Comments on: The airminded Mr. Kipling

By: Airminded · The doom of the great city

Airminded · The doom of the great city — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 18:08:46 +0000

[...] more than a hint here (though not much more) of both Kipling’s “As easy as ABC” and Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come. Other parts of the book anticipate elements of the [...]

By: Old is the New New :: History Carnival XXIII

Old is the New New :: History Carnival XXIII — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:50:17 +0000

[...] always about air power and British society in the early 20th century. A recent post described the high-flying 21st century imagined by Rudyard Kipling. Meanwhile, 19th century “blogger” Frances Williams Wynn outlined the state of the art [...]

By: Airminded · The Nine Years’ War

Airminded · The Nine Years’ War — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:01:53 +0000

[...] They weren’t alone, either—it seems there was a “utopian/dystopian” moment in the early 1930s. At least two other books written during the Depression take similarly long views: Michael Arlen’s Man’s Mortality (1933) and Olaf Stapledon’s astounding Last and First Men (1930). Aviation plays a part in both of these—in the former as the basis for a Kipling-esque world government called International Aircraft & Airways, in the latter as an important, almost spiritual, element of the culture of the First World State. But while the prevention of the next war, or the next war after that, is an important motivation for a world state in these novels, the main reason is economic; pretty understandable when you think about the shock of the world slump, particularly how crises seemed to spread from country to country. Economic control and planning on a global scale seemed inevitable to some, though whether it would be worth it in the end was debatable. Huxley suggested that people would have to be conditioned to consume products from an early age, through messages piped into every child’s ears in every sleeping moment: [...]

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 08:54:54 +0000

Thanks Dave - yes, there are a number of interesting items on there, even from a strictly aviation perspective: particularly the Vickers airship catalogue, which I might be inspired to blog about in future!

By: Dave Bell

Dave Bell — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:54:39 +0000

Marcus Rowlands started off his "Forgotten Futures" series of role-playing games with the setting in these stories. So Kipling might be said to have inspired the concept of Dame Kylie Minogue being drenched with airship ballast while performing in The Crystal Palace. It's worth checking out as a source of proto-SF and fantasy. It's not all Utopian. See the Forgotten Futures website.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 04:12:41 +0000

Geez, was anyone not predicting world-government-through-airpower back then? Still, it's all grist for my particular mill!

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 12:11:12 +0000

'the next stage will be the emergence, soon or late, of the greater cimmunity than the commonwealth of nations; perhaps the continental community, the European; the American; the Asiatic. The existing groupings will grow to these larger groupings as aviation prospers and provides the means of growth. And then there must be-again if the past is a sure guide-another, greater clash, a tremendous war of continents in which yet vaster forces will meet in fiercer struggle' etc etc etc

from 'Air Power and the Expanding Community' by Major Oliver Stewart MC AFC (London: George Newness, 1944) p. 225 .

Stewart appears to have been a Spenglerian, though - for him the world federation was not an attractive end point, but the inevitable brewer of decadence, leading too...

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 03:37:12 +0000

Thanks Chris. True story: "Locksley Hall" was Harry Truman's favourite poem. I don't know what it means that the man who ordered the first military use of the atomic bomb, just happened to carry around a copy of a poem about air warfare and world government in his wallet for 50 years ... but it must mean something! Unless he just liked the way the words rhyme. PS Alex's promised post is up at The Yorkshire Ranter.

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:28:50 +0000

In that case, another book for the bibliography: Pocock's _The Early British Radio Industry_. AKA 'how the First Lord of the Admiralty also invented radio'.

Thinking on this, I can get you right back to Tennyson's utterly brilliant poem Locksley Hall. Here we go:

"
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:18:43 +0000

Another possible source: there was an intellectual movement at the time that saw the future, not just in Imperial Federation (the creation of an overarching political structure for the UK and the Dominions) but in a federation incorporating the USA.

One of the key people in this was Lionel Curtis, one of Lord Milner's staff in South Africa, who went on to help found the World Federalist movement. Years ago, I attended a lecture for Britain in Europe given by Sir Anthony Meyer (Tory MP who acted as stalking horse against Thatcher), who described how he had been influenced by Curtis at Cambridge.

There will have to be a full blog entry on this, I feel, as it has a bearing on some popular current ideas (Thomas Barnett's Core and the Gap, for one).