential that a president’s personality matches his accomplishments. Plenty of dull presidents have accomplished great things. But Teddy Roosevelt was a rare case where the magnetism of the man matched the grandeur of the office. And look, your kid doesn’t go to bed hugging a James K Polk bear. Franklin D Roosevelt In office: 1933–45 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Iwan Morgan, emeritus professor of United States studies at University College London, and author of FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America (Bloomsbury, 2022) In guiding the US through the Great Depression and Second World War, Franklin D Roosevelt, or FDR as he was known, transformed the presidency, hitherto a relatively small institution, into the modern office that is the fount of national leadership. Having to overcome physical disability after polio left him paralysed from the waist down at age 39 made his achievements all the more remarkable. Assuming office in 1933 amid the US’s worst slump, FDR failed to effect full recovery until war spending renewed prosperity, but otherwise enjoyed unmatched domestic success. His New Deal programme rescued the banking system from meltdown, enabled industrial workers to form unions that bargained for better pay and conditions, and created a new welfare state. It forged a working-class coalition of urban, multi-ethnic voters that helped FDR to win an unprecedented four terms in office (a two-term constitutional limit was ratified in 1951) and transformed the Democrats into the majority party for the next half-century. Roosevelt’s judicial appointments precipitated a constitutional revolution whereby the Supreme Court eventually accepted federal regulation of private enterprise as valid. An outstanding communicator, he uplifted national spirits through his speeches and broadcasts. Finally, he formed a memorable political partnership with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose idealism offset his pragmatism. As wartime commander-in-chief, FDR set spectacularly high production goals for America’s defence industries that ensured the Allies were far better equipped than their Axis enemies. He overruled his generals’ plans for a 1943 invasion of France as premature, then prodded a reluctant Winston Churchill into agreeing the D-Day invasion in 1944. HistoryExtra Academy | Take our four-week course, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about the Normandy landings The driving force behind the creation of the United Nations Organisation in 1945, he nevertheless regarded great power collaboration as essential for sustainable peace. Accordingly, he accommodated Josef Stalin’s demands for Soviet control of eastern Europe to maintain good relations. For critics, this encouraged Stalin’s insatiable expansionism, but FDR saw no alternative with the region already under Red Army occupation. Roosevelt’s sudden death while still in office in 1945 meant that history would never know if he could have pre-empted the wartime alliance’s rapid disintegration and descent into Cold War. FDR’s record has some significant shortcomings, notably his limited advancement of African-American civil rights and his complicity in the worst federal abuse of citizen rights in history in signing an executive order in 1942 authorising relocation of approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Nevertheless, his positive accomplishments were arguably far more significant. They justify his remembrance as America’s greatest president. Lyndon Baines Johnson In office: 1963–69 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Clifford Williamson, a lecturer in modern British and American history at Bath Spa University “Power is where power goes,” was the mantra of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his early days as a New Deal bureaucrat and teacher through to his time as president of the US. LBJ, as he was often known, was a commanding and intimidating figure who handed out the ‘Johnson treatment’ in his pursuit of power and change in America. A tall man, he loomed over whoever he was seeking to impress, frighten or cajole into supporting him or his policies. He was a member of Congress from 1937 until 1961; he graduated from the House to the Senate in 1948 and became a majority leader in 1955. His time in Congress would be key to his effectiveness as a president who used procedure, patronage and his powers of persuasion to break the entrenched opposition of, in particular, the southern Democrats. LBJ was selected as the running mate to John F Kennedy in 1960, and was raised to the presidency following the assassination of JFK in November 1963. Almost immediately he proved his effectiveness by breaking the Congressional logjam over tax cuts – and, importantly, a Civil Rights Act which was passed in 1964. Read more | US civil rights movement: 5 landmark events In May he launched his ‘Great Society’, a wide-ranging legislative programme where he claimed, “no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled”. There then followed a slew of initiatives that rivalled in scope the New Deal of his hero, Franklin D Roosevelt, and in many cases surpassed it. Following the violent attacks on the peaceful Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, he would propose the 1965 Voting Rights Act that finally ended the poll taxes, literacy tests and Grandfather clauses that had hindered African-American political participation and enfranchisement. However, following a series of riots across the US (starting in Watts, Los Angeles in 1965), a growing white backlash would soon be palpable. It was something that not even the formidable political talents of LBJ could stem. The crisis was exacerbated by the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam, where it was becoming increasingly evident that the US had become embroiled in an unwinnable war, despite sending hundreds of thousands of US troops. Then, in 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese shocked the US by launching the Tet offensive, a major escalation in the conflict. In the face of spiralling opposition to the war among the American people, Johnson decided not to seek re-election in that year’s presidential election. It was a muted end to what had been a brilliant political career. Ronald Reagan In office: 1981–89 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Jeremy Black, author of books including The Cold War: A Military History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) and A Brief History of America (Robinson, 2024) Ability and achievement come in many forms. The innovators and the explorers of the possibilities of politics and government win the most praise. But it is also necessary to honour the stabilisers, and Ronald Reagan, the much-mocked elderly ex-Hollywood actor from California, was one of the greatest. America and the West were in grave difficulties at the end of the 1970s. The Vietnam War and Watergate had hollowed out confidence in American power and politics, and the two oil shocks of the 1970s had destabilised the economy and public finances, contributing to a sense of decline. At the end of the decade, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took this malaise further. What might have come next was a matter of hazard – and, indeed, in 1983, war between the Soviets and the west came very close. Detente had fallen and the Cold War reheated. Read more | Opinion: the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan Reagan proved an adept responder. Though castigated as a warmonger for his reference to a Soviet ‘evil empire’, and for the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles, he believed in negotiations from strength – a stance that eventually bore fruit in the move towards a reduction of tension from 1985. Just as Richard Nixon had reached out to Chairman Mao, so Reagan responded to Gorbachev. Earlier crises over Poland and Afghanistan were handled through measures short of war – so, for instance, the US supplied armaments to the Afghan resistance but didn’t commit ground troops. The same policy of subversion rather than invasion was employed in Central American countries such as Nicaragua. The fall of the Soviet system suggested that the pressure of trying to match American military expenditure and economic development was potent, more so than the repeated moves into war and use of troops frequently employed by presidents from 1991 onwards. In light of this, Reagan appears more viable as a model than contemporary criticism often allowed for. In domestic policy, Reagan pushed growth and deregulation. The American economy provided a clear contrast with the Soviet one, and was thus a more attractive partner for China. In social terms, Reagan was a libertarian, which would have jarred with the intolerance of many members of the modern Republican party. Charismatic, a great communicator, able to take the pulse of the nation, a good delegator, and a man with a heart… Reagan was an attractive head of state and an accomplished leader. Barack Obama In office: 2009–17 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Rebecca Brückmann, associate professor of history at Carleton College and author of Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood (University of Georgia Press, 2021) Barack Obama became the nation’s first African American president, 390 years after the first documented slave ship arrived in the continental British colonies. Obama’s identity should not eclipse his effectiveness: he oversaw the passage of urgent economic reforms and the first comprehensive healthcare law since Lyndon B Johnson signed the 1965 Medicare and Medicaid Act. Obama expanded civil rights, reconfigured US foreign policy, and emphasised the fight against climate change. Read more | American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know Obama’s 2008 ‘Yes We Can’ campaign centred his charisma and rhetorical skill. He tapped into widespread dissatisfaction with George W Bush’s administration amid the Iraq War and a worldwide economic recession, promoting a hopeful and inclusive vision of the country. Once elected, he confronted the longest economic downturn since the 1930s. One month after Obama took office, in addition to offering financial ‘bailouts’ for banks and the automotive industry, Congress passed an $800bn stimulus package, investing in infrastructure, education and renewable energy. By the time Obama left office, unemployment had been cut in half. The Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), his landmark achievement, outlawed health insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and halved the number of uninsured Americans. The Obama administration strengthened civil rights by bolstering equal pay provisions, repealing the anti-LGBTQ ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy, supporting marriage equality, and offering a path to work authorisations for undocumented minors. Confronted by an obstructionist Republican Congress that rebuffed attempts at bipartisan coalition building, the Obama administration increasingly relied on executive orders to effect political change. Obama raised the federal minimum wage, designated national monuments under an Indigenous commission, and cut federal greenhouse gas emissions. Obama’s foreign policy saw the continuation of his predecessors’ military interventionism in the Middle East, which made critics question the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2009. However, he re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba after 54 years, and he brokered a new agreement on nuclear weapons development in Iran. Most constructive of all was his spotlight on the climate crisis, which enabled the breakthrough 2016 Paris Agreement. In the face of racist threats, birtherist conspiracies and a conservative countermovement, Barack Obama was a remarkably effective president during socio-politically challenging times in the 21st century. Read more | Life after the White House: what the US presidents did next This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
Marco Polo’s adventures in Asia in the 13th century earned him everlasting fame, with his very name now synonymous with the excitement of exploration. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar
Life had taken a turn for the worse for Rustichello of Pisa. In the dying days of the 13th century, the Italian romance writer found himself locked up as a prisoner of war. Over the previous years, Rustichello had made something of a name for himself as the first author to pen an Arthurian romance in Italian. Yet he had got himself captured while fighting for his native city in the Genoese-Pisan War. And so here he was, denied his freedom, languishing in a Genoese jail. Yet if Rustichello was searching for some sort of salvation, he didn’t have to look far. It lay in the identity of the curious individual with whom he shared his cell. That man began telling Rustichello an extraordinary story. It was a tale of an epic journey to China – of encounters with unimaginably rich and powerful rulers, of strange and exotic lands, of brushes with creatures that would make your heart race and skin crawl. And it triggered in Rustichello an idea. The Italian writer soon saw the potential of turning the memoirs of his well-travelled cellmate into a book. And so he set about writing them up in the default language of medieval romance: Old French, but with a smattering of Italian. The result – The Travels of Marco Polo, or Le Divisament du Monde (‘The Diverse Parts of the World’), as it was originally known – was Rustichello’s crowning achievement. And it would turn his cellmate, Marco Polo, into one of the most famous figures of the entire Middle Ages. Can we trust The Travels of Marco Polo? Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit. But look beyond its remarkable impact, and how much credence should we give to the text that Rustichello committed to paper following his incarceration with Polo? How useful is the book in understanding life in Asia – especially China – in the Middle Ages? In short, can we really trust Marco Polo’s word? Read more | Why are Marco Polo's travels so famous? To answer this question, we first need to untangle what kind of book Le Divisament was, and what it aimed to do. At its heart is the tale of how – in the early 1270s, at the age of just 17 – Marco embarked on an extraordinary journey to China with two other Polos: his father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo. The trio, so Le Divisament tells us, travelled to the far east at the end of a superlative period of imperial expansion triggered by the rise of the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan (c1162–1227). So formidable was Genghis as both a warlord and a conqueror that the empire he established would, at its peak, extend all the way from eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan. However, by the time Marco and his companions arrived on the scene, the Mongol empire had split into a number of virtually autonomous states – and the age of rapid expansion was all but over. Only to the east – in the dominion of Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan – were major wars of conquest being fought, notably when, in 1279, Kublai extinguished the rule of southern China’s indigenous Song dynasty emperors Sadly, the original text of Le Divisament, describing the world that greeted Marco and his companions on their arrival in China, is lost. But there’s enough consistency between the various manuscripts to indicate that what we’re reading is essentially the same book. However, this is not necessarily the book you might expect. For all that its English title talks of Polo’s travels, Le Divisament is emphatically not a travelogue. Rather, it is a description of the known world, based loosely around Marco’s experiences. As descriptions go, it’s often an unsatisfactory one. The text is rambling and discursive. It is also given to maddeningly artificial changes of direction, such as when it embarks on a description of the Black Sea, before – having recalled that Marco has already given an account of this – heading off abruptly in another direction. There are other irritations. Despite repeatedly promising to confine himself to describing lands he had seen – and to distinguish personal observation from hearsay – the book includes regions, such as the coast of east Africa, that it’s highly unlikely Marco ever visited. For the most part, there is little sense of an itinerary. And yet, despite these limitations, there are extraordinary details to be found. What do we learn about the Mongols in the book? Le Divisament states that, having arrived at the court of Kublai Khan, Marco swiftly made a favourable impression on the Mongol ruler, who recruited him into his service. The Great Khan apparently despatched Marco as his representative on missions within China – and, in a number of cases, around the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Venetian was often charged with securing exotica for Kublai’s collection, such as the alms-bowl of the Buddha, and drafting interesting reports on these journeys. Marco’s accounts of his interactions with the Great Khan are remarkable. Read more | What was life like under the Mongol empire? Yet arguably more astonishing to his contemporaries were his descriptions of the marvels he had witnessed on his travels. Some of these are undoubtedly in the tradition of the fantastic – take, for example, the giant bird called the ruc, which could drop elephants from a great height. Many others, however, use exaggeration – and explore the remarkable within nature – rather than employ pure fabrication. So we read of a king of Champa (the southern part of present-day Vietnam) who has 326 children, and of a giant ruby in the possession of the king of Ceylon, a jewel Marco allegedly saw at first hand. Marco also describes huge Chinese ships, and invites us to marvel at the enormous populations of Chinese cities – not to mention the vast number of islands to be found in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. The book sings the praises of a great island lying due east of China, named Cipingu, which abounds in gold and pearls. That island is now known as Japan – and Marco’s book was the earliest western source to mention it. Marco (or Rustichello) seems to take a positive pleasure in demolishing common misconceptions about the east back in western Europe. The mythical salamander is not a living creature but asbestos, an incombustible substance mined from earth. The corpses sold in India as dead pygmies are, in fact, dried monkeys. The unicorn is identified as a rhinoceros – not at all the kind of creature, the book assures us, that allows itself to be ensnared by virgins. Timeline: the life and travels of Marco Polo c1254 Marco Polo is born in Venice to a wealthy merchant. His mother dies when he is young and he is raised by extended family 1269 Marco’s father, Niccolò, and uncle Maffeo – both merchants – return to Venice after having visited the court of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan 1271 Niccolò, Maffeo and Marco set out on a new expedition. It’s believed that their journey east takes them through Iran, Afghanistan and on to China c1275 According to Marco’s account of his travels, the Polos arrive at Kublai Khan’s summer capital of Shangdu in modern-day north-eastern China c1275–c1292 In Marco’s words, he is appointed to serve as Kublai’s foreign emissary and spends the next 17 years travelling extensively across China c1292 The Polos escort a Mongol princess to Persia, visiting modern-day Vietnam and Sri Lanka en route. They eventually return to Venice c1298 Marco is captured by Venice’s enemies the Genoese. His cellmate in Genoa – an author called Rustichello – begins writing up (and embellishing) Marco’s memoirs c1300 Copies of Rustichello’s book The Travels of Marco Polo proliferate. It will help make Marco arguably the most celebrated explorer of the Middle Ages 8 January 1324 After living out the final years of his life in his native Venice, Marco Polo dies Did Marco Polo make up details in his Travels? So Marco witnessed some extraordinary sights on his travels – and he was all too happy to share them with his readership. Yet, to return to the question posed earlier: can we trust Marco’s word? When he lectured his fellow Europeans on the intricacies of life in the far east, how far was he dipping into the well of lived experience, and how much was make-believe? Certain details in the Le Divisament are undeniably questionable on historical grounds. Prominent among these is the claim that the Polos rendered invaluable assistance to Kublai’s forces in the capture of the city of Xiangyang. This is known to have occurred in 1273, a year or two prior to the Venetians’ arrival in China. In fact, Chinese sources give Muslim siege experts the credit for assisting Kublai’s assault on the city. This is not the only passage that stretches credulity. Niccolò and Maffeo had already travelled to China (in the early 1260s), and Le Divisament tells us that, during this first visit, they had been commissioned by Kublai to bring back to China 100 Christian missionaries together with some holy oil from Jerusalem. Read more | Your guide to the Silk Roads The book also claims that Pope Gregory X appointed the Polos as his ambassadors to the Mongol Ilkhan in Iran following a meeting in Acre. Both are great stories; neither is likely to be true. Many historians have also questioned the credibility of Marco’s co-author. Rustichello was known from his other writing to have been a habitual name-dropper – once claiming, for example, that the Lord Edward (the future Edward I of England) had lent him a book of Arthurian romance. Were Marco Polo's Travels believed at the time? Such scepticism has a long history. Le Divisament started making waves across western Europe from as early as the second decade of the 14th century – and it wasn’t long before rave reviews were being counter-balanced by the voicing of doubts. In particular, Marco’s contemporaries struggled with the contrast between the received image of the Mongols – a people customarily portrayed in 13th-century Europe as nomadic barbarians – and the book’s depiction of the wealth and impressive organisation of Kublai’s empire. In short, while Europeans could accept the existence of a sophisticated polity in the east, the idea it was presided over by the Mongols was far more difficult to swallow. Europeans were all too willing to lap up the fictional story of the Christian king Prester John, who, according to the traditional legend, ruled over a kingdom in the east. However, the version of Prester John’s life in Le Divisament – which described him as a minor prince overthrown, paradoxically, by Genghis Khan with the help of astrologers – was much less to their liking. What is the modern assessment of The Travels of Marco Polo? Modern critics are more troubled by what seem like glaring omissions from the Venetian’s text than his depiction of the Mongols. Marco’s failure to mention the Great Wall of China shouldn’t be held against him because, contrary to popular belief, the continuous structure that exists today had not yet been built. But it is more difficult to account for his silence regarding tea-drinking, the use of fingerprinting for authentication of documents, or the way Chinese women bound their feet. Other critics have pointed to the fact that, although Marco is at great pains to depict himself as a highly valued agent of the Great Khan, no reference to him has been found in Chinese sources. In the eyes of some modern academics, such omissions fundamentally undermine Marco’s entire story. One has even gone as far as to claim that he never made it further east than the Black Sea. Do I agree with this assessment? No. In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically improbable about a Venetian finding employment in China under the Great Khan. Kublai is known to have recruited men of diverse talents to serve him. In fact, this seems to have been a trait of Mongol rulers: by 1289, the Ilkhans were employing Italians as envoys, interpreters and mercenaries. Marco’s maritime voyages on the Great Khan’s behalf fit easily within the burst of diplomatic activity that took Kublai’s representatives to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and peninsular India between 1278 and 1294. One explanation for the Polos’ absence from Chinese sources is that they would simply have been classed in the same category as all the many other foreign agents drawn from lands to the west of China. So numerous were these visitors that the Chinese had two terms for them: xiyu (‘westerners’) or semu (‘people of various nations’). What of the accusation that Marco grossly inflated the role he played in Kublai’s court and exaggerated his adventures? Even his most vigorous of defenders would have to concede that it’s highly likely that he did both. Yet he’d hardly be the first traveller to be guilty of such a ‘crime’. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t have any adventures at all. Read more | A knight's (tall) tale: why medieval traveller Sir John Mandeville was more popular than Marco Polo Maybe the best way to make any significant headway in the quest to determine the veracity of Marco’s writings is to locate documentary evidence to support his presence in the Mongol world. Unfortunately, this is in vanishingly short supply. Marco’s later life, in which he became a successful merchant, is comparatively well documented. But firm proof of his travels remains elusive. In fact, the nearest we get to documentary evidence is his uncle Maffeo’s will. This refers to “the three tablets of gold that were from the magnificent Chan of the Tartars”, a term that could mean either the Great Khan or one of his relatives. It is presumably one of these tablets that is mentioned in an inventory of Marco’s property drawn up decades after his death, during a dispute among his notoriously litigious kinsfolk. Why were Marco Polo's travels so significant? Ultimately, given the difficulties of the sources, and the doubts swirling around Marco’s account, perhaps we have to make an admission – that the most remarkable thing about the Polos’ travels is not so much that they happened, but when they happened. Their long journey to China fell several years before an Italian presence in Asia is even documented. It would be up to 30 years before the great age of Italian settlement in China’s coastal cities would get under way. That makes the Polos true pioneers. In the 13th century, Venetian and Genoese traders established footholds in Crimea and the chief camp-cities of Mongol princes in Iran and in the western steppes. Yet no one ventured nearly as far east as Marco and his two relatives. Is it any wonder, then, that generations of western Europeans read his accounts of his travels with slack-jawed wonder? As the 14th century went on, European voyages to China began to decline. Then, in 1368, a native Ming dynasty less ready to welcome foreign merchants kicked out the Mongol rulers from China. But the western imagination never lost sight of the image of a fabulously wealthy empire lying to the east. When Christopher Columbus embarked on his transatlantic journeys in the 1490s, which led to the ‘discovery’ of the New World, he was seeking an alternative route to ‘Cathay’. Before he boarded his ship on one of his famous voyages, Columbus packed an indispensable guide. It was a copy of Marco Polo’s book. Peter Jackson is emeritus professor of medieval history at Keele University. His books include The Mongols and the West (Routledge, 2018) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine