Fred Pearce - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Nature's Salvation

Fred Pearce has been a longstanding writer and science journalist on ecological questions, and any book by him deserves a serious consideration by radicals and environmentalists. His books have covered topics as diverse as the population question and landgrabbing, and he has a new book out discussing nuclear power. This 2015 book looks at biodiversity and in particular the question of invasive species.

Why I was writing Land and Labour one of the people who read the first draft insisted that I should change the word "alien" when describing species that entered habitats from where they were not normally found. That reader was absolutely right to do so and Pearce's book shows why (though he uses the word himself). Alien implies outsider, but species have constantly moved around. Pearce explains that there is no pristine nature, unchanged since the beginning of time. Rather nature has constantly evolved, adapted and changed. Species come and go, and while humans have been part of doing this, through deliberate planting or accidental transportation, this process is also a natural one. Pearce gives a number of fascinating examples of the natural processes - from animals and plants that have moved across the oceans, to the colonisation of a brand new island created off the coast of Iceland. But humans have a particular socialised view of nature, and that means we often reject, or fear, intruders. But, as Pearce explains, what we think of as natural nature, is often anything but:

We forget that much that appears loveably native is actually foreign. Some vagabond species that we like can become so much part of the landscape that they get local names and even become adopted natives. In the US, old-world meadowgrass was renamed Kentucky bluegrass. Tumbleweed sounds quintessentially American - a metaphor of ghost towns in Western movies as it rolls across the landscape in the wind. But the most common tumble weed species is not native at all. Salsola tragus, Russian thistle, was brought by Ukrainian immigrants in flax seed.

When I was young every public building in the UK was festooned with posters warning of the dangers of the Colorado beetle. Today some local councils warn of the threat from Japanese Knotweed and Pearce's book lists numerous others. Pearce challenges the idea that invasive species like these are as dangerous as the authorities suggest. Often, for instance, such species actually do not spread as far as portrayed, and very often they prefer "disturbed land" such as brown field sites. But, as Pearce concludes, "they rarely invade the countryside" and "some natives are a much greater nuisance. Bracken, brambles, stinging nettles and ivy are all natives... If they were foreign there would be a hue and cry.... Imagine if the stinging nettle was an alien." One scientist quoted by Pearce "found that the locals caused four time more damage to local woodland biodiversity than the aliens".

The question of biodiversity is important in this context because one major accusation against invasive species is that they drive out "native" plants and kill biodiversity. But often the opposite is true. Pearce shows that a "usually-cited" source for an "oft-repeated claim" that invasive species are the second greatest threat to biodiversity is not true. More interestingly he shows that such species, "except in rare cases... bring greater biodiversity". This can be in several ways - new species that enter existing eco-systems and establish a niche, or new species offering existing species new food sources, or toe-holds for protection. When the Suez Canal opened tropical species moved from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, and 250 species established themselves in new areas, but there was only one recorded extinction.

Pearce isn't arguing that invasive species do not do harm, create problems, or economic costs. What he is arguing is that they are not the existential threat they are often accused of being, and more often than not they bring benefits. This, after all, is why humans have often transported species around the globe - as food sources, for profit, or even for aesthetic reasons. This is a process that began long before farming took place, and we cannot pretend it did not occur - to do so is to believe that there is a pristine nature that can be recovered, or protected like something trapped in amber.

Pearce argues that part of the problem is that the common understanding of ecology is based on the idea of "balance" between species. This, he says, is wrong. As one scientist Henry Gleason, argued (against the grain) in 1926, "every species of plant is a law unto itself, the distribution of which in space depends on its individual peculiarities of migration and environmental requirements." In the late 19th century Frederic Clements came up with the idea of a "matching permanent association of vegetation" (Pearce's words) which he called a climax. Counter to this Pearce argues that "species evolve to get by, not to attain Clementsian perfection". Because of the sort of crudities that Pearce argues against, it struck me that many ecologists would benefit from a dialectical understanding of biology, such as that outlined by Levins and Lewontin in The Dialectical Biologist.

Pearce argues a strong case. However, as the subtitle of his book puts it, he sees salvation in the ability of nature itself to repair and build anew. He concludes:

But the new wild is flourishing, and will do better if we allow it to have its head.... Alien species, the vagabonds, are the pioneers and colonists in this constant renewal. Their invasions will not always be convenient for us, but nature will rewild in its own way.

This is problematic. Pearce appears to be saying here that we should do nothing, and nature will simply rebuild given time. But Pearce also has numerous examples that show how human action - such as industrial farming - is driving biodiversity loss. He argues that climate change will lead to more destruction of nature, but will simultaneously be "a major driver of species migrations" which will lead to renewal. In other words Pearce appears to be trying to have his environmental cake, and eat it as well.

What is missing from his analysis is an attempt to locate the environmental crisis within the wider social relations that humanity exists in. While it is true that humans have always altered nature, capitalism has transformed the scale of the transformation, unleashing changes to the environment that are breaking fundamental ecological relations. Eventually, human driven climate change, will likely create feedbacks that can threaten the very existence of life on the planet. I know that Fred Pearce knows this, because he wrote a very good book about it called The Last Generation. But beware - I am not dismissing Fred Pearce's book, in fact I encourage people to read it. But I think it's flawed in its suggestion that "By seeking only to conserve and protect the endangered and the weak, it [conservation] becomes a brake on evolution and a douser of adaptation. If we want to assist nature to regenerate, we need to promote change, rather than hold it back." Maybe; but we primarily need to stop fossil fuel capitalism to give nature the space to "regenerate". In fact Pearce's dismissal of contemporary conservation reads more like a call to passivity in the face of ecological crisis than a call to action.

Given time, and and end to capitalism, nature will have enormous potential to rebuild damaged regions, part of that will involve invasive species of many sorts and human involvement in moving them. Even today, as Pearce's book shows, a proper understanding of the ecological relationships between species, can help regenerate areas and protect biodiversity. But this will not happen if we sit back and wait for nature to rewild on its own. That's a recipe for a world of utter chaos and complete ecological breakdown.

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Shaun Jeffery - The Village in Revolt: The Story of the Longest Strike in History

The story of the Burston School Strike, the "longest in history", is a seminal one for the British trade union movement. The story has often been told as one simply about two brave trade union activists, Annie and Tom Higdon who defied the local Norfolk establishment and fought for their jobs, and most importantly, their children's education.

But as Shaun Jeffery makes very clear, this struggle was in the context of much wider social and economic changes taking place. This is not to downplay the role of the Higdons however - they were principled individuals who were at the forefront of fighting against poverty, inequality and exploitation. But this brought them into conflict with their employers and the local representatives of the higher-classes.

The story of the Burston School strike begins then, not in Burston, but in Wood Dalling, Norfolk where the Higdons were previously employed. Here they came a cropper of the local employers after a series of disagreements of, what seem, relatively petty issues. Eventually dismissed and then re-employed in Burston it was immediately clear that the Higdon's would not simply agree to whatever the establishment wanted. They complained about the state of the school, light fires when not supposed to do so, and generally upset the local gentry and clergy by their non-subservience.

They were clearly adored by the children they taught. Fond memories from their students show that the Higdon's were good teachers, kind and generous. Helping the children whose clothing were inadequate, bringing gifts of sweets and toys, organising Christmas events and, most importantly, taking an interest in their general education when the dominant form of teaching was simply the rote learning of the "three Rs". I was struck that their generosity extended way beyond the village boundaries. Twice a year, for instance, Annie Higdon arranged for children from poor communities in London to visit for a holiday.

Jeffery begins with the background to Annie and Tom. Both came from poor rural communities, though Annie's family had money due to a lucky break by an ancestor. How they met we do not know, but it was clear that their politics meshed and they both had the self confidence needed to stand-up to their supposed "betters". Tom became a central figure in both villages in the growing trade union movement for agricultural workers, something that he was part of for his whole life. Annie was also a trade unionist in the teaching union, albeit it much more isolated, but her politics was nonetheless centered on trying improve to make the lives of the poorest.

When, on April 1st 1914, the two were sacked, almost every single child walked out on strike. While it's not clear if the Higdons knew of these plans, the students were clearly supported by their parents. Rapidly the strike became a cause for the wider movement, and as days spread into months, the authorities were unable to get the children to return. Eventually the union movement and the local population would come up with the cash to setup a "strike school" that taught Burston (and children from further afield) through the war and into the 1930s. Jeffery tells the fascinating story of how the strike became a cause célèbre for the wider union movement, particularly the railway workers union, who brought speakers and solidarity to the tiny village repeatedly.

The role of the railway union hints at the wider context to the strike. For it is clear from Jeffery's research that Burston was not an isolated event. In the months running up to the 1914 events there had been a rash of strikes by school students in England, and these were widely reported. Jeffery argues that these were in the context of widening class conflict and I think this is right. The run up to the First World War saw a growth in strikes, known as the Great Unrest, and children were not immune to the explosion in trade union membership and militancy. In the countryside this was tied up with the rebirth of agricultural trade unionism as the reality of rural poverty (something very clear to the Higdons) became unbearable.

A third factor was the breaking down of the old order in rural villages. In both Burston and Wood Dalling, it was clear that the local establishment was struggling to maintain its old role as total local authority. This was being challenged politically (by the emerging workers organisations and parties) and economically by the growth and development of new forms of agriculture (and other industries such as the railways). The spectacular rudeness and belligerence of the local school board (usually the local clergy and big farmers) in the face of what seem relatively benign demands from the Higdons demonstrates their firm belief in their right to govern. This could no longer hold and the rebellion (as well as other strikes etc) demonstrates this, as do the references by both the Higdons and the contemporary unions to "Junkers" in Norfolk. This refers to the landowning class in Germany and had a particular resonance in the context of the First World War.

Today the Burston strike is celebrated with an annual festival much like Tolpuddle. Shaun Jeffery has been part of making sure that takes place and helps us to remember this important struggle. His book celebrates the role of Tom and Annie, as well as the brave school students who went on strike, and their families who stood by and encouraged them in the face of the courts and the farmers. Their sacrifices should not be forgotten as they illuminate rural life in the early 20th century, and I am pleased to recommend Shaun Jeffery's excellent history which will both educate and inspire the reader.

Buy The Village in Revolt from Bookmarks, the socialist Bookshop - click here.

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Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic

Beginning with an intriguing idea, this is a complex novel that will repay reading for a second time I suspect. It is set in the future, probably in the US, in a world transformed by a visitation by aliens. But, frustratingly for humankind, the aliens made no contact and left a series of zones which have been radically transformed in ways that humans simply cannot understand. The areas are rich with alien artefacts, some of which of marvels like unlimited power or potential weapons. But they are protected by, often invisible, threats that kill or maim those seeking to find these alien treasures. Frustratingly it is not apparent to explorers and scientists whether these threats are deliberate protections or other random leavings by the alien visitors.

A whole industry, official and unofficial, has developed around these zones. Scientists are desperate for more information and more artefacts. Other, less scrupulous, forces want to get their hands on the treasure for profit and power. The official expeditions into the zones are mirrored by illegal trips by "stalkers". One of these stalkers, Red Schuhart, has a dual life foraging the zone for illegal and legal purposes. Like many who lived near a zone during the visitation, his family has suffered as a result - unknown forces have mutated his daughter, and friends and other stalkers have died. He drowns his sorrow in alcohol, but he cannot escape the zone, returning again and again, in the hope of understanding its secrets and possibly finding salvation for his family.

The point of the book, however, is that no one can understand the zones, humans can only gain superficial knowledge and use from the alien leavings. The title derives from a analogy used by one of the scientists. The visitation was like a picnic visit to a field by a human party. They leave behind scraps of food and broken toys, radios or trinkets. These are incomprehensible to the insects and animals that live in the field, but are understood as wondrous creations. The humans finish their picnic and leave, not stopping to comprehend the impact on the roadside inhabitants.

The concept is clever, and was clever enough to encourage at least one successful film 1979's Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and with a screen play by the Strugatsky brothers. Its also been widely translated and my edition from the SF Masterworks series has a great introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin and an afterword by Boris Strugatsky that looks at the tortuous publication history in the former USSR. The book isn't simply a critique (or commentary) on the old Soviet regime, though there are clear elements to that, not least in Red's final demand. But it certainly has elements of a critique of a commodity obsessed society that appears to be set in 1950s America. Many of the objects found, as Le Guin, points out might be being misused by their human scientists. For all their successful applications are humans using "Geiger counters as hand axes"?

A clever story with a brilliant setting, I feel that Roadside Picnic will improve with a second and third reading. It's not quite as good as the Strugatsky's Hard to be a God but it comes recommended.

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Julia Boyd - Travellers in the Third Reich

It is a cliche to say it but "hindsight is a wonderful thing". It's a phrase that repeatedly came to mind as I read Julia Boyd's highly interesting and critically lauded book that looks at Hitler's Germany through the eyes of visitors in the 1930s. It is with only a slight amount of tongue in cheek that she can write in an opening line to one of the final chapters that the "year 1939 was not a good one for Germany's tourist trade" because for much of the 1930s the opposite was true. With Hitler's grabbing of power in 1933 the regime was keen to promote itself was positively as possible around the globe and expanded its promotional work enormously. Thousands of people travelled to the country, encouraged by posters from travel agents like Thomas Cook who urged people to see the country for themselves. In particular many tourists came from England - Germany had been a popular pre-WW1 destination and the 1920s saw a resurgence of this.

The 1930s bought a variety of people. From political activists and diplomats trying to understand, change or negotiate with the Nazi regime to tourists, musicians, academics and fascists who each had their own reasons for travelling to the country. As Boyd explains many of them were bemused, but then caught up into the sights and spectacles of the Nazi state. The regime was adapt at linking propaganda with the tourist experience, and many travellers, not just politicians or diplomats received a heavy dosage of Antisemitism and anti-Communism with their operatic performances or encounters with Nazis. Even people from the left seemed unable to clearly understand what was taking place, and while they rarely feel under Hitler's spell, they often found their experiences jarred with their expectations. More often than not though, many visitors simply found their latent anti-Semitism confirmed:

John Mynard Keynes... who readily sang the praises of Jewish friends... wrote, 'Yet if I lived there, I felt I might turn anti-Semitic fr the poor Prussian is too slow and heavy on his legs for the other kin of Jews, the ones who not imps but serving devil, with small horns, pitch forks and oily tails'. He added how unpleasant it was to see a civilisation 'so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jew who has all the money and the power and the brain'.

Boyd has an eye for anecdote and plenty of ironic humour. But beneath much of these accounts is a real sense of dread. Not everyone was blind the regime. The Summer Olympics of 1936 allowed many to get an understanding of what was taking place, even though the experience was heavily choreographed and sanitised of Antisemitism. One athlete remained behind after the games and went swimming to suddenly see signs forbidding Jews to enter, he was told that this was because the Olympics were finished. Others used the opportunity to tell the world what they thought of Hitler. Halet Çambel was the first female Muslim to take part in the Olympic games and "was astonished by her fellow athletes' apathy to National Socialism". She loathed the Nazis and would have preferred not to be in Berlin at all. When asked if she would like to meet Hitler, she famously said, 'No.' Others noticed the hypocrisy of their own countries. Archie Williams, a black 400 meteres gold medalist from the USA returned home and was asked in a newspaper "How did those dirty Nazis treat you?" He replied that he had not met any, "just a lot of nice German people. And I didn't have to ride in the back of the bus."

Nonetheless the over-riding theme of Boyd's book is that very few travellers actually did hate the regime and many came away after expecting to hate it, finding much to celebrate. In the case of some, like academics, Boyd argues that they

chose to travel int he Third Reich because Germany's cultural heritage was simply too precious to renounce for politics... They allowed their reverence for the past to warp their judgement of the present. As a result they wilfully ignored the realities of a dictatorship that by 1936 - despite the Olympic mirage - was unashamedly parading itself in all its unspeakable colours.

While this is no doubt true, I also think that one of the other factors is that the material Boyd works from tends to come from the higher class end of the spectrum who tended to have right-wing inclinations. This is not to say the lower classes did not travel to Germany in the period, on the contrary I was fascinated to find that 1000s did go on package tours. But the material that survives, letters, articles, diaries tends to come from the middle and upper classes, and their prejudices were more inclined towards the regime. Some of these were extremely anti-Semitic, and many of them approved of the key political line of the regime which was that Germany was a bulwark against Communism.

But it is also true that the Nazis were adapt at hiding their true faces. I was quite shocked by how many people visited Dachau concentration camp. It was a veritable tourist destination, yet few of these visitors realised that they weren't meeting real inmates, well fed and looked after. Instead they were meeting SS men in costume. The reality dawned for many, far to late, with Kristallnacht in November 1938 which Boyd sees as a moment of profound realisation for many of the naive visitors.

Boyd points out that even a serious a left-wing black thinker as W.E. Du Bois was confused by his time in Germany. That said, on his return to the US, he noted that he detested the antiSemitism, but enjoyed his time in the country, but realised that "It would have been impossible for me to have spent a similarly long time in any part of the US without some, if not frequent, cases of personal insult or discrimination. I cannot record a single instance here.... It was not at all deceived by attitudes of Germans towards me and the very few Negroes who happened to be visiting them... Theoretically their attitude towards Negroes is just as bad as towards Jews, and if there were any number of Negroes in Germany, would be expressed in the same way." He did conclude though, that "ordinary Germans were not naturally colour prejudiced".

With hindsight, many of the accounts in Boyd's book are shocking in their naivety (or for their latent racism). Hindsight gives us a much clearer picture, but it is still surprising that so many people accepted without question the demands of the regime when they visited - joining in the with Hitler salute, adorning their caravans with Swastikas, or even, for one highly respected conductor acceding to demands that he remove music by the Jewish composer Mendelssohn from his programme. It is easy to say "I would have behaved differently" and perhaps many readers of this blog would have. The question is why didn't more people behave differently then?

Today, as we witness a new growth in fascist and far-right movements in Europe and beyond, we should read Julia Boyd's book for its insight into how fascists organise and can conceal their horrific plans with more acceptable politics. But I also was struck by the similarities with a generalised acceptance of antisemitism in the 1930s by large numbers of people, and the way that a general Islamophobic mentality has been created by governments and the media today. We will do well to learn the lessons from Julia Boyd's book which uses a previously ignored set of materials to illuminate the darkest period of European history. An excellent, if frightening read.

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James Hobson - Dark Days of Georgian Britain

History bookshelves groan under the weight of books devoted to kings and queens, famous generals and well known figures. Rarely do ordinary people get a look in, and it is even rarer to find a book devoted to their struggles. This is particularly true of the Regency, a period in English history where, if one was to focus on the output of television drama departments, everyone lived in a country house.

So it is with pleasure that I review James Hobson's Dark Days of Georgian Britain. Hobson begins with two quotes to illustrate his central thesis, one from Jane Austen's Emma where the titular character is described as living twenty-one years "with very little to distress" her. The other from Karl Marx noting that "the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle". It's an excellent juxtaposition, for the book deals with, both the actuality of those class struggles and the society that bred them.

The Regency period was not one were it was pleasant to be poor. England was in a period of transition. It was rapidly moving towards a society where the urban population would outnumber the rural, and the transition was painful for the majority of the countryside's population who were being forced from their land into poverty. It was, as Hobson, explains "a new society; one where it was every person for themselves and previous mutual obligations between the rich and poor were dissolving." The rich, of course, justified these changes as being either natural or inevitable. The poor existed so that there could be rich people, though the wealthy seemed to work hard to make life worse for the lower classes. As Hobson concludes,

Two sets of conflicting ideas existed. Britain was still a community-minded society where the rich felt the need to help the poor under certain conditions. However it was also one where market forces and laissez-faire economics were all the rage, and were used to condone the suffering of the poor. A more fatalistic view of suffering was developing as Britain industrialised.

Whether these changes were laws to maximise profits from agriculture, or changes to the game laws to prevent the poor catching and eating food, ordinary people resisted. Mass protests, demonstrations, riots and occasional strikes shook the establishment. Hobson looks at a number of these, including food riots and in two excellent chapters he discusses the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 though a discussion of the "establishment cover up" and the role of women. The latter is particularly interesting, highlighting the way that the role of women in the protest was considered shocking to the press and establishment, despite the attacking militia having no qualms in attacking both sexes indiscriminately. However many of these women had deep roots in radical movements that would continue long after the massacre; Mary Fildes was knocked off the platform at Peterloo, and slashed at by a member of the yeomanry but went on "to be an activist for women's contraception and supported the Chartists in the 1840s."

Not all of the chapters focus on resistance. Several look at wider contexts, such as the ideological role of charity, the disgusting Prince Regent, Crime and Punishment and so on. Some of these, such as the chapter on the Irish, remind the reader that divide and rule was a conscious strategy of the ruling class two hundred years ago, and there are some appalling stories of how this racism led to repression and exploitation of immigrant communities on a huge scale. Other chapters, such as the ones on adultery and suicide, show how society was beginning to change, but how it retained many dubious older prejudices.

Hobson's running theme through the book is the similarities between then and now. Economic discontent, racism towards immigrants, under employment and low pay and a ruling class only interested in their own wealth. It's not a bad thing to highlight, though perhaps what is missing is a attempt to explain why it is that capitalism encourages this sort of behaviour. Hobson's book is a good read, entertaining and shocking by turns. On occasion I was frustrated at the poverty of references. For instance Hobson writes about the "Stale Bread Act" and a quick look on the internet brings few references, and I would have liked more information. Also on occasion chapters finish two quickly, leaving questions unanswered. I was, for instance, surprised that Hobson did not write more about Oliver the Spy whose extensive career and unmasking at the hands of brave journalists tells us a great deal about the nature of the period. These, minor, criticisms aside, Dark Days of Georgian Britain is a great readable antidote to all those costume dramas.

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Greg Grandin - Fordlandia

In the 1920s Henry Ford decided to build a city in the Amazon. He was not the sort of person who was shy of self-promotion so he named it after himself. The purpose was to ensure a safe, cheap supply of rubber for Ford's car factories in North America, but Ford's real dream was the transformation of a section of the Amazon into a recreation of a highly stylised small town America. Doing this required a few things. Firstly it needed an enormous amount of money, something that the Ford corporation had in vast quantities. Secondly it needed land that could be transformed into rubber plantations and urban areas and, most importantly, it needed a large number of people who would work for Ford.

Ford famously built his empire by paying workers much more than the competitors. In theory they were paid enough to be able to purchase the cars they made. But Ford also made sure that his workforce conformed to a very strict set of standards. Alcohol was frowned upon, and often forbidden. Trade unions were strictly banned and Ford's hired thugs were prepared to use the utmost violence to prevent any hint of workers organising. Inspectors were sent to workers' homes to quiz the family on propreity and behaviour, even their sex life came under examination. While Ford liked to argue that he was the epitome of the good capitalist, at home and in the workplace he strictly controlled his workers' labour.

Ford has gone down in history for a number of things. He is credited with the transformation of factory work. Everything that could be done to improve efficiency was done. Today workers in call centres have their toilet breaks timed. In Ford's factory's workers had every movement calculated and analysed. The pay might have been good, but the relentless hard work meant turnover was high. Ford took his beliefs to all the logical, and illogical, extremes. According to Grandin he once sacked 700 orthodox Christians for taking a day off to celebrate a holiday. He believed that cow's milk was unhealthy and forced soy milk and food made from soy substitutes on his guests. Gardin writes, and  quotes one contemporary journalist, Walter Lippmann:

The industrialist's conviction that he could make the world conform to his will was founded on a faith that success in economic matters should, by extension allow capitalists to try their hands "with equal success" at "every other occupation." "Mr. Ord is neither a crank nor a freak," Lippmann insisted, but "merely the logical exponent of American prejudices about wealth and success." 

Importing this to the Amazon was fraught with peril. The rubber trade had brought capitalism to the rain-forest. But Ford brought it on an enormous scale. The heart of this book is the story of the consequent clash. Nature and people had to be shaped in Ford's image, and both resisted!

Firstly the people. Many of those that Ford's employees wanted to work for them in the Amazon had little or no experience of working to the regimes that Ford wanted. Some had no experience (or need) for money and wanted goods in kind - Ford refused to allow this, and so the workers refused to work for him. Others didn't want to work continuously, just enough to earn some money before returning to their own land. Still others wanted to bring their whole families with them. A year or so into the project, when Fordlandia was beginning to work, a huge riot destroyed nearly the whole complex. The trigger was management's insistence that workers had to queue in a canteen for food, rather than being served by waiters, behind this though was intense anger at the regime, the strict clocking in and out, and so on. One of the notable pictures in the book is of a clocking machine destroyed by the rioters.

Secondly nature. Like so many capitalists before and after Ford believed that he could simply force nature to do what he wanted. There's a famous quote from Fredrich Engels where he warns, "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us..." This was very much true in the Amazon. The stripping of the land required far more work and money than Ford expected and, because he ignored local advice and refused to hire experts, his operations were repeatedly beset by problems. In particular, he and his managers, did not understand that rubber plantations cannot work in South America because of the native pests and diseases. This is why Henry Wickham had to steak Brazilian rubber seeds for plantations in Asia which were free from these threats. Ford's plantations repeatedly failed, costing millions. As Grandin explains, "The Ford Motor Company, with the endorsement of a well respected pathologist with experience on three continents, had in effect created an incubator" for disease.

Today Ford's plans seem unbelievable. He wanted to strip bare a massive area of the rain-forest and build a huge plantation, serviced by a town modelled on his vision of small-town America. Building an electric plant and a dock is one thing, but cinemas, bandstands and an 18 hole golf course seem utterly bizarre. But behind this, as Grandin explains, was Ford's own vision of society. He believed that men like him could transform the world into a system that would provide peace and prosperity through the control of workers and nature. Ford's pride and arrogance failed. Fordlandia was a disaster and as it declined, the aged Ford retreated further and further into his own artificial world populated with antiques and fake town life.

Ford, it should be emphasised, was not some benevolent eccentric. He was a ruthless capitalist, who drove his workers hard and held some extremely offensive views - particularly his Antisemitism, though his racism also affected his (and his company's) attitudes to the Brazilians. His attempts to shape people and nature where of course celebrated by Hitler's Nazis, a group that Ford famously courted.

In the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Engels wrote about capitalism's globalising vision:

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

With Fordlandia, Henry Ford literally wanted to create the Amazonian world into the very image of an imagined America. At the same time he wanted to entrap the people into his factories and transform nature into something that could readily guarantee his profits. The story of his failure is brilliantly told by Greg Grandin, and I highly recommend this well-written, gripping history.

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Richard Fortey - Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time has Left Behind

When I was much younger, sometime in the 1970s, I had a picture book of animals and rather fascinatingly to me it had a drawing of a living fossil, the Coelacanth fish. I was captivated by the idea that animals that had been alive in the distant past were still alive today. Around the same time I also watched that terrible film The Land that Time Forgot but I don't think I ever believed that there was anywhere were dinosaurs continued to exist.

The Coelacanth jumped into my mind as soon as I saw Richard Fortey's book. Many years later I was still fascinated by the idea that animals could survive into contemporary times. While this is not a history of evolution Fortey does tell the story in a roughly linear way, and so we begin with very early animals and plants to understand how some examples of these remain alive today.

The first thing to point out is that Fortey never uses the term "living fossil". As he explains, no living thing remains still, a species is in a continuous process of evolution, but with some we can see something very similar to their historical ancestors. Sometimes this is because an organisms "niche" the "place where it fits in, earns a living, reproduces" remains constant and so little change takes place. Quite a few of the organisms in this book are like that, particularly bacteria and so on. Others may have evolved elsewhere but found in radically different environments today. Cacti, Fortey points out "are now specialists for life in arid conditions in the Americas, but did they originate in damp forests in Gondwana?"

Coelacanth

Despite my youthful enthusiasm for the Coelacanth, I was particularly fascinated by the examples of lifeforms that are close to those that existed very early on in Earth's evolutionary history. Of these the Stromatolites must be the most amazing example in this book. They look like "flat-topped cushions and low pillars, or even giant mushrooms expanding upwards like plush stools".  They are built up by tiny organisms, year after year, and so are not a single organism, but a "whole ecology". Usually such microscopic organisms would be eaten away, but in the special conditions where they are found today, a warm shoreline in Australia, would be consumers are absent. Fossil stromatolites have been found from as far back as the Archean era, up to 3.5 billion years ago. They are found in many different places around today's globe (Fortey recounts finding them in Spitsbergen as an undergraduate) and must have been very common. Seeing pictures of them today gives us a tiny insight into what life was like very early on in its evolutionary career.

As with Fortey's other writings this is highly personalised. His career has taken him to many places to

Stromatolites

see many things and this helps make his books highly readable. Unfortunately this book's illustrations are reproduced very badly - in black and white, on paper - and much of the detail is lost. Luckily the internet allows readers to quickly find more useful examples.

Fortey ends the book with a discussion of how these creatures in their niches or Time Havens, face the pressures of environmental change. He points out though, that even if catastrophic climate change wipes out the vast majority of living things on Earth, small bacteria will still be there and that "the wheel of life will have turned full circle". It's a great book that gives an unusual insight into evolutionary history.

Related Reviews

Fortey - Trilobite!
Fortey - The Earth: An Intimate History

Neil Rathmell - 1549

This is an unusual novel that deserves to be better known. Neil Rathmell tells the story of Kett's Rebellion of 1549, a major upheaval that shook Norfolk as tens of thousands of peasants revolted against rural poverty and the attacks on their communities. Rathmell tells the story from two perspectives; the first from Robert Kett's rotting corpse who recounts the history of the rising backwards to an audience of rats. Kett has been cruelly executed and his remains hung to remind the population of the folly of rebellion, but after death he celebrates the struggle and the value of resisting inequality and oppression.

In the second interleaved story a Norfolk merchant falls in love with his brothers' wife. From this perspective the rebellion is a disturbance that reflects the upheaval in their lives, but is also distant and remote. It is chiefly noticed for the problems it causes for trade, though the family is more closely involved in the rebellion than either of the major participants initially realises.

Rathmell knows the history of 1549 well though it might not be the best place for someone new to the period to start as the novel's structure means the history is told backwards. Nonetheless, while strange in places, Neil Rathmell tells a good tale with a fascinating backdrop.

Related Reviews

Wood - The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England
Land - Kett's Rebellion
Flecther & MacCulloch - Tudor Rebellions

M. Jahi Chappell - Beginning to End Hunger Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond

A study of attempts to deal with poverty, hunger and malnutrition in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and what this means for food poverty, sustainable farming and wider questions of food sovereignty for the majority of the city's population.

My review of this book is published in the Climate and Capitalism web-journal here.

Related Reviews

Vergara-Camus - Land and Freedom
Sader & Silverstein - Without Fear of Being Happy
Galeano - The Open Veins of Latin America
Sader - The New Mole
Robb - A Death in Brazil

Stephen King - The Wind Through the Keyhole

Long term readers of this my reviews will know that I have a great love for much of Stephen King's work and particularly his Dark Tower books. Nearly four years after finishing that epic series I was finally able to return to them by reading The Wind Through the Keyhole a novel set between volumes four and five of the original series. The novel adds little to the actual series, but adds a great deal to the backstory of the Gunslinger and his companions. It also builds on the wider history of the world they inhabit.

Sheltering from a stark-blast, an enormously powerful storm that drops temperatures to freezing and shatters wood with high-speed winds, the Gunslinger is reminded of a story his mother used to tell him. As his companions huddle around a fire, he tells them the story of how he first retold that tale, and thus we are treated to a story within a story. The Gunslinger tells us of his adventures that took place after those described in the forth volume Wizard and Glass. They deal with a mission he is sent on to kill a skin-man, a shape-shifting creature that has been massacring the population of a small mining village near to Roland's home.

During an over-night shelter there, Roland tells tells a nervous witness to a massacre the story that his mother had told him, of a small boys adventure that leads him to become a Gunslinger. Readers hoping to find answers to the great mysteries of the other novels will be disappointed. The book contains little of that, though it does tie up some loose ends and certainly gave this reader a sense of a deeper knowledge of Roland's world and his motivation. Telling more would ruin much for future readers, so I'll leave it there, except to recommend the Dark Tower series once again to those who haven't read them.

Related Reviews

King - The Gunslinger
King - The Drawing of the Three
King - Wizard and Glass
King - The Wastelands
King - Wolves of the Calla

Wilhelm Hasbach - A History of the English Agricultural Labourer

This classic study of English agriculture was first published by the author in Germany in 1894 and translated into English in 1908, where it was reprinted several times. I read the 1920 edition which has an introduction by the famous Fabian socialist Sidney Webb reflecting the left leanings of the writer.

Hasbach's History of the English Agricultural Labourer is a fantastically detailed work. Some of it is, without doubt dated, and on occasion the constant repetition of facts, figures and dates makes it tiresome to read. But Hasbach manages to show how, within the broad sweep of historical development, the peasant and then the labourer in England's rural economies had their lives transformed. The first chapter looks at the feudal manor as an organisation unit for labour and rent. But Hasbach is only interested in these feudal arrangements for how they frame the later development of capitalist agriculture.

Hasbach repeatedly emphasises that the rural masses were very much the victims of agricultural development in England. They were pushed from their land, had their wages constantly driven down, and faced all sorts of legal restrictions on their ability to improve their lot. Enclosure, for instance, didn't simply remove people from the land, destroying their homes and communities, but those that remained found their lots immeasurably reduced.

As for the great mass of the cottagers and squatters, it is obvious that to them division meant simply that the very backbone of their economy was broken. They had few friends, and many bitter enemies, and were unable to get their case represented in Parliament. They could do nothing, and went empty away....The wastes being divided, shelter and firing were no longer to be had for nothing. Men must either pay or go without. And in very few places was any compensation paid for this loss.

Hasbach sees enclosure not as a simple change to the organisation of the countryside which brought about mass depopulation, but also a transformation in the economic relations. New forms of labour are developed (which he explores in horrific detail) such as the gang systems. This is agriculture designed to maximise profit.

Hasbach looks at how many reformers tried to understand what these changes had done to the population and how things might be improved. A whole variety of strategies were looked at - from the creation of allotments, to the recreation of rural communities. One 18th century commentator, Richard Price who regarded "the agricultural changes mainly from an ethical, social and political standpoint" and had a rather romantic view of the "earlier stages of civilisation" based on small holding farming, argued that there was a need to "drive back the inhabitants of the towns into the country. Establish some regulations for preserving the lives of infants. Discourage luxury and celibacy, and the engrossing of farms".

This is an extreme approach, but it does highlight one problem of the time when discussing the conditions of the poor, one that Hasbach himself repeats, which is the lack of any believe in the poor themselves playing any role in the improvement of their situation. They are passive recipiants of government plans, or reforming strategies. As a result Hasbach also fails to highlight in detail any of the great acts of resistance by the rural communities. In fact, when he does comment on these events, it tends to be in a negative way.

The constant war which the pauper has to wage with all who em,ploy or pay him i destructive to his honest and his temper; as his subsistence does not depend on his exertions, he loses all that sweetens labour.

Later he continues

The demoralisation reached its height when labourers revenged themselves on obnoxious farmers by rick-burning. It was was not uncommon for several fires in one night to proclaim grimly and plainly to the propertied classes the destruction o the ancient concord of the village community.

But at times rick-burning etc became a genuine mass movement in the countryside that went far beyond simple revenge on obnoxious farmers, taking up questions of wages, village organisation and made attempts to democratically control aspects of peoples' lives such as by the removal of particular over-seers. This brief paragraph neglects the strikes, protests and other mass actions of the rural class struggle.

Prejudices

On occasion modern readers will smile at Hasbech's 19th century prejudices. Several times he suggests that part of the problem was that rural labourers were too ignorant to understand their position, particularly in regard to the employment of children. In others his language is very dated, as when he writes that "the prettier and livelier country girls sough situations in the towns and returned no more". But despite this, the book echoes with Hasbech's deep sympathy for the poverty and problems of the rural masses throughout history. This means that his discussions on the family wage, children employment, gang labour and the levels of wages don't ignore that behind all these things are real sufferings that he hopes can be alleviated. Thus he can write in the conclusion:

Up to the present time the two most important stages in the history of the agricultural labourer have been, first, his acquisition of personal freedom and second his severance from land and capital. The first was an historical process, desired by many but... intended by no one. The second was, on the contrary, definitely intended, end as well as means, by many people. They desired to place proletarian labouring class as the disposal of the farmer, believing that such as step was in the interest both of employers and the public.

Hasbach however, can only see the solution as being a return to some sort of closer relation between land and labourer. This means the redistribution of land and a vast increase in the numbers of small holdings. This Hasbach believes, will also bring the added benefit of strengthening protectionism against free-trade, which Hasbach saw as being a driver of the impoverishment of the rural masses.

These are conclusions that are tied up in 19th century economic debates and few will read this book to rediscover them. But Hasbach's book is a treasure trove of detail of the economic lives of the rural population of England, it never romanticises that life, even if it sometimes neglects the role of ordinary people in resisting the changes that took place.

Related Reviews

Whitlock - Peasant's HeritageHowkins - The Death of Rural England
Mazoyer & Roudart - A History of World Agriculture
Groves - Sharpen the Sickle
Hammond & Hammond - The Village Labourer
Hammond & Hammond - The Skilled Labourer
Fisher - Custom, Work and Market Capitalism

John le Carré - A Legacy of Spies

I was looking forward enormously to A Legacy of Spies and re-read its prequel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in preparation. That book is a near perfect spy thriller, the dirty, backstabbing reality of Cold War spying in the drab, grey of 1950s England and East Germany. By contrast A Legacy of Spies is set in a world that seems like New Labour - full of steel and glass, opulence and smartly dressed professionals. But its a superficial modernity. The reality for the spies is still one of betrayal and backstabbing, loneliness and violence - but now they are even more scrutinised by a 21st century bureaucracy that pretends to incomprehensibility when faced with the methods of previous decades.

The legacy of the title is the fall out from a long forgotten spy operation undertaken in the first novel, supervised by Control, Smiley and the narrator of Legacy Peter Guillam. Guillam is uncooperative in MI6's investigation into those events which has been sparked by the return of the son of the British agent who died in the operation, who is suing for wrongful death. Guillam is trying to protect both his legacy and that of his friend and mentor George Smiley. Tied up with all of this is the larger betrayal that MI6 experienced in the aftermath of the first book.

The plot is convoluted, though the reality is that little happens. Guillam twists and turns and reveals little, but spends a lot of time thinking through the rights and wrongs of his own past and the Service. Rather than being a novel in itself it felt to me more like the author was tying up some lose ends for his fans by referencing all the events that they've come to cherish. It's not a bad novel, but its not the greatest and I found the ending very flat. It's not Le Carré at his best, but if you're reading it, that wil be because you've read all the others and you'll already know this by the time you open the book.

Related Reviews

Le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Le Carré - A Small Town in Germany
Le Carré - The Looking Glass War
Le Carré- A Murder of Quality

Mike Davis - Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory

Mike Davis is the author of many excellent socialist books, two of which have been highly influential on me - Late Victorian Holocausts and Planet of Slums. I was also highly impressed with his book on Avian Flu, The Monster at the Door. Old Gods is a reassertion of Marxism in several collected essays. I've been asked to do a full review of it for a separate magazine and I'll update this post when that is published.

Related Reviews

Davis - Planet of Slums
Davis - The Monster at Our Door
Davis - Late Victorian Holocausts

John le Carré - The Looking Glass War

By all accounts John le Carré wrote The Looking Glass War disappointed that readers of his best selling The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was taken far to seriously, and not understood as the satire it was intended as. Looking Glass focuses on The Department, a section of British Intelligence that has left its wartime glamour far behind. Now, instead of an essential section of Britain's military machine, it is a poor second cousin to Smiley's Circus. Lacking funding, infrastructure and staff the Department is a spy network without any spies.

Beginning with a botched intelligence job, over some dubious intelligence, the Department is dragged into a dangerous mission in East Germany which senior figures clearly see as a last ditched attempt to regain wartime levels of funding, glory and acceptance in the Intelligence Community. The botched job is followed up by amateurish attempts to retrieve a roll of tape that nearly blows the whole thing open. Despite this, the Department's head Leclerc, a boorish former pilot uses his knowledge of Whitehall's bureaucracy to secure under the table funding to send a spy into East Germany.

The mission is, inevitably, a cock up. But what makes the book is the meticulous way that le Carré depicts the build up. Here are bureaucrats scheming against each other for funding and ministerial approval. Leclerc himself oversees much of the hiring of the Departments new spy, but is keen to keep from him the reality of his organisations eclipse. The former spy, now gone to grass in a second hand car salesroom is repeatedly told that the Department has "got boxes of files" of other operatives. Reality is, of course, exactly the opposite, and readers cannot help but feel that someone is being hung out to dry.

Much of this is presumably based on le Carré's own experiences. Infighting, competition and lies are the staple of government departments and spies. The grim, competing world of the Department and the Circus is a complete contrast to the glamour of James Bond. By the time that The Looking Glass War was finished Ian Fleming had published all of his Bond books. There's no doubt that le Carré was writing to stab that particular image of the intelligence services in the back. When people try to understand how Tony Blair's government could come up with something as crude as the 45 minute dodgy Iraq dossier, it's not hard to imagine some of these self-serving bureaucrats behind the scenes.

As with all the other le Carré novels that I've read, this is tightly written. It's grim and the characters are unlikable. Unusually, the plot matters little. What's really interesting is the tension between individuals and the nasty backstabbing world of the intelligence services.

Related Reviews

le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
le Carré - A Small Town in Germanyle Carré - A Murder of Quality

Emily Winterburn - The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel: The Lost Heroine of Astronomy

When Caroline Herschel was born in 1750 no one would have imagined that she would have become lauded throughout Europe as one of the most important astronomers of the 18th century. Women simply did not do that sort of thing.

As Emily Winterburn says "nothing about Caroline's early life suggested she would grow up to become a pioneering female astronomer". In fact quite the opposite. She grew up in Hanover in a male dominated household. Her father was an accomplished professional musician and her brothers were expected to follow in his footsteps. Caroline was "taught to cook, clean, spin and make clothes, and was required to look after younger children... Caroline and her older sister Sophia were trained to run a household and to be useful and agreeable to her family".

However when her older brother William found a musical job in Bath, England she joined him there and soon became a close partner with him in his astronomical work. William Herschel was catapulted into fame when he discovered the planet Uranus and received a (relatively low paid) job as a royal astronomer. Caroline is often portrayed as William's able assistant. Yet she was a skilled a diligent observer and scientist, and while he was away on a journey delivering a telescope he had sold, she made the first of her discoveries. Her own notes from 1786 detail it:

1st August: I have calculated 100 nebulae today, and this evening I saw an object which I believe will prove to-morrow to be a comet.
2nd August: Today I calculated 150 nebulae. I fear it will not be clear to-night; it has been raining throughout the whole day, but seems now to clear up a little. 1 o'clock; the object of last night is a Comet. I did not go to rest till I had wrote to Dr Blagden and Mr Aubert to announce the comet.

It was a brilliant discovery. Her paper announcing the comet at the Royal Society was read by her brother because women could not be members. Winterburn explains how Caroline carefully neutralised her announcement and had it backed up by others to ensure that it was taken seriously. It began, "In consequence of the Friendship I know to exist between you and my brother I venture to trouble you in his absence with the following imperfect account of a comet." At the end of the paper, her brother and a (male) friend both add their confirmation of the discovery leaving no room for excuses.

Winterburn explains that Caroline's careful wording was not the result of meekness but a calculated way of making sure she had to be taken seriously. She was using all the social skills she had been taught to make sure that she could not be sidelined. As a result of this, and her other work, Caroline became the "first high-status woman paid for her science [in England], and almost certainly the first to receive royal patronage". It was an amazing achievement and gave her unprecedented financial independence to continue doing what she loved. She continued to make discoveries and fight to ensure that she was recognised for them, including an amazing horse-ride through the night to announce a different comet discovery (though on this occasion she wasn't quite the first).

Caroline Herschel made many further discoveries and did some incredibly important other work. She became famous as the "Lady Astronomer" and while well known for the comets she found, her cataloguing work was much more mundane but perhaps more important. Winterburn explains:

Caroline's real skill, her gift to astronomy, was being able to see the importance of what she was doing, even as she meticulously sifted through observation after observation searching out the occasional error, omission or duplication. It was a job that not even William could bring himself to do. It took a very specific set of very much undervalued skills.

But Caroline's class and gender in 18th century English society meant she also had to play all the other roles demanded of her. Her brother's eventual marriage and the pressures that this put upon Caroline as she became responsible for two households, in a complicated social hierarchy with Williams wife Mary Pitt, form a core part of Winterburn's book as she explores Caroline's life.

But slowly society was changing. Not everyone believed women could not be part of the scientific establishment. Her brother in particular promoted and supported her. Incredibly, because she was his sister and working with his equipment, it would have been perfectly acceptable for him to claim her discoveries as his own; yet he did the opposite. In fact their relationship was much closer to that of a equal partnership. Winterburn writes:

In writing about women in science... we often tend to get bogged down in trying to extract work that was purely theirs from the record. We try to find something tangible that we can connect with their name so they can be returned to history. What we lose when we do that, however, are the ephemeral stories of process, unminuted discussion, teaching as a way of learning and companionship.

There were other male scientists who were keen to work with and promote women scientists. Caroline was included in an updated edition of Jerome Lalande's Astrronomie des Dames and the scientist and mathematician Nevil Maskelyne was a close friend and supporter of Caroline. He was also one of the first scientists to employ women to work as "computers" doing the complicated calculations that astronomy required.

Caroline had her own way of promoting her scientific work, which would not have met approval from all those arguing for greater equality. Winterburn quotes Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer of the fight for women's rights, who attacks those who used "pretty feminine phrases" to make it difficult for men to dismiss them. But Caroline was trying to find a way to fight for her position using the weapons she had, and was remarkably successful, and as Winterburn points out, if Wollstonecraft was criticising the strategy it must have been widespread.

By the end of her life Caroline Herschel had been celebrated across Europe, and won awards of scientific bodies across the world. Still unable to become a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, she, along with Scottish scientist Mary Somerville, was made an "honorary" fellow in 1835. More importantly she became an important "icon" for generations of later women scientists.

If all Emily Winterburn had done in this book was to tell the amazing biography of Caroline Herschel it would have been a great read. But she puts that story in the context of a society undergoing dramatic changes. Firstly, and most obviously, there is the scientific revolution that is opening up new views of the universe and new areas for study. Secondly society itself was changing dramatically, most obviously with the French Revolution which was raising all sorts of questions of equality, freedom and democracy. For a growing number of women (and some men) this meant a belief that women should not be subordinate to men and a small minority of women were beginning to challenge their position in society. How this played out for individuals like Caroline Herschel was complicated and nuanced. Emily Winterburn's biography explores this brilliantly, and I have no hesitation in recommending this brilliant book.

Related Reviews

Holmes - The Age of Wonder
Jardine - Ingenious Pursuits
Sobel - Galileo's Daughter

Charles Oman - The Great Revolt of 1381

Charles Oman's book is an important historical milestone. It was one of the first historical works to treat the English Peasants Rebellion of 1381 through a modern historical approach. Originally published in 1906 it builds on the historical research of poll tax records by the academic Andre Reville who died very young before he could finish his own work on 1381.

Oman's book is a fairly decent historical overview of what was then known about the rebellion. It has, of course, been surpassed since then by more contemporary work. But many more recent books have been heavily indebted to Oman's work and it is worth reading on that basis.

Oman is in no way sympathetic to the rebels, in fact when discussing events in Scarborough when "at least 500 men" led by Robert Galoun, William Marche and Robert Hunter made "a systematic attack on all against whom they had old quarrels, or wishes to pick new ones" he argues that despite escaping the death penalty, the three men "richly deserved" it. That said, the greatest strength of Oman's work is that he puts the rebellion in the context of the poverty, oppression and high exploitation of the feudal period.

All over England we may trace, in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, local disputes in which one or other of the rural grievances came to the front. The only thing that was new in 1381 was that the troubles were not confined to individual manors, but suddenly spread over half the realm. It is dangerous to conclude, as some writers have done, that this simultaneous action was due to deliberate organisation. We have no proof that there was any central committee of malcontents who chose their time and then issued orders for the rising. The leaders who emerged in each region seem to have been the creatures of the moment, selected almost at hazard for their audacity or their ready eloquence.

Oman's certainty on the lack of political organisation behind the rising ought to have been heeded by others who followed his lead on this subject. But Oman is on less sure ground when he applies a crude economistic analysis to the growth of trade and manufacturing in the 14th century. He writes,

A new industrial proletariate [sic] was in process of formation, and was striving hard against the conditions which it found existing... the growing industrial activity of England, and the multiplication of wealth, was tending to create a class of great employers of labour, and a class of artisans who could never aspire to become masters. 

Here Oman telescopes several centuries of industrial development in England and places the birth of an industrial working class far too early. Oman is right however to note the importance of the lower orders in London in supporting the rebellion, and helping drive it forward. But he is wrong to see these doing this as an industrial working class movement.

The book finishes by arguing that while the events of 1381 failed to transform England's rural economy:

We may well believe that many landlords were taught caution by the events of June 1391, and that they conducted the rural machine with comparative moderation for the future, lest another outburst of discontent should ensue. But there can be no doubt that the old system went on; it had received a rude sock, but had not been completely put out of gear. The best proof of this is that for the next ten years the archives of England are full of instances of conflict between landlord and tenant precisely similar;ar tp those which had been so rife in the years immediately preceding the rebellion.

But eventually, "villeinage died out from natural causes and by slow degrees". In this I think Oman neglects that the very processes that drove the peasants to rebellion were in fact making villeinage outdated. The withering away was not simply about gradual economic changes, but because it could no longer be made to work effectively.

Oman's book is an important read. It is a good supplement to other books, such as Juliet Barker's excellent England Arise! It also has Charles Oman's own translation of the Anonimal Chronicle, and a series of interesting examples of poll tax rolls. Disappointingly the "report of the sheriffs and jurors of London" on the events of June 1381 are published untranslated in their original Latin.

Related Reviews

Barker - England Arise! The People, The King and the Great Revolt of 1381
O'Brien - When Adam Delved and Eve Span
Lindsay & Groves - The Peasant's Revolt of 1381
Hilton - Bond Men Made Free
Basdeo - The Life and Legend of a Rebel Leader: Wat Tyler

Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana

Having recently enjoyed Guy Gavriel Kay's Children of Earth and Sky I took Tigana from the library to read on a brief holiday. Sadly I was not as enamoured by this novel whose bulk became a hindrance rather than representing a satisfyingly detailed plot.

The Tigana of the title is a conquered nation. It's destruction has been so complete that the sorcery of its new dictator has ensured that no one can even hear its name. Tigana, now known a Lower Corte, is but one of a number of tiny states on the peninsula that forms the geographical backdrop for the story. Clearly based (as in Children of Earth and Sky, the map is barely disguised) on medieval Italy, the region is made up of a variety of city states and small countries vying with each other. But geo-politics are dominated by two competing magical warlords. Brandin, who destroyed Tigana and Alberico, his sworn enemy.

The story focuses on two areas. The first is the tale of a growing rebellion led by a small group of rebels to free Tigana, through killing the tyrant Brandin. The problem is that if only Brandin is killed, Alberico will simply take over. So freedom means destroying two enemy states. The second focus of the novel is events in Brandin's court where a woman from Tigana arrives as a concubine with the intention of killing Brandin, but eventually falls in love with him.

Unlike a lot of historical fantasy these characters are morally ambiguous and fairly well rounded, even if the vast number of them can be confusing. Brandin might be a fearful and violent tyrant, but he has his loving side too, causing his would be assassin enormous confusion. The rebels themselves are prepared to use any means necessary to further their cause, but their plan to free their homeland requires years of planning (and not a few nearly unbelievable coincidences).

Tigana is a complex novel. This, for me, was its major difficulty. There's simply too many characters, too much convoluted plot, and a few too many coincidences. I can't recommend it, despite enjoying Kay's book Children of Earth and Sky.

Related Reviews

Kay - Children of Earth and Sky
A&B Strugatsky - Hard to be a God
Morgan - The Dark Defiles

John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Re-reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ahead of getting hold of its sequel, I am struck once again how perfectly crafted le Carré's books are. In barely 200 pages the novel takes us from its famous opening scene in the dark night near the border between East and West Berlin, to a thrilling ending after an incredibly complex story. In fact, much of the story is simply people conversing, as former spy controller Alec Leamus changes sides and begins to work for the other side. Needless to say there is a deep and shocking twist, but what really makes the novel is the increasingly scary and intense atmosphere as Leamus is pulled deeper and deeper into enemy territory.

It is, of course, nearly impossible to review this book without giving away plot details. But the atmosphere for dull, grey 1960s London is worth mentioning. Beef tea, tinned chicken and cold single rooms warmed by a weak gas fire...it's not just the interrogations that are chilly. You get a real sense of Britain at the end of it's imperial greatness... it's neighborhoods are dirty, it's airports and bars grim and utilitarian. Even the drinks are bland. Everyone is tired and fed up. Even the activists of the Communist Party groups fake their paper sales figures so they can go home early.

Its a wonderful novel. It's so perfect that when they filmed it they barely seemed to change a scene. By turns punchy and shocking, and ultimately deeply tragic. This is spycraft stripped bare of any glamour - lies and counter lies, bureacracy gone mad, cowardly murders and every sentence uttered mined for information. Its not James Bond, its something far more real.

Related Reviews

le Carré - A Small Town in Germany
le Carré - A Murder of Quality

Michael Roberts - Marx 200: A Review of Marx’s Economics 200 years after his birth

This short, but clear and well-written book is one of the better explanations of Karl Marx's economics to come out of the publishing frenzy that marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. Michael Roberts focuses on Marx's economic work and its importance today, as well as defending Marx's approach (in particular his laws of the labour theory of value, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) from critics, both left and right. In doing so, Roberts demonstrates the importance of Marx's ideas to understanding capitalism in the 21st century.

I have been asked to write a fuller review for a publication and I'll post that review here when it is published. In the mean time below are links to a review of Robert's book on the Long Depression and in the same vein a highly recommended book by Chris Harman Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx.

Related Reviews

Roberts - The Long Depression
Harman - Zombie Capitalism

Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

Snow Crash is one of the great works of science fiction that came out in the run up to the millennium. Alongside writers like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson pushed new boundaries that saw the potential for new technologies like virtual reality, but also recognised that society limited how those technologies would be used.

Snow Crash is notable for putting virtual reality at the heart of the story, and in some ways it probably works better now than it did in 1992. 25 years ago did anyone really think that it would be possible to enter a virtual world on your computer while travelling at high-speed along a motorway?

The brilliantly named Hiro Protagonist is sacked from his job delivering pizzas right at the start of the book. He's a hacker extraordinaire and quickly becomes involved in a complicated plot involving a corporate Mafia, a computer virus that can kill in the real world, and the interests of an extraordinarily rich private church. The characters are all larger than life and many of them poke fun at particular sub-cultures. The 15 year old Y.T. who is a kourier using her skateboard to surf through traffic via grappling hooks is brilliant. But even the minor characters, like the US President that everyone ignores, are well done.

The plot races along, in fact there are several dramatic chase scenes as Hiro and Y.T. try to get to the bottom of what is happening.

Despite being published in 1992 this dark comic novel of hacking and virtual reality set against a backdrop of a disintegrated United States has aged extremely well. In part that is because Stephenson doesn't spell out in to much detail the technology of the time. Technology has a way of developing far quicker than authors imagine and too much science fiction is blighted by characters using technology that sounded futuristic when it was written, but dated five years later. In fact the most fantastic technology in Snow Crash is the wonderful adaptive wheeled skateboard that Y.T. uses; and that's because its actually unworkable.

But what really makes the novel work today is that the trends that Stephenson has bigged up for comic effect in 1992 still seem eerily real. A United States were the Mafia have achieved corporate power and Fast Food delivery has become something done by low paid couriers racing against the clock, risking death as they go, doesn't seem that far off. The coding factory that Y.T's mum works in, where managers monitor every mouse click and time taken to read an email might have seemed like a dystopian future in the 1990s, yet today it's reality for millions of workers.

Snow Crash is a classic novel that retains much of its punch over a quarter of a century after its initial publication, but in someways seems even more relevant today. It would be churlish to compare this with Stephenson's absolutely superb Baroque Cycle, as they are completely different books, so whether or not you liked those as much as I did, you should try Snow Crash.

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