Sai Englert - Settler Colonialism: An Introduction

Almost a year into Israel's genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians and in the myriad of books, articles and pamphlets that have appeared to analyse and explain events, the phrase "settler colonialism" regularly appears. As Sai Englert explains in his engaging new book, this is a phrase that has a long pedigree, arising out of liberation theories and ideas linked to thinkers like Franz Fanon and others. But for the wider left in Britain it is a relatively new concept, and Englert's book is an attempt to explain and contextualise the theory. It is a prescient book. First published in 2022 it is a little out of date given the events since October last year, and the mass movement in solidarity with Palestine, but this should not put off readers as what matters is the theory itself.

Englert begins by outlining the history of colonialism and, closely related to this, the development of racist ideologies that sought to justify colonialism. Here he draws heavily on the analysis of writers like Gerald Horne whose books on settler colonialism in the Americas I have reviewed before. Englert's account of colonialism reminds the reader of the sheer horrors of that colonialism, and the cynicism by which racist ideas were constructed in order to make it acceptable. Indeed Englert notes that the attempts to downplay colonialism's genocidal policies continue today, for instance in the focus that is often placed on "disease" as a killer in the Americas. This, he points out, was important, but "its role is often overstated - or at least extracted from a more general picture of settler violence and murder". It is this violence that is key to understanding what happened in colonialism, and the construction of settler colonial states.

Settler colonialism in general does not separate colonialism from the rise of capitalism. As Englert notes, "the accumulation of wealth in the Americas, based on the murder, enslavement and dispossession of Indigenous and African peoples, kick-started the rise of European empires on the world stage... which laid the ground for an accelerated emergence of capitalist relations of production and the intensification of exploitation at home."

This is important because there is a close link between the impact of colonialism and the development of "settler states" and the progress of capitalism, and its exploitation, in the heart of the colonial powers themselves. The dispossession of hundreds of thousands of peasants from land in Europe, was closely associated with the rise of industrial capitalism, as well as the movement of settlers to places like the Americas and Australasia. 

Settler societies emerged, most strikingly in the colonies that would become the US, which attempted to develop polities free from a reliance on the Indigenous populations. Their economies would be primarily dependent on settler smallholders and European bonded labourers on the one hand, and impotred enslaved African populations on the other. 

This highlights a problem for settler colonial theory, in that the experience of colonialism itself was different around the world. Some colonial projects had a genocidal policy towards indigenous people - eg in New Zealand, others saw indigenous people as making up the enslaved people for the rise of capital.

The centrality of racism to colonialism is important, in part because it helps understand how it was possible for relatively small powers to violently dominant much larger land masses by mobilising the dispossed against the indigenous people. The construction of "whiteness" which gave settlers an identification with their own ruling class, despite being the victims of an exploitative relationship with them, was part of making the settlers buy into the process. While there was solidarity between the oppressed within Settler societies, and indigenous people, it wasn't the norm, though it was not uncommon, as this important piece from Australian socialists makes clear.

Racism, Englert, argues is so central to the colonial project that fighting racism has to be linked to "ending the underlying process of domination that gave birth to it. Only by ending the social reality of settler domination can the ideology that normalises it die". Marxists or revolutionary socialists would  not disagree with this. That racism is part of capitalism, and for racism to end, so must capitalism, is something that has been associated with revolutionary ideas since the days of Marx and Engels. Englert reminds us, however, that we have to ensure that all racist ideas are included within this. He criticises "much of the literature on Whiteness for failing to address Indigenous dispossesion alongside the enslavement of African populations in racism's emergence and reproduction". 

The existence of racism, against Black and indigenous people, underminded the struggle of white workers for their own emancipation. But, Englert takes this further. He argues that settler colonialism means that white workers had, and continue to have, an interest in furthering it. This is undoubtably true of the past. Englert lists a number of occasions when the unity of Black and white workers threatened the structures of colonial power enough for violent measures to be taken to prevent such unity again. He also notes the large number of times when white workers, and their organisations - including trade unions and left parties - organised against black workers.

Englert argues:

Far from challenging the process of settler expansion, settler workers repeatedly played a key role in intensifying racial segregation and Indigenous dispossesssions. Settler class struggle was fought simultaneously against settler bosses and Indigenous workers. Settler labour movements demanded both an increase in their share of value extracted from their own labour power, as well as from the colonial loot extracted through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. From Australia's labour-led "White-Australia" campaign to the French labour movement's near-unanimous opposition to Algerian indendence, across the colonial world, settler workers fought for the exclusion and dispossession of Indigenous and racialised people, and did so while deploying socialist, communist, or even internationalist rhetoric.

While acknowledging that there have been significant and succesful attempts to challenge racism by activists and the left in all of the settler states, does Englert's argument here remain the case? In a key part of the book, Englert discusses the nature of Settler Colonialism, and writes about "settler quietism" which he explains is "the fact that all settler classes, despite their internal social tensions and conlicts, depend on the Indigenous population's continued dispossesssion, as well as on the settler state to impose their dominance and distribute the colonial loot. Even when the situation escalates to internal military confrontation, peace can be re-established not through structural change but through the intensification of colonial violence, to the settler population's collective benefit."

Here, Englert is arguing that in settler colonial states, all "settler classes" benefit from the structures and activity of Settler Colonialism, which allows the ruling class to buy off workers. But is is that still true today? There is perhaps an argument that this is taking place in Israel, where the displacement of Palestinian people, is allowing material benefits to some Israeli workers in terms of land. This is an argument made by Englert. But is it true of the settler colonial states of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand today? I am unsure. Englert continues:

Similar to the case of racism... land distribution and economic advantages to settler workers serve as powerful tools for stabilisation of settler rule. They also facilitate the economy's continued functioning as well as the reproduction of both the settler state's and capitalist class's power. In that sense, settler workers participate in securing their continued exploitation, in exchange for land and comparatively better working conditions.

I don't think it is tenable to say this is continuing everywhere and Englert offers no numerical evidence to suggest it is happening. So either Englert's arguments don't fit, or there isn't such a thing as settler colonialism. To argue the theory as no value would be entirely wrong. As Englert's book makes clear, the theory does offer many insights, even while it doesn't necessarily have a single agreed "line". What I think needs to be added to Englert's analysis is a more detailed exploration of settler colonialism as a process that takes place over time - and frequently a long time. What happened to Native Americans until the Massacre at Wounded Knee when the frontier was declared "closed", and what that meant for "settler classes", is different now to how the continued repression and oppression of Native American people impacts on working class Amercians (Black and white). 

But the process itself also matters. It is undoubtably true that people from working class backgrounds went to colonial countries. But those settlers who were "bought off" with land in the early days of (say) Canada or North American colonial history, were no longer workers. Buying them off like this, transformed their class position. They became farmers or smallholders. This is not the same as saying "settler workers" benefited as workers from the continued disspossession of indigenous people and land - and consequently secured their own continued exploitation. It is not correct to say that this process continues in (say) Australia. Israel/Palestine is a different case, which highlights the necessity of understanding specific settler colonialisms in their wider context, particularly that of the global imperialist system.

In general, with the exception of Israel and the case of South Africa under Apartheid, I don't think it is right to argue that workers benefit from settler colonialism. In Australia settler colonialism allowed some of the settler lower orders to avoid becoming wage labourers in that continent. But the workers who did not benefit like this remained workers, and saw no benefit from settler colonialism. Indeed, the racism that went alongside, undermined their position and their ability to fight for better conditions. Englert says that white Australian workers get "land and comparatively better working conditions" out of these relations. But this is simply not accurate. Englert would need to provide more detailed examples to justify this point today. Clarity on this is important, for if "settler workers" do benefit from settler colonialism, than it makes the process of workers' self emancipation either harder or impossible.

Workers everywhere have every interest in defeating racism, and the system that uses it, and they can only do so through completely unity with indigenous people, and principled opposition to all forms of racism. 

These are significant criticisms of Englert's book, but it is made in the spirit of arguing that the book is a contribution to the debates that seek to understand a world where imperialist powers continue to destroy the lives of billions of people, dispossing, oppressing and exploiting them in a unrelating drive to accumulate capital. Much more discussion and clarity is needed.

Related Reviews

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Lev Grossman - The Bright Sword

***Warning Spoilers - loads of them***

I'll admit to picking up The Bright Sword with some trepidation. I loved Lev Grossman's Magicians Trilogy, which was a sort of warts and all, grown up response to the Harry Potter monolith. The Bright Sword is a retelling of the Arthur myth. The sword of the title is, of course, Excalibur, so do we really need another account of these stories?

But I am hugely glad I did read it though. The book is a fantastic modern update of the story of Camelot, which is refreshingly 21st century and neatly subverts the genre. Lev Grossman's writing is delightfully engaging, and his construction of the story, will engage even those who know Malory or TH White's books inside out. Grossman introduces us to Collum. A talented sword fighter from the Isle of Mull, who is traveling to Camelot to find King Arthur, drunk on the stories of adventure and chivalry that he has heard. His naivety and ignorance mean that when he arrives in the aftermath of Arthur's defeat and death, he is prey for the swirling factionalism that surrounds the court. Morgan le Fey tries to draw him into her schemes, but Collum's idealism keeps him with the knights of Camelot, as we, the reader, learn through flashbacks the story of Arthur and his court.

But this is not the linear narrative of Malory or White, or even John Boorman. This is Camelot, warts and all. Merlin is a sexual predator who uses and abuses his young proteges. Arthur is a good king, but not a great swordsman. Lancelot... well Lancelot is not the person you think he is. As we go back and forth in the timeline, we learn how Camelot was held together by Arthur's idealism and his pure presence. Its a weak foundation that barely holds things together.

Grossman is to be congratulated for this approach. He could have produced a work that was modern without transforming the story. But the Arthur legend has always been retold. It is, after all, a medieval fantasy that moves 15th century society back into the post-Roman period. Malory has a lot to answer for in this regard.

But Grossman goes several steps further. He too plays loose with history (there was no Baghdad at the time of the collapse of Roman Britain) but is at least honest enough to admit this in the afterword. This allows him to make commentary on the differences between Britain and the rest of the world. His slightly tongue in cheek references to colonialism will no doubt cause some Daily Mail readers to gnash their teeth. But the knight who visits the round table from what is now the Middle East, and bemoans how dirty and backward everything is, certainly has a point.

Grossman does more, of course. There's more magic, more fairies, more of an interaction between the real world and fantasy than either White, Malory or even Boorman and Disney introduced to the genre. It makes for a more unsettling atmosphere, that gives the sense of a world in transition. There's also more honesty about who the Britons were. There are enough black and Muslim characters to further upset the Mail readers, and it must be said, there is a beautiful and touching transgender subplot. To say more would be one too many spoilers for this review.

The Arthur myth was always the story of kingly perfection and the closeness between land and ruler. It is one that always glossed over the realities of feudal society, the oppression and exploitation, and brutal war. In retelling it Grossman reminds us that stories have a power to illuminate a lot more than their subject matter. For this, and for many other reasons, I have no trouble in recommending The Bright Sword as one of the strongest, and dare I say it, most original, works of fantasy in years.

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Adrian Budd - China: Rise, Repression and Resistance

A recent Science article discussed an interesting conundrum. Asking "Have China's carbon emissions peaked?" it analysed the impact of China's economy on the environment. China is the single largest national emitter of carbon dioxide, "leads the world in firing up new coal-fueled plants" but is also the biggest installer of renewable energy. The article is unable to answer the question, because that depends on how long the Chinese state continues to support and use coal plants. But hidden in the article is a telling comment. Ending coal use faces a number of barriers, "including pressure from Chinese energy companies to keep coal plants producing revenue as long as possible."

China, after all, is supposed to be a socialist state. It is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, and surely, one might argue, the revenue interests of Chinese energy companies should not be a barrier to this state meeting its emissions targets. 

Adrian Budd's new book, China: Rise, Repression and Resistance offers us a clear explanation of this seeming contradiction. In fact, it is no real contradiction at all, for as Budd argues throughout the book China is not a socialist state, in fact it is a "State Capitalist" society, whose economic logic is determined by the state's need to continuously engage in capital accumulation due to China's position within a global neoliberal capitalist system. While Budd's book engages in many aspects of China's current political situation, from its environmental impact, to its repression of LGBT+ people, women and national minorities, as well as the resistance to this national project, it is worth looking a little further at what Budd says about China's State Capitalism, as the rest of his analysis flows from this position. 

After positioning the book within a historical framework, Budd argues that contemporary China acts as it does because it has adapted to the changing global economic circumstance. It is both the workshop of the world, and a global imperialist force that is fighting to shape its own global market. Budd writes:

The structures of Chinese state capitalism have changed over the last four decades, and perhaps it even deserves a new label such as 'open state capitalism' or 'state-orchestrated capitalism'. But whatever the label, the Chinese economy is part off, and shares the general hallmarks of, the global capitalist system.

China's economic ascent has been accomplished by its ability to adapt its economy to the rules of global neoliberalism (using FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] and domestic companies to become the world' sindustrial workshop and largest exporter) while simultaneously interpreting and bending those rules to protect and dvelop its own industrial base and wider economy. State influence over borrowers and lenders allows Beijing to delay proelbmes, which would be less possible in more market-driven system, by instructing banks to lend, including to zombie companies. But if reduced dependency on inward FDI and exports proides a degree of insulation from the problems in the wider global economy, China cannot escape the economic laws of motion of capitalism that Marx discovered 150 years ago and its economy is now showing considerable signs of strain.

This last part is important. The laws of capitalist motion determine not just how China relates to other foreign powers, but to how its companies and state act in its interior. This means that China subordinates people and the environment to the logic of capital accumulation, driving both exploitation and natural degradation. This means that China is prone to the the consequences of these actions, including the resistance of workers, oppressed minorities and social movements. Xi Jinping's "mission" in Budd's wods, "is to protect the state-capitalist economy, and the interests of its ruling class, from the mounting problems it faces."

This is why, to respond to the Science article mentioned above, China simultaneously has the largest growth in renewables, yet is also beholden to the interests of its coal companies. The logic of capitalist accumulation drives the onward use of these resources, in the interest of profit. 

Budd's book discusses how the Chinese ruling class justifies this. A mix of repression and regime legitimisation is the strategy of Xi. This means stopping internal dissent, partly through violence and imprisonment and partly through trying to challenge key social issues. One of these, the rampent corruption at every level of society, is a significant barrier to China, both in terms of legitimising the rule of its leaders and in terms of social discontent. A few high profile trials aside, it is notable that Xi's response to corruption is in part to reduce the power base of his own rivals and to severally punish corrupt officials. Both of these are linked to a wider project of increasing authoritarianism within the state. Budd notes that this has close links to the intensification of nationalism as a tool to bind groups to his wider economic and political plans.

There is, however, hope. The book's final chapters look at resistance, both of social movements like those of the LGBT+ community and wider, often localised groups fighting over specific demands such as environmental issues. He has a deep focus on the workers' movement and explores some of the powerful strikes waves that have taken place. Despite the heavy repression of these, and the limitations imposed by Covid lockdowns etc, Budd does note promising signs of "a new generation of workers and acivists" inside workplaces. China has a long history of workers' struggle, and revolutionary struggle based on mass working class movements, that point to potentially transformative struggles far from the parroted "socialist" ideas of China's rulers.

In conclusion Adrian Budd's book is a brilliant dissection of China today. It places this in the context of historical class struggles, imperialist competition, framed by an understanding that human liberation and an end to China's environmental destruction can only come from a struggle against a system based on the logic of capital accumulation. In this sense the struggle of China's workers is identical to that of those in every other capitalist nation. "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains".

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Robert Ashton - Where are the fellows who cut the hay?

George Ewart Evans' book Ask The Fellows Who Cut The Hay is one of the most remarkable works of rural oral history. Rightly it is considered an indispensible work for anyone trying to comprehend the enormous changes that British agriculture has gone through in the last two centuries. More importantly perhaps it is a book that doesn't patronise its subjects. It takes the lives, beliefs and labour of the Suffolk agricultural workers it records seriously. Any reader will be carried along by its honesty and insight.

So I was excited to learn that Robert Ashton was producing a new book that was to look at "How Traditions from the Past Can Shape Our Future" based on his own connections with George Ewart Evans and the places he lived and worked. I helped sponsor the book through Unbound. The book itself is a lovely production, well made, easy to read and the cover is lovely. But I was disappointed with the content. 

The book works as a two part autobiography. Firstly it is a look at Evans himself, exploring his life and the ideas and forces that shaped him. How did Evans, having grown up in South Wales in a mining community come to live in rural Suffolk, writing and recording the lives and work of the local population? This is fascinating, and I enjoyed Ashton's exploration of the places that Evans had lived, his encounters and the occasional coincidence that allowed him to meet people who knew Evans and loved his work. Ashton himself was taught by Evan's wife. This all allows Ashton to explore further the changes that Evans saw, and those that came after.

The second autobiographical aspect to the book is Ashton's own life and times. His life as a agricultural labourer, tractor driver and finally salesperson for agricultural companies. These events, Ashton tries to use as a tool to extract more details about what has changed and developed in the British countryside, drawing some parallels with the changes that Evans himself saw, and why Evans did the work he did.

The problem is it is quite superficial, and much of the book is Ashton retelling the stories and accounts that Evans recorded. None of this is dull or boring, but it isn't what I expected. Sadly the book doesn't really do what it promises on the cover. There is no real analysis of how the traditions of the past can shape the future. Ashton does make some attempts to do this, noting how there are a return to localised production, and a move away from industrial agriculture. But there's no deep analysis, only a few of Ashton's impressions. Indeed, Ashton's thoughts on the changes that have taken place in society in general are often quite superficial, limited, for instance to noting that clothes are cheap because they are mass produced abroad for workers' on low wages.

The big question, implicit in the title, about what has happened to rural labour could have been further developed. I would have liked to read more about migrants and casual labour in British fields. How these people are organising, and how their wages and conditions differ from previous generations. 

Overall this was a nice enough read, but it lacked the real depth I'd hoped for. The most interesting bits were those about Evans himself, and even then I'd have liked a little more. The passing reference to Evans' Communist Party membership sparked my interest, but that was all there was to it. The building of sustainable, healthy agriculture and socially just societies in the future will, no doubt, require us learning from traditional methods and insights. Unfortunately this book doesn't give enough of this. It will however be enjoyed by those who live, work and travel to and through Suffolk, and would be best read there in conjunction with Robert Ashton's own hero, George Ewart Evans' work.

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Isaac Rose - The Rentier City

Friedrich Engels' classic book The Condition of the Working Class in England,  details the hardships of working people in Manchester in the first half of the nineteenth century. In it, Engels recounts a  meeting with a "bourgeoisie" in the city:

One day I walked with one of these middle-class gentlemen into Manchester. I spoke to him about the disgraceful unhealthy slums and drew his attention to the disgusting condition of that part of the town in which the factory workers lived. I declared that I had never seen so badly built a town in my life. He listened patiently and at the corner of the street at which we parted company he remarked: “And yet there is a great deal of money made here. Good morning, Sir.”

It's a justifiably famous quote, that tells us as much about Engels who himself was from an affluent background, as it does about the capitalists who were squeezing wealth and life from working people in the city. The tragedy is, as Isaac Rose shows us in his brilliant new book, its a quote that could be attributed to the city today.

Rose tells us the story of Manchester, through its people and their struggles and the lives that they led and continue to lead. He begins with the early history of Manchester, the period when Engels lived there, that saw the city becoming a colossus of capitalist industrial might. The mills and factories went alongside overcrowded, dirty and insanitary slum houses. In the intervening years, struggles over housing and working conditions, and, indeed the very space of Manchester by its working people shaped the city we now know.

In the 20th century, a process of expansion of public housing and slum clearance transformed things for working people. Houses became something that were to be proud of, not profit machines for unscrupulous landlords. For a time in the 1930s and the post-war period, there was an atmosphere of hope. Yet today, living in Manchester is dominated by an enormous housing crisis. Rents are skyrocketing, social housing has all but disappeared and that which remains is decaying and uncared for, and gleaming towers of steel and glass dominate the horizon, but are all but empty of tenants. The impact, Rose points out is worst for the poorest, and its creating a new layer of poor and vulnerable people. As he says, a recent study "has shown that the rent burden is so high in Manchester that it outstrips London for unaffordability, due to the city's lower wages". High rents and lack of social housing mean that "Manchester has the highest number of households assessed as homeless in the country".

How did this come to be? Rose argues it is the consequence of a set of neoliberal politics that are closely associated with Margaret Thatcher's Tory government of 1979 onward. More importantly though, he argues that their impact in Manchester was the result of a series of choices made by the City Council in reponse to Thatcher's assault. In particular, the failure on the part of the Council to be able to fight Tory policies that limited funds. This meant the Council essentially accepting neoliberal ideas, and then becoming the force for driving them forward in the late 1990s and 2000s. Rose says:

Manchester City Council, through the deals struck in the middle years of the last decade, handed over the extraction rights to a broad class of corporate landlords, who extract rent from the tenants and often take this wealth offshore. Manchester has become the pre-eminent example of the real estate state. This is the symbiotic relationship between politicians, the institutions of the local state and the property lobby.

Rose continues:

The local state has gone beyond simply providing the supportive policy context for development or acting as an enabler to being an executor of development. 

Drawing on the work of Marx and Engels, as well as contemporary Marxists such as David Harvey, Rose argues that "there is a profound in-built logic to the dynamics of urban development that are now underway in Manchester."

One thing that Rose highlights throughout the book is that there is a strong tradition of ordinary people in Manchester fighting to improve their conditions, and one of the key battlegrounds has been housing. But in fact in the key battles with the Thatcher government, this force was not mobilised. Where it did come on to the scene was in largely passive ways through public meetings and so on. Unlike, say, the Poll Tax revolt, there was not mass participation in tackling the government. The "dented shield" approach of the Labour councils in the 1990s was very much orientated on the idea that the councils were the only force that could fight the government.

Why is this important? Because if we are to move away from the privatised nightmare that is housing provision in Britain, we're going to have to build the type of social movements that can transform British politics. That will require mobilising the mass of working people to use their economic power, and their politic clout to transform national and local politics. Rose's book was, in his words, written with exactly this in mind, as a contribution towards "the crystallisation of a general force that could again wrest our cities back from the hands of the rentier, landlord and speculator".

The Rentier City is a superb book, powerfully written, accessible and readable, and full of the sort of facts and figures that will get repeated and quoted in pubs, cafes and meetings around the city. Everyone who cares about the great city of Manchester should read it.

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Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

The Massacre of Mankind proudly displays its badge of honour on its front cover: "Authorised by the H.G. Wells Estate". It might be authorised, but is it a worthy follow up to Wells' classic The War of the Worlds?

For those readers who have been hiding from Martians for seventy years, Wells' book was a classic account of an invasion of Victorian England, which saw the industrial, Imperial might of England defeated by fighting machines, until they are defeated in turn by one of literature's greatest deus ex machina. Baxter's follow up is set a few decades later in an alternate history shaped by the Martian's presence in the solar system, and the likelihood that they will return. The course of history has been diverted from our own timeline. World War One did not happen, Britain is in close alliance with Germany, and is a near dictatorship. Secret government projects exist to plan for the next alien arrival, but most people live in a hard, oppressive and grim world.

But Baxter's follow-up takes Wells' context, but sacrifices the original author's ability to tell a tale sharply and briefly. Baxter's work is overlong, bloated and disjointed. He attempts to tell the story of the Second Martian War as a sort of Victorian steampunk alternate history morality tale. 

The problem is that it all hangs together rather badly. There is a structural problem. Halfway through the book Baxter takes a break to suddenly introduce dozens of new characters to discuss the impact of the invasion on America, Australia, South Africa, China and the Ottoman Empire. Most of these are rapidly discarded (similar to how he discards characters in earlier chapters) and all the stories do is to tell of more destruction. It is likely that Baxter thought these stories might add colour (and it is at least good that places in the Global South get a mention) but unlike say Stephen King, who can add real depth to his wider stories with such bit parts, Baxter just adds to the book's bulk, without adding to the story.

A bigger problem though is that its hard to care about the characters. They are too one dimensional. Baxter simply cannot give his readers people who you identify with. Simply giving people long back stories is not enough. They disappear from the page and are instantly forgotten. He seems more interested in telling his alternative history (and being clever by inserting real historical figures into new situations) but even this feels contrived. The idea that the Russian Empire would leapfrog Western industrial capitalism by avoiding Revolution is incredibly far-fetched. But even that is not as far-fetched as the laughable deux ex machina that Baxter offers to end the Second War. At least HG Well's one was believable.

Overall this is a weak book, that relies too much on its original source material and seemingly clever nods to the reader. Don't bother, especially if you enjoy HG Well's original.

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Philip Pullman - The Imagination Chamber: Cosmic Rays from Lyra's Universe

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials universe has been growing over the years. The initial trilogy, followed by two further books of a second trilogy, have been joined by a number of shorter works, several of these have been reviewed on this blog, and have impressed with the additional materials, and quality of production. The Imagination Chamber is less impressive. It is a collection of whimsical thoughts, that the author suggested are like the "little trails of vapour" that condense around a charged particle in a cloud chamber, though the particles in this metaphor, are charged with story.

Cloud chambers are useful for studying very small things, and these vapour trails are very small indeed, some of them barely a few sentences and stretching the material to fit the description of book is difficult. Fans of the books, particularly the first trilogy, will perhaps enjoy fitting the material into those narratives, but they offer little insight or extra information. They might flesh out things a little, but they are more designed to explore character, rather than plot.

Dedicated fans will probably find something here. But I struggled to. The Imagination Chamber offered little to me, and felt unnecessary. One for the completionists. 

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James M. Stayer - Anabaptists and the Sword

Anabaptists and the Sword is a detailed look at the evolution of the Anabaptists and their ideas, focusing particularly on the earliest period and the Reformation. James M. Stayer is one of the foremost historians of the radical Reformation, and in his opening remarks he aregues that the Anabaptists were "the most important group of radicals" and that a "major historical problem about them is that they seemed to oscillate between the polar antitheses of pacifism and revolution in their early history."

Many students of the period will notice this most obviously because we associated Anabaptism today with pacifiscm and communities isolated from the wider world. But the sixteenth century saw the forerunners of Anabaptists playing a central role in the Peasants' War in Germany, and most importantly in the capture of Münster when a theocratic radical regime took over the city in the expectation of the end of days.

Anabaptists and the Sword is not for the faint-hearted. Its detailed study of early Anabaptist ideas will appeal to specialists and historians particularly. Perhaps the most important concept is the idea of "the Sword" itself, a contested concept that evolves out of different biblical readings. Where the two powers of "coercive jurisdiction", the civil and ecclesiastical, or just one, wielded solely by the temporal (non-religious) regime. The Anabaptists held to the later, which meant that "the one, temporal, Sword stood for all the authority and force necessary to cement a social order comprised of individuals assumed to be in the vast majority radically wicked, egoistic and, hence, unresponsive to the common good". The concept of the Sword troubled the Anabaptists because it was closely tied up with ethics, and as Stayer argues, led to a multiple of ideas about whether or not it was right to use force to protect oneself, or your beliefs, or use violence to promote those same ideas. 

Writing at the end of the 1960s Stayer finds some interesting parallels between contemporary debates within social movements. But most of his focus is on the evolution of Anabaptist thought through this framework. Much of the book focuses on the evolution of these ideas through looking at key figures of this movement, from Müntzer to Hoffman. There are plenty of useful and interesting titbits and ideas here. I found it particularly interesting that Stayer points out that radical (revolutionary, and hence violent, in the context of sixteenth century Europe) Anabaptism did not end with the defeat of Münster, but lingered on even in almost guerrilla ways. 

Stayer's conclusion however is to avoid any easy generalisations. He argues that early Anabaptism was both radical and apolitical (in the sense of abstention from wider issues) but at the same time there were always important, if minority voices of "crusading radicals" such as Rothmann in Münster. Not all Anabaptists were, or perhaps are, nonviolent (nonresistant). Understanding the dynamics between the groups exposes a wider engagement of the movement with the Reformation and society in general that defies simple answers. 

Related Reviews

Stayer - The German Peasants' War and the Anabaptist Community of Goods
Kautsky - Communism in Central Europe in the time of the Reformation
Bax - The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists