The Making of the Modern Arab World: Episode 3

In the third episode of The Making of the Modern Arab World Tarek Osman looked at the rise of political Islam since the 1970s. He started by reminding us of the context for this, which he talked about more in the previous episode (post). As of about 1966 Nasser was both the leader of Egypt and the most prominent public face of Arab Nationalism. The state and politics were secular in nature, and to some degree so was the general population – women generally did not go veiled, for instance. Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood were repressed, and their leaders and activists imprisoned, brutally treated, and potentially executed. The regime was also fairly left wing, and pro-Soviet. Then in 1967, with the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel, Arab Nationalism lost a lot of face. Nasser died in 1970 and his successor, Anwar Sadat, changed the focus of the state.

Sadat liked to see himself as “the pious President”, and took pains to present himself as a good Muslim. He backed off on the repression of Islamist groups, releasing many of their members from prison and permitting them to openly take jobs at universities. At the same time he was swinging the political compass of the regime towards the right, and towards the USA and capitalism. He also started to shrink the state involvement in the welfare of the poor. As the country embraced capitalism Sadat removed the subsidies that were artificially keeping the price of bread low – after riots from students and workers who could no longer afford food the subsidies were reinstated.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups took advantage of both the perceived corruption of the state, and the gap opening up in care for the poor. Islamist rhetoric held out the hope that if Islam was fully integrated into the state then politics would be more honest & less corrupt. There was also a prominent notion that the reason the war against Israel had failed was that the Arab states had turned away from religion and so God was no longer on their side. The Muslim Brotherhood were also involved in widespread charitable works – providing for the poor who were being failed by the state, which encouraged people to regard them as a viable alternative to the authoritarian state.

1979 was a year containing three events that were to lead to increased support for Islamist groups across the region. One of these was the revolution in Iran – this might’ve been Shia rather than Sunni but it was proof that an Islamist uprising could overthrow a secular state. Another was the signing of a treaty between Egypt and Israel, which was taken as evidence of the state’s corruption and decline. And thirdly the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets pitted Islamist forces (such as the Taliban) against the Soviets – by Cold War logic this meant that the US and other Western groups saw the Islamist groups as their potential allies, and hence worth funding and training.

Another growing influence on the Arab region was the Saudi Arabian regime. The balance of political and economic power was shifting away from places like Egypt and towards the oil countries. Many Egyptians and nationals of other countries went to work in Saudi Arabia, and many of them became more religious and more conservative under the influence of the culture they were now living in. When they returned to their native countries after several years they kept contact with people they knew in Saudi Arabia. Along with funding suitable Islamist groups this was a conduit for Saudi Arabian influence in the politics of countries like Egypt.

Osman talked about how over the next couple of decades (the 80s and the 90s) the Islamist groups were struggling against the “near enemy”, i.e. the regimes of their own states. After the end of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan at the end of the 80s many of the groups that had been involved in that jihad felt flush with success – they felt they had brought down the Soviet Union and the time was ripe for success in their own countries. This was not to be. A Muslim Brotherhood led uprising in Syria was brutally dealt with at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, and the breaking of the back of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation in that country. The Algerian civil war, sparked after the army overturned the election of an Islamist leader ended in defeat for the Islamist forces, after the loss of many lives. And in Egypt Mubarak had come to power after the assassination of Sadat by Islamist soldiers (in the early 80s), and brutally cracked down on Islamist groups. Violent protest was undertaken by extremist Islamist groups during the 80s and early 90s, but the Luxor Massacre in 1996 actually caused that to die down. Osman said that public opinion, and opinion of mainstream and even somewhat radical Islamist groups, was appalled and shaken by the massacre and the extremists who’d carried it out were denounced.

So towards the end of the 20th Century the radical Islamist groups were failing in their struggle at against the near enemy. Osman said that this is why their attention began to turn to the “far enemy”. The USA and other Western powers were involved in propping up the secular and authoritarian regimes that the Islamists were struggling against. So groups like Al Qaeda turned their attention outwards towards these foreign powers.

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“Carnival” Elizabeth Bear

Carnival is a standalone science fiction novel by Elizabeth Bear, and the first of her books that I bought – also the only one I’ve ever seen in a bookshop over here. The several books I now have of hers seem to fall into groups which represent her take on a particular sub-genre – to me this one is Bear’s take on the eco/feminist science fiction story. By that I mean the sort of thing that Sherri S. Tepper writes. But as with the others of Bear’s books that I’ve read this takes the familiar tropes of that sub-genre and does something different with them.

Carnival is set in a future where Old Earth is still the political leader of several colony planets. The population of Earth is much reduced – the majority have been Assessed by the Governors. This is explained later in the book, the Governors are AI constructed by a group who felt humans were damaging the Earth too much so the best thing to do is to kill off most of them, then enforce strict controls on population and other ecologically damaging practices. The Governors use the ubiquitous nanotechnology to kill those they Assess as needing to die – starting in the first instance with all the white people (which included the creators of the Governors, something they would definitely have approved of). It’s an End of the World as We Know It catastrophe caused on purpose by a small group of extremists. After the first wave of Assessments several off-world colonies are founded, then the Governors bring the remaining population down to an “appropriate” number. Two of the protagonists are from Old Earth, on a diplomatic mission to one of the colonies.

Said colony is called New Amazonia – it’s the sort of society I have the impression Tepper would approve of. It’s completely run by women, who go armed and have a dueling culture. Men are studs, and second class citizens, unless they’re gay (“gentle”) in which case they might get a bit more education and rights but it’s not like they’re ever going to be on a par with a woman is it? New Amazonia has something Old Earth wants – a clean & limitless power source. Possessing that might make the Governors back off a bit on the population limits. And a third protagonist is the New Amazonian counterpart to the two Old Earth diplomats.

And there’s a third culture involved here too – this one totally alien. Kii’s species once lived on what is now New Amazonia, and there are several interludes from Kii’s point of view. At first Kii feels almost superfluous, but as the book goes on you find out why this is an essential thread of the narrative. And Kii too is a diplomat of sorts – Kii is explorer-caste “And things that are new are things that Kii’s caste is for”, who else would be observing the humans and maybe interacting with them?

One of the things I like about this book is that everyone (including the secondary characters) is the protagonist of their own story. The ones we follow are Michaelangelo & Vincent from Old Earth, Lesa from New Amazonia and Kii, but everyone has their own agenda and no-one is as simple as the mask they present to the world. And everyone is masking something. The conflict in the story comes from the clash between everyone’s goals, rather than a Good v. Bad struggle, even if some of the goals are more sympathetic to me than others. And people that we thought were on different sides aren’t, and people who seem on the same side might not be. Allegiances shift (or are revealed) several times during the story but it always feels like it grows out of who the characters are and what they want.

Something Bear does very deftly is keep each culture feeling both alien to us and yet still sympathetic. I think part of how she does this is to have the things that our current point of view character Others be things that are part of our culture, and the things that they just accept as the obvious axioms of existence be things that we look at in bemusement. So for instance, there’s a bit where one of the Old Earth men is observing in horror that Lesa has a pet, how could she? An example from the flip side of it is Lesa having a contemplative moment about how it’s not like you could expect a hormonal man to really cope with the pressure of government/civilisation, they’re just not biologically set up for it. And very much all the cultures on show have their own flaws. Vincent’s is from yet another culture, and it’s presented as having been almost an idyllic childhood, but I’m not really sure I believe that (and I don’t think Bear meant one to take it at face value).

There’s a lot of other stuff I could talk about too. Communication is definitely a key theme – all three of the human protagonists are very good with the unspoken sides of communication, Kii is in a First Contact situation (kinda). Which links in with the cultures stuff I just talked about – your basic axioms of society affect how you deal with people and the assumptions you make, and how you communicate. Sacrifice is another theme (often is in Bear’s stories, to get what you want you have to pay a high price and you have to decide if that price is worth it). This story also has something going on about choosing prices for other people – the very existence of Governors is a prime example of this. A few people chose that price on behalf of the whole world, and this was not a good and noble thing despite what they might’ve thought when they did it. And this ties in unsettlingly into the interactions with Kii towards the end of the book, ends and means again and I’m not quite comfortable with the choices made on behalf of Kii even if maybe there wasn’t anything else they could do, and maybe Kii was OK with it afterwards.

Pleasingly after the Banks I’ve been reading there’s a hopeful ending. It feels like maybe, just maybe, things will get better. The net change over the course of the story feels like a positive one.

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Treasures of Ancient Egypt (Ep 2); Strange Days: Cold War Britain; Rise of the Continents

The second episode of Alastair Sooke’s series about the art of Ancient Egypt covered the Middle Kingdom (briefly) and most of the New Kingdom. He only picked a couple of objects from the Middle Kingdom – both from Senusret III’s reign. He gave the impression that this is because the New Kingdom was the Golden Age, which is true in some ways, but the Egyptians themselves looked back at the Middle Kingdom as their “classical age” where art and culture first achieved great heights. I think it’s a shame he didn’t make it more clear the reason it gets short-shrift in programmes like these is because not as much survives for one reason or another. Often because sites were re-used or updated by New Kingdom Egyptians wanting the association with past glories.

The other eight treasures on the programme were from the New Kingdom between the reigns of Hatshepsut and Tutankhamun. As well as looking at some of the iconic art from her reign he spent some time talking about the iconography of Hatshepsut as Pharaoh. Pharaohs are male, so Hatshepsut was represented with all the male accoutrements and a masculine body in her official art works. One thing I hadn’t realised before (or had forgotten) is that it was during Hatshepsut’s time that the term Pharaoh actually started to be used – it translates to “the palace” so it’s the equivalent of talking about the White House doing X or Y in the USA (and surprisingly the example Sooke used was Brits talking about the Crown which I don’t even think is the best of the possible UK equivalents – No. 10 would be better).

There was obviously some considerable discussion of the new art style that Akhenaten brought with him when he changed the state religion. Both in terms of the slightly bizarre body shapes of the earliest stuff, and the new informal poses and domestic scenes on official art works. Which does give a very different impression of the royal family of that time, even as I remind myself it’s propaganda first & foremost. Obviously the bust of Nefertiti featured in this section, you can’t really miss it out. But the item from around that era (just before it) that struck me most was the little glass fish, that’s now in Berlin. I’ve seen it before & it’s a lovely piece, but what made it the highlight of this programme for me was that they showed us how it was made. I’ve read about how these glass objects were made before but it’s different actually watching it happen. And as always I’m somewhat in awe of what people were able to do before the advent of modern technology.

Obviously the programme ended with Tutankhamun’s mask – another iconic piece you can’t miss out, which also illustrates how what we have to admire depends so much on chance. The next episode covers the rest of Egyptian culture up to Cleopatra, quite a wide range. There’ve been a few clips of the temple at Abu Simbel, so presumably that’ll feature 🙂

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This week we finished watching Dominic Sandbrook’s series about the Cold War – Strange Days: Cold War Britain. This three part series looked at British history from 1946 through to 1989 through the lens of how the Cold War affected politics and culture. So part of the series was Sandbrook telling us about the major events of the Cold War, and giving some indication what life was like on the other side, to give us context for the effects on Britain. And the other part was looking at events in Britain from a perspective we don’t always think of. Some stuff was obvious when you thought about it – like the popularity of James Bond films tying in to revelations about Russian spies in the UK. And the John le Carré novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold as the much less glamorous and more cynical take on the same thing. Other things less so – consumerism being a part of how we differentiated “us” from “them” makes sense when I think about it, but I’d never’ve thought of how capitalism was in some ways kept in check by a desire to prove it was better than the alternatives. Which made more sense when Sandbrook talked about it than I have quite managed to articulate here!

The threat of nuclear war and how that shaped our culture was one of the strands running through the programmes, and the various attempts government made to prepare people for this. Sandbrook highlighted several times the contrast between the almost optimistic government handbooks which aimed not to panic people (even if this backfired at times) and the bleak films and TV serieses which were closer to what the reality might be. He showed us clips from The War Game (a 60s film that wasn’t shown on TV for about 20 years) which was a meticulously researched documentary, and Threads (an 80s film) which was more overtly fictional. Both grim enough even in excerpt that I know I don’t want to watch them in full. In the third programme Sandbrook also mentioned a book he’d read for class when he was 10 (I looked him up on wikipedia, he’s a couple of months younger than me) – as he started to talk about it I knew exactly which book he meant before the reveal. It was “Brother in the Land” by Robert Swindells, which I’ve read. Once. I’ve dipped into it occasionally since, and it’s still on my shelves, because I remember it as a good, well written book. But I’ve never re-read it cover to cover, despite my love of post-apocalypic novels. It’s just an extremely grim and depressing and unrelentingly bleak tale of the first months after a nuclear war. I read it at about 13 or 14, a few years after it was published, and it’s stuck with me since then – it must’ve been pretty traumatising to read at the age of 10 particularly when you had to think about it for school rather than stick your head in the sand (I’ve always adopted the ostrich approach to the idea of The End of the World As We Know It catastrophes).

Anyway, that was a bit of a digression. I liked this series, in particular I thought they did a good job of mixing archival footage with new stuff seamlessly switching between the two in a way that made the old stuff seem more immediately relevant. I even liked the somewhat overblown style, but I think J found the sweeping generalised claims made at times a little irritating.

We also finished another series this week – Rise of the Continents – which I really enjoyed so I wanted to say a few words about it even though this post is already quite long! This was a series about plate tectonics and the geological history of the earth, presented by Iain Stewart. Each week Stewart looked at a different continent (Africa, Australia, the Americas and Eurasia) and followed the geological story of the continent after it split from Pangea (the supercontinent that existed when the dinosaurs roamed the earth). He showed us the evidence that tells us about this geological story, and he also showed the impact that geology has had on both evolution and on human history. He’s a geologist so was strongest on that subject, pretty good on palaeontology but said a couple of dubious historical things we noticed (but otherwise was OK on that). Basically what you’d expect as he got further from his actual area of expertise. He was also a charmingly enthusiastic presenter.

One reason I enjoyed it so much is because I think the idea of plate tectonics is inherently cool. The earth not being static but consisting of vast sheets of crust all moving around and crashing into each other is awesome. It’s also an area I don’t know much about – I think the last time I read a book on it was in the 80s, when the science was still fairly new. So there were all sorts of things I didn’t know, and most of them were in the “neat facts” category. Like did you know that as India travelled on its way to crashing into Eurasia it moved over a magma plume, which turned a big chunk of it into a zone of volcanoes. This thinned the land so India started to move quicker. But also while it sat over this region for a few hundred thousand years the amount of volcanic eruption dumped toxins in the oceans and changed the climate – so this is thought to have contributed to the decline of the dinosaurs (before an asteroid finished them off). Or did you know the silver mines in South America exist because of subduction of the Pacific Ocean floor carries water down under the land. I can’t quite remember how Stewart said this then lead to the silver deposits, but the very idea of water being carried down under the crust is one I’d not thought of before (and it’s kinda cool as a concept).

I think J didn’t like the visual effects on the programme much – there were quite a few transitions where they used a jumble of still shots and mixed up audio before Stewart explained something. It didn’t bother me as much though.

Other TV watched this week:

Episode 2 of Sacred Wonders of Britain – Neil Oliver visits several sacred sites in Britain dating from prehistoric times through to the Reformation.

Episode 2 of The Brain: A Secret History – Michael Mosley series about brains, minds and experimental psychology. We never managed to record episode 1 but we decided to watch the other two anyway.

Episode 6 of Tudor Monastery Farm – part re-enactment, part documentary about what life would be like living on and running a farm in 1500.

A Review of the New Hamlet, Seen this Recent Afternoon

Abroad yesterday afternoon south of the river to the theatre – finally hearing the new play from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. I confess I’d been dubious in advance, the revenge tragedy has been rather done to death in recent years. And even this particular story has been staged in recent memory following the script of none other than Thomas Kyd, so a re-working of Hamlet seemed to offer nothing new.

But we went, and I admit I was wrong – the pen of Will Shakespeare shook the tale up and made something fresh of it. On arrival I almost thought we had mistaken the hour, and had walked in partway through. The play began practically mid-scene, no prologue or explanation, Shakespeare trusting us to find our way through by our own wits. An interesting device. The story having been set before us with deft strokes we were swiftly under way. I began to wonder if there would be sufficient story to fill the allotted time, but this Hamlet was no man of sharp sword yet dull wit. He devised his scheme and spun his web with crazy-sounding quicksilver words to entice the King into revealing his guilt. And then in the moment where he could finally wreak revenge, he pauses and considers if it were the best time. I was of the opinion he should just have done the deed, but in argument later I am almost persuaded that Hamlet’s course might have been the better one. Why should the murderer die in a state of grace when that lack in his victim is a part of his crime? And yet, and yet. In the end they all die, even the innocent maid – and if Hamlet had not stayed his hand at first, she at least might yet live. A conundrum worthy of pondering.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were as accomplished as ever. Richard Burbage as one would expect was a delight to watch in the title role. His trademark veracity enhanced perhaps by his own father’s recent passing?

All told a play that is worth hearing again.

Ok, so if you normally read this blog and are now wondering “wtf?”: This is a creative writing assignment for a course I’m taking on Hamlet with Future Learn. We had to write a short review of Hamlet from the perspective of an Elizabethan seeing it for the first time. We were encouraged to embrace anachronism hence the mix between my normal style and slightly archaic (but not Elizabethan) phrasing. And if it was too long to stick in the 1200 char comment box we were encouraged to “set up” a blog and post it there.

If you came from Future Learn: Hi! Welcome, and feel free to poke around the rest of the site 🙂

2013 Roundup: Photos, Trips, Museums and Concerts

This part of my roundup of 2013 posts includes categories that involve photos or me going somewhere (and in many cases both).

Concerts

I don’t think we go to as many gigs as we used to – this feels like a short list of “big” concerts or events. Having said that, I think there’s a couple we went to that I haven’t written up – I’m sure we went to some Furry Live events early last year and those are not on the list. Picking a favourite is difficult – the Marillion Weekends are always special for instance and a social event for us too (7 of us in the group who went this year!). But I think that for me the Stone Roses gig has to win out – despite the unpleasantness of big-outdoor-gig crowds – although not a one-off this is only the second time we’ve seen them play and there’s no saying there’ll be another chance. That gig wins out over the Roger Waters one for me, because heathen that I am I’ve never really been that into Pink Floyd – so seeing The Wall live was a cool show but not a special event.

Museums

It’s been a good year for visits to museums and exhibitions! There’s even a few I’ve not written about (yet?) – including the Pergamon Museum in Berlin and the London Museum. And a couple in Turin too. It’s processing photos that holds up these posts, and that’s something I need to work on getting better at just sitting down and doing. It’s hard to pick a favourite, but I think the Ice Age Art one might be it – the stuff we saw there was so very old, yet still evocative as art.

Photos

The photos of the week that I post are mostly self-consciously chosen to be a bit “arty” and I’ve gradually started to title them with something that isn’t straightforwardly what the subject of the photo is. I can’t really choose a favourite, this is one of the only things on my blog that is my work as opposed to me talking about other people’s work, so they’re all either my babies or horrid (or both) depending on my frame of mind. I will mention that both Gathering and Tattered hit the “Popular” list on 500px on the day they were posted. That means something to me because I don’t do any promotion of my photos on 500px, I just post them and see what happens – so a significant handful of random strangers chanced across those and liked them 🙂

Trip

You’ll spot our Turin trip is missing from this list, the photos are part processed and I need to get on with it! I shan’t rank the two trips that are here, they’re different sorts of thing – one was a holiday and one a day out.

2013 Roundup: Other TV

And this is the final list of TV programmes we watched over the last year. I’ve sorted them into categories, but possibly in many cases this tells you a bit more about the inside of my mind than the programme itself. For instance I put the current affairs programmes like the Panorama programme about North Korea into the same category as travelogues because some of those (like Simon Reeve’s programmes) also have a theme how the world’s fucked up and it’s all our fault. But also in there are some nature programmes (like Wild Arabia) that are much more about the beauty of the world than the problems in it. And some nature programmes belong with science. Oh, and “Fiction & Related” should possibly be called “Doctor Who”…

I don’t think I can pick a favourite or a least favourite of these, it’s far too varied. And some programmes were good to have watched, but not particularly enjoyable (see Depressing Current Affairs as a category). So without further ado, the list:

Depressing Current Affairs & Travelogues

Culture & Biography

Fiction & Related

Science

The Making of the Modern Arab World: Episode 2

After a fairly long hiatus over Christmas we’ve started listening to radio programmes with our Sunday morning breakfast again. This week we listened to the second episode of The Making of the Modern Arab World. From the brief descriptions on the BBC website the first three episodes are covering the three major strands of political ideology in the region, and the fourth one looks at the lead up to the Arab Spring. The first episode had been about the secular liberal movement that rose during the early 20th Century, which moved away from the Muslim nature of the preceding Ottoman Empire but didn’t change the old class hierarchy nor did it succeed in winning full independence from the European colonial powers. This episode was looking at the Arab Nationalist movement that rose as the opposition to this.

Tarek Osman opened the programme by talking about the war in 1948 where several Arab nations fought against the new state of Israel. This conflict had been presented to the ordinary people of the Arab nations as having a foregone conclusion – obviously the Arab states would win against this upstart nation. And when this wasn’t the way that things turned out, the ruling elite of the countries lost a lot of face and respect. Particularly in the case of Egypt there was also a feeling amongst the army officers (among them Gamal Abdel Nasser) that the ruling elite was lazy and self-indulgent, and were responsible for the failure of the war. When Nasser returned to Egypt after the war he organised what started as a military coup, but turned into a popular revolution.

The coup had started as an alliance between the army officers (who were generally younger) and the Muslim Brotherhood (which had been a political organisation since the 1920s). Osman said that the Muslim Brotherhood leader had anticipated being the real leader after the revolution was over, regarding the army officers as not knowing what they were doing. For instance he wanted the Muslim Brotherhood to be given a veto on any policy decisions. But this was not well received by their allies and the alliance broke down – the army officers with Nasser at their head were now ruling the country alone.

Nasser was incredibly popular in Egypt. Osman talked about some of the things that helped to make this the case – one of which was a Muslim Brotherhood assassination attempt on Nasser while he was giving a speech. He reacted with courage (as well as a clamp down on the Muslim Brotherhood), and gained a lot of respect from people for it. He also gained a lot of respect because of the dispute with Britain over the Suez Canal – Nasser nationalised it, which upset the British & the French because they no longer controlled this strategically important waterway. So the UK and France allied with Israel, and sent troops in hoping to retake the Suez Canal and get rid of Nasser. However without the support of the US this military action failed – greatly boosting Nasser’s popularity not just in Egypt but across the Arab nations. He had beaten the old colonial powers, and Israel.

In terms of more practical reasons, he & his government also passed laws reforming land ownership. During the monarchy & before there were very few landowners – and most peasants lived on land owned by someone else, with a restrictive feudal system in place. Nasser’s reforms meant that many more people owned the land they lived on, and so they could then make money (and family members could get other jobs and make more money). They could send their children to the towns for education if they wished, and could aspire to become middle class. Many did, and so saw Nasser as someone on the side of social justice and the common people. Also during Nasser’s regime the Aswan High Dam was built, invigorating the economy.

Nasser believed in Arab Nationalism, and talked a lot about the idea of a single Arab country. This didn’t go down well with the still existent monarchies in places like Saudi Arabia, but met with a much better reception in places like Syria’s fledgling democracy. The Ba’ath party was formed by Syrian army officers, as a secular Arab Nationalist party – and took inspiration from Nasser. The rhetoric of a single Arab nation met with such approval that the Syrians offered to merge with Egypt, creating the United Arab Republic. This met with great approval at first, but after only 3 years Syria seceded and the United Arab Republic was over. The reality had been that Syria was to become part of Egypt – it was Egyptians in charge, it was the Syrian military and political parties that had to dissolve – and this was unpalatable to both ordinary Syrians and the ruling elite alike.

Nasser’s regime lost more of its glitter before the end – he lead the disastrous war (for the Arab nations) against Israel in the late 1960s. Israel’s decisive victory meant Nasser, like the King before him, lost face. Nasser died not long after, but his legacy still shapes Arab politics. Many leaders in Arab countries modelled their regimes after what they had seen work for Nasser. However, Osman pointed out that they took the wrong elements from it – instead of the charisma and bond with his people that had made Nasser so popular, people like Gaddafi and Assad instead emulated the autocratic despotic and militaristic aspects of Nasser’s rule. The programme talked to people who were less glowingly complimentary about Nasser than the above summary makes it sound. His policies of social reform were criticised for not going far enough, and for not actually being targeted at those most in need rather at those most useful or supportive of the state. The often brutal nature of the state was also discussed – and its capricious nature was illustrated by a woman who talked about how her father was a poet whose work was liked by Nasser, and several of his friends were incarcerated. But her father never was, because Nasser would cross his name off lists of “seditious” people who were due to be rounded up – so the poet escaped torture only by the whim of Nasser.

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“Mage’s Blood” David Hair

I’ve read a lot of fiction of varying qualities, and generally so long as it’s fun or interesting in some way I’ll overlook a lot of flaws. Sadly sometimes a work has a flaw that keeps popping up in your face and waving its arms around, shouting “Hey, remember me? Don’t you find me annoying? Yoooooohooooo! Over here!”. Mage’s Blood had one of those, and despite feeling that there was something there to appreciate in the story I couldn’t get past the clunky world building.

Mage’s Blood is technically a secondary world fantasy – set in a world that’s not our own, rather than our own world with some fantastical element added. Technically. But it’s full of things like these:

“Have you seen Ramon?”
“Nope. I imagine the Silacian sneak-thief is probably running his village familioso by now.”

I guess Silacian == Sicilian where the mafia come from, get it, get it, get it?? We are hit over the head with this several times, and Ramon even sprinkles Italian words & phrases through his speech … Or how about this:

The Rimoni men were clad in white shirts and black leggings; their hands rested on their knife hilts. The women, wrapped in shawls, were scowling in suspicion. […] the head of the gypsies, Mercellus di Regia,[…]

Well, what do you know, the Rimoni are gypsies, amazing what you can do with a few vowel shifts and a great big helping of stereotypes, isn’t it? The Rimoni also do double duty as the Romans – having had a large empire around a thousand years ago in this world’s past. And so the Rimoni also scatter Italian through their speech.

We’re also at the time of some great wars being fought at intervals between two continents – from the perspective of the cultures mentioned above (plus others on that continent) these are the … wait for it … Crusades. And how about the cultures on the other continent I hear you ask? Would it surprise you to find out that the people there look Arabic or Indian? And one group have a monotheistic religion, greet each other with the phrase “Sal’Ahm” and have a concept of holy war called “shihad” which they have declared against the crusaders – we’ve found our Muslims, I think. And another group wear sarees, have many gods (including Gann, sometimes referred to as Gann-Elephant in case we don’t figure out it’s Ganesha), and the author even says thanks in the acknowledgements to someone for her help with Bengali wedding rituals – I guess these are Bengali Hindus then!

Some stuff was original, but there was enough of this clumsy “oh if I just change the letters a bit no-one will notice” world building, and it was reiterated often enough, to yank me back out of the story over and over again. I wish he’d taken the time to come up with some less obvious equivalences and had the setting feel less like he’d picked a bunch of stereotyped ingredients from our world and mixed them in with his new stuff.

And it’s a shame, to be honest. There were things about the plot and characters that I did enjoy. For instance there’s a plot line with a young woman in an arranged marriage to an immortal mage – she was promised to someone else, but the mage offered unbelievable riches to her family. And her young lover follows to rescue her, and you just know it’s all going to end in tragedy of an almost Shakespearean sort especially as you see (and Hair makes you believe in) the growing affection between her and her husband. And I almost want to know what happens next, but I can’t see myself ever reading the rest of this planned quartet of books.

I’d assumed it was a debut novel, and perhaps one that should’ve been trunked and another one written using the lessons learnt writing this one. But I looked him up, and it seems this is not his first published work – he has a couple of series of YA fantasy novels set in our world. Which makes sense given what I think worked and what I think didn’t work about the book – the secondary world setting is one of the things he hasn’t done before. And sadly the stuff that worked just couldn’t keep me engrossed enough to ignore the clunkyness.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 6)

The next chapter of this book about Plantagenet England covers the decline and fall of Edward II’s reign – from the death of Piers Gaveston in 1312 through to the aftermath of Edward’s deposition.

Orientation dates:

  • The Yuan dynasty ruled China from 1279 to 1378 (post).
  • Philip IV (the Fair) ruled France from 1285 to 1314.
  • Edward II reigned from 1307 to 1327.
  • Edward III born 1312, and reaches his majority in 1330.

Times of Trouble, 1311-1330

Prestwich doesn’t think highly of any of the major players in this 20 year period of English history. He sums up Edward II as “A brutal and brainless man would probably have done better as king; Edward’s unconventional ways, combined with his lack of ability in politics and war, were disastrous in a king.”. The primary opposition to Edward’s regime in the first 10 years of this period was Thomas of Lancaster, who is dismissed with this sentence: “Thomas of Lancaster, like his cousin Edward II, was not worthy of the position that hereditary right gave him.”. The Despensers, Edward’s favourites after the demise of Gaveston, are talked about as follows: “This regime was characterized by astonishing greed and political folly”. And Edward’s deposers, his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, are discussed with statements like “It was in the land settlement that the new regime revealed its political ineptitude.” and “Roger Mortimer was a classic example of a man whose power went to his head. […] his greed paralleled that of the Despensers, and his political sensitivity that of Piers Gaveston.”.

So, this twenty year period is almost farcical in its turmoil. Edward II’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, was captured in 1312 and subsequently executed after a show trial. This new violent low in politics, of a sort that hadn’t been seen since the 1250s polarised the realm into two factions – those who were with the King, and those with Thomas of Lancaster (who had been one of those responsible for Gaveston’s death). Prestwich lists a variety of reasons for why the country didn’t descend into outright civil war, one of which is that Edward III was born later that year which not only provided Edward II with an heir but also thawed relations with his wife’s family, the rulers of France. Negotiations between the two factions dragged on over the next couple of years until the catastrophic defeat of the English by the Scottish at Bannockburn changed the balance of power once more. Not only did this make the king look weak, but Lancaster and some of his allies had not been involved and so looked wiser in comparison. And in addition one of the noble casualties, the Earl of Gloucester, had been a powerful influence for moderation.

Edward II had no choice but to give in to the earls’ demands to enforce the Ordinances set out in 1310 (see previous chapter) and Thomas of Lancaster was now in a position of power. Prestwich says he was unlucky (as well as the damning summary above) – the harvests in 1315 and 1316 were both poor due to appalling weather, causing problems for the royal finances as well. Lancaster also had internal issues that distracted him from matters of state – one of his retainers rebelled against him. At a parliament in Lincoln in early 1316 he was formally declared head of the King’s council, which he’d been acting as since 1314, and although various matters appeared to be sorted out in this parliament the King refused to co-operate with the reforms. Lancaster left government in August 1316 and the two factions began to build up their household knights and retainers.

The dispute rumbled on for another few years before civil war actually broke out. During this time Hugh Despenser the younger became increasingly important as Edward II’s favourite. War eventually broke out in 1321, and at first the rebels had the upper hand. This changed in the autumn of 1321, and the climatic battle of the war took place at Boroughbridge in February 1322 ending in total defeat for the rebels. The captured leaders, including Lancaster, were brutally executed. Prestwich sees this as Edward II’s revenge for the earlier brutal death of Gaveston. One of the reasons the war went so wrong for the rebels, and why Prestwich is so anti-Lancaster, is that this cause really lacked the idealism of earlier conflicts (like Simon de Montfort’s campaign in the 1250s). Lancaster was too obviously out for his own personal goals, rather than the country’s, to build up a solidly loyal powerbase and the period is characterised by a high degree of volatility in the loyalties of the nobles.

After Lancaster was defeated Edward II had 4 years where his regime, or rather that of his favourites, the Despensers, was dominant. There were positive reforms, this wasn’t a complete disaster for the country. However the Despensers, in particularly Hugh the younger, were primarily operating in their own interests, to make themselves rich and powerful. They also weren’t popular, due to operating via blackmail and bullying instead of rewarding those who worked with them. They “persuaded” people to co-operate by making them sign recognizances – papers which said that they owed the Despensers a debt. These were set very high, and beyond the means of the so-called debtor to pay – the threat of the recognizance being enforced is what kept people in line. This didn’t provide the Despensers with a broad or loyal powerbase, and set them and Edward II up for the disaster of 1326.

Another factor leading up to the events of 1326 was that Edward was neglecting Isabella again – possibly by an affair with Hugh the younger’s wife, possibly with Hugh the younger himself. Whichever it was it set Isabella at odds with Hugh the younger. When she was sent to France to negotiate a peace in a war that had broken out between England and France she refused to return. With her son in France with her she joined forces with Roger Mortimer who had his own reasons to dislike the Despensers. Isabella and Mortimer embarked on a scandalous affair, and also gathered together allies to invade England. The primary of these was the Count of Hainault – in return for his daughter Philippa marrying the future Edward III he would support the invasion with troops and ships.

The Despenser regime collapsed in the face of the invasion. Both Despensers and Edward II fled westwards to the Welsh Marches, but were quickly captured. The Despensers were brutally executed, and Edward imprisoned. A parliament was called and Edward II was formally deposed. Prestwich says he thinks it is futile to try and work out precisely what legal or customary justification was used to depose Edward as parliament made use of every precedent they could come up with. This need to cover all bases was because this was the first time it had happened in England, so there was no obviously legal way to proceed. And Edward unsurprisingly didn’t long survive his deposition – he was murdered, quite possibly by a red-hot poker up his bottom, and very probably with the approval of Mortimer and Isabella. There were stories afterwards about how he might’ve survived, but these are implausible and even if true he didn’t play any further part in English politics.

Isabella and Mortimer seemingly lost no time in making themselves as unpopular as the Despensers, and for many of the same reasons. They both gained new lands and increased wealth. They failed in a campaign against the Scots, negotiating the “Shameful Peace of May 1328”. Despite a full treasury when Edward II was deposed their expenses drained it – the Count of Hainault needed paying for his assistance, and the Scottish campaign was expensive too. New opposition rose in the form of Henry of Lancaster (Thomas’s brother) but his rebellion failed. Finally, in 1330 Edward III was 18 and was keen to take a greater role in the government of his country than Isabella and Mortimer were permitting him. He and a small group of men broke into the private chambers of Isabella and Mortimer and captured them – Mortimer was executed, Isabella imprisoned, and Edward III now ruled in his own name.

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