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Thursday, May 07, 2026

Trevor Royle - Fighting Mac: The Downfall of Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald

Sir Hector Macdonald was an unusual soldier in the British Army in the late 19th and very early 20th century. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Omdurman, being more competent than the usual British officers in killing African soldiers who mostly carried swords when facing artillery and machine guns. But what distinguished him was not just his ability to command troops in an era when officers were often incompetent. This was true at Omdurman, but it was doubly true in the First Boer War when Macdonald's superiors demonstrated astonishing limitations in the field of command.

What made Macdonald unusual was that he had come from a poor crofter's background and risen through the ranks on the back of his competence.

This was very unusual in the period. The British Army had only just got rid of the Purchasing of Commissions as a means to becoming an officer, and ordinary troops being promoted upward was not yet common. It meant that "Fighting Mac" as he was known, was famous and popular, and was the source of patriotic pride for thousands of Scotsmen. His poor background made it extremely difficult to survive in this atmosphere. Being a British Officer then still required the soldier to purchase his own uniforms and so on, as well as dine out and be seen. There was enormous pressure on Macdonald and it is fair to say, at least in Trevor Royle's telling, that Fighting Mac struggled with the fame and the spectacle.

But at the height of his fame Macdonald was laid low by scandal and committed suicide. The scandal itself concerned "very grave charges". Royle argues that these were "homosexual" in origin. It seems likely that Macdonald was gay. While he married young and had a son, his relationship with his wife was distant - during his military career they hardly ever met and almost no one knew they were married. In fact this was possibly deliberate. At the time Macdonald's regiment did not allow officers to be married. Homosexuality was illegal at the time, and while there may have been suspicions within the army about Macdonald, nothing was proved. Royle details the repression and secrecy of gay men, and some of the scandals at the time that meant there was "a good deal of public interest" in homosexuality during Victoria's reign. It was considered "an illness bordering on insanity" and would have destroyed Macdonald's career and damaged anyone associated with him - since he had been close to members of the Royal Family this would have been a problem for the establishment.

In 1902 Macdonald was posted to command the troops in Ceylon. He arrived in March, and was "a man who may have been under suspicion" for his sexuality. Whether or not he was actually "under suspicion" or not, he did not improve his situation by "spurning polite society". Lack of funds meant he did not entertain, he was rude to the gentlemen who served in the local milita, and he befriended "a number of Burgher families - old Ceylonese familes of mixed European, usually Portugese and native Celonese origins". Macdonalds friendsship with the Burgher community and particularly a "family called de Saram" outraged the English colonial class. As Royle put's it, he was to "pay for his lack of allegiance to the white planter class".

The scandal erupted when Macdonald was suspected of "spending too much time" with the de Saram family children, especially their two sons. Rumours were that there was a "sexual relationship" between the boys and the General. While homosexuality "was an accepted and natural fact of life amongst the native Ceylonese... the de Sarams were a strict Burgher family whose code of morals proably owed more to their Portugese ancestry than to local customs".

Two versions of what caused the scandal exist. Both of them involve Macdonald being caught in some sexual relationship with boys on a train. Macdonald was sent back to England when the news borke, by his commanding officer, and then returned to Ceylon to try to clear his name. On the way back he stopped in Paris, and shot himself in a hotel room.

It was a huge scandal and Macdonald was buried with indecent haste, quickly and without ceremony. Thousands of Scots were shocked and heart broken, disbelieving the rumours and wanting to celebrate his life and patriotism.

There is no doubt that MacDonald was treated badly by the Army command. It is possible that this was in part because of his class background. It is also because Macdonald's senior officers were foolish. Royle asks whether MacDonald could have got away with the accusations and survived the scandal. He answers yes, pointing out that similar scandals had been dealt with without soldiers committing suicide or the public hearing of them:

If Macdonald had been possessed of influence in high places or indeed of more wordliness, or a guinea or two, then he could have taken legal or political advice and perhaps have put a damper on the charges.

Royle further suggested that Macdonald misplaced faith in the army and his belief in "honour" made him think that suicide was the only way out. It was the only way to "regain the army's trust in him".

From a 21st century perspective though it is difficult to see this in the same way as Royle does, writing in 1982. But there is a repeated conflation of homosexuality with pedestry. While Macdonald may have been gay, the scandal was actually around "the fact that he liked little boys perhaps too much" to quote Royle. While Royle doesn't claim Macdonald as a tragic victim of homophobia and certainly not as a hero for the LGBT+ movement today, the conflation of homosexuality with abusive and inappropriate relationships sits badly today.

Macdonald was, no doubt, a victim of prejudice, and Royle is right to say that he had been forced to "live a lie". We do not know the full evidence for the scandal that destroyed him, and General Macdonald was probably a victim of forces in the British military who hated him for his background. But he was also a man who used his position in society to abuse boys.

Trevor Royle's book details the case well, and Macdonald's career is interesting, as is the material on the scandal and the awful position of gay men in Victorian society. But the book feels very dated with phrases such as "latent homosexual" being particularly noticeable.

Stephen Graham Jones - My Heart is a Chainsaw

My Heart is a Chainsaw is the first in a trilogy of horror novels by Stephen Graham Jones. As I mentioned in my earlier review of his book The Only Good Indians there is a strong tradition of such works being used to discuss wider social and political themes. My Heart is a Chainsaw uses the genre in a very meta way to discuss big issues and more individual ones.

The book is set in a lakeside town of Proofrock, Idaho. It's a small town on Indian Lake. Jade Daniels is about to graduate, but her childhood has been hard. In her final semester she attempts suicide. Coming back to Proofrock she becomes convinced that the town is about to experience a slasher killing, as portrayed in a myriad of films that Jade is obsessed by. Jade's internal monologue, and increasingly frequently, her conversations with others, is peppered with references to events, plot devices and tropes of the slasher movie genre. She even identifies a "final girl" in Letha Mondragon a beautiful new girl in the school. Letha is popular, bright and the daughter of the fabulously wealthy Theo who is developing the far side of Indian Lake into a exclusive and expensive new housing area. The lake will be the playground of the rich and Proofrock will be the source of their labour and services.

As the victims begin to pile up there's alot of ambiguity about who is doing the killing. Jade is convinced it is a slasher and for a time people think the killer might be her. The reality is both more sinister and in keeping with the tropes of the genre.

The book carefully ties up the horror with the wider social problems of poverty, boredom and abuse inherent to a poor, forgotten rural community. The rich, with their yachts and wealth, form a nice counter-point to the reality of Proofrock. Indeed their chosen name for their development Terra Nova, might echo the way that settlers viewed indigenous people and their lands when Europeans arrived.

One of the most important themes of slasher movies for Jade is revenge. For her, the slashers are fighting injustice - literarily. The murders they commit are supposed to rectify some ancient evil or balance out some horror. But Jade divorces the events from her personal history. She doesn't get that she is the centre point of the story, believing that Letha in all her "final girl" glory of beauty and innocence, isn't the protagonist Jade thinks she is. As a result the finale takes everyone by surprise and allows Jones to keep misdirecting the reader while Jade stumbles through the chaos. A great read, but one that's really too gory for me.

Related Reviews

Jones - The Only Good Indians

Thursday, April 30, 2026

Martha A. Sandweiss - The Girl in the Middle: A recovered history of the American West

In 1868 the pioneer American photographer Alexander Gardner joined a delegation from the US government that was negotiating with the Lakota and other Native American tribes. They met at Fort Laramie in Wyoming Territory, and Gardner made a number of images of the negotiators, the Native Americans and the landscape. One of these is a striking picture showing six men, some in military uniform, others in different smart clothes. All of them stand rather incongrously, facing the camera, each other, or staring into the middle distance. In the middle, a young woman faces the camera directly on. To my eyes there's an air of defiance about her look. She is not named on the back of copies of the photos though the others are.

When Martha A. Sandweiss came across this image she was immediately, and unsurprisingly, struck by it. But she was also taken by the fact that the woman was unnamed. The anonymity might stand for the way women are written out of history, something doubly true for indigenous women. Who was she? Why was she there? What became of her? Answering these questions required a lot of detective work, a bit of luck and dogged determination. In finding out the answers Sandweiss unearthed a lot about American history, its violence and the complicated and intersecting lives of the subjects of the picture.

Standing over the story is Gardner. The photographer's fascinating life began with his immersion in the Scottish radical movement. Emigrating to the Americas with others he hoped to set up a utopian town were settlers like him could live equally. Ironically, given the book's context, the land they settled on was taken forcibly from Native Americans. The project, like many others of its type, fell apart. Gardner tried his hand at many things, but eventually became a celebrated photographer who almost single handedly was responsible for inventing photo-journalism. His pictures of the aftermath of Civil War battlefields brough the war home to the American public and were taken with not a little risk to himself. His portraits of the great and the good were also celebrated, and Gardner is perhaps most famous today for his pictures of Abraham Lincoln and his assassins.

Of the other white men in the picture, some were veterans, some politicians and all of them had led lives that reflected aspects of American history and life on the frontier. One of them was a killer. General William S. Harney is the only white person in the photo who is looking directly at the camera. He was experienced in "Indian affairs" though the nature of his experience is best illustrated by the name the Lakota gave him: "Woman Killer". He epitomises both the violence of the US government against Native Americans, but also the insidious way that the violence of US society embedded itself in individuals. Sandweiss describes him:

Harney carried with him to Fort Laramie not just a long military record but also a pesonal history of cruelty and abuse. He beat subordinates. He abused women. He drove away his own family. And he was a murderer. Not just according to the fuzzy rules of wartime engagement, but within his own household. His violent streak often erupted in public life, yet early on, it was honed at home.

The murder "within his own household" was the beating to death of Hannah, an enslaved woman whom he suspected of stealing his keys. While he was found to killed her according to the coroner, he was acquitted in court. The lives of enslaved people mattering little.

The young Native American woman was Sophie Mousseau. We owe this knowledge to a chance identification by someone who saw the picture and annotated it for Sandweiss to stumble upon later. Oral and family history, archival material and legal documents have fleshed out an incredible tale.

The Mousseaus were a mixed heritage family, who arrived in Fort Laramie after losing their business due to a Native American attack. The backstory is a fascinating account of life on the US frontier, settler history and the way that families were destroyed by the US Army. Sophie's parents were married fifty years. Her father was a French-Canadian trader, M. A. Mousseau. Her mother, Yellow Woman, was a Lakota woman who survived a horrific massacre at Blue Water Creek. This massacre saw almost 90 Native Americans murdered by troops led by General Harney. Coincidences like this abound throughout the book and throughout the stories of those who are in the photo.

Sophie's life is complicated and chaotic. One feels that she was never far from the horrors of the American West and the poverty inflicted on Native Americans by the victorous government. In 1890, she was working in the Pine Ridge Reservation when the Wounded Knee Massacre took place.

But by failing to name Sophie on the photograph, Gardner showed how unimportant Native Americans were to those who were building the United States. Her anonimity stands for the rewriting of history, which relegated Native Americans to being people who were lost to time. Gardner's title for the collection of images of which this was one was "Scenes from Indian Country". It reflects the way that Native Americans were being turned into curiosities.

But as Sandweiss says, by knowing who Sophie was and what happened to her, we rescue her history and wider history. She is no longer just surrounded by famous white men. She represents the lost and forgotten history of the Native American peoples. Sandweiss writes:

But knowing who that girl is shifts things, refocussing our attention from the men around her to her. In centering her, we decenter them. Sophie's living descendants have had scattered stories, but no picture with which to visualise their ancestor. Conversely the viewers of Gardner's photograph have had a face without a name. Put the name and the face together, dig into the historical records and a largely forgotten life becomes more knowable.

This matters because Sophie had a life that was inseperable from the history of America. Tragically her life reflected the violence of US history, a violence that is often ignored or downplayed. It is mostly a violence done to Indigenous people. But it is also domestic violence, murder and family trauma.

If Sandweiss had only rescued Sophie from anonymity it would be important and interesting enough. But something more comes from this. Martha A. Sandweiss reminds us all, but American people in particular, that we have to resist the current US government's attempts to rewrite US history.

In National Parks across the United States, on monuments and in museums, officials are removing historical markers, names and descriptions that seek to tell visitors and tourists real stories. The story of The Girl in the Middle - Sophie Mousseau - reminds us of the importance of all those labels, nametags, markers and monuments. If history is a battleground, this book is a good example of the fights we need to wage to remember the past and shape the future.

Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full of Sky

Tiffany Aching is one of the great characters of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasies. While the novels she is in are aimed at young adults - Tiffany is only 11 in this one - they are profoundly clever works exploring our moral universe with a dash of anarchy and chaos. A Hat Full of Sky is the second Tiffany Aching novel after she defeated the Queen of the Fairies and temporarily becomes the Kelda of the local Nac Mac Feegle. These "pixies" are violent, drunken, agreesive and fiercly loyal inhabitants of the Chalklands were Tiffany lives (analogous to Wilthshire) and after her victory they are her protectors and chaotic influences.

Tiffany heads to become an apprentice to the elderly Witch Miss Level. One the way she is attacked by an indestructible creture called a Hiver which has been around since the beginning of time, absorbing and taking over individuals, feeding off their memories and knowledge. After several surprises in Miss Level's home, Tiffany meets other apprentices, some of whom are convinced that the more showy aspects of magic are the most important thing. Trinketts and explosions over care and morals.

Tiffany, together with her mentor Granny Weatherwax, eventually defeat the Hiver and restore safety to the universe. It's a fairly decent fairy tale, and everyone gets their just desserts or rewards at the end.

Except. It is much more than that. It's a wonderful example of Pratchett's carefully drawn world. His buccolic rural setting where the rural economy is backed up by gentle magic. Where real magic exists, but proper magic is knowing how to look after a dying man and help his widow clean the sheets the day after. Its a carefully constructed moral universe where people love and live, and get back what they put in. The moral Witches' moral economy is particularly interesting, as payment and reward are constantly fed back into the wider social and economic world, keeping things going and passing on good.

Threats to the order are dire, but can be faced with honesty and bravery. While there's a lot of fantasy here, its a kind world where Pratchett celebrates our humanity and kindness in general. We could learn a lot.

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year

During the Coronavirus pandemic Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year gained a new popularity. Despite being an account of one man's experiences during the Plague of 1665, readers found many parallels with their own experiences of sudden death, mass sickness, panic and isolation. The book reads like a historical account. It's filled with weekly deaths neatly tabulated (another familiar thing for those who lived through 2020 onward). The author's accounts of walking deserted streets, stories of their neighbours and anecdotes of a deserted London read like a real experience.

But Daniel Defoe's book is not a real account. It is a sort of meta-fiction, based no doubt on experiences that Defore had related to him, and, at times it references real people and places. But it is fictional. While the numbers quoted might be real, the reader is forced at times to question what might be real and what might be imaginery. Again, the lack of clarity, might be something familiar to those who survived Covid-19.

That said scholars do tend to think there is a lot of reality present. The account is signed HF. Defoe had an uncle with those initials, and in a slightly incongrous moment in the text, there is a reference to a cemetary, where the author is buried. The tempation to read the book as fiction, or as non-fiction remains everywhere. Nonetheless Defoe captures the experience in ways that are tempting to link to our own times.

Defoe, or his narrator, care little for the experiences of the rich and powerful. There are few references to the Court, the Royal Family, or famous figures other than those who play some role in relieving or helping the population such as the Lord Mayor. Instead Defoe demonstrates a concern for the ordinary person, reflecting the worry and uncertainty of a city whose population is leaving in droves. Take the servants that Defoe describes as worrying about their future if their masters leave:

Their Question generally was, after the first demand of, Will there be a Plague? I say, the next Question was, Oh Sir! For the Lord's sake, what will become of me? Will my Mistress keep me, or will she turn me off? Will she stay here, or will she go into the Country? And if she goes into the Country, will she take me with her, or leave me here to be starv'd and undone.

These questions Defoe says were addressed chiefly by maidservants to the various quacks and astrologers who plyed their trade in the early days. Not a few workers asked similar things of their bosses, trade unions and colleagues in the days of lockdown.

Defoe bemoans who the poor, tricked into buying useless potions were "carried away in the Dead-Carts" and "thrown into the common Graves" of every Parish. He describes these tragedies. The sudden deaths and the occasional miraculous escape. Above all he is obssessed with the empty homes and shops. More often he is also fascinated by the experiences of those found with the plague - locked into their family homes to survive as they could - and guarded by watchment. Defoe's narrator takes a salacious delight in telling the stories of those that escaped, the occasional bribery of officials or the sneaking out of back windows.

But these examples aside the book actually chronicles a time of solidarity and support. Kindness and compassion. There are many people who stay at their posts. Or try to help. From physicians to politicians, but most often church figures - Defoe impresses on the reader that while there is crime amidst the horror, what characterises things are those who try to help. In particular I was struck by his descriptions of priests. Their numbers denuded by death and escape, dissenters who previously would have been shunned are drawn in to play the role offering prayers and salvation. And home important this was to the 17th century population:

As it brought the People into publick Company, so it was surprizing how it brought them to crowd into the Churches, they inquir'd no more into who they sat near to, or far from, what offensive Smells they met with, or what condition the People seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead Corpses, they came to the Churches with the least Caution, and crowded together, as if their Lives were of no Consequence, compar'd to the Work which they came about there.

Readers might also notice then that the disease democratised the religious space.

Interestingly Defoe is also impressed by the official response. He lists the rules and regulations (that modern science knows made little difference) but he also talks of the relief efforts. Those who remained in London and were well did not starve. Though Defoe does acknowledge that there would have been rebellion had such aid not been forthcoming.

While it's not a historical account, Defoe's book feels real. It is, perhaps, an early example of historical fiction. It is also a meandering book in two ways. The first is that Defoe's narrator meanders in his account. This is not a account that follows a time line of events. Rather its like a slightly drunk storyteller who goes back and forth, returning to themes and anecdotes. Secondly, and most of interest to the modern reader, is that this is a book that meanders through space. Defoe takes us down the streets and alleyways of London, making sure we know exactly where things are and who lived where. This is not the London of the Tower, or famous bridges. It's the London of backstreets and cheap housing. His readers would have recognised every nook and crany, for much of it was rebuilt on the same plan after the fire of 1666.

A Journal of the Plague Year is a remarkable book. An insight into a previous disaster, one whose shadow long hung over the city. A tragic and shocking year that must have felt even more frightening for the lack of any real explanation. Supernatural mixes with the latest science in Defoe's telling. Don't wait till the next pandemic before you read it.

Dashiell Hammett - The Thin Man

It is New York, Christmas ,1932. Prohibition is almost over and so most people are drinking quite heavily. There is a lot of cigarette smoke, quite a few late night parties, many visits to not very pleasant speakeasys and murder hangs over the whole town. Nick Charles is in town with his wife Nora. Nick is a former detective. Now he looks after his father in law's businesses and is doing very well for himself. His wife Nora is a socialite who drifts between parties and is wary of her husband's drinking. Neither of them get up early.

While hanging about drinking in a speakeasy Nick is approached by Dorothy Wynan. She's the daughter of a former client of Nick's called Clyde. Clyde hasn't been seen in a long time and Dorothy is worried. She's also flirtatious. Everyone is flirtatious, and one of the entertaining things about Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man is the banter and flitrtation between Nora and Nick. "How about that red-head you wandered off with at the Quinn's last night" she asks him early on in the novel. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings" answers Nick.

Once Clyde's former secretary and mistress, Julia Wolf, is found dead, the plot gets going. Nick finds himself surrounded by a mystery that he has no interest in being part of. Nora is fascinated and he somewhat enjoys himself by showing her the detective ropes. He is further drawn in by being shot at by a gangster who was Julia's lover, and flirted at by Mimi, Clyde's former wife who is now down on her luck as her cash is running out. The police are keen for Nick to be involved and, to make it even more complicated, Clyde's lawyer is a former comrade of Nick's from the army. He's a hopeless shot - Nick saved his life at least once.

Like all decent detective stories, and Hammett's in particular there is a complex plot which throws in loose ends and new characters every few pages. At various points in the novel I suspected every single one of the people above to be guilty, including Nora (for no apparent reason). Classically there's also a thin line between state investigation and private detectives. The cops simply take Nick along with them to key investigations.

The Thin Man was Hammett's last novel. Its themes are the hypocrisy and drunkenness of America in the 1920s and 1930s and the lazy, wasteful lives of a section of the monied classes. Few of the characters are working. Fewer still get up before 8am or are in bed before midnight. Its a dark, seedy world. Hammett would develop the characters into a series of films. Though some of the scripts remained unfilmed, The Thin Man is dedicated to Lillian Hellman, the blacklisted playwright whom Hammett was romantically linked to for many years.

The Thin Man's conclusion is not particularly surprising, though its executed with typical flair. But the novel itself feels darker and deeper than many others of its genre. A classic.

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Ian Angus - Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism's Assault on the Earth

Karl Marx eagerly devoured writings on all aspects of history, culture and science. Anyone who has read a small part of his work will be struck by references to contemporary politics, history, science, art and culture. But in 1851 Marx read a paper that altered how he thought about the world. This was by Roland Daniels, a fellow Communist activist, doctor and scientist which described something called "organic metabolism", the "simultaneous destruction and regeneration" of living organisms. Daniels thought that this could be used to understand human society and Marx, agreeing, placed metabolic ideas at the heart of his ongoing analysis of humans and society.

The concept of "metabolism" for Marx, and Marxists, has been the subject of intense discussion in recent years. A quarter of a century ago John Bellamy Foster wrote a fundamental text Marx's Ecology which drew out the ecological core of Marx's though and popularised the concept of "metabolic rift". In the years since, metabolic rift theory has become a tool eagerly used by revolutionaries to understand the relationship between capitalism and nature and how to change it. But it has also been critiqued by some on the Marxist left and by more people on the right.

Ian Angus has been a prominent figure in these discussions through his online journal Climate and Capitalism and this, his latest book, is a study of "Metabolic Rift" and a reassertion of key concepts. But Angus goes much further than restating the arguments. He notes that

Marx could not have known how broad, deep, high and complex the metabolism was. Scientists in his time were just beginning to study the metabolic processes that make life possible at every level, from cells to the entire planet, and even today vast parts are not well understood. But he grasped the essence of the matter, and his insights provide a basic framework for understanding what is happening to the Earth System at all levels today.

So Angus' book sets itself the task of firstly explaining the "metabolic" framework and then using it to explain what is happening to the Earth System today. It is a huge task, and while Angus doesn't claim to write a full analysis of what is going wrong, he offers both a general approach and specific examples that explain the interlocked environmental crises we are facing.

In writing this book Angus stands in a long, if neglected or forgotten, tradition of key Marxist figures engaging with science to understand history and the world. Marx's metabolic approach was mostly forgotten after his death, but not by all. In a key chapter he looks at the work of three Marxists - Bebel, Kautsky and Bukharin - to demonstrate how they each, in different ways approached social and scientific questions in a similar way to Marx. I am particularly glad that Angus devotes some time to Kautsky's work The Agrarian Question, which was described by Lenin as "the most important even in present day economic literature". It is a book that ought to be more widely read for those trying to understand precisely while capitalist agriculture is so destructive.

But I was taken by Angus' account of an earlier work by August Bebel. Bebel's 1879 book Woman and Socialism was one of the most widely read popular expositions of socialist ideas. It was also a book that explored ecological issues. Bebel wrote that capitalist agriculture is "soil vandalism" and it "cripples the land and decreases the crops". He also bemoaned environmental destruction including "the senseless ravaging of forests, for the sake of profit".

Angus explains that the books like these "disproves the canard that socialists of the late 1800s and early 1900s did not know or care about the universal metaolism of nature or the environmental destruction caused by rifts in that metabolism". That said he acknowledges that there was a loss of this knowledge and it is being rediscovered. But this "does not mean that everyone understands the funamental concepts". Crucially, "a common misunderstanding in articles on metabolic rift... is treating it as a metaphor rather than as a description of real global circumstances".

The bulk of the book then is an attempt to explain these core concepts. Angus does this by firstly explaining the metabolic processes that are key to the Earth's systems. Some of these are ancient. Angus' explores how life evolved and how it required chemicals that arose out of key cyclical processes that are built into the planet's geological systems and climate.

Perhaps the most impressive chapters however are those that show how the Earth's metabolic processes are being broken by capitalism. Two of these chapters are essential reading - on the breaking of the carbon cycle (which is driving climate change) and the disruption of the nitrogen cycle. The latter a rarely mentioned crisis that is causing serious problems. Industrial agriculture is pumping nitrogen into Earth's systems faster than any natural process can break it down. The "glut" is breaking a cycle that has exised for "hundreds of millions of years" which saw:

Constant recycling of reactive nitrogen in multiple forms, "a metabolism prescibed by the natural laws of life itself," enabled plant and animal life to thrive almost everywhere on the planet.

But:

Planetary boundaries research confirms that the current level of industrial nitrogen "cannot continue without significantly eroding the resilience of major components of Earth-System functioning".

To fix this, Angus concludes, requires taking control of the valves and "expropriating" the factories. He says:

However it is achieved, social control of nitrogen production must ensure a radical reduction of nitrogen use. That will require balancing the need to prevent ecological damage aganst the need to produce sufficient food, not just withing a country, but globally. It may one day be possible to feed the world without synthetic fertiliser and other chemicals, but undoing the damage that capitalism has caused won't be easy or quick.

The Nitrogen cycle chapter demonstrates very well the great strength of Angus' book, which is the way that Marxism must engage with science to develop strategies that can offer solutions to environmental crises. This is explicitly explored in the final chapters when Angus shows how scientists often come close to recognising that the environmental crises we face are systemic ones, but seldom draw revolutionary conclusions. He warns, however, that what science shows is that the changes needed are urgent, but will also take "decades". Day two of the "revolution" will not see ecological equilibrium restored. But it will open up a space where workers, scientists and activists can find a way forward - at the same time as having access to the wealth and power they need to deal with immediate issues. This, as Angus says, is not about "reordering capitalism" but building a new society in tune with the natural world. Nonetheless the first revolutionary stage is necessary, and I was struck by a pertinent quote that Angus uses from the great ecological socialist William Morris that I had not read before. Morris said:

The first real victory of the Social Revolution will be the establishment not indeed of a complete system of communism in a day, which is absurd, but of a revolutionary adminstration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in all available ways, human life for such a system.

Looking at the world around us the catastrophe threatens on multiple fronts: imperialist war, genocide, economic stagflation and environmental disaster. In Metabolic Rifts Ian Angus reminds us that there is a deep tradition of revolutionary politics closely engaged with scientific research, that offers an understanding of the chaos around us. It also offers us a strategy to change it. I urge readers to read it.

Sunday, April 19, 2026

Frederic F. Van de Water - Glory Hunter: A life of General Custer

When George Armstrong Custer was killed, alongside all of the men who rode alongside him, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, he was catapulted into eternal fame, elevated to the position of American hero, and reinvented as a military genius of unsurpassed bravery. He needed to be reinvented, because George Armstrong Custer, was a headstrong, genocidal killer, who's inability to follow orders was only matched by his supreme self-belief. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the Little Big Horn, this was forgotten. A nation whose self-belief had been badly knocked during its centennial year needed a hero. The dead Custer was more useful than he was alive.

The principle guardian, and part inventor, of Custer's legacy was his beloved wife Elizabeth. Libby, as she was known, jealously protected Custer's legacy and made it near impossible for critical voices to be published. Men who knew him, possibly "stifled criticism for the sake of the woman who spent her widowhood glorifying a memory." Elizabeth Custer lived to until the ripe age of 91, dying only in 1933 nearly sixty years after her husband's death. As the author Frederic Van de Water frequently complains, she outlived nearly everyone who could shed light on the key events of Custer's life.

In 1934, almost immediately after her death de Water published this, the first critical review of Custer's life. It is damning. While modern scholarship would flesh out the real story of Custer's life, this first demolition of the legend and it is highly effective. The Custer that emerges from this story is one whose headstrong hunt for glory was never satisfied. That, combined with breathtaking arrogance, led to the death of himself, hundreds of troopers and a number of his immediate family. It also saw the murder of hundreds of Indigenous people during the 1870s and, it must be emphasised, the probably massacre of some of an early command of Custer's when he abandoned them to their fate during a one-sided attack on a Native American camp.

Heroic biographies of Custer portray him as a brave and natural soldier. The reality was the opposite. Van de Water, says "few embryo soldiers have shown less qualifications". The multiple failures, defiance of authority and limited academic success that marked his time as a trainee are detailed here. Had the US not been plunged into Civil War almost immediately after Custer's graduation it would have probably been an ignoble career. But Custer, being a superb horseman, and in charge of a force of Cavalry rode his luck through the War. On several occasions victory in battle was the only reason that Custer's insubordination did not lead to discipline. The Custer that comes through here is a disagreeable bully. He enjoyed practical jokes, though these are, in hindsight, rarely amusing. Van de Water notes that they required "for inspiration, the spectacle of an abashed or discomfited victim". Even during the advance to the Little Big Horn Custer's practical joke on a "friend" terrified the man who thought he was about to be murdered by a Souix attack.

Custer was easily bored, hunting for distractions and often found writing long letters to his beloved wife. Their times on the East Coast saw him enjoying the theatres and music, dinner parties and wealthy company. But his wife and other friends were loyal. Others were much more critical. On two occasions, once during the Civil War and once later in the "Indian Wars", troopers that Custer commanded rebelled and deserted. On the latter occasion, Custer's order to "bring in none alive" led to Court Martial and nearly a murder trial after some deserters were shot. The irony was that Custer himself was willing to desert his own command on occasion.

In 1868 Custer massacred the village of Black Kettle at the Washita River. Van de Water writes that:

When the hour of slaughter ended they counted in one hollow the bodies of seventeen Cheyenne warriors and in a ravine, thirty-eight. One hundred and three Indian men were slain, not counting women and children. Fifty-three squaws and children were captured. Many of these had been wounded... Indian lodges, supplies and munitions were gathered for burning.

The destruction of the Native American homes and supplies condemned the remaining survivors. But the problems for Custer stemmed less from this massacre and more from his abandonment of Major Elliot and nineteen men who had got separated from the main force to their deaths. Custer's decision to not go to their aid, despite warnings from other officers and the sound of gunfire. Many have seen divisions in the 7th Cavalry that may have contributed to Custer's failure in the Bighorn as stemming from this point. De Water disagrees. He argues that the rot started much earlier, and the events at Washita simply contributed to the divisions and were amplified by the parallels in 1876 when Benteen (who mourned Elliot "with unpremeditated candor") failed to march to join Custer. As an aside, these parallels, seem to me, to be unjustified. There is simply no way that Benteen could have relieved Custer during the latter battle.

Custer's supreme arrogance, self-belief and racism led to his death. His decision to divide his forces at the Little Big Horn, arose out of monstrous belief that the Cavalry would drive all foes ahead of them, and the idea that Native Americans were weak and in no way capable of resisting. Van de Water has no doubt:

He was a man to whome abasement was intolerable; to whome renown was essential. In pursuit of Glory, he had lynched enemy soldiers and inspired mutinies. The spring of 1876 had found him in deep disgrace.

In Custer's willing defiance of his final set of orders, Van de Water sees the culmination of a career of insubordination.

All his life he had been insubordinate. His career at the Academu; his blind recklessness in the war; his dispute with Sully; his disobedience in 1867 that led to his court martial and suspension; his squabble with Stanley, his scorn of Reno for not disobeying his orders and bringing the Sioux to battle - these trace the grove in which his nature ran.

Custer was "a hard-pressed egotist and a gambler. He planned to whip the Sioux alone." The opposite took place.

"Death made him immortal" writes Van de Water. This is undoubtably true. The biography of Custer has the air of a Greek tragedy to it. Custer's character traits from his childhood onward, his prejudices and lack of self control manifest at key moments through his life led to his death. This analysis makes for a satisfying biography and Van de Water tells it well. But the book doesn't really get to grips with what happened. Van de Water is too quick to blame everything on Custer:

At Washita, Custer's luck was at its zenith. At the Little Bighorn, at its nadir. Bad generalship won his first Indian fight and lost him his last.

This analysis negates the differences on the Native American side. At Washita it was a small force, surprised in awful conditions, and at night. In 1876 the Native Americans were organised, united, out in huge numbers and fresh from a victory against Terry at the Rosebud. Custer's arrogance took him into a battle he had no hope of winning. The victory was an inspiration, albeit a temporary one, for those resisting the United States.

Since its first publication there have been many other biographies of Custer. Frederic Van de Water's book finally broke the mold. It is a masterpiece of writing though naturally dated. For those that want the unheroic truth this is an excellent starting point.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Bryan D. Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890

Running through this, the first of a trilogy of books on Canada's history, is an emphasis on the way that Indigenous Peoples were dispossed of their land and power through the "reciprocal historical projects" of colonialism and capitalism. "Canada's story", Bryan D. Palmer writes, "has always involved the interface of colonialism and capitalism,even as the latter was not truly and unambiguously established". The expansion of colonial powers into what is now called Canada, and the development of capitalism, saw the "obliteration" of some Indigenous People, and the subjection of all to a "cultural genocide" which, "was thwarted by Ingenous resiliency, as continuous historically as was the process of dispossesion that First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people resisted".

This first volume of the trilogy traces this process. But it begins with what was lost. Palmer explores the First Nations life before colonialism. This was not a Utopia, but it was one with a completely different conception of property to that of Europeans. One of the first European settlers, Jazues Cartier was, according to Palmer, "unsettled" by his encounter with the "original inhabitants of the St. Lawrence Valley". He sais, "These people live as it were in a community of goods". A frightening thing for Europeans obsessed with money and natural resources as a source of wealth accumulation.

This "community of goods" meant that Europeans would struggle with their relations with First Nations. The seemingly free landscape was not unused or unvalued. First Nations expected compensation for the loss of resources, and were prepared to fight if they didn't get it.

But Palmer is also careful not to idolise pre-colonial Canada. He quotes an incredulous First Nations account of visiting Paris in 1649 shocked at the extreme poverty adjacent to the wealth of the Court. But he rejects a romantic view of Indigenous Peoples. They suffered "want and war" and sometimes "abhorred one another". But Palmer notes how this view often dominated early accounts of Canadian history (and some more recent ones):

Romanticized notions of the innate goodness of Indigenous people - the 'noble savage' or the ecological preservationist - are thus misplaced, the mirror image of stereotypical, ethnocentric denigrations... Both judgements should give rise to discerning skepticism.

But, he also points out that colonialism destroyed all the realities of Indigenous life, upsetting and transforming social and cultural relations and dividing, or increasing, divisions between groups. As he says:

A struggle for dominance in the fur trade pitted First Nations against one another in new, intensified ways. Commerical, commodified exchange relations with white traders played a significant role in an evolving state of conflic, undeniably exacerbated by the introduction of trade goods, European-based pathogens and technologies.

The Canadian state, which emerges out of the colonial conflict between Britain and France, and then that between Britain and the US, was shaped by white supremacy, racism and the acceptability of forced dispossession and genocide. Canada itself was "born a conservative, counter-revolutionary colony" shaped by wider forces of industrial development and colonial conflict. But it was also born in the era of Revolution and this meant that Canada's capitalist development had to be "mirrored... in a rhetoric of constitionalist, liberal-democratic rights".

The contradiction of Canada's supposed liberalism and its treatment of Indigenous Peoples and workers is a key part of Palmer's analysis in the second part of the book. The development of industrial Canada, based on its plentiful natural resources - land, wood, fish, coal and so on - combined with racist genocide and the brutal exploitation of workers shapes the country on the eve of the 20th century.

The early Canadian capitalist class also had to be wary of a different dynamic. As land became the "decisive" commodity European settlers could hope to break free of their proletarian chains. Indeed just as in the United States, capitalism's development depended on a section of people doing just that and in doing so "opened up and developed land, enhancing the value of the larger holds of the elite". Simultaneously this helped to discipline and further displace Indigenous Peoples. But the capitalist class were worried. Lord Goderich, the British colonial secretary, worried in 1831 that "without some division of labour, without a class of persons willing to work for wages, how can society be prevented from falling to a state of almost primitive rudeness, and how are the comforts and refinements of civilised life to be procured?"

It is tempting to think that the "primitive rudeness" that Lord Goderich feared was one of "community of goods", but what this illuminating paragraph actually shows is that the capitalist class knew that they had to fight to construct a society in their interests. It was, as Palmer notes, the story of English enclosures "all over again" but "in a colonial setting in which Indigenous displacement seemingly created land's availability". At the same time though the British state was terrified of losing control of its wealthy colony, and deliberately tried to hold back industrial development in order to keep Canada's reliance on Britain.

The book's final chapters trace how, in the aftermath of independence, the late 1800s in Canada were characterised by two parallel processes. The first was the further dispossesion of First Nations, including such brutal experiences as Residential Schools, as well as their resistance including the Métis rebellion in 1885. The second process was a massive wave of workers' resistance and trade union struggle which emerges from the development of a new industrial working class. The "Great Upheavel" of 1886 saw mass strikes and the ruling class feared revolution. But the failure of these struggles to break through partly lay in the inability of the struggles to connect. This reflects, Palmer argues, the "Canada's history of uneven capitalist development combined with its historically evolving colonialism" which structure the struggles differently. The tragedy was the failure of these two struggles to connect in significant ways. And while Palmer highlights the "faint indications" that "both challenges to capitalism and colonialism were nonetheless gravitating in directions that might feed into common struggles", he also notes:

Labour's uprising rarely espoused an unequivocal anti-capitalism to the same extent that the Métis-led war of resistance in the North-West categorically rejected colonialism.

Having said this, Palmer finishes his fantastic book on a positive note:

Canadians need not be confined in the shapes that colonialism and capitalism have hammered out for them, over centuries, on an anvil of developmental determination. Paths once taken can be reversed; choices advocated and refused might now well be embraced, adapted to new circumstances. And struggles long separated from one another can be brought into new and exhilarating alignment.

It's a fitting conclusion for a remarkable history that traces the tragedies and horror that mark the birth of Canada at the same time as celebrating the struggles and resistance that shaped the state. I look forward to the next two volumes which will no doubt show these processes continuing in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James - The Bullet Swallower

In 1895 bandit Antonio Sonora lives on the border between Mexico and Texas. Sonora came from a very wealthy landowning family, but fallen on intensely hardtimes. He, and his own family, live in a shack made from the materials of his ancestor's mansion. But finding himself completely out of options, drought destroying the local farmland he embarks with his brother, on a final attempt to make it rich - a daring robbery of a train carrying plunder from Mexico to the US.

After the robbery fails, it's a bloodthirsty and desperate fight against the Texas Rangers whose renowned brutality strikes fear into the Mexicans (and Native Americans) and who are happy to murder Sonora's family to try and flush him out. Thus begins Sonora's quest for retribution - path of revenge that requires him to sacrifice himself, but also his past and his family's future.

In 1964 Antonio's grandson is one of Mexico's most famous movie stars. One day a mysterious woman gives him a book which is a history of the Sonora family, in all its gory and violent detail. Jamie Sonaro decides to make a film that tells the story, and rescue his family from obscurity. In doing so, he encouters a mysterious, shadowy stranger who seems to have magical powers. This stranger has the power of life and death, surviving a scorpion bite, and bringing the crushed creature back to life. Perhaps he is the devil, or Death.

The two different timelines gradually become closer, as Jamie learners the truth about his grandfather, and we follow Antonio's story of revenge, redemption. The latter forms the core of the novel. Antonio's story is told through a series of set piece encounters - a cross between a Western and a road trip. He meets a series of characters including very delightfully described Englishman whose inherited wealth includes slave plantations. This character embarks on a trip with Antonio as an adventure, until the bandit admonishes him. This is real life for him, not a game. The conditions of poverty, war and hunger all around are not scenery. They're real.

Normally I find magical realism difficult to follow. But this unusual Western brings fantasy, magic and a realistic tale of a bandit trying to escape poverty through violent action to life. It's a lovely book. It's worth noting that it tells a very different story of the Texas Rangers to the heroic bravery of that depicted in Lonesome Dove. A useful antidote to that rewriting of history.

Thursday, April 09, 2026

Lois Phillips Hudson - The Bones of Plenty

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is probably the novel that most people associate with the Dustbowl of the 1930s. Lois Phillips Hudson's The Bones of Plenty was published nearly 25 years after Steinbeck's classic and bares comparison. It is set in North Dakota, and centres on the Custer farming family whose patriarch, George Armstrong Custer (named for the General). The struggles of the family, and in particular George's struggles with drought, storms and disease, make up a novel that marks the gradual decline and fall of the Custers and their community.

George spends his time criticising the government, the banks and his fellow community. He recognises that something fundamental has gone wrong. Big business has stripped the little producer down, the hardworking farmer has been undermined by politicans whose support has gone straight to grain speculators and big capitalists. His rage at the banks, the government and the capitalists is only matched by his antisemitic anger at the Jews he imagines are running the banks. It's a powerful example of the contradictions that can sit in the brains of men oppressed and exploited by an anonymous system.

Hudson fleshes out her narrative with stories of what's happening elsewhere, so of which she tells narrator style, and on other occasions tells through George and his wife Rachel's reading of newspapers and listening to the radio news. Bankruptchies destroy families, farms and communities. George obsesses over prices for grain, and makes tough calculations about his possible yields and finances. Maybe next year will be the time he makes it.

His eldest daughter Lucy is just reaching adolescence and her naive, hopeful dreams carry the novel. She's the thread that links disparate stories, the eyes through which we see the frailty of the Custer's wider community. She, alongside Rachel, are also the victims of George's uncontrolled, abusive anger. He wishes that Luch had been born a boy. She desperately prays that she will change overnight so that her father will like her more and she can work on the farm. He blames the government, the banks and everyone else for the unstoppable calamity.

The community does resist. George helps collectively to fight against the selling off of a neighbour's farm, someone brought low by the banks, but helped to survive by collective resistance and refusal to allow his home and farm to be auctioned. But there's not enough of it, and as the system sinks further, the end is on the horizon for George and Rachel's farm.

This is then the story of tens of thousands of others who found in the dustbowl the inherent contradiction of a capitalist model of farming clashing with ecological realities. It was the smallest people who suffered and the richest who stood to gain the most. The crisis would only be resolved through World War and massive state investment from governments. That was in the future. It doesn't help the Custers.

There is plenty more to this remarkable novel - the story of the drifters, community spirit and solidarity and the anger of those crushed by the system, but not quite losing all hope. Tragically it's a bit of a forgotten book - perhaps because it is so bleak. But it ought to be read more widely. It's got a lot to say to the 21st century world.