Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
How Tibbles the cat single-handedly caused a Victorian-era extinction
How did one cat take out an entire species of bird in the 19th century? Dr Ross Barnett explains more about how human behaviour through history has caused devastating impact on rates of extinction
Before the dodo, the notion of human-caused extinction was unimaginable. However, in the three and a half centuries since the dodo disappeared (the last widely accepted sighting was in 1662), the extinctions of species driven by human behaviour have occurred widely across the globe – driven by both habitat loss and hunting. Few stories of extinct animals are as poignant as that of the Stephens Island wren. This flightless bird was wiped out in rapid fashion – not by poaching or habitat destruction, but by a single cat Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, palaeogeneticist and extinction expert Dr Ross Barnett discussed the history of human-caused extinctions. The story of the wren's extinction begins in 1894, when a lighthouse keeper on Stephens Island, New Zealand, introduced a female cat named Tibbles to the remote outpost. Cats had never before been present on Stephens Island, a small island 55 miles from Wellington off New Zealand’s South Island. And Tibbles’ arrival, explains Barnett, “decimated – exterminated – the last population of this unique flightless songbird.” The Stephens Island wren was a flightless species of bird which lived in holes in the ground, an existence sometimes characterised as a ‘Hobbit-like’. Peter P Marra and Chris Santella described the bird in their book Cat Wars (2016, Princeton University Press) as: “Equipped with large feet and a short tail, it ran low to the ground among the shoreline rocks or jumped from branch to branch through thick tangles of knotty shrubs.” Most importantly to this tale, the Stephens Island wren did not need to fly. “There was no need to leave the island or the ground for long,” explain Marra and Santella. “Food was available throughout the year, and the species could breed on the island.” And, fatefully, there were no predators. Read more | How do you really kill a dragon? But in 1894, the wren’s existence changed. Tibbles quickly became more than a companion to the lighthouse keeper, turning into an unwitting agent of destruction. As Marra and Santella wrote: “Cats do not always kill out of hunger”. They can stimulated by the chase and other prey-return behaviour that some have suggested as cats trying to teach another cat or perhaps even a human to hunt. “Tibbles, once on the island and allowed to roam, doing only what her instinct told her to do,” write Marra and Santella, soon began bringing the small birds, also known as Lyall birds – “sometimes whole and sometimes half-eaten.” “By 1895, within a year of the cat turning up on Stephens Island, there were no more Stephens Island wrens,” says Barnett. But the blame does not rest solely on Tibbles. “Here we have a complete extinction down to humans,” says Barnett, pointing out that the introduction of the cat was a human decision. “Essentially, the proximate cause is the cat. But humans have brought the cats – and they've decimated the population.” But it’s not just about cats and wrens. Barnett tells the story to highlight the broader pattern of human-caused extinctions throughout history. Read more | 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about animals in ancient Rome “As long as humans have been around, as long as we've been moving around the planet, I think we've been causing extinction.” The fate of the Stephens Island wren mirrors other extinctions. The dodo, famously wiped out in the 17th century by human influence, similarly had no natural defences against introduced predators. “Once we turn up and start modifying the landscape in these island environments, which are naive to our presence, species like the dodo or the wren stand no chance,” says Barnett. Barnett also highlights the broader environmental impact of these human-caused extinctions. "The one that tugs at my heartstrings the most is the Steller’s sea cow," Barnett reflects. The Steller’s sea cow, a giant sea creature which was related to the dugong and grazed on kelp forests, was driven to extinction by human hunting in a matter of decades after its 1741 discovery by naturalist and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller, when he and his sailors were shipwrecked on Bering Island in the North Pacific during an expedition. The stranded sailors hunted the mammals for survival, The rapid demise of the Steller’s sea cow was not unlike the fate of the Stephens Island wren. Once discovered, the gentle giant found itself vulnerable to human exploitation. After the sailors’ stranding, and after word of the species spread (bringing more hunters), the Steller’s sea cow was extinct by 1768. “That's less than 30 years between discovery and extinction,” says Barnett. "They just sound like really beautiful animals that were absolutely destroyed by desperate people in desperate times."
Penal transportation to Australia: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
From criminal sentencing to colonial settlement, Nancy Cushing answers questions on the transportation of British convicts to Australia
Why did the British state decide to send criminals across the globe to Australia? Was it really as grim as you might expect to be one of those transported? And what was the impact of the convict transportation system on Australia and its indigenous peoples? In our latest Everything you wanted to know episode, Nancy Cushing answers listener questions on convict transportation to Australia. Nancy Cushing is the author of A History of Crime in Australia: Australian Underworlds (Routledge, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
William Douglas: infamous bushranger, prize-fighter and reader of skulls
Born in one of the first generations of black Americans legally free from slavery, William Douglas travelled the world but still wound up in chains and facing the lash. Meg Foster explores his life of crime across 19th-century Australia, which made him a target of lynch mobs and the press, and how the real man has to be unravelled from the myth of “Black Douglas”
In May 1855, hundreds of Victorian gold miners moved to lynch a gang of alleged murderers and thieves. The Alma goldfields in the Australian colony of Victoria saw between 100 and 400 diggers set out to punish a nefarious criminal, named Black Douglas, and his brothers in crime. They knew Douglas as a dastardly goldfields’ entity, a black colonial bogeyman accused of a slew of serious crimes including violent robbery and (though all evidence suggests he wasn’t guilty) the murder of a white woman on the diggings at Avoca. The lynching was averted after a police man convinced the miners it was in their best interests to bring in Douglas and his men to face British justice (Douglas was sentenced to two years’ hard labour). “It will give very general satisfaction to the public to be informed that the career of this notorious criminal and his mates in crime has sustained a check,” declared one report. On the podcast | ‘Black Douglas’: a not so dastardly bushranger? Douglas was renowned as a “bushranger” – a bandit who robbed to survive and hid in the Australian bush on the run from the law. While some white bushranging men gained assistance and local fame for their criminal deeds in this period, appearing as some kind of colonial Robin Hood to some of their working-class supporters, Douglas was cloaked in infamy. The miners did not concern themselves with the details of Douglas’s life, or verifying the heinous stories told about him. They knew Douglas by reputation as a black man and a criminal, and that was enough for them. But Douglas’s time on the goldfields was just one small part of his epic life story. And there is far more to his tale than immediately meets the eye. Who was 'Black Douglas' and where did he grow up? Black Douglas was American. Born William Douglas, in Philadelphia in 1817, he entered the world with some luck on his side. Douglas was one of the first generations of black Americans to have been born legally free from slavery and enforced labour, as Pennsylvania was an abolitionist state. It had ushered in the first state enforced programme of emancipation in the world with the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780. Philadelphia, in particular, was known as a hub for runaway slaves and a centre for free black thought and culture. From the late 1820s, the city was home to thriving black literary societies that provided their own schools and education. This was a remarkable feat considering that, at this same time, reading was viewed as a seditious skill for enslaved people in the American south. This is not to say that Douglas had an easy life. Racial hatred grew as the 19th century progressed. Many citizens of Philadelphia began to fear and resent the new free black population of which Douglas was a part. Douglas undoubtedly experienced racism and may have predicted its increase. This might have been why he left. Where did he go after leaving the US? By 1835, Douglas was living in England. The most likely way that he could have journeyed thousands of miles from North America to Britain was as a seafarer, perhaps working for his passage on board a trading vessel. Douglas was described later in life as a cook/servant, and he may have occupied these roles on a ship – they were, after all, common occupations for someone of Douglas’s race and youth. Read more | Black British history: key questions answered In some ways, seafaring would have offered Douglas more freedom and equality with his peers than he found on land. Men were more likely to be employed according to their skills rather than their ethnic origins, although this didn’t mean ships were free from the grip of racism. Ships relied on hierarchy and absolute obedience to one’s superiors. Crew members with more power could arbitrarily punish members lower down the ladder and could use racial slurs to demean their lessers. If Douglas was indeed employed on a trading vessel, it wasn’t for long, for soon he was working as a labourer in England. And it was here that he first encountered the hard hand of British justice. In January 1835 at the age of 18, he was brought before the Rye Quarter Sessions in Sussex. Alongside a man named John Smith, he was accused of stealing two woollen coats, the property of a Charles Taylor. Caught red-handed in the act of the theft, the odds were not in Douglas’s favour. He and Smith were found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to New South Wales. The verdict was expected. The sentence was not. Although transportation to Australia was a common punishment in early 19th-century Britain, in Rye it was far from the norm. Rye had control over its criminal justice system, but it usually sent those accused of serious offences to the Sussex Assizes. Douglas and Smith were tried and punished severely to serve as an example of the government’s robust stance on crime, and as a deterrent to any like-minded criminals. What was his life like in Australia? The next leg of Douglas’s international journey was coerced, as he was shipped across the world to the Australian colony of New South Wales as punishment for his crime. Life in the colonies was not to his liking. During his six years there, he received 336 lashes and spent 12 months working in irons for various misdemeanours and crimes, from being absent without leave and neglect of work to assault. By 1841 it seems that Douglas was so unsatisfied with convict life that he tried to leave it, bolting into the bush to become a bushranger. Despite goldfield rumours to the contrary, this was the one and only time in Douglas’s long life that he committed bushranging crime, and it was incredibly anticlimactic. On the podcast | Meg Foster tries to answer whether Australian bushrangers were folk heroes or common criminals Douglas and an accomplice named John Wood held up a cart at Seven Mile Hollow, robbed it of “blankets, some tea, sugar and other property”, according to the Sydney Herald, and were captured soon after fleeing the scene. The Sydney Monitor noted: “[The man in the cart] recognised Wood, but Douglas, who is a man of colour, had a black handkerchief over his face, but [the] prosecutor knew him to be a man of colour by his hands.” For this crime, Douglas was tried and sentenced to be transported again; this time to the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land (present day Tasmania). It was a place of secondary punishment, a site to send convicts who had committed new crimes in the Australian colonies. It was designed to both instil fear in offenders and to reform them through a coercive system of labour. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/G38GW8sml-aee48a7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Convicts were often put to hard labour in Van Diemen’s Land, as depicted in this print from the 1820s (Photo by Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Convicts were often put to hard labour in Van Diemen’s Land, as depicted in this print from the 1820s (Photo by Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> The work was incredibly varied – from clearing land to providing domestic service for private settlers – but given Douglas’s record, it’s likely he would have been employed in heavy physical labour. Convicts’ situation would improve if they served enough time with good behaviour, but if they resisted the system, they were punished. Douglas chose resistance. In his nine years on the island, he was punished for 32 separate offences ranging from misdemeanours like drunkenness and obscene language, to serious crimes like riotous behaviour and assault. He remained a recidivist despite the fact that in Van Diemen’s Land he received punishments of 49 months and 14 days’ hard labour. He also suffered eight bouts of solitary confinement, totalling some 60 days in isolation. How did he become known as “Black Douglas”? But Douglas not only made a name for himself as a criminal. He was also a renowned prize-fighter. Although illegal in Van Diemen’s Land at the time, matches drew large crowds and champions held a great degree of local fame. The moniker “Black Douglas” actually originated here, in the ring, as his prize-fighting name. One news report described him as 13 stone and “much taller and longer in the reach than his antagonist” – which meant the punters were “inclined to be sweet upon him”. Douglas was not to stay in Van Diemen’s Land forever, though. After serving his sentence, he was one of hundreds of ex-convicts who flocked to the colony of Victoria during the gold rush of the 1850s. There, he became known as the “infamous Black Douglas” and was regularly referred to as “infamous” and “notorious” by newspapers. Read more | The dark side of the 19th-century gold rushes There’s no evidence he ever looked for gold himself, and instead he made his money from illicit pursuits, such as sly grog-selling, and became a symbol of endemic crime on the diggings. Most of the diggers were white men, though the diggings also included Chinese, Maori and indigenous peoples, as well as white women. The white male miners were shocked and discomforted by the fact that people they believed to be their inferiors could find success on the diggings. A story casting a black man as a villain who murdered a defenceless white woman made sense to them and restored their ideas about racial and gendered order. But rumours of murder and high-stakes robberies were just that: rumour. In reality, William Douglas was a petty criminal, who was most often convicted for alcohol-related offences. After his goldfield adventures in the 1850s, Douglas was constantly in and out of gaol for vagrancy and drunk and disorderly conduct. In 1853, his own words, rarely heard, appear in the historical record. At a court hearing he “complained that police were always pouncing on him and that he had a bad reputation without a cause”. He died in Bendigo gaol in 1892 from old age and senile debility. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/MTHGH9sml-fa12c1b.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A c1886 engraving of an Australian pub. It was in establishments like this that William Douglas carved out a living reading skulls (Photo by Lakeview Images / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A c1886 engraving of an Australian pub. It was in establishments like this that William Douglas carved out a living reading skulls (Photo by Lakeview Images / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Douglas lived his life in prison, on the streets, in benevolent institutions, or in the pub. A pub may not appear to be an obvious place to challenge colonial ideas about race, but it was here, late in life, that Douglas became a phrenologist – a turn of events briefly recorded in his anonymous obituary. Phrenologists believed that by “reading” a person’s skull, they could divine details about their character and intelligence. Phrenology was also intimately intertwined with racial science, as white phrenologists used their “studies” to justify white people’s place at the top of the racial ladder. And yet, at the same time, Douglas, a black man in a pub, was “reading” white people’s skulls in exchange for a pint. Meg Foster is a historian of banditry, settler colonial and public history, research fellow at the University of Cambridge, and author of Boundary Crossers: The Hidden History of Australia’s Other Bushrangers (NewSouth Publishing, 2022) This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
In one of the more extreme displays of animal control likely to be seen, a machine gun unit was sent to cull the flightless birds in the Australian Outback in the early 1930s. As Jonny Wilkes explores, however, the army severely underestimated its enemy…
In 1932, the Australian military went to war. Nearly 15 years before, its soldiers had fought in the First World War, and the Second World War was not far ahead, but this was a very different kind of conflict: the enemy were emus. The large, flightless birds – almost six feet in height on average, and capable of running 30 miles per hour – can be found all over Australia, and are able to travel huge distances during their breeding season. This posed a sizable problem for the wheat farmers of Western Australia in the early 1930s, as large populations of emus could (and did) suddenly appear, break their fences and ruin their crops. What’s more, each broken fence meant that other animals, such as rabbits or dingoes, could get in and wreak further havoc. Around 20,000 of the flightless birds had descended on the Campion and Walgoolan regions in the so-called ‘wheatbelt’. Why did the 'Emu War' happen? This was the time of the Great Depression, and it was already hitting farmers hard. wheat prices were falling, but the subsidies promised by the government had not been delivered. The farmers, many of them war veterans, could do next to nothing about those problems, so their anger and frustration went into seeking a drastic solution to the emu epidemic. They found an ally in Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, who agreed to their requests for machine guns to rid the Outback of the emu menace. It was not a large operation. The military force he dispatched was comprised of two soldiers, Sergeant S McMurray and Gunner J O’Halloran, under the command of Major Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery. They were equipped with two Lewis light machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition – half the bullets for the number of emus they were sent to cull. Pearce was so convinced that it would be a success that he sent a news cinematographer from Fox Movietone to film the ‘war’. He believed there could be some good PR for the government. Military operations got underway in early November 1932, having been delayed a few weeks due to rain. The idea was to herd the emus towards the guns, where they would present an easy target. How did the army lose the Emu War? Nothing went to plan. As soon as the shooting started, the birds scattered into quick-moving, hard-to-hit small groups. Even when the soldiers did find their mark, the emus could withstand several bullets to their bodies seemingly without knowing it, let alone dying. They had the “invulnerability of tanks”, said Meredith. Every attack failed miserably, including a major ambush on at least 1,000 emus that came to nought when the machine gun jammed after just a few seconds. On 8 November, the pint-sized army withdrew, only to be sent back within a few days when the farmers begged for a second assault. That lasted until December, at which point Meredith and his men were forced to admit defeat and retreat: the Australian army had been defeated by emus. They had used nearly all 10,000 rounds of ammunition, but at the cost of 10 rounds per emu killed. What was the aftermath of the Emu War? The failures of the so-called ‘Great Emu War’ were widely ridiculed in the press, and not just in Australia. The news spread around the globe, drawing criticism from conservationists as far away as Britain. One tongue-in-cheek battle report was offered by the ornithologist DL Serventy. “The machine-gunners’ dreams of point-blank fire into serried masses of emus were soon dissipated," he wrote. "The emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month.” Not long afterwards, a much more effective strategy emerged: would-be emu hunters (anyone with a rifle, essentially) were offered a bounty. In six months in 1934, bounties for more than 57,000 emus were claimed.
Aboriginal Australians: a modern history
Richard Broome explores the experiences of Aboriginal Australians after the arrival of white settlers in the 1780s
Historian Richard Broome, author of Aboriginal Australians, discusses the experiences of Australia’s indigenous peoples after the arrival of white settlers, uncovering stories of exploitation and oppression, but also of agency and cultural independence. Richard Broome is the author of Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 (Fifth Edition – Allen and Unwin, 2019) Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
Cakobau: the first (and last) king of Fiji
Cakobau was crowned the first king of Fiji 150 years ago, but within three years his kingdom had crumbled, replaced by British rule. Toby Wilkinson chronicles the imposing warlord’s remarkable reign
On 5 June 1871, an unlikely ceremony took place in the ramshackle colonial settlement of Levuka, on the tropical island of Ovalau, at the heart of the Fiji archipelago. Before a motley crowd of European settlers – sugar-cane planters, gun-runners and the assorted jetsam of empire – and a few native Fijians, a tall and imposing local chief was proclaimed the king of Fiji. The first and last person to bear that title, the man at the centre of proceedings was better known to his subjects as Cakobau (pronounced “Thakombau”). Born circa 1815, his personal journey, in the space of half a century, from cannibal to king to British subject, is one of the more incredible stories from the era of Pacific colonisation. As this year marks the 150th anniversary of his accession, it seems an appropriate moment to bring him back to life and tell his story anew. The Fiji islands were first sighted by a European called Abel Tasman in 1643, but it was not until 1800 that western “civilisation” began to encroach on the traditional Fijian way of life. In the wake of sandalwood-traders, who stripped Fiji of much of its native forests, came the “beach-combers”, outlaws who had fled justice in their home countries and come to live among the Fijians as gun-runners and interpreters. These ne’er-do-wells married local women and exercised a degree of influence over the native chiefs. In the early 19th century, Fiji comprised about a dozen major chiefdoms which, since long before European contact, had been engaged in endless internecine battles. The cannier rulers recognised the military advantage to be gained from western firearms and used them to pursue hegemony. The Victorians and the British Empire: a brief guide and timeline Foremost among these ambitious chiefs was the ruler of the tiny islet of Bau, located less than half a mile off the coast of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. Measuring barely a mile in length, and covering an area of just 20 acres, Bau came to exercise a degree of influence out of all proportion to its size. Its rulers were famed as warriors – they bore the proud title of vunivalu (“warlord”) – and they harried their neighbours relentlessly. All along the coastline of Bau, rock-built docks served the great war canoes that set out on regular expeditions to subdue the vunivalu’s rivals. Eating one’s enemies Bau’s ascendancy began in 1832, when the island’s unpredictable ruler, Tanoa, was deposed and fled into exile. That could have marked the end of his dynasty’s rule, had it not been for the cunning and determination of his son, Cakobau. Pretending to side with the rebels, he secretly laid plans for a surprise attack. The result was Tanoa’s restoration in 1837 (the year of Queen Victoria’s accession), after which Tanoa reigned, but Cakobau ruled, pursuing political advantage with single-minded determination. In one respect, father and son were very alike: Tanoa had a penchant for human flesh (Mary Wallis, an American who wrote a book about her visits to Fiji with her husband from 1845 to 1849, described him, with gleeful horror, as “one of the greatest cannibals in Feejee”), and Cakobau shared his father’s taste. The ovens of Bau were frequently filled with the enemies of the chief. Some anthropologists have sought to deny the existence of cannibalism in Fiji (or indeed anywhere else), arguing that it was a figment of the western imagination, designed to degrade indigenous peoples and justify colonisation. But this ignores the weight of evidence from Fiji, including artefacts and multiple independent accounts. As the Fiji Museum itself explains: “Cannibalism was a normal and ritualised part of life, integral to Fijian religion and warfare.” It was part of a complex culture where eating one’s defeated enemies was “an act of vindictive vengeance reaching beyond the grave”, and “the ultimate insult in a society based upon ancestor worship”. Neither Tanoa nor Cakobau sought to deny cannibalism, rather asserting it as an integral part of their traditional customs. Cannibalism at sea: the starving Victorian sailors who are a cabin boy Despite his predilections, Cakobau attracted the admiration of western visitors. Wallis found him “not destitute of dignity”, and a fellow American called Charles Wilkes described him as “extremely good-looking, being tall, well made and athletic. He exhibits much intelligence both in his expression of countenance and manners. His features and figure resemble those of a European, and he is graceful and easy in his carriage.” The Napoleon of Fiji In his battles with neighbouring chiefdoms, Cakobau continued to enhance his reputation as a fierce and skilled warlord. Wallis declared: “I think that he may truly be called the Napoleon of Feejee.” And western envoys found it increasingly convenient to focus on a single ruler with whom they could do business. For instance, in 1844 the British consul in Honolulu sent a letter to Cakobau in which he addressed him as Tui Viti (“King of Fiji”). In 1852, Tanoa died and Cakobau succeeded as vunivalu. With Bau and its subject territories at his feet, he fully intended to live up to his moniker as Tui Viti. Standing in his way, however, was a new group of white people recently arrived in the Fiji islands: missionaries. In the 1850s, the London Missionary Society was in full cry, and reports of cannibalism in Fiji fuelled their converting zeal. They were particularly focused on Bau, for, as their spokesman James Calvert explained: “The hearts of the missionaries were stirred because they saw here the centre and stronghold of all the horrors and abominations that darkened Fiji.” Tanoa had been prepared to welcome the missionaries, but Cakobau was fiercely opposed. His resistance found unlikely support in the more dissolute elements of the white settler community, who, according to Calvert, “had reason to fear that their own licence would be restricted by the establish- ment of Christianity”. What eventually changed Cakobau’s mind was not any amount of preaching by Wesleyan missionaries, but the disastrous prosecution of a war with neighbouring Rewa. Despite a steady flow of armaments, Bau had started to lose ground, and its ruler was beginning to contemplate defeat. Cakobau, whose rise to power seemed to have been ordained by the traditional gods, began to lose faith in the old religion. On 22 April 1854, the king received a letter from George Tupou I, the ruler of Tonga (an archipelago neighbouring Fiji), who had converted to Christianity, urging his Fijian counterpart to do likewise. Just a few days later, Cakobau announced his decision to lotu (“convert”), and he did so at a service on Sunday 30 April. Three years later, he and his queen were publicly baptised. His conversion, swiftly emulated by many others across western Fiji, effectively brought to an end the old cultural system that had sparked the Bau–Rewa conflict and dozens like it. With peace established, Cakobau’s rapaciousness soon found new outlets. For example, on hearing that the kings of Tonga and Hawaii each had a ship, he ordered two. It was the beginning of a downward spiral of spending and debt. There were political troubles to contend with, too. For some time, Tonga had been expanding its sphere of influence in eastern Fiji, with the intention of subjugating the whole country. With pressures on his finances and threats to his throne, Cakobau began to wonder if the intervention of a foreign power might be his only salvation. In 1858, he approached the British consul, offering Queen Victoria full sovereignty over Fiji. But the British were wary of taking control of a territory wracked by internal conflict and spiralling debts. London sent two commissioners to investigate and then dithered over a decision for four years. Eventually, in 1862, the British gave their answer: a polite refusal. But Cakobau was not wholly disappointed. In many ways, his move had worked. Attracted by the possibility of annexation, more British had settled in Fiji, reining in Tongan ambitions. Meanwhile, the American Civil War had pushed up the price of cotton, leading to a surge in white planters in Fiji. By 1866, there were around 400 Europeans in the islands; their informal capital was Levuka on Ovalau, a place of industry and commerce, but also drunkenness, fights and racial discord. Relations were not helped by Cakobau’s own attitude. He borrowed large amounts of money from the traders of Levuka to finance his lavish spending but took a haughty approach when asked to repay it. When one creditor had the temerity to press his case, Cakobau silenced him with the words: “I did not send for you. However, white men make good eating: they are like ripe bananas.” Royal ambitions Eventually, the settlers lost patience. They demanded a government that would protect their property and recognise their rights. In 1865, they persuaded Cakobau and his fellow high chiefs to form a Confederacy of the Independent Chiefs of Fiji, with Cakobau as president. Within two years, however, it had unravelled. In its place, the settlers decided to create a kingdom of Bau. This suited Cakobau, who had not given up his ambitions to rule as a genuine Tui Viti. His coronation as king of Bau on 2 May 1867 was a colourful and faintly ludicrous affair. The crown, created for the occasion for the princely sum of four-and-a-half dollars, was made of zinc, with a few decorative baubles. When placed upon Cakobau’s immense coiffure it provoked laughter among the gathered assembly; only the king’s natural air of authority and dignity prevented the occasion from descending into chaos. (Cakobau is said to have worn the crown only once before throwing it into the sea.) The British consul at Levuka, too, was far from impressed. He warned British residents not to recognise the new regime. Without diplomatic support, the kingdom of Bau was doomed from the start. Pressure soon grew for a more stable, predictable government. Matters worsened further in July 1867, when a Wesleyan missionary, Thomas Baker, was killed and eaten in a remote part of the main island of Viti Levu by villagers who despised both the new king of Bau and his new god. Cakobau had been powerless to stop the atrocity, highlighting the limits of his authority. The country was descending into chaos. In desperation, settlers in Levuka once more conspired with Cakobau, and on 5 June 1871 they proclaimed him king of Fiji. But changing the ruler’s title changed nothing. Financial and political troubles beset the new regime on every side. With few options, Cakobau appealed to a British cotton planter, John Bates Thurston, to join his administration, first as chief secretary and later as acting premier. Thurston managed to navigate endless financial crises, and the settlers’ demands to “open up” Fiji (by which they meant the appropriation of native land). However, by 1873, both Thurston and Cakobau had come to the conclusion that annexation by Britain offered the only long-term solution. Mutiny on the Bounty: the incredible tale of how castaway captain William Bligh made it back to England For the second time, a formal request was sent to London; it took the British nearly a year to decide to send two commissioners to investigate. Meanwhile, events in Fiji were moving fast. First, the government fell in a vote on the budget, and the king dissolved parliament. Then there were demonstrations in the streets of Levuka and tax revolts. Fiji’s white settlers were now almost universally opposed to the administration they them- selves had created. They ridiculed the king, calling him “Cockaboo Rex”. Thurston, a man of unusually liberal views for the period, stood firm, believing that long-term justice for the Fijians outweighed the short-term interests of his fellow cotton-growers. Eventually, the British commissioners were forced to accept the logic of cession. Cakobau explained, poignantly: “If matters remain as they are, Fiji will become like a piece of driftwood on the sea, and be picked up by the first passer-by... By annexation the two races, white and black, will be bound together... and the stronger nation will lend strength to the weaker.” In September 1874, the governor of New South Wales arrived at Levuka to make the final arrangements. On 10 October, in the Council Room on Ovalau, the final signatures were added to the Deed of Cession. The signatories were Cakobau, 11 other high chiefs and a Tongan prince. Cakobau’s proclamation left no room for doubt: “Unto Her Majesty the Queen of Britain – We, King of Fiji, together with other high chiefs of Fiji, hereby give our country, Fiji, unreservedly to Her Britannic Majesty Queen of Great Britain and Ireland; and we trust and repose fully in her, that she will rule Fiji justly and affectionately... Signed: Cakobau R., Tui Viti and Vunivalu.” The independent kingdom of Fiji had lasted just three years. A century of colonialism For the next century, Fiji was a colonial possession of Britain. But thanks to Thurston, who served under the first governor and eventually became governor himself, Fijians’ land and their rights to make their own laws were protected, and the native Fijians retained their culture, faring better than most colonised peoples. Britain was able to showcase Fiji as a model colony (in fact, it was the exception, not the rule). Cakobau’s wisdom in choosing Thurston as his chief political aide was perhaps his greatest legacy to Fiji. Cakobau shaped his country in other ways, too. Because of Bau’s pre-eminence during the crucial years of conversion and colonisation, its dialect, just one of about 30 main tongues spoken across the archipelago, was adopted by the church and the press. This standardisation helped ensure the survival of Fijian as a language into the 21st century. Cakobau remains a visible presence in Fiji today. In front of the parliament building on Victoria Parade, a seated statue of the king of Fiji commemorates the Act of Cession. At that ceremony, he presented his favourite war-club, known as the “blood-bather”, to Queen Victoria’s representative. Many decades later, it was given back to the Fijian people. Today, somewhat embellished, it serves as the parliamentary mace. The vunivalu of Bau is still held in high esteem, and Bau itself is accorded a special sanctity as a royal island and heartland of Fijian culture. Cakobau’s emblem, the white dove of peace (an unusual choice for a warlord and cannibal), retains its place in the Fijian coat of arms. And, 150 years after Cakobau’s coronation, his regal motto, Rerevaka na kalou ka doka na tui (“Fear God and honour the king”), remains the national motto of the Republic of Fiji. Toby Wilkinson is vice-chancellor and professor of history at the Fiji National University, a bye fellow of Clare College Cambridge, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society This article was first published in the July 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine
Australian bushrangers: folk heroes or common criminals?
Meg Foster discusses the bandits that lived outside the law in Australia’s bush – from Ned Kelly to surprising lesser-known figures
Meg Foster discusses the bandits that lived outside the law in Australia’s bush, unpicking myth from reality in the stories of criminals who became folk heroes and national icons. She looks at the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly, and also shares surprising stories of lesser-known Aboriginal, black and women bushrangers.
Gallipoli: 5 reasons why the First World War campaign was a failure
But for the achievement of the Australian and New Zealander Army Corps (Anzac) in carving out a small bridgehead at Anzac Cove, the WW1 campaign to seize the Gallipoli peninsula was a disaster, says Peter Hart. Writing for BBC History Magazine, the author of a 2011 book on the disastrous First World War campaign offers his explanations for the Allies' failure in 1915
What happened at Gallipoli? The Gallipoli campaign was a terrible tragedy. The attempt by the Allies to seize the Gallipoli peninsula from the Ottoman empire and gain control over the strategically-important Dardanelles failed in a welter of hubris, blood and suffering. Located just across the Dardanelles straits from the fabled city of Troy, its classical undertones have helped create a rich mythology of ‘the terrible ifs’; of what might have been achieved with ‘a bit more luck’. The beach landings at Helles – the first made against modern weapons systems – saw incredible heroism and turned the sea at V Beach red with blood. Gallipoli is today synonymous with the achievement of the Australian and New Zealander Army Corps (ANZAC) in carving out a small bridgehead at Anzac Cove. That maze of tangled gullies and ridges is still sacred for Australians. But for all that the campaign was an utter failure. The question is why? Here are five possible reasons... The Gallipoli campaign was poorly conceived The First World War stalled when the huge armies of Germany and France fought themselves to a standstill on the Western Front in 1914. When the Ottoman Turks attacked Russians in the Caucasus mountains in December 1914, Russia went to her allies requesting help. The British were fully committed elsewhere but a group of politicians led by Winston Churchill, then at the Admiralty, sought to help Russia with an attack on the Gallipoli peninsula that aimed to gain control of the Dardanelles straits that separated Asia and Europe. This, it was boasted, would remove one of the allies ‘propping up’ Germany, influence wavering Balkan states and open the sea route to Russian Black Sea ports for the export of munitions to feed Russian guns on the Eastern Front. Read more | 10 WW1 generals you should know about Much of this was nonsense. There was no backdoor to Germany; no easy route to victory, no allies that propped her up. Germany operated on interior lines of communications and even in the event of a Turkish defeat would merely have rushed reinforcements to bolster her Austro–Hungarian allies. Finally Britain did not have sufficient munitions for her own armies. Britain had to fight the war as it was; not how visionaries dreamt it might be. German armies were deep in France, and Britain could not just abandon her ally to her fate. The priority of the Western Front meant that the Gallipoli expedition could never be given sufficient men and guns to have any chance of success. As such it should never have been started. The myths of the battle of Gallipoli Professor Gary Sheffield challenges some commonly held assumptions about this failed attempt to change the course of the First World War... The British Army wasn't ready The British Army of 1915 was not yet ready for war. There were not enough guns or shells for the Gallipoli campaign to have any chance against Turkish troops once they were well dug in, with barbed wire, machine guns and artillery. Success demanded hundreds of guns that did not exist, fired by gunners not yet trained, using complex artillery techniques that had not been invented, firing hundreds of thousands of shells as yet not manufactured. It required infantry tactics not yet painfully developed in the heat of battle and support weapons not yet imagined. Gallipoli shared the failings of every campaign launched in that benighted year: a lack of realistic goals, no coherent plan, the use of inexperienced troops for whom this would be the first campaign, a failure to comprehend or properly disseminate maps and intelligence, negligible artillery support, totally inadequate logistical and medical arrangements, a gross underestimation of the enemy, incompetent local commanders – all of which was overlaid with lashings of misplaced over-confidence leading to inexorable disaster. Gallipoli was damned before it started. Every day merely prolonged the agony and it ended in such catastrophe that it could only be disguised by vainglorious bluster. Inferior leadership The British commander was General Sir Ian Hamilton who was one of Britain’s greatest soldiers. He was no fool, but his plans for Gallipoli were fatally overcomplicated. He launched multiple attacks, each dependent on each other’s success, but left isolated when things went wrong. Taken as a whole, his schemes were utterly unrealistic. Everything had to go right, but his plans demanded incredible feats of heroism, raw troops would have to perform like veterans and incompetent subordinates lead like Napoleon. Above all, his plans demanded that the Turks put up little resistance. When the landings failed he blamed everyone but himself. "Behind us we had a swarm of adverse influences: our own General Headquarters in France, the chief of the imperial general staff of the War Office, the first sea lord of the Admiralty, the French cabinet and the best organised part of the British press. Fate willed it so. Faint hearts and feeble wills seemed for a while to succeed in making vain the sacrifices of Anzac, Helles and Suvla. Only the dead men stuck it out to the last." – General Sir Ian Hamilton Opposing Hamilton was a German, General Otto Liman von Sanders. A steady professional, Liman husbanded his reserves until he knew what the British were doing before committing them to devastating effect. He was fortunate indeed in one of his Turkish subordinates Colonel Mustafa Kemal. As Kemal led his 57th Regiment into action against the Anzacs on 25 April his chilling words have gone down in legend: "I don't order you to attack – I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our places." This unflinching martial spirit inspired the Turkish troops to victory. The Turks were experienced and well led Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who became President Kemal Atatürk after the war, summed up the grit and determination his countrymen demonstrated at Gallipoli. A good proportion of the Turkish soldiers had recent experience fighting in the Balkan wars of 1912–13. But all of them came from a country where life was hard. They made tough, well-disciplined soldiers when fighting in defence of their homeland. "But think about the enemy which landed at Ari Burnu shores equipped with the most advanced war machinery, [they] were, by and large, forced to remain on these shores. Our officers and soldiers who with love for their motherland and religion and heroism protected the doors of their capital Constantinople against such a strong enemy, won the right to a status which we can be proud of. I congratulate all the members of the fighting units under my command. I remember with deep and eternal respect, all the ones who sacrificed their lives..." – Colonel Mustafa Kemal In contrast, with the exception of the British 29th Division and two French divisions, most of the Allied troops committed to battle were inadequately trained. It was not that the Anzacs, the reservists of the Royal Naval Division, the Territorials and the first of Kitchener’s New Armies raised in 1914 were not keen; it was just that they were not yet ready for war in such an unforgiving environment as Gallipoli. The Turks were experienced and well led. They were determined to win – and they did. It was a logistical nightmare The United Kingdom was some 2,000 miles away and the nearest ‘real’ base was that of Alexandria back in Egypt with its spacious quays, cranes, lighters, tugboats and plentiful labour. Yet it was nearly 700 miles from Alexandria to Gallipoli. The advanced base of Mudros on the island of Lemnos, some 60 miles from Helles, had a good natural anchorage. But that was all it offered – there were no port facilities. A phenomenal amount of work was required to build it up into a military supply base. There was an advanced supply depot at Imbros, but even then there were still 15 miles of open sea to the Gallipoli peninsula where all the thousands of tonnes of necessary foodstuffs and munitions had to be landed on open beaches. Makeshift piers were all they had and these were ephemeral in the face of the raw power of the sea. Every day of the campaign Turkish shells crashed down on the beaches while soon U-boats lurked offshore. Gallipoli was a logistical nightmare that would make any responsible staff officer tear his hair out. As a method of waging warfare, it was insanity. Peter Hart is a military historian specialising in the First World War. He is the author of Gallipoli (Profile, 2011) This article was first published in the February 2011 edition of BBC History Magazine
Female activism: 10 remarkable protests from around the world
For centuries, women have taken to the streets to fight discrimination, instigate change, and make their voices heard. As Women's History Month continues, we look back at 10 remarkable examples...
The Suffrage movement – 19th Century to the present, worldwide The right of women, by law, to vote in national and local elections has been a topic of discussion since ancient times. But serious campaigning for female suffrage in the modern world can really be seen to have begun in the late-19th century, with New Zealand, in 1893, becoming the first self-governing country in the world to give all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. The fight by suffrage campaigners in New Zealand, such as Kate Sheppard, inspired women across the world to take up the fight in their own countries. In Britain, late 19th-century parliamentary reforms, which had given more men the right to vote, yet rejected petitions to enfranchise women at the same time, led to the creation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), which boasted more than 50,000 members. Years of non-violent campaigning ensued under the leadership of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, including lobbying MPs, petitions to parliament, marches and protests. But with their pleas falling on deaf ears, many women became frustrated at seemingly fruitless peaceful tactics and decided to take more direct action. And so the Suffragettes were born in the form of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Manchester suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughters, Christabel, Sylvia and Adela, under the motto ‘Deeds Not Words’. From around 1905, a new strand of the women’s suffrage movement grew and demonstrations became increasingly angry, with window smashing, hunger strikes, arson attacks and even bombing deployed by militant suffragettes. Ultimately, it was the essential work of women in World War I that proved to be the catalyst for change, and in 1918, some 8.5 million women (over the age of 30 who met a property qualification) were granted the right to vote. It would not be until 1928, however, that all British women over the age of 21 became enfranchised. Can we call the suffragettes terrorists? “Absolutely,” says Fern Riddell Between 1893 and 1960, 129 countries and territories granted women the right to vote, including the US (in 1920, following ratification of the 19th Amendment). Black and Asian women in the US were still subject to discriminatory voting laws, however, which persisted until the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Australia, Indigenous women were not enfranchised until 1962, while black women in South Africa had to wait until 1993 and the end of Apartheid – more than 60 years after white South African women were granted voting rights. The most recent country to grant women the right to vote (in local elections since the country has no national elections) was Saudi Arabia, in 2015. Aba Women’s War – 1929, Nigeria From November–December 1929, some 25,000 women in the provinces of Calabar and Owerri in southeastern Nigeria rebelled against oppressive policies introduced by British colonial administrators, including a new market tax. The women attacked European-owned stores and Native Courts run by colonial officials, and in some areas forced British-imposed ‘warrant chiefs’ to resign. But they faced brutal retaliation from colonial troops, with more than 50 women killed and dozens more injured. The uprising is widely considered to be one of the first major challenges to British authority in West Africa during the colonial period, and many of the proposed plans were dropped as a result, including the market tax. The matchgirls’ strike – 1888, UK In 1888, with the support of socialist activists, some 200 girls at London’s Bryant & May factory downed tools in protest against work conditions and meagre pay. They were joined by 1,200 more workers and the company eventually conceded to their demands promising, among other things, to abolish fines and wage deductions and introduce a breakfast room. Women’s March on Versailles – 1789, France One of the earliest events of the French Revolution, the Women’s March started in the marketplaces of Paris in protest against the scarcity, and escalating cost, of bread. Before long, thousands of women brandishing weapons were en route to the Palace of Versailles, determined to force Louis XVI back to Paris. The king heard their grievances but, unconvinced, some of those in the crowd besieged the palace and nearly captured Marie Antoinette. The siege only ended when Louis XVI agreed to move the royal court back to the city. Let them eat cake: did Marie Antoinette really say it? The Putilov strike – 1917, Russia On 8 March 1917, International Women’s Day (23 February in the old Russian calendar), groups of (mainly) women began gathering on Nevsky Prospekt in the Russian capital of Petrograd. By midday, numbers had swelled to tens of thousands, many clutching homemade banners demanding change. The afternoon saw them joined by female textile workers who had gone on strike in protest against bread shortages, and by late afternoon, some 100,000 people – including men – had joined the strike. The following day, as many as 150,000 people took to the streets, some looting, overturning trams or fighting police; others simply marching for change. After a rally in Znamenskaya Square, where speeches called for an end to the monarchy, the crowds finally dispersed. But the demonstration, led initially by women, helped sow the seeds of the Russian Revolution. Women’s March – 1956, South Africa “Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo!” (“You strike a woman, you strike a rock”), sung 20,000 South African women of all races and backgrounds in unison. 20 inspirational quotes from women through history Gathered outside the headquarters of the South African Government, in Pretoria, this demonstration on 9 August 1956 protested against the compulsory carrying of passes by black women, which controlled and limited where they could travel and prevented them from finding better-paid work in the city. “We shall not rest until we have won for our children their fundamental rights of freedom, justice, and security” declared the petition presented to government. Miss World protest – 1970, UK The 20th Miss World beauty pageant was thrown into disarray in 1970 when women’s liberation protesters stormed the Royal Albert Hall in London, where 58 women were competing for the Miss World title. The 100 million viewers (22 million in the UK alone) watching the event on TV screens across the world could only gape as host Bob Hope was pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables, flour and stink bombs. As well as objecting to the idea of women being judged solely on their looks, the protesters also wanted to draw attention to the multinational companies and press who supported the competition. The protesters were each fined around £1,500 in today’s money and some spent a night in the cells; the BBC stopped broadcasting the event in the 1980s. Miss Australia Quest protest – 1981, Australia In 1981, the International Year of Disabled Persons, feminist and disability advocate Lesley Hall and others from the Women With Disabilities Feminist Collective smuggled protest placards into the finals of the Miss Australia Quest competition, at St Kilda Town Hall in Victoria. The pageant was being held to raise funds for the then-named Spastic Society (now Scope), supporting people with cerebral palsy. But Hall – who also lived with a mobility-limiting condition – and her co-campaigners stormed the stage to protest against the stigmatisation of people with disabilities, none of whom were represented at such beauty pageants. Women’s Liberation Movement – 1960s–80s, worldwide <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/03/GettyImages-2643279-9bf2998.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="Bella Abzug (1920 - 1998) is running for Congress and is one of the chief organisers of the Women's Liberation Day parade in New York, on the 50th anniversary of women winning the vote in the United States. She is carrying an anti-motherhood sign reading 'Free the female body from pain and inequality. Put motherhood in a test-tube'. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" title="Liberation Parade" /> The Women’s Liberation Movement emerged in the 1960s – predominately in the West – during a period of rapid social and cultural change, and campaigned on a range of issues affecting women – from the objectification of and violence against women, to equal pay, reproductive and abortion rights and sex-based discrimination. A host of methods – both legal and illegal – were used to raise awareness of the issues at the heart of the movement, and to demand social and legal change – including protest marches, ‘die-ins’, letter writing, flour bombing, as well as supporting women at a grass roots level in consciousness-raising groups. Greenham Common – 1981–2000, UK In September 1981, the Welsh group ‘Women for Life on Earth’ arrived at Greenham Common, Berkshire, to protest against the decision to site 96 Cruise nuclear missiles there. When attempts to discuss the decision were ignored, they set up camp outside the fence surrounding RAF Greenham Common airbase. The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was born. For the next 19 years, women occupied the camp 24 hours a day, in all weathers, and without electricity or running water. One of the biggest events held at the site took place in December 1982, when more than 30,000 women joined hands around the base. The missiles were removed between 1989 and 1991, but the Peace Camp remained as a protest against nuclear weapons; the last women left in September 2000. Charlotte Hodgman is editor of BBC History Revealed This content first appeared in the December 2020 issue of BBC History Revealed
The Crown S4 E6 real history: Charles and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia & the start of ‘Dianamania’
Episode 6 of season 4 of The Crown sees Charles and Diana, deep in the midst of marital troubles, called upon to tour Australia and New Zealand in an effort to stem feelings of republicanism in one of the Commonwealth’s key countries
Diana’s priorities as a mother become clear and the couple are seen to momentarily reconcile. Meanwhile, the tour is hailed as a huge success. But how historically accurate is all this? Let’s unpick the historical truths of episode 6… (This article contains spoilers for season 4, episode 6 of The Crown) Episode six of the new season brings the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, back to centre stage, covering the couple’s 1983 tour of Australia. It was the job of incumbent Australian Labour prime minister Bob Hawke to welcome the young royals to the Commonwealth country as part of a royal tour aimed at shoring up the royal family’s reputation. Hawke is clearly sceptical about Charles’s ability “as a different breed” to connect with the Australian public, and there is a lot riding on the tour. In reality, Hawke did want Australia to become a republic by 1988; in The Crown it’s made clear to Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) ahead of their tour that if Australia were to strike out on its own away from the Commonwealth, other countries would “fall like dominoes”, in the words of one adviser. The Queen (Olivia Colman) expresses her hope that the couple will be alright. Yet amid a harrowing depiction of Diana’s struggle with the eating disorder bulimia, and Prince Charles’s visits to the Parker Bowles estate, it seems as though the tour will be anything but. In the opening scenes of episode 6, the strength of Charles and Camilla’s enduring chemistry is made plain as the pair perform a joke at a dinner party while Camilla’s husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, looks on. Charles and Camilla’s relationship was, according to most records, platonic during this stage of Charles’s marriage to Diana, and royal expert Penny Junor says that he and Camilla were not mixing socially: “If Camilla knew Charles would be at a party during this time, she didn’t go.” It is true that Andrew knew about Charles and Camilla’s close connection. And he had been aware of their initial affair in the late 1970s, over which he “didn’t make a fuss,” writes Junor in her biography of Camilla, explaining that Andrew’s own infidelities perhaps made it difficult for him to complain. Charles and Camilla started seeing one another again in 1986, and Camilla would visit Charles at Highgrove, “although usually in the company of Andrew or other friends,” says Junor. Gradually it turned into a sexual relationship. In some ways this was “a perfect arrangement” because it allowed Camilla to see the prince while Andrew continued his own affair with Rosemary Pitman, says Junor. Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world” The royal tour begins Hearing that Diana wishes to take the baby Prince William on the tour, the Queen expresses disbelief. (During the Queen’s 1954 tour of Australia, five-year-old Charles and three-year-old Anne remained at home in the care of nursery staff and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The pair were famously greeted by their mother with handshakes upon her return.) In contrast to Queen Elizabeth’s hands-off parenting, Diana hovers over nine-month-old William on the flight to Australia, describing him as “perfect in every way”, making clear her feelings at being separated from her son for two weeks (when William was stationed at a large sheep ranch in Woomargama with his nannies). Diana tells Charles and his aides she is determined to bring up her son with “a vestige of humanity”. This is true to history. “I want to bring them up with security,” Diana is quoted in Andrew Morton’s 1992 biography as having said. “I hug my children to death and get into bed with them at night. I always feed them love and affection; it’s so important.” Princess Diana: a "modern" mother who ripped up the rule book Yet this desire to be close to her children (rather than leaving them behind while she carried out her official role), and her very public displays of affection, were incongruous with how the royals had always done things. The drama chooses to show this through royal aide Edward Adeane, who tells Diana: “You married the Prince of Wales, ma’am. And that is an act of service… which you signed up to for willingly and with open eyes.” This, surely, would have been what Charles had hoped for, too. Penny Junor says: “In the mid-1970s, when asked about marriage, Charles had said that when he marries it must be to someone who understands what she’s marrying into; who understands the job. And because it would have to be a marriage for life (because divorce was out of the question), this is one area where his heart must be ruled by his head, he said. “Charles understood that his marriage wouldn’t be any old love match, he couldn’t just marry someone he was utterly mad about and live happily ever after. His wife would one day be queen and would have a hell of a lot of royal work to do. She would need to have the discipline to put up with the life she was entering into – no spontaneity, no freedom, no privacy. His wife would have to understand and be willing to accept all these handicaps.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/GettyImages-52101621-6013177.jpg" width="1024" height="765" alt="Prince Charles and Princess Diana visit Australia and New Zealand with their son Prince William" title="Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited Australia and New Zealand with their son Prince William – a marked departure from previous royal tours. (Photo by Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)" /> Read the real history behind more episodes with our S4 episode guide to The Crown: The Crown S4 E4 real history The Crown S4 E5 real history The Crown S4 E7 real history The Crown S4 E8 real history Reception in Australia In episode 6 of The Crown, Charles and Diana initially seem to flounder when arriving in Australia. A press report from the royals’ arrival in Alice Springs on 21 March 1983 stated that the Princess of Wales “stood holding Prince William with something less than a smile on her face. She seemed uneasy, even glum, and looked at the tarmac with downcast eyes throughout much of the brief airport picture session.” In the episode, Charles’s jokes to the press fall flat, and Diana makes a gaffe referring to Ayres ‘Dock’, leading prime minister Hawke to see an opportunity to cut Australia “free” of the monarchy. In reality, some of Charles’s less-tactful remarks did make headlines, one notably in Sydney: the Prince of Wales upset animal lovers when he joked during a speech that Prince William was being given “warm milk and minced kangaroo”. In The Crown the Queen says trip was always designed to be Charles’s tour, and Philip bemoans the fact that his wife sent the “B team” for something so important, putting the tour’s objective in peril. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/GettyImages-52103182-c9015a4.jpg" width="1024" height="675" alt="Diana, Princess of Wales, with Australian prime minister" title="Diana, Princess of Wales, with Australian prime minister Bob Hawke. In 'The Crown', Prince Philip worries that the Queen has sent the “B team” for such an important tour. (Photo by Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)" /> Later in the episode, Diana and Charles appear distant and divided – in reality, royal press officers assured reporters and photographers that any signs of distress were due to jet-lag and adapting to the heat – and Charles continues to rely on Camilla as a close confidant (though both maintain there was nothing more between them than close friendship during this time). Yet things come to a head when Diana becomes insistent that the tour is paused so she can see William (who had been stationed in Woomargama with his nannies). The royal tour of Australia was a challenging time for the young princess, who had suffered postpartum depression after William was born and was still battling an eating disorder. “I find I can't stop playing with him,” Diana had said at William’s first press conference in Australia, and she insisted that she and Charles should return to Woomargama to see him as much as possible. This prioritisation of her child over royal duty, often viewed as a departure from royal protocol, would continue; Diana later shifted her official responsibilities so that her schedule matched that of her children as much as possible, and in her official calendar the princess had all the everyday details of her sons’ lives marked in green ink. A royal reconciliation? The drama chooses to depict a confrontation between the couple behind closed doors at the sheep station, used as a touchstone for a number of issues facing them: the most prominent being Charles’s connection with “her” (Camilla). Though Charles insists that his relationship with Camilla remained platonic until his marriage had “irrevocably broken down”, the drama has Diana citing love letters, a photograph in Charles’s wallet, and the ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet. These are all real accusations levied by Diana in Andrew Morton’s biography, which also mentions the cufflinks that Charles wore on their honeymoon, engraved with two interwoven Cs. Charles reportedly dismissed Diana’s reaction to them, saying they were “a present from a friend”. The gulf between Charles and Diana is emphasised, with both parties bemoaning the fact they feel misunderstood and unappreciated, and both saying they are in need of praise and encouragement – characteristics upon which many differing biographical views seem to agree. “How awful incompatibility is,” Charles wrote to one friend, according to Sally Bedell Smith’s 2017 biography of the prince. “How dreadfully destructive it can be for the players in this extraordinary drama.” Yet as the pair reconnect, the drama emphasises how the couple’s children offered common, and often happy, ground. Describing this time with William and Diana in a letter to a friend, Charles said: “The great joy was that we were totally alone together,” and how he and his wife “laughed and laughed with sheer, hysterical pleasure” at William’s antics as a baby. The drama depicts the strength of this reconciliation in Charles failing to return a phone call from Camilla. Stuart Higgins, an editor at The Sun who had a close friendship with Camilla in the 1980s, believes there was a definite “cessation” in her relationship with Charles and that Charles made an effort with Diana. But he also noted that there was no sense Camilla was ever “out of contact”. In Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 authorised biography, much was made of the fact that Charles and Camilla had “virtually no contact” between 1981 and 1986, but they still hunted together and mixed in the same circles during this time. The start of ‘Dianamania’ Post-reconciliation, in The Crown Charles and Diana are seen to continue the tour, and as they greet crowds as a pair all seems well. Arthur Edwards, one photographer present on the tour, said: “They just looked at each other like they wanted to go and rip the clothes off each other. They were so much together and in love.” As shown in the drama, the couple did famously dance together at a charity ball in Sydney, and Charles “prided himself on his ballroom prowess”, writes Bedell Smith. Meanwhile, “the British press reported on how the royal pair were working to reinvigorate the historic ties of friendship and political unity that existed between the UK and Australia,” says Dr Ed Owens, a historian of the British monarchy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/The_Crown_charles_diana_dance-3418fd0.jpg" width="1024" height="756" alt="Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Diana (Emma Corrin) in 'The Crown', left; and the real royal couple dancing in Sydney" title="Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Diana (Emma Corrin) in 'The Crown', left; and the real royal couple dancing in Sydney in 1983. (Images by Netflix/Des Willie and Getty Images)" /> “Diana proved a real hit with the Australian public and media,” Owens adds, “and was noted not only for her fashionable dress style, but also for the informal way she interacted with crowds by exercising her famous ‘common touch’.” Yet as Charles and Diana take on separate engagements, it becomes clear that Diana is the real star – the 1983 tour is often regarded as the birth of ‘Dianamania’. “Hundreds of people fainted, flowers and flags were thrown at the couple, and police became seriously concerned about crowd surges. Police numbers were increased by 25 per cent,” the Telegraph reported, while in Melbourne the couple drew crowds of 200,000. Before Diana, Charles had been the main draw. After one walkabout in California during his tour of the USA in 1977, writes Bedell Smith, his hands were “swollen to twice their size and covered in bloody cuts from the diamond rings of his fervent admirers who had grasped him so tightly.” Yet, once married to Diana, the picture changed. Though the prince often made light of the crowds’ preference for his young wife, says Penny Junor – he once “quipped that all he was good for these days was collecting flowers for his wife” – it was a new and uncomfortable experience for him. When crowds chanted for Diana, the prince said: “You will have to make do with me.” The drama chooses Princess Anne to voice how the public’s preference for Diana will make Charles feel: “This was meant to be his grand debut, his moment in the sun, as future king,” she says. Her prediction is not wrong; “In those moments, the form of their public life together was set,” writes Bedell Smith. “Diana’s umbriferous presence disquieted Charles, a feeling that would soon become full-blown resentment.” The final straw for Charles in The Crown comes when Bob Hawke makes clear that it is Diana, not the prince, who can claim credit for derailing his hopes of making Australia a republic. “No offence, but if it had just been you [on the tour] I might have got my wishes!” he jokes, before telling the prince “That superstar [Diana] may have just set back the cause of Republicanism in Australia for the foreseeable future.” True to history, the Telegraph reported that the couple’s popularity had set back the cause by “two decades”. Opposing the royals: a brief history of republicanism in Britain The real history behind The Crown Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts… Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II: what was their relationship like? Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance Why did Charles and Diana's marriage fail? The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world” Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan: what happened and why did he break in? Was the Queen opposed to the Falklands War? The Crown: the real history behind series 1–3 Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding: everything you need to know Why was Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles’s great-uncle, assassinated? Everything you need to know about Prince Charles Who is Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall? Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon: why did their marriage break down? Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage Who is Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II? A couple divided In The Crown, upon their return to the UK, it becomes clear the tour has driven a wedge between Charles and Diana. They are seen going their separate ways – Diana to Kensington Palace, and Charles to his beloved Highgrove. Ed Owens says that “the private tensions that emerged during the tour took fuller form on the couple’s return to Britain, where the Prince of Wales (and other members of his family) expressed concerns about the way he, as next-in-line to the throne, was consistently outshone by his wife.” Diana herself told Morton that though the tour was “basically a great success”, when crowds favoured her over Charles “he wasn’t used to that and nor was I. He took it out on me. He was jealous; I understood the jealousy but I couldn’t explain that I didn’t ask for it.” The episode ends with Diana requesting an audience with the Queen, asking for the monarch’s support, telling her mother-in-law: “I don’t know who to turn to anymore.” While this meeting is further example of The Crown writer Peter Morgan speculating what happens behind closed palace doors, the Queen’s avoidance of overt emotional displays and confrontation, and Diana’s need for approval are certainly well-chronicled. In Morton’s biography, Diana said of the tour: “I was thrown in the deep end […] No one ever helped me at all. They’d be there to criticise me, but never there to say: ‘Well done’.” The drama chooses this moment, with Diana splashed across the front pages of newspapers splayed over the Queen’s table, to show that Diana had a new and different understanding for what the public wanted from the royal family and of how to connect with the modern world. But the Queen dismisses Diana’s appeal for love and approval – a misjudgement that cuts Diana further adrift. Diana later described the 1983 tour to Andrew Morton as a “make-or-break time for me” – a sentiment echoed at the end of the episode by the royal women gathered at Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother’s brutal assessment that Diana will eventually “bend” under the pressure (or “break”, Princess Margaret quips) is testament to the increased isolation Diana felt. But Diana returned from the tour, in her own words, “a different person… more grown up, more mature”. It seems the predictions of The Crown’s royal women may be off course. Discover more real history behind The Crown here NEXT EPISODE: The Crown S4 E7 real history: Princess Margaret’s decline and a royal secret revealed Elinor Evans is deputy digital editor at HistoryExtra With thanks to Penny Junor, royal biographer and author of 10 books on members of the royal family; and Dr Ed Owens, a historian of the modern British monarchy and author of The Family Firm: Monarchy, Mass Media and the British Public, 1932–53 (University of London Press, 2019)