Philip Payton. Regional Australia and the Great War: 'The Boys from Old Kio'. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2012. I was surprised to see that Philip Payton is giving a paper at AHA 2012 on 'The 1916-17 Conscription Crisis in Regional Australia' because I know him as a leading historian of Cornwall and Cornish emigration. That actually helps explains this book: 'Kio' is a nickname for Moonta, a mining town in the Yorke Peninsula 'Copper Triangle' which was a magnet for Cornish migrants. But it also, as the title suggests, follows in the footsteps of John McQuilton's Rural Australia and the Great War, as a regionally focused history of how the war affected one part of Australia (in McQuilton's case he examined northeastern Victoria). One major difference, though, is the way Payton seeks to integrate the story of the northern Yorke Peninsula in the war with the story of its men fighting overseas, for example through the letters sent home describing their experiences and often published in the local press. Anyway, I'll have to say hello!
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Fear, uncertainty, doubt — VII
If the threat from Germans outside Australia during the First World War was small, the threat from Germans inside Australia was non-existent. There is no credible evidence at all of any espionage, subversion or sabotage activities by German-Australians. But you wouldn't know it from the way the Australian people and their government behaved. It's not an episode that does the nation credit.
Before the war, the German community in Australia was generally liked and respected. People of German descent numbered around 100,000 in 1914, out of a population of nearly 5 million. That's not very much in relative terms, though it did constitute the largest non-British ethnic group of immigrants. Most of the German-born had lived here for decades: they started coming in numbers in 1838, with the greatest surge coming in the gold rush years of the 1850s. So by the time Germany and Australia went to war, many German-Australians were third-generation and had never seen the country of their forebears. That's not to say they didn't have a distinctive culture: a majority of them were Lutherans, there were German-language newspapers, and they often clustered in 'German' districts and towns, especially in South Australia and Queensland. But the evidence is that they felt they were Australian, and while they were understandably distressed by the outbreak of war, most German-Australians wanted to do their part and were confused when other Australians turned against them.
...continue reading
Fear, uncertainty, doubt — VI
It's been more than two weeks since I've posted anything on my current mystery aeroplane research, but it's not because I haven't been working on it. In fact it is coming along pretty well. There are still some frustrating gaps in my understanding of the archival records, but the writing is coming along. I've written up the section about the aeroplane scare, and next I'll be doing the section on the German threat, as depicted above in a 1918 (?) poster by Norman Lindsay. So here's something about that.
...continue reading
An Air Force Records Society?
The indefatigable Ross Mahoney, a PhD student at the University of Birmingham's Centre for War Studies, has written a briefing paper proposing the creation of an Air Force Records Society (AFRS), which he has circulated among some of the senior academics studying the history of British airpower, and has also posted on his blog. Briefly, the idea is that the AFRS would exist solely to publish one volume annually of significant but hard-to-find primary sources relating to the history of the RAF and its predecessors: perhaps unpublished memoirs written by key figures, or selections from their papers, or themed collections of documents from various sources. The models are the Navy Records Society and the Army Records Society, which are both well-established by now; indeed the Navy Records Society predates the formation of the RAF by a quarter of a century. Obviously I think this is a great idea, but it's easy to say that; the question is how to get it done, and good on Ross for asking that question. There's not much I can do directly to help from where I am, but what I can do is help drum up support for an AFRS.
I have a few comments. One, which I've already passed on to Ross, is that the brief for the AFRS be expanded. In the current proposal it covers the RAF, the RFC and the RNAS. But organised airpower started before then, with the brief existence of the Air Battalion (1911-2) and the less ephemeral Balloon Factory/School of Ballooning (1878-1912). These seem like logical subjects for an AFRS. But because they were part of the Royal Engineers and hence the Army, there is a potential for stepping on the toes of the Army Records Society. But this jurisdictional problem exists anyway; indeed the Navy Records Society has already published at least one volume on the topic of the RNAS. And I think there's plenty of history to go around. Another possible area to expand into might be the Royal Aircraft Factory/Royal Aircraft Establishment, which was separate from the RFC/RNAS/RAF but had a principally military character.
Another question is whether the volumes published should be actual physical books, or whether the AFRS should be 'born digital' and just publish ebooks or perhaps just online. I don't know much about the financing of the existing societies, but I expect most of the membership fees go to the publisher. If the costs of physical distribution could be eliminated that would lower the fees and hopefully broaden the membership base. Of course, digital does not always equal cheap; and I must admit I prefer real books -- to this day I have never bought an ebook!
Finally, it's fun to think of possible archives to plunder. From my own experience, I think P. R. C. Groves's papers (at KCL and the IWM) have some potential, covering topics such as early air control operations in the Sudan in 1916, the RAF's operations in the first year of its existence, air policy at the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations, and, after his RAF service, his airpower advocacy (and I would argue that he was the most influential of all the British airpower writers between the wars), including his time heading the Air League of the British Empire; there's also an unpublished book manuscript he finished just before the Second World War, 'This air business'. But that's just me, I don't expect anyone else to share in my obsessions… and there are plenty of more obvious places to start.
Any thoughts?
Acquisitions
Norman Stone. The Atlantic and its Enemies: A History of the Cold War. London: Penguin Books, 2011. After often picking up Gaddis' The Cold War and then putting it down due to its obvious ideological biases, I bought this on a whim -- not that Stone has ever hidden his own politics! Probably should get some Judt or something for balance.
The war and Arthur Machen
It has happened before that while I'm focused on some research topic but read something seemingly unrelated, that unanticipated connections serendipitously appear between the two. In this case it was while reading a collection of short stories by Arthur Machen, an influential writer of supernatural horror who wrote his greatest, and most disturbing, works in the 1890s.1 Many drew upon his Welsh heritage (he was born in and grew up near Caerleon; though I kept an eye out during my visit for his blue plaque I managed to miss it), particularly Celtic myths about the Little People which he used to create far, far darker things than most of the fairies fluttering around contemporary fantastic literature. Those were the stories I remember most from reading Machen as a teenager, and they do not disappoint now.
But this time around I was more intrigued by Machen's writing from the First World War, when he was a journalist for the Evening News, part of Lord Northcliffe's empire. Of these, 'The bowmen' (first published in September 1914) has gained some notoriety as the inspiration for the Angel of Mons which supposedly saved the BEF from disaster in its first major battle of the war. Machen story has not angels, but phantom bowmen from Agincourt lending their firepower to the British line as it repels a German attack (another story in this collection, 'The soldiers' rest', also evokes a supernatural link between the Tommy and his medieval predecessors). It was clearly meant to be read as fiction, but seems to have inspired the belief that something like it had actually happened during the retreat from Mons. Machen always denied that 'The bowmen' was anything other than fiction and tried quite publicly to refute the myths/rumours/urban legends his story had generated, but in the end the Angel wasn't going anywhere: people -- at least, some people -- wanted to believe in it.2
...continue reading
Fear, uncertainty, doubt — V
So, to the mystery aeroplane sceptics. Again, there are some sceptical opinions to be found in the press and police reports, but relatively few. Very early on, the Age, one of Melbourne's leading newspapers, wrote on 25 March 1918 that
the defence authorities are inclined to laugh at the story told by Police Constable Wright, of Ouyen, that at Nyang on Thursday last [21 March] he saw two aeroplanes flying in a westerly direction at a high altitude. The constable insists that he was not mistaken, but the authorities, being able to account for the movements of all Australian aeroplanes, jokingly suggest that the constable's story is on a par with those told about the Tantanoola tiger.1
It did go on to say that 'the authorities very rightly recognise that it would be unwise not to investigate [...] and inquiries into the reported occurrence are being made by special intelligence officers'.2 This was true, though in the event the 'special intelligence officers' (actually Detective F. W. Sickerdick, Victoria Police, and Lieutenant Edwards of the Royal Flying Corps) weren't despatched from Melbourne until 13 April as part of a broad sweep around western Victoria interviewing witnesses and suspects which took several weeks to complete. The conclusion of Sickerdick's report was unsurprisingly negative:
In my opinion and from the observations taken and from information received, the opinion of the residents, and the country travelled through, I do not believe that aeroplanes ever flew over the MALLEE, and I believe the objects seen at different times and by different people, were either hawks or pelicans.3
- Age (Melbourne), 25 March 1918, copy in NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066. The article also refers to reports 'earlier in the war of a mythical fleet of eight enemy aeroplanes which flew over Hobart'. This would seem to refer to an incident in October 1914 when 'a battery of artillery in training near Hobart observed "several aircraft"': NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, minute, Director of Military Intelligence (Major E. L. Piesse) to Chief of the General Staff, 'Report of aeroplane at Towamba, N.S.W.', 16 May 1917. [↩]
- Age (Melbourne), 25 March 1918, copy in NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066. [↩]
- NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, report, Detective F. W. Sickerdick (Victoria Police) to Major F. V. Hogan (Intelligence Section, General Staff), 1 May 1918. [↩]