PANGÆA
The Journal of Undergraduate History Studies
Dalhousie University
PANGAEA
2005-2006
The Dalhousie Undergraduate History Journal
Editor:
Anne E. Cummings
Associate Editor:
Heather Parker
Editorial Board:
Ally Basen
B. Gayle Cormier
Deanna Foster
Elizabeth Maynes
Andrew Patrick Murray
Ari S. Najarian
Noah B. Shack
Stéphanie Simard
Matthew Sugrue
Faculty Advisors:
Christopher M. Bell
Cynthia J. Neville
Special Thanks to:
Tina Jones
Mary Wyman
Dalhousie History Department
Dalhousie Undergraduate History Society
Dalhousie Computer Science Society
PANGAEA
The Dalhousie Undergraduate History Journal
2005 - 2006
CONTRIBUTORS
H. J. PARKER is a fourth-year Honours History and Classics
student. Her paper “Divorce in the Medieval Celtic Realms”
was originally submitted for Cynthia Neville’s 2005 seminar
on Crime and Society in Post-Conquest England.
RACHAEL A. GRIFFIN is in the fourth year of a History and
Political Science Honours degree. She wrote “The English in
Ireland: English Law in Ireland from 1297-1366” for Cynthia
Neville’s 2005 seminar on Crime and Society in Post-Conquest
England.
ARI NAJARIAN is a fourth-year student in History and
Anthropology. He composed “The Millet System and
Ottoman Decline” for Colin Mitchell’s 2005 Sultans and Shahs.
CHRISTA HUNFELD is a third-year student in History. Her
paper “Pitchforks and Paternalism: Women and the English
Reformation” was written for Krista Kesselring’s 2005 Tudor
and Stuart England.
ELIZABETH MAYNES is in the fourth year of a History
Honours degree. Liz completed her Bachelors of Science at
Acadia University in 1998. She wrote “Guilty until Proven
Innocent: Mothers and the Law in Early Modern England”
for a Directed Readings course with Krista Kesselring.
ANNE E. CUMMINGS is a fourth-year Honours student in
History and Spanish. She originally submitted “Catholic
Relief and the Anti-Papist Tradition” for Krista Kesselring’s
2005 Topics in the Social and Cultural History of England, c. 15001850: Madness and Marginality.
KATHERINE ARCHIBALD is a fourth-year History and
Contemporary Studies Honours student. She wrote
“Insurgence in ‘Traitordom’: Andrew Johnson, East
Tennessee, and Appalachian Unionism” for John O’Brien’s
2005 American Civil War and Reconstruction.
B. GAYLE CORMIER is a fourth-year History Honours
student. She wrote “Setting the Record Straight: Churchill,
Appeasement, and the Italo-Abbysinian Crisis” for
Christopher Bell’s 2005 class, Winston Churchill.
DAVID J. R. KEHOE is a fourth-year History student. His
paper “Churchill and the Spanish Civil War” was written for
Christopher Bell’s 2005 class, Winston Churchill.
ELYSE CRAGG is a fourth-year History student. She
composed “Everyday Germans and the Holocaust: What
They Knew and Why They Stayed Silent” for John Bingham’s
2005 class Nazism and German Society.
NOAH B. SHACK is a fourth-year History and Political Science
student. He wrote “Brinksmanship and Backfire: Nasser and
the Six-Day War” for Paul Sedra’s 2005 class History of Modern
Egypt.
DAVID STANLEY is a third year student in the second year of
a degree in History and Environmental Science. He wrote “A
Siren Song: Canada's National Policy Scuttles the Maritimes'
Merchant Marine” for Timothy Lewis’s 2005 class Transition
and Decline in Rural Canada
PETER MCGUIRE is a third year history student. He submitted
“Tormenting the Bear: The Russian Defeat in Chechnya,
1994-1996” for Christopher Bell’s 2005 class War and Society
Since 1945.
PANGAEA
The Dalhousie Undergraduate History Journal
CONTENTS
The English in Ireland: English Law in Ireland 1297-1366..... 1
The Millet System and Ottoman Decline .................................20
A Siren Song: Canada’s National Policy Scuttles the
Maritimes’ Merchant Marine ......................................................32
Setting the Record Straight: Churchill, Appeasement and the
Italo-Abbysinian Crisis ................................................................53
Brinksmanship and Backfire: Nasser and the Six-Day War .69
Tormenting the Bear: The Russian Defeat in Chechnya,
1194-1996......................................................................................82
The English in Ireland:
English Law in Ireland 1297-1366
RACHAEL GRIFFIN
When in 1365, King Edward III spoke of Ireland as being
“sunk in the greatest wretchedness through the poverty and
feebleness of its people”,1 he was unwittingly summing up the twocentury history of England’s experience in Ireland. From the reign of
Edward II, English institutions and the jurisdiction of the common
law began to retreat from the further reaches of Ireland back into the
Pale.2 This paper examines the extent to which English laws
penetrated Ireland, and where they did not, why. In an attempt to
synthesis some of the reasons that contributed to the drastic
reduction of English power in Ireland between 1297 and 1366, six
main topic areas are explored here. These are the patterns of the
Norman conquest of Ireland and their effect on the future of English
rule, the organisation of the English colonial government in Dublin,
the system of Anglo-Irish lordship and its importance in
understanding the application of law, the status of the native Irish
under English law, and, briefly, the Bruce invasion of 1315.
I
It is advantageous to begin with Edward I, because his reign
marked the height of English power in Ireland both territorially and
administratively.3 Edward I’s talent as an administrator and monarch
strengthened the English position in Ireland. In his administrative
machinery “[t]he English exchequer audited accounts from outposts
at Caernarfon and Berwick as well as Dublin”.4 This allowed central
control and the capacity to oversee the everyday accounts from areas
under his command. In addition, the English parliament had supreme
jurisdiction over that of Dublin. Thus, Westminster normally heard
Quoted in Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1980), 291
2 This includes the creation of many more liberties by Edwards II and III which
farther reduced the jurisdiction of royal officials.
3 Jocelyn Otway- Ruthven, “The Native Irish and English Law,” Irish Historical
Studies 7 (1950-51): 1-16, 3.
4 Robin Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 142.
1
The English in Ireland
the petitions of Irish subjects.5 Edward I emphasized the importance
of London’s supremacy in decision-making over that of Dublin.
Edward’s success as a head of state can be attributed to “the growth
of the administrative and fiscal capacity of the state”, which allowed
the English monarch to “pursue large military aims in a sustained
way—which further stimulated the development of government”.6
This increased level of English administrative overview and fiscal
power gave Edward a much firmer grip over the lordship than any of
his predecessors had or his descendants ever would. It also, however,
ensured that he and his descendants would be occupied with more
ambitious endeavours overseas and away from Ireland. In addition to
a relatively firm grasp over Irish institutional life, Edward also
enjoyed the most extensive lordship over Ireland of any monarch to
date. Due to the fractioning of inheritances by co-heiresses and the
holding of liberties in wardship by the king, “[t]he area of direct royal
government had thus been greatly increased during Edward’s reign:
by its end only Wexford and Kilkenny remained as liberties in
Leinster, and only half of Meath”.7 Since the lords of liberties were
allowed significant control over their affairs, short of sovereignty, the
limiting of liberties meant a greater area directly under the king’s
control.
II
In order to appreciate why the English common law never
achieved universal jurisdiction in Ireland it is important to
comprehend the conditions under which the English conquered the
island. When the English arrived in 1169, they did not conquer the
entire realm. Under the terms of the 1175 Treaty of Windsor, the
English won control only over “Leinster and Meath, with the whole
coastline from Dublin to Dungarvan.”8 The rest of the country was
to remain under the jurisdiction of the Irish high king Rory
O’Connor, who entered into a feudal relationship with Henry II.9
Implicit in this agreement was that there would exist a dual system of
law. In the area controlled by the Normans, it was intended that
English common law would have supreme jurisdiction. In those areas
Ibid.
Frame, Political Development., 144.
7 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 212.
8 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 2.
9 Ibid.
5
6
newly under Norman control, there was little change to the “political
boundaries” already in existence. 10 The newcomers simply
superimposed on the Irish the Anglo-Norman system of law.
Excluded from the common law, the Irish were left to their
traditional and customary forms of law. As R.R. Davies points out,
this laxity in allowing the Irish to retain their laws reinforced “a sense
of unity. . . [and] also served as one of the crucial bulwarks of [Irish]
national identity.”11 When the Normans conquered England, their
invasion “had been both rapid and complete.”12 Through “the
merging of the two peoples [Anglo-Saxon and Norman] in a
relatively short time”, the Normans had sufficiently intertwined the
two populations under the same law.13 In Ireland, this had not
occurred. There remained two distinct cultural and ethnic groups
whose people followed different laws in different areas of the
lordship. The English conquest of Ireland was less a conquest than a
semi-successful occupation. Most notably, the kings of England did
not refer to themselves as kings of Ireland but lords of Ireland.14
that
The historian Robin Frame puts it succinctly when he states
an intensely regional island, with a marked absence of
conventional government institutions, was penetrated
piecemeal by individual adventurers held on a fairly
loose royal rein.15
The Irish had no central government, but instead divisive tribal
groups, feuding chiefs and numerous sub-kings with rival claims to
the Irish throne.16 The Treaty of Windsor cannot be seen as
embodying the submission of the Irish, since Rory O’Connor did not
speak for all Ireland. When the king’s men entered Ireland, they had
these problems standing in their way. These ‘individual adventurers’
were given the vast tracts of land which they had overpowered to
Robin Frame, “Power and Society in the Lordship of Ireland 1272-1377,” Past
and Present 76 (August, 1977): 3-33, 6.
11 R.R. Davies, “The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100-1400: III. Laws and
Customs,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6. 6 (1996): 1-23, 10.
12 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 1.
13 Ibid.
14 Edward I was to be addressed as “King of England, lord of Ireland and duke of
Aquitaine”. Quoted in Frame, Political Development, 143.
15 Frame, “Power and Society,” 5.
16 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 226.
10
The English in Ireland
protect for England. The irregular conquest prevented large numbers
of English immigrants from populating the new colony because it
was not yet stable. The lack of “substantial immigration and a
sustained royal presence” made conditions impossible for total
governmental control of Ireland by the English.17 The result of this
fitful domination by the English was not a consolidated lordship but
“a patchwork or lordships”, each of which was “a small, vulnerable
society”.18 Over this highly superficial veneer of control, the English
government superimposed its administrative structure. Under the
circumstances, the English government “applied [its resources] to
purposes that were premature”.19 In essence, the English imposed
their common law while simultaneously attempting to gain control of
the parts of Ireland not under their influence. At no time during their
lordship was there ever universal English control of Ireland upon
which to base a strong and consolidated system of English law and
government.
III
The system of government in Ireland was essentially a copy
of its progenitor in England. The institutions that served England
well were transported ready-made to Ireland. As Richardson has
noted:
the Irish chancery, exchequer, justiciar’s bench,
common bench and eyres of the king’s justices were,
as near as circumstances would permit, replicas of
English institutions: the council and the parliament
followed as closely as possible on the English model.
Shires and franchises or palatinates completed the
mechanism of government.20
The system was to remain independent of the English system,
hence why it had a chancery to issue writs, a common bench to hear
Frame, “Power and Society,” 18.
Ibid., 1, 18.
19 G.J. Hand, English Law in Ireland 1290-1324 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1967), 218.
20 H. G. Richardson, “English Institutions in Medieval Ireland,” Irish Historical
Society 1 (1938-39): 382-392, 384.
17
18
pleas, and an exchequer to deal with finances. 21 The justiciar was the
head of the government and functioned as the king’s “alter ego”.22
This certainly did not relieve the Irish administration from English
overview. The Irish courts and parliament had to enforce both
English and Irish statutes.23 The Irish parliament began to meet
regularly in the time of Edward I; however, it was only entitled to
create statutes regarding problems specific to the lordship, never to
supersede those of the king’s council and parliament. 24 Frame states
that the
Legislation made in Ireland between 1297 and 1366,
and the records of the Dublin government . . . depict a
country where war and peace were the concern of a
single royal administration which set out to organize
and, when necessary, mobilize the king’s subjects.25
The statute of the 1297 Irish parliament is a good example of
this.26 It did not attempt to legislate on points of technical procedure,
but endeavoured “to establish peace more firmly” in Ireland.27 The
statute lamented the absence of lords from their lands, whether
absentee or residing in more stable areas of Ireland because “their
lands in the marches being left waste and uncultivated and without
guard”.28 The result of such negligence was that “Irish felons . . .
pass[ed] freely through to perpetrate robberies, homicides and other
mischiefs up on the English”.29 In addition to this, the English king’s
bench exercised the same privilege over the justiciar’s court, thus
providing the lordship with “supervision over the law administered in
Ireland”.30 Like the English king’s bench, the justiciar’s court
“exercised a jurisdiction in review over both courts of record and
Hand, English Law in Ireland, 136.
Hand, English Law in Ireland, 136.
23 Ibid., 159.
24 Ibid.
25 Robin Frame, “War and peace in the medieval lordship of Ireland,” in The
English in Medieval Ireland, ed. J. Lyndon (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1984),
130.
26 “Parliament of Ireland, 1297,” in Irish Historical Documents: 1172-1922, ed. E.
Curtis and R.B. McDowell (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1943).
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid. 33.
29 Ibid.
30 Hand, English Law in Ireland, 215.
21
22
The English in Ireland
courts not of record”.31 In order to avoid confusion regarding
jurisdiction, the crown eventually decreed that writs should be
purchased in the country in which they were to be pleaded.32
Like England, the portions of Ireland under direct control by
the king were shired. The numbers of shires changed frequently,
depending on problems with inheritance, the death of magnates, the
expansion or retreat of English power and changing authority within
crosslands. At the beginning of the period under investigation there
were nine shires in Ireland.33 Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, in her intensive
study of Anglo-Irish shire government in the thirteenth century,
states that the Anglo-Irish sheriff was modeled exactly upon those of
England. Thus, he was responsible for the collection of amercements
imposed by the royal courts, fines for having the king’s grace, fees for
chancery writs, the arrears of former sheriff’s accounts, and all other
items which made up the ordinary revenue of the crown, as well as
the scutages of the lesser tenants in chief ‘when royal service ran’, and
sometimes a local subsidy.34
Indeed, the sheriff was responsible for collecting most of the
revenue of the royal administration. Otway-Ruthven suggests that
this was the reason why “the oath which [the sheriff] took on
appointment was largely concerned with their accountability at the
exchequer”.35 Irish fiscal resources were taken directly by the king for
use in wars in Scotland, France and the continent.36 It is estimated
that during the period between 1203 and 1307, ₤90,000 was used by
England in such pursuits.37 Given that the average income for the
colony during Edward I’s reign was ₤6,300, much of the Irish
revenue went straight to England.38 Absentee magnates also had a
habit of taking the funds from their Irish estates to England, “leaving
nothing here to protect their tenements of their tenants thereof”.39
Without money, the lordship was even less able to defend the vast
tracts of land under tenuous control. The large sums of money
leaving Ireland throughout the period of the lordship was a strong
Ibid., 83.
Hand, English Law in Ireland., 141.
33 Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, “Anglo-Irish Shire Government in the Thirteenth
Century,” Irish Historical Studies 5 (1946-47): 1-28, 4.
34 Ibid., 14.
35 Ibid.
36 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 218.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 “Parliament of Ireland, 1297,” 34.
31
32
contributing factor in the degeneration of English control.
Throughout the early fourteenth century, Irish revenue decreased due
to internal unrest.40 By the time of the meeting of the 1431 Irish
Parliament, officials were “seeking taxes in parliament for the defence
of Ireland itself.”41
There were key differences in the nature of offices held in
the Irish administration from that of their English counterparts.
Ireland was not a consolidated lordship. It was a fragmented system
of marches and lordships in which conflict was endemic. As a result,
most government offices had an unavoidable military component.
Robin Frame estimates that by the first quarter of the fourteenth
century, “the king’s justiciar spent from one to six month’s a year at
the head of an army”.42 As the king’s representative, it was dependent
on the justiciar to declare the king’s war against his enemies. Frame
states that the medieval Irish keepers of the peace were much like
their English predecessors had been in the previous century.43 As a
result of the constant border warfare in every shire,
[i]nstead of becoming judicial officers, with the
incidental duty of overseeing the archaic local peacekeeping machinery, [medieval Irish keepers of the
peace] remained active military commanders and
developed judicial duties as only a subsidiary part of
their function.44
During this century, the Irish administration delegated special
powers of truce-making and local parleys to the keepers of the
peace.45 In areas where the Dublin government exercised marginal
control, the keepers of the peace had the local knowledge and
connections to orchestrate and enforce parleys and truces. Some
lords were also granted this power. However, there were strict
controls put on this privilege since certain lords had used powers of
“Parliament in Ireland, 1297,” 34.
Frame, Political Development, 184.
42 Robin Frame, English Lordship in Ireland 1318-1361 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982), 3.
43 Robin Frame, “The Judicial Powers of the Medieval Irish Keepers of the
Peace,” Irish Jurist 2 (1967): 308-26, 310.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid., 311.
40
41
The English in Ireland
truce to entice Irish chiefs to aid them in vendettas against their
rivals.46 The medieval Irish keeper of the peace, for example,
[a]ssessed to arms, arrayed and mustered the shire
levies; they acted as their captains in march warfare;
and they possessed powers of truce-making and
negotiating with English and Irish rebels and
enemies.47
They were also empowered to fine and imprison members of
the community who shirked their obligation to protect their lands
and shires from enemies.48
Although there was an organised, though perhaps not highly
effective, government structure in Dublin, Ireland was not a primary
concern for the English crown. It has been described as coming in “a
bad fourth to the English monarchy’s domestic entanglements and its
commitments in France and Scotland”.49 No English king set foot in
Ireland between 1210 and 1394.50 It would be catastrophic to
underestimate the significance of this fact in the context of medieval
England:
Royal absenteeism faced the resident lords with
practical, and even psychological, problems; for
medieval political societies depended for their
cohesion on contact between the ruler and his greater
subjects. The supreme lord of Ireland did not come
among the Anglo-Irish lords; he did not assume
command in Irish wars; there was no court in Ireland
where magnates could receive public favour and
confirmation of their self-esteem.51
This point is crucial to understanding the political and legal
landscape of the lordship. Unlike Scotland and Wales, which were
connected to England by land, Ireland was psychologically and
physically distant from the minds and bodies of English monarchs
“Parliament of Ireland, 1297,” 35.
Frame, “Keepers of the Peace,” 310.
48 Ibid., 312.
49 Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 7.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 8.
46
47
for almost two centuries. Under these circumstances begins the
investigation of the role of Anglo-Irish lords in the lordship of
Ireland. These individuals were, in essence, entrusted with running
the country from day to day and its protection from internal enemies.
Through their experiences in the fragmented and violence-ridden
lordship of Ireland, we can discern the true relationship of the
English common law to the Irish.
IV
During the latter half of the thirteenth century, the king
appointed eight justiciars to Ireland in twice as many years. The result
of these short-lived appointees was an increased opportunity “for the
great Norman-Irish lords to establish a predominant position in the
running of the colony”.52 G.J. Hand reinforces this argument by
pointing out that the extent of “feudal honours and liberties” in
Ireland was much greater than it had ever been in England.53 Since
“lords might exercise supremacy over areas as large as a shire, or
larger” in Ireland, they naturally had the power to control those in
their power. This included tenants, the Irish under their protection,
and all those who appeared in their courts.54 The lords of liberties
enjoyed such power on a wide scale. Given the distance of several of
the Anglo-Irish liberties from both England and Dublin, OtwayRuthven is not far from the truth when she states that when charters
of liberties were granted to Anglo-Irish lords, the holders enjoyed
“almost royal rights, with complete control of all administration and
all jurisdiction, to the exclusion of royal officials”.55 The greater
liberties, notably Ulster, had “their own chanceries, exchequers and
courts of law”.56 Wary of the dangers of allowing his great lords too
much freedom the king retained certain powers. For example, if the
lord or his chief lieutenant, the seneschal of the liberty, were
negligent in executing royal writs their actions could be reviewed by
the Dublin sheriff and their prerogatives might be taken away at any
time by the king.57 Statutes, when addressed to Ireland, mention both
sheriffs and the seneschals of liberties, whom it entrusts with the
Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 200.
Hand, English Law in Ireland, 132.
54 Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 46.
55 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 181.
56 Richardson, “English Institutions in Medieval Ireland,” 385.
57 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 183.
52
53
The English in Ireland
enforcement of the statutes.58 In order better to organize the system
of lordship, the sheriff of Dublin’s jurisdiction was restricted in 1297
with the hope of increasing control while more sheriffs are applied to
crosslands.59 It was decreed that “there be a sheriff in Ulster, as well
of the Crosses of Ulster, as to carry out executions in the liberty of
Ulster, when default is found in the seneschal of the aforesaid
liberty”.60 The seneschal had to take an oath to the king in addition to
his lord,61 and the lord was the king’s servant entrusted with the
maintenance and protection of the liberty he had been granted.
With the king’s attention perennially focused on domestic issues,
Scotland or the continent, Irish magnates were expected to maintain
control of the marches and borderlands at their own expense. Law
required that absent landholders must allow enough revenue to
remain on their lands for their protection.62 In addition, any armies
raised by a lord, with “license for this from the Chief Justiciar, or a
special mandate” must be able to support such an “expedition” at
their own expense.63 This last clause can be seen in two ways. First,
that the king was not willing to fund such endeavours unless his
position was seriously threatened. Second, armies without sufficient
resources would pillage and cause unrest in the surrounding areas;
this statute sought to prevent this unfortunate but frequent side
effect of march warfare. This remained an unresolved issue, and was
addressed in a 1357 English statute:
The Marches of the said Land [Ireland] situated near
the Enemy, have been laid waste by Hostile Invasions,
the Marchers being slain and plundered, and their
Dwellings horribly burnt, and others compelled to
desert their proper Homes.64
This was a testament to the lack of success of previous attempts
by government to entreat lords to protect and occupy their lands in
the march. Ten years later, an act regarding absentees repeated the
same complaint that Irish felons and other enemies of the king were
“Parliament of Ireland, 1297,” 32.
“Parliament of Ireland, 1297”, 32.
60 Ibid., 33.
61 Hand, English Law in Ireland, 116.
62 “Parliament of Ireland, 1297,” 34.
63 Ibid.
64 31 Edward III. c.1, 3
58
59
continually allowed to commit felonies and robberies in these
unmonitored lands.65 The statues clearly stated that the only way to
prevent these grievous occurrences was
by the coming and continuous residence of the earls,
nobles and others of his realm of England who have
inheritance in the said land of Ireland in their own
persons, or by their strong men sufficient and well
equipped for war upon their lordships.66
Much of the solidity of the land of Ireland depended on
magnates and lords of liberties being able to “devise means of
controlling lesser lords and Irish chiefs”.67 Thus, Anglo-Irish lords
were involved on many levels with the Irish. Any Irishman accused
of a crime was tried in his lord’s court.68 As Richardson notes, the
crown’s legal power over and Irishman was inferior to that of the
local magnate who could enact laws against him.69 If, however, the
Irishman in question escaped from custody or sought safety
elsewhere, the crown retained jurisdiction because the lord had failed
in his duty.70 In addition, only the shire court, that is the royal courts,
have the power to outlaw felons.71 The lands of Irish chiefs often
“lay outside the administrative framework of shires”.72 However, in
many instances, “Irish rulers . . . were . . . involved in some sort of
feudal relationship either directly to the crown or to the lord of the
liberty within whose area their territories lay”.73 In this way, under
specified terms, usually involving feudal dues of armed service, Irish
chiefs and Anglo-Irish lords coexisted with mutual reassurance of
support and protection.
As discussed above, numerous concerted attempts by the law
were unsuccessful in creating a firm grasp of the common law in the
marches. Law existed in these areas, but not the common law, at least
“Act of Absentees, 1368,” in Irish Historical Documents: 1172-1922, ed. E. Curtis
and R.B. McDowell (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1943), 59.
66 “Act of Absentees, 1368,” 59-60.
67 Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 46.
68 Richardson, “English Institutions in Medieval Ireland,” 387.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., 388.
71 Ibid.
72 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 3.
73 Ibid.
65
The English in Ireland
not in a recognisable way. In Marcher areas there existed the lex
marchie, which W.R. Jones describes as
[a] vaguely defined body of Irish and feudal law and
legal procedure, with its greater tolerance of private
distraint, its involvement of kindreds in peace-keeping,
and its preference for the commutation of murder and
mayhem [which] represented an attempt to provide
minimal justice to a people divided by language, law,
and race.74
In lands on the border of the Pale, and in the marches,
compromise between English law and the Irish law was necessary.
The Anglo-Irish recognized that they had to be politic by creating a
hybrid system in order to both retain their control and come to
agreements with the Irish, with whom they shared the land. Frame
uses the example of Ulster to show that many Irish chiefs were in
“formalized subjection” to the powerful de Burgh earls, and held
“their land of them in return for providing specified numbers of
troops”.75 In a remote liberty such as Ulster, it was expedient for the
de Burghs to promote good relations with their Irish neighbours
while also ensuring that they had adequate vassals to offer protection
and to meet the quota they owed to their king.
V
That status of the native Irish during this period is clear- they
were not admitted to the common law. The letter written to Pope
John XXII by the Irish princes, specifically Donald O’Neill, in 1317
gives a fairly comprehensive list of grievances regarding Irish status
under the civil and criminal laws of England. Among the main
problems were the inability of Irishmen to initiate legal proceedings,
their incapability to hold or inherit land, the absence of severe
punishment for the killing of an Irishmen, that Irishwomen were
denied a dower if married to an Englishman, and that Irishmen were
W. R. Jones, “Violence, Criminality, and Culture Disjunction on the Anglo-Irish
Frontier: The Example of Armagh, 1350-1550,” Criminal Justice History 1 (1980):
29-47, 30.
75 Frame, “Power and Society,” 9.
74
excluded from certain religious orders.76 Only if he had purchased a
letter of denization might an Irishman be heard by the royal courts,
acquire land, and bequeath that land to descendants and enter
cathedrals or collegiate churches.77 A 1321 royal charter which
admitted the Irish to English law for five years is good evidence for
what rights were denied native Irish under the common law. They
were to be admitted to English law in “life and limb”, meaning that
they would be subject to the harsher penalties of English law.78 It
stated that
all the Irish previously admitted to English law and
those who hereafter shall happen to be admitted
thereto, do henceforth use the same law concerning
life and limb, and by these presents we command that
the Irish so admitted and to be admitted to the said
law, as well within liberties as without, be treated
according to the custom of the English, always saving
in all things the right of us and of other lords, in the
goods and chattels of the ‘nativi’ who are commonly
called in those regions ‘betaghes,’ who may happen to
be admitted to the said law, and of their issue, as
regards the possession of those goods an chattels.79
What this passage shows, first, is that the English government
realized that it was cutting itself off from the revenue it would be
afforded by extending the common law to all Irish. The focus on the
punishments of life and limb belied the opportunity to obtain the
chattels of a convicted Irish felon. This was especially important
given that, since the Bruce invasion from 1315-1318, “great ruin had
fallen upon the colony.”80 Secondly, it shows the difference between
the two classes of Irish: the free and the unfree, or betagh class. The
Irish betagh was at roughly the same legal status as the English
“The Remonstrance of the Irish Princes to Pope John XXII, 1317,” in Irish
Historical Documents: 1172-1922, ed. E. Curtis and R.B. McDowell (London:
Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1943), 41.
77 Bryan Murphy, “The Status of the Native Irish after 1331,” Irish Jurist 2 (1967):
117-128, 123.
78 “The Irish Admitted to English Law, 1321,” in Irish Historical Documents: 11721922, ed. E. Curtis and R.B. McDowell (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1943), 47.
79 Ibid.
80 Edmund Curtis, A History of Medieval Ireland from 1086 to 1513 (London:
Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1978), 199.
76
The English in Ireland
villein.81 Hand suggests that the status of the betagh was greatly
unchanged by the Norman invasion, but that Irishmen who had once
been free under native Irish law were the ones most disadvantaged.82
They were reduced, essentially, to the status of betaghs.83 The betagh
continued to be “bound to the land”.84 Hand illustrates this with an
interesting example from 1309. Two men, and Irishman and an
Englishman who was married to the Irishman’s sister, argued over
twenty-seven acres of land. The Dublin exchequer ruled that the
Irishman was in the right because he was “verus betagius and bound to
the soil”.85
Until 1329, only the king could grant charters of English law to
an Irishman.86 Very early in the history of the lordship, lords of
liberties had obtained this prerogative, but it was retracted by the
crown soon after.87 However, lords did have the right to grant
English law to any of his Irishman “as regards himself, so that he
would be unable to plead the exception [of Irishry] against the man
thus freed”.88 Under civil law, “the property of an Irishman, who has
not been admitted to English law, is deemed to belong to his lord”.89
Grievances of Irishmen were to be held in their lord’s court, because
“the common law took no cognizance of lands held in velleinage or
equivalent terms”.90 H.G. Richardson is quick to point out, though,
that this does not mean that an Irishman’s lord cannot initiate a suit
on his behalf,91 since an attack on a tenant could be seen as an attack
on his lord. Otway-Ruthven has found evidence of an “Irishman
joined with his lord as a plaintiff”.92 In other cases, if the Irishman
could “show that the rights of the crown [were] involved he [might]
sue himself as attorney for the king, even against his own lord.”93 It is
such instances that lead her to conclude that “the Irishman not
admitted to English law was neither rightless nor deprived of legal
Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 7.
Hand, English Law in Ireland, 188.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid., 195.
85 Hand, English Law Ireland, 195.
86 Murphy, “The Status of the Native Irish after 1331,” 117.
87 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 5.
88 Hand, English Law in Ireland, 206.
89 Richardson, “English Institutions in Ireland,” 388.
90 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 10.
91 Richardson, “English Institutions in Ireland,” 388.
92 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 11.
93 Ibid.
81
82
protection: there were avenues available to them to receive justice
from the common law”.94
VI
Now that the resources of government, the power of AngloIrish lords, and the status of the native Irish have been examined, the
strong influence of Irish laws and customs on the functioning of the
common law should be investigated. There were many areas where
traditional Irish laws and customs penetrated the English lordship,
much to the chagrin and displeasure of the crown. The Irish statute
of 1297 admonished the English of Ireland for their tendency to
dress, ride or wear their hair in the Irish fashion.95 The Statues of
Kilkenny, 1366, again reprimanded the English for “forsaking the
English language, fashion, mode of riding, laws, and usages, live and
govern themselves according to the manners, fashion and language of
the Irish enemies”.96 Compounding this disgrace, the English in
Ireland polluted their race by persisting to marry and have children
with the Irish.97 The crown saw this as the degeneracy of the English
living in Ireland. Such practices fuelled quarrels between the English
born in Ireland and the English born in England. The Statues of
Kilkenny restated a constant theme in crown orders: “that no
difference of allegiance henceforth be made between the English
born in Ireland and the English born in England . . . but that all shall
be called by one name”.98 A statute of 1357 reiterated this by stating
that it was treasonous to say otherwise; what bound Englishmen is
not soil but that they “use[d] the same Laws Rights and Customs.”99
The common law bound together a people, not a nationality.
In the arena of criminal law, Richardson shows that “the
influence of Irish law” was directly related to the ability of both
Englishmen and Irishmen to escape hanging for felony in favour of
ransom or a fine.100 Frame shows that lords exploited
Ibid., 14.
“Parliament of Ireland 1297,” 37.
96 “The Statues of Kilkenny, 1366,” in Irish Historical Documents: 1172-1922, ed. E.
Curtis and R.B. McDowell (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1943), 52.
97 Ibid.
98 “The Statues of Kilkenny, 1366,” 55.
99 31 Edward III. c. 18.
100 Richardson, “English Institutions in Medieval Ireland,” 388.
94
95
The English in Ireland
Irish customs of prise and billeting . . . in order to
support their armed bands . . . [a]nd march customs,
since they had been developed in part at least in the
context of dealing with the Irish, had their Gaelic
features, especially perhaps in their emphasis on
pledges.101
This certainly seems in step with the discussion earlier about the
need of lords to balance the populations of Irish and Irish clans on
their land with the demands of an English monarchy and system of
law. G. Mac Niocaill summarises it well when he describes it as
“recognition of the limits of control of the common law in
Ireland”.102 Hybrid systems of law and compromise were extremely
important in maintaining order. Caution was necessary, though,
because in no way did the English feel that Irish laws were superior
to their own. Indeed, “respect for the laws and customs of the. . .
Irish . . . could be accompanied by a mean-minded exclusiveness and
a tendency to regard the tolerated different as culturally and ethnically
inferior”.103
In some cases, an “Irish thief, though if convicted in the
justiciar’s court he will usually be hanged like an Englishman, is often
allowed to pay a fine and go free by private lords, and this eventually
extends to Englishmen as well”.104 This was a gross violation of the
jurisdiction of the common law. The Statutes of Kilkenny direct: “no
English be governed in the settlement of their disputes by March of
Brehon law, which by right ought not to be called law but bad
custom; but that they be governed by the common law of the land as
the lieges of our lord the King”.105 However, Mac Niocaill finds
examples of lords of both races using whichever law they thought
would give them the outcome they desired.106
In a harsh climate of endemic conflict, it is easy to see how
statutes such as that of Kilkenny were weak in the face of “the joint
interests of a population prone to larceny and homicide and of their
Frame, “Power and Society,” 25.
G. Mac Niocaill, “The Interactions of Laws,” in The English in Medieval Ireland,
ed. J. Lyndon (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1982), 110.
103 Davies, “The Peoples of Britain and Ireland,” 5.
104 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 13.
105 “Statutes of Kilkeny, 1366,” 53.
106 Mac Niocaill, “The Interaction of Laws,” 110.
101
102
lords who expected to profit by it”.107 By hanging felons, especially in
areas from where the common law had since retreated, they would be
killing “the goose laying the golden eggs”.108 To a lordship that
protected its land out of its own minimal revenue, such an
opportunity must have seemed a godsend. Lastly, Otway-Ruthven
shows that the English system of frankpledge was not imported to
Ireland. Instead, she states that the Anglo-Irish administration “relied
on . . . the responsibility of the kin, and of the lord” to ensure that
offenders appeared in court.109 This was yet another concession to
the wide influence of Irish in the name of maintaining order.
VII
Lastly, this paper will look briefly at the Bruce invasion, and its
implications for English power in Ireland. When Edward Bruce
landed in Ulster in 1315, the state of the lordship of Ireland offered
him many advantages. The descendants of several traditional Irish
dynasties supported any effort to oust the English.110 Donald O’Neill,
who claimed the right to the Irish throne, on behalf of the whole
Irish people condemned the “sharp-toothed and viperous calumny of
the English”, whose “arrogance and excessive lust to lord it over us”
had resulted in the complete subjugation of his people.111 O’Neill and
his followers welcomed Bruce, with whom they cited common
ancestry.112 This shared sense of origin, coupled with their
resentment of the English, show clearly that the Irish kings intended
to use Bruce to “more speedily and fitly” throw off the yolk of
English rule. 113 Otway-Ruthven comments that the “general malaise”
felt by most living in Ireland caused “an alarming number of the
Anglo-Irish in Ulster and elsewhere . . . to show themselves ready to
support Bruce”.114 By no means had all of the Irish in Ulster
supported this move on the part of Bruce. Many tried to defend their
lands, but were defeated.115
Ibid., 112.
Ibid.
109 Otway-Ruthven, “The Native Irish,” 13.
110 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 226.
111 “The Remonstrances of the Irish Princes,” 38, 44.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid., 45.
114 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 223.
115 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 226.
107
108
The English in Ireland
Bruce also benefited from the fact that Edward II’s wars with
him had become increasingly taxing on the Irish Exchequer. One
year before Bruce’s invasion, the king “ordered the handing over [of]
. . . all the cash then in the Irish exchequer”, thus leaving the “Irish
administration . . . financially crippled before Bruce’s invasion
began”.116 The resources of the Dublin government were painfully
inadequate for the task of waging war.
It was perhaps the advent of famine that saved the struggling
lordship. James Lyndon asserts that the Scottish “invasion coincided
with the worst famine to hit Ireland in the middle ages”.117 By the
time Scottish reinforcements could be mobilised, Edward II had
brought a strong force to stop the Scottish who had gotten
dangerously close to toppling his lordship.118 Robert Bruce returned
to Scotland, and his brother was killed five months later, ending the
Scottish invasion.119 Many historians recognise this crucial period in
Ireland’s history as the point of no return for English control over
Ireland. James Lyndon argues that the “breakdown in law and order
was worse than ever before and many parts of the island never
recovered”.120 Otway-Ruthven suggests that England’s
embarrassment over the Bruces in Ireland “weakened the English
interest” in maintaining a strong presence;121 “[i]n all the outlying
districts a retreat [was] evident”.122 Clearly, the Bruce invasion was a
problem that the Irish administration was ill equipped to deal with.
Its aftermath can be seen as a realisation by the English that their
interests in Ireland were much more troublesome than they had
bargained for.
In a colony organised for war,123 Ireland was ill prepared for the
challenges it faced. The failure of England fully to conquer all areas
of Ireland should not be underestimated as a significant contributing
factor to the decline of English lordship during the fourteenth
Ibid., 221.
James Lyndon, “Ireland: Politics, Government and Law,” in A companion to
Britain in the Later Middle Ages, ed. S.H. Rigby (Malden: Blackwell Publishing,
2003), 345.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid.
121 Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, 237.
122 Ibid.
123 Robin Frame, “England and Ireland, 1171-1399,” in England and her
Neighbors, ed. M. Jones and M. Vale (London and Ronceverte: The Hambledon
Press, 1989), 154.
116
117
century. Although a ready-made and successful system of
government was applied to the lordship, in neglecting to amalgamate
the English and Irish populations, the monarchy ensured that the
common law would never have universal jurisdiction. The absence of
the king ensured that Anglo-Irish lords would have much more
significant responsibility in the application of laws. The results were
systems of hybrid English-Irish law which were abused by all who
lived in Ireland. The opportunities afforded by the abuses of a dual
system of law prevented the common law from becoming the sole
system in Ireland. Prejudices against the Irish as a race combined
with a lack of significant interest in fully conquering Ireland
guaranteed that the Irish would always have reason to support
insurgency. The statutes that have been examined in this paper are
testimony to the neglect of Ireland by lords and the monarchy alike.
The failure to observe a universal system of law resulted in frequent
commands by the king to observe English law and protect his lands.
These requests were only marginally obeyed and ensured that Edward
I would be the only king in the middle ages to enjoy relatively
extensive territorial and judicial control over the colony.
The Millet System and Ottoman Decline
ARI S. NAJARIAN
In 1453, Mehmed II conquered Constantinople and placed
the Greek patriarch Gennadius at the head of the Greek Orthodox
Patriarchate. In doing so, he invested Gennadius with both
religious and civil authority over all Orthodox believers in the
Ottoman Empire, including Serbs, Bulgars, Wallachians, and
Moldavians.1 Shortly afterward, in 1461 he instituted Yovakim, the
Armenian primate of Bursa, at the head of the Armenian
Patriarchate, which similarly governed over the non-Chalcedonian,
non-Orthodox and Monophysite Christian communities of the
empire. These two administrative structures, along with a parallel
Jewish system, constituted the bulk of what is now termed the
Ottoman millet system, whereby semi-autonomous communities
were defined along religious lines. Mehmed’s motivation appeared
to be the quick integration of these communities into an emerging,
distinctly Islamic state structure. The degree to which these
communities were defined at the outset is unclear, however the fact
remains that the administrative decision to divide the subjects of
the empire in this manner was ostensibly sound and positive. The
following argument proposes otherwise: that the implementation
of an institutionalised millet system in the Ottoman Empire
contributed significantly to its gradual weakening and decline.
Essentially, one can trace the growth of an independent, nationalist
sentiment within these and other millets, due to their accidental
ethnic uniformity and internal autonomy.
The argument will proceed by establishing the historical
background necessary for further analysis, including the conceptual
caveats and qualifications made by other historians on this topic.
The millet system of the Ottoman Empire itself will be explored visà-vis Christian and Jewish communities, as well as the inner
workings of these communities themselves. By such examination I
hope to demonstrate that the particular kind of autonomy held by
these millets is responsible for their ultimate departure from the
interests of the state. I will then link this process to international
developments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and
demonstrate how the millet system fits into the widely held narrative
1
Varant Artinian, The Armenian Constitutional System in the Ottoman Empire, 18391863: a Study of its Historical Development. (Istanbul, 1970), 11.
of Ottoman decline. By way of conclusion, I will attempt to
generalize the principles observed herein with regard to other
Islamic empires with similar administrative structures.
The concept of a millet predates the Ottoman Empire by
centuries. Earlier Islamic empires employed similar systems to help
govern their non-Muslim subjects, and the term millet appears in
the Quran as a pre-Islamic religious community.2 The similar way
in which caliphs, sultans and shahs have treated their non-Muslim
subjects throughout history can be explained by two important
concepts: the dhimmi and the general Islamic attitude toward
statecraft. The dhimmi in Islam are those people who practice
monotheistic, scripture-based religions, for instance Christians and
Jews. These groups were considered ‘protected peoples’ and, once
conquered, paid a special tax to retain their right to practice their
religions. The Islamic attitude towards dhimmis was influenced by
the Quran, effectively guaranteeing these groups special treatment
under Muslim rulers. This foundational principle, combined with
the perceived role of the state under Islam, helped explain the
similarities between administrative state structures in the historical
Muslim world.
The notion of a ‘cycle of equity’ has been used by
contemporary scholars and historical chroniclers quite astutely to
describe the philosophic foundation for political organization in
the Middle East.3 Though first promulgated in sixth-century Persia,
this ideal appeared in the fifteenth century Ottoman Empire as
such: the state is predicated upon the military, the military needs
wealth, wealth is obtained from the subjects, subjects need social
stability and justice, and the state safeguards social order and
justice.4 Under this construction, state intervention into the affairs
of the subjects occurs mainly through heavy taxation and
protection of private property. This attitude was unmistakably
reinforced in the administrative discourse: the two main classes as
defined by Ottomans themselves were the askeri and reaya, or
literally, the ‘military-governors’ and the ‘flocks’.5 The subjects of
Benjamin Braude, “Foundation Myths of the Millet System,” in Christians and Jews
in the Ottoman Empire. Vol. 1. ed. B. Braude et al. (New York: Holmes & Meier
Publishers, 1982), 69-71.
3 Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol. 1.
(Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 112-3.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.; Luke, Sir Harry. The Old Turkey and the New: From Byzantium to Ankara
(London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd. 1955), 53.
2
The Millet System 22
the empire were a matter of state interest only inasmuch as they
produced wealth for the state. As a consequence, administrative
groupings were made primarily to expedite the tax process. For
example, the sancak system in the provinces approached taxation as
a reward for military service.6 As a tiered system, officials at one
level were only accountable to those directly above them: sancakbeys
to beylerbeys, sipahis to sancakbeys and so on, resulting in more or less
internally-autonomous units.
The direct urban equivalent to this rural administrative
system was the millet. One of the primary responsibilities of the
milletbashi (leader of the community), was to direct the flow of taxes
into the government structure. Due to the comparable tiered
structure, the internal affairs of each millet were left entirely in the
hands of the milletbashi, and of no concern to the state; this
included judicial, civil and economic affairs, with the exception of
taxing. In this way, the notion of a millet fit nicely into the political
organization of the state to reflect both its foundational principles
(treatment of dhimmis) and administrative philosophy (general
disinterest toward subjects outside taxation).
These observations provide a possible response to
Benjamin Braude’s pressing argument that the absence of the term
‘millet’ in Ottoman administrative discourse in the 15th and 16th
centuries suggests that such a unit did not exist per se until much
later in Ottoman history.7 There is indeed little evidence to suggest
that millets, by any name, existed widely in their modern sense
during the fifteenth century8. However, due to the limited
accountability of administrative units in the empire, the internal
structure of the religious communities would be of no interest or
import to Ottoman administrators, thus explaining their absence
from sources at that particular level of government. It is just as
likely that these early structures were loose associations headed by a
single official invested with authority. These ostensibly undefined
M. Philips Price, A History of Turkey: From Empire to Republic (New York George
Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1961), 60.
7 Braude, “Foundation Myths”, 70.
8 Braude cites a host of sources from various institutions where one might likely
find a term denoting religious communities. However, these documents
(“capitation tax records, cadastral records, chancery decrees, inquisitions post
mortem…”) are all Ottoman documents. According to the hypothesis advanced
above, there is no reason to expect these officials to have any knowledge of the
internal structure of dhimmi communities. See Braude, Foundation Myths, 70-71.
6
but internally structured communities will be referred to as millets
throughout the argument.
Before addressing the internal processes of these millets, one
more conceptual tool merits consideration. While the argument
addresses the transitional period from medieval to modern, the
prominence of the capital relation should be underscored: from the
end of the 16th century a gradual transition is evident from a feudalbased economy to one with slight modern inclinations, where the
deregulated urban market begins to show its true potential with
increased international trade.9 The prominence of capital makes it
particularly important to recognize the relationship between the
state and its economic institutions. Under ideal circumstances, state
structures are a function of socio-economic institutions, and thus
reflect their characteristics in any given setting; when the
institutions change, the structures must ultimately adapt themselves
or the resulting inefficiency will breed social unrest.10
If we accept this premise, the decline of the Ottoman state
can be interpreted as the process whereby existing economic
institutions ‘outgrew’ their complementary state structures. The
remainder of the argument will demonstrate this process by
highlighting the economic agency of the millet communities, and
tracing the effects of their autonomy on both themselves and their
relationship with the Ottoman state. Particular reference will be
made to the deviating interests of millets as manifested in budding
nationalism movements.
Fairly good insight into the economic agency of the millets can
be obtained by examining the Ottoman state revenue system.
There existed two state treasuries, the iç hazine and hazine-i enderun,
both financed almost completely by taxes, both traditional (shariahrelated) and civil (örfi).11 As state expenses grew due to expansion
and catastrophic events such as wars, the original ‘emergency’ örfi
taxes grew in number and were institutionalised. Here a curious
feature of the Ottoman Empire becomes evident: the state (the
askeri) had almost no control whatsoever over affairs in major areas
of the economy, and in fact largely did not own capital.12 For the sake
Price, 55; Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 158.
For a more in-depth account of this relationship, see John Holloway and Sol
Picciotto, “Capital, Crisis and the State", Capital and Class 2 (1977): 76-7.
11 Aryeh Shmuelevitz, Administrative, Economic, Legal and Social Relations in the
Ottoman Empire in the Late 15th and the 16th Centuries. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984), 81.
12 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 158-9.
9
10
The Millet System 24
of convenience, consider the basic urban/rural divide of industries:
in the countryside, although peasants produced on state-owned
lands, the taxes levied on them—whether cash or crop—cannot be
considered capital. These resources were permanently taken out of
the production process and did not contribute to the reproduction
of labour; this left the peasants actually in charge of their means of
production, albeit only in an unrealized sense. Now, it is difficult to
say with any certainty which religious community of reayas
dominated agriculture: the provinces of the Ottoman Empire were
so expansive that the composition of the countryside varied
considerably. The Caucasus remained distinctly Christian, central
Anatolia had concentrations of Armenians, Kurds, some Turks and
Circassians, and the eastern Balkans to a great extent retained their
ethnic composition before conquest. No askeris cultivated land.
As for the cities and towns, where trade and secondary
industries dominated, circumstance and tradition both led to the
rise of a petty-bourgeois merchant class, composed of craft guilds
(esnafs), bankers, money lenders and traders who operated more or
less independently of the state. In the case of the secondary
industries, guild members owned their means of production and
were allowed to accrue some capital after taxation. As for the
bankers and sarrafs (moneylenders), again from the non-askeri
classes, they dealt entirely with capital: their funds were used
whenever tax-farms were auctioned, merchants needed loans for
their businesses, or when foreign currency needed to be
exchanged.13 It should also be noted that from the mid-17th
century, when large-scale international trade became common,
esnafs were almost always comprised of individuals from either the
same ethnicity or at least the same religious community.14
Furthermore, sarrafs were generally non-Muslims (Islamic law
forbade the taking of interest on loans). Finally, Muslims had a
relatively insignificant presence in international trade: European
nations almost without exception preferred trading with the
minority Christian and Jewish communities, making them
indispensable intermediaries.15
Artinian, 20-1.
Ibid., 25-6.
15 Robert Mantran, “Foreign Merchants and the Minorities in Istanbul during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire.
Vol. 1. ed. B. Braude et al. (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), 1301.
13
14
In both rural and urban settings, we find that the reayas and
minority bourgeois classes controlled the vast majority of the
means of production and that these social groups were
overwhelmingly non-Turkish and ethnically diverse throughout the
empire. Recall that by the initial hypothesis, if a change in the
nature of the capital relation is not accompanied by a
commensurate change in the political structures predicated
thereupon, social discord may be a significant consequence.
Developments in late Ottoman history serve to illustrate this point.
The effects of according such economic agency to
communities of religious minorities took on two different forms,
one in the rural areas and another in the urban centres. In both
cases, one of the primary causes was the transformation of Europe
into a modern mercantilist force.16 The changing nature of
Europe’s economy created a huge demand for raw materials as
industrialization fostered the growth of secondary industries.
International trade networks began to bring raw materials into
Europe from both the Americas and the Middle East. In the case
of the latter, these were in increasingly short supply. The
consequences were that much of what was produced in the rural
areas of the Ottoman Empire was no longer distributed all over the
state, but rather exported directly to Europe in exchange for badly
needed funds, and those who were involved in the export process
were uniformly Greeks, Armenians, Jews and other urban
minorities. As the empire was drained of important primary
resources, conditions in the rural parts of the empire worsened at
the expense of the urban areas. Peasants from these areas
attempted to migrate to the cities to improve their lot, but the
Ottoman government retaliated by forcing them back onto their
land.17
Rather than ameliorate the condition of peasants, the state
coerced them to keep producing in progressively vulnerable
conditions. As the traditional system of prosperity failed, former
Janissaries, mercenaries, militias, and even timar-holders exploited
the ‘flocks’ they were supposed to protect.18 This was in turn
caused by the transformation—at the beginning of the seventeenth
century—of the timar system into lucrative tax farms that attracted
both sedentarised military officials and other askeris. The conditions
Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 172.
Ibid., 108, 156.
18 Ibid., 174.
16
17
The Millet System 26
in the provinces became so unbearable in the late sixteenth century
that revolts became endemic, not only among Sufi tekkes and army
deserters but also peasants themselves.19
The experience in the cities was much more positive. Europe’s
mercantilist transformation increased not only the nature but also
the volume of trade with the Ottoman Empire. While Europeans
dealt exclusively with the religious minorities, the position of these
dhimmis rose proportionately. However, not all minority groups
benefited from this transformation; the esnafs faced direct
competition from Europe, where new manufacturing processes
made it possible to undersell indigenous craftspeople. With the
penetration of European trade, the balance of power between the
esnafs and the sarrafs shifted towards the latter, who merely had to
change the type of capital they directed. In fact, the latter group
grew to have so much influence in the empire that a new class of
wealthy dhimmis called amiras emerged at the end of the seventeenth
century, who occupied a privileged status in their respective
millets.20
Having established the gradual transformation of the nature of
the Ottoman economy, the argument will now turn to examine the
dynamic between this new capital relation and the state structure.
Non-Muslim peasants largely expressed their defiance of the state
by attempting to abandon their farms and flee to the cities. As
conditions in the provinces worsened, the immediate Ottoman
response, rather than instituting structural reform, was to force
these peasants back to their points of origin. The Ottomans used
military force to maintain the agricultural and political institutions
as they were, rather than reconfiguring them to accommodate the
urgent need for raw materials within and without the empire.
Further evidence for this claim is the fact that silver coins
were in incredibly short supply all over the Ottoman countryside,
especially in the late sixteenth century when the empire first
Suraiya Faroqhi, “Political Initiatives ‘from the Bottom up’ in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire” and “Political Activity among Ottoman
Taxpayers and the problem of Sultanic Legitimation (1570-1650)” in Coping with
the State. (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1995), 4-6; 30-3.
20 Hagop Barsoumian, “The Dual Role of the Armenian Amira Class within the
Ottoman Government and the Armenian Millet (1750-1850)” in Christians and
Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Vol. 1. ed. B. Braude et al. (New York: Holmes &
Meier Publishers, 1982), 171-3.
19
became heavily monetized.21 The need for liquidity became a
pressing issue due to increased urban international trade, and more
silver akçe was produced for circulation in the cities. However, cash
increasingly became the standard idiom of commercial discourse
and the empire expected all affairs to be handled with it, including
and especially provincial taxation, its key source of revenue. The
monetization of Ottoman society was caused largely by outside
forces; the dearth of silver in the provinces illustrates the extent to
which the state was unwilling to adapt itself to this development at
all beyond the immediate urban necessities. To avoid painting a
completely bleak picture of the Ottoman state, it is worth
mentioning that various reform efforts were made throughout the
seventeenth century, in response mainly to external crises and
internal decay.22 However, as Stanford Shaw notes, these reforms
only “temporarily saved the empire by forcing it back into the
patterns of the past”, acting against the effects of decline but never
its cause.23
When examining the urban capital relation as an historical
phenomenon, a significant trend should be kept in mind: Turkish
contributions to the internal economy significantly outweighed
involvement in international European trade. From the outset,
Turks were disinterested in international trade. This reinforced the
defined spheres of activity for the non-Muslim minorities. Robert
Mantran suggests that Turks may have viewed Europeans as
inferiors who benefited from Ottoman trade out of the
magnanimity of the sultan.24 This may explain the very real dearth
of Turkish trade with European merchants. What is striking is the
continued lack of Ottoman involvement in international trade after
its volume increased; Greeks, Armenians and Jews continued to
dominate in this sphere.
Two instances will illustrate the effects of the new capital
relation. In the late-sixteenth century the civil, or emergency, örfi
taxes began to increase in number as Suleyman and later Selim II
attempted to counter population-related inflation. Peasants, lacking
the funds to pay these taxes, turned to sarrafs for loans. Here we see
Suraiya Faroqhi, “Counterfeiting in Ankara” in Coping with the State. (Istanbul:
Isis Press, 1995), 136.
22 Shaw, Stanford. Between Old and New; the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III,
1789-1807. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 6.
23 Ibid.
24 Mantran, 131-132.
21
The Millet System 28
the divergence of the capital-owning class interests from those of
the state: the moneylenders fully exploited the peasants’ need for
funds and charged exorbitant interest rates to increase their
profit.25 If they truly had the interests of the state in mind, these
sarrafs would have cared less for their own profit and more about
maintaining some economic stability state-wide. The second
example has been described briefly above: as the export of raw
materials became more lucrative with higher demand, the
merchants who handled these transactions had absolutely no
qualms about sending much-needed supplies out of the empire
while several provinces in Anatolia experienced famines.26 This
demonstrates the diverging interests of the state and the
proponents of the new economy; the Turks who could have
counterbalanced the interests of the dhimmis would have nothing to
do with international trade and refused to adapt themselves to the
new market. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this would prove to be
the main cause for the rise of the amira class and the penetration of
dhimmis into the state administration.
Developments in the 16th and 17th centuries transformed the
capital relation in the Ottoman Empire, illustrated the effects of
this transformation on the economic institutions of the state, and
showed that the Ottomans were largely unwilling to adapt their
political institutions to complement these changes. This resulted in
revolts, famines and increased crime and corruption in the
provinces, as well as inflation and monetization in the cities. What
remains to be demonstrated is role of the millets in all of this.
Over time, the millets in the Ottoman Empire became
ethnically fragmented to a significant degree. From what we can
consider three loose groupings in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, at the close of the nineteenth century there were fifteen
distinct communities, including Greeks, Wallachians, Serbs and
Bulgarians under the Orthodox, three monophysite groups, six
affiliated with Catholicism, one Protestant and one Jewish.27 As the
empire gained seniority, it required that all its subjects belong to
defined communities to facilitate administration. Kemal Karpat has
traced the transformation of millets from primarily religious
institutions to ethnic communities in Ottoman history, and cites
the changes in land tenure, increased responsibility of communal
Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 107-8.
Ibid., 172-3.
27 Luke, 95.
25
26
leaders and, of course, the economic agency of these groups as
causes.28
As Ottoman reform attempts became progressively liberal and
Western-inspired, service to the state became the main determinant
of rank in the empire. This led to a large portion of the urban millets
in the Near Eastern provinces overshadowing their Muslim
counterparts even as they became internally differentiated at the
local level29 and, in the eastern Balkans, to pressures from these
same local units for upward mobility and political integration.30
When this became impossible within the existing state structure,
many distinct Balkan communities, starting with the Serbians and
Greeks and spurred on by European ideals,31 revolted and ceded
from the Ottoman Empire.32 The convergence of increased local
responsibility, ethnic and linguistic similarities and proximity to
Europe, as well as the realization of their economic agency yielded
this particular course of events in the Balkans, bringing Western
pressures ever closer to Istanbul while robbing the Ottomans of
vast tracts of taxable land.
While much of this occurred in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, similar developments are found in Anatolia,
the remaining core of the empire, from at least the mid-nineteenth
century onwards. In this case, it was Russia and not Europe that
threatened the Ottoman Empire. Alienated from and exploited by
the state mechanism, the Armenians of the six eastern provinces
sought protection from Russia against both the Kurds and hostile
local authorities.33 The nationalist attempts were largely
unsuccessful; the Ottomans, aware of the threat facing them,
quelled any potential resistance at the turn of the century by
slaughtering or deporting over 1 million Armenians from these
provinces.34 These, combined with the measures taken against
Karpat, Kemal. “Millets and Nationality: The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation
and State in the Post-Ottoman Era.” In Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire.
B. Braude et al. Vol. 1. ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), 145.
29 Ibid., 149,
30 Ibid., 147-8.
31 Karpat, 158-9.
32 Ibid., 162-3.
33 Charles Issawi, “The Transformation of the Economic Position of the Millets in
the Nineteenth Century” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. ed. B.
Braude et al. Vol. 1. (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982). 274-5.
34 George A Bournoutian, A Concise History of the Armenian People, (California:
Mazda Publishers, 2003), 271-273.
28
The Millet System 30
Greeks and Armenians over the course of the 19th century
effectively removed a substantial class of merchants and
administrators from the state. The hope was that the economic and
political vacuum would be filled by Turkish askeris and reayas,
thereby assuring a certain degree of synchronization between the
state’s institutions and those directing the capital flow. This was, of
course, after the Tanzimat secularisation, an era of reform that
allowed these minorities to rise to unprecedented prominence - to
such influential positions that their participation in the government
may have ultimately transformed it to reflect the interests of those
controlling capital.35 By drastically reducing the number of
minorities in the empire, the Ottomans managed to undo much of
the progress the economy had seen while consolidating Turkish
institutions to govern and direct Turkish capital. This conforms to
the pattern we have seen whereby pressing economic changes fail
to bring about commensurate changes in the state.
Various historians have different views regarding the start of
Ottoman decline; some place it at the end of Suleyman’s reign in
the sixteenth century, while others date it much later. European
expansion is often cited as a main factor, as is the lack of
understanding of economics on the part of the state.36 From the
above analysis, I hope to have shown that these and other factors
were all incidental in this decline narrative, which in reality was
caused by a rigid state structure that was unwilling to adapt to a
changing economy. The exploitation and revolts in the countryside
are direct results of this, as are the nationalist movements and
massacres on the fringes during the late nineteenth century. At the
heart of the conflict between the tradespeople and the government
was a system that divided the reayas into locally uniform ethnolinguistic and cultural groups while giving them control of state
capital. The millet system was a volatile and variable feature of the
Ottoman Empire that concentrated the capital relation in the hands
of communities whose interests changed with the very relation they
directed.
If one were to expand this hypothesis to other historic Islamic
empires, the following considerations may prove useful as starting
points for analysis: the empires’ attitudes towards their subjects,
their philosophy of political organization (the ‘cycle of equity’
35
36
Karpat, 162-65.
Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 108.
above), transformations in their modes of production, the nature of
ethnic diversity in the empire and their political adaptability. The
history of the Ottoman empire unfolded due to a particular
configuration of these variables; it is not unreasonable to suggest
that other Islamic imperial histories could be studied and
interpreted with these same factors in mind.
A Siren Song:
Canada’s National Policy Scuttles
the Maritimes’ Merchant Marine
DAVID STANLEY
In the mid-nineteenth century the Maritimes controlled one
of the largest shipping fleets in the world. However, once Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick joined the Canadian Confederation they
became subject to the policies of the federal government. These
soon thereafter promoted land-based and westward-looking
industrial development behind a curtain of domestic market
protection and at the expense of the hard fought for international
sea trade. Within this cloistered environment, Maritime ship
owners and other controllers of capital in the region were offered
numerous, apparently superior, investment opportunities onshore
that the wind was taken from the sails of the sea. Consequently, the
new technologies and high returns offered by steam power and
metal hulls for ocean-going vessels were all but ignored. In just two
decades, the Maritime shipping industry was starved of new capital
and, consequently, rapidly liquidated. Yet the land-based
industrialization of the region proved to be a short-lived and
pyrrhic success. Had the Maritimes remained outside of any transcontinental confederation, it might have developed into be one of
the globe’s pre-eminent shipping regions.1
The Maritimes and Norway – Two Sides of the Same Atlantic
Coin
Canada enjoyed an ‘age of progress’ from the mid-nineteenth
century as industrialization, immigration, and urbanization
prompted the development of new industries, economic growth
and expanding trade. Nowhere was this better exemplified, at least
initially, than in its shipping industry. The Canadian shipping sector
grew to become the fourth most important in world trade for a
short period around 1880, with the Maritimes leading the way.2 The
Canadian confederation or annexation by the United States, would likely have led
to broadly similar outcomes. The United States had even more rigid domestic
protection policies than those of Canada.
2 Keith Matthews, “The Shipping Industry of Atlantic Canada: Themes and
Problems,” in Ships and Shipbuilding in The North Atlantic Region, ed. Keith
Matthews and Gerald Panting (St John’s: Memorial University of
Newfoundland, 1978), 3.
1
tonnage of ships registered to owners in the Maritimes and
Newfoundland together equated to 78 percent of the total for
Canada. 3 Atlantic port towns “were for a generation or two, able to
expand their merchant marine so far as to not only capture a large
proportion of Canadian foreign trade, but to engage in far flung
cross [traffic] competing on the [commercial] routes of the world,
on equal terms with all comers”.4 Yet, the industry declined rapidly
from the 1890s, and by 1909 Canada ranked just tenth on the table
of leading maritime nations.5 The decline in the Maritimes was
even more dramatic and in the three decades preceding 1910,
registered tonnage fell a whopping 72 percent.6 In contrast, another
great seafaring nation of the age, Norway, both retained and later
built on its position in global shipping. At the turn of the twentyfirst-century, Norway controlled the world’s third largest merchant
fleet, the same ranking it held in the late nineteenth century.7
The demise of the Atlantic Canadian shipping industry has
been the subject of numerous in-depth studies, including a roundtable series of conferences hosted by the Maritime History Group,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, from the 1970s onward.8
Two key conclusions – the loss of comparative advantage in
shipping, and the concurrent development of alternate
opportunities - is presented by Eric Sager and Gerry Panting in
their contribution to the Sixth Conference of the Atlantic Canada
Shipping Project in 1982:
Keith Matthews, “The Shipping Industry of Atlantic Canada: Themes and
Problems” (1978) 3, 10. While Newfoundland did not join the Canadian
confederation until 1949, historical studies of the shipping industry of the region
often include it in any analysis.
4 Ibid., 3.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 10, 11.
7 Helle Hammer, “The Norwegian Shipping Industry,” (Oslo: Norway Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, 2000),
http://odin.dep.no/odin/engelsk/norway/economy/032001-990368/dokbn.html, accessed 12 March 2005.
8 The proceedings of each conference have been published as edited collections
under various titles. Key sources for this investigation are: Matthews and
Panting eds., Ships and Shipbuilding, Lewis R. Fischer and Eric W. Sager eds.,
Merchant Shipping and Economic Development in Atlantic Canada: Proceedings of the Fifth
Conference of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project June 25 – June 27, 1981 (St John’s:
Memorial University Group, 1982)., Lewis R. Fischer and Gerald E. Panting
eds., Change and Adaptation in Maritime History: The North Atlantic Fleets in the
Nineteenth Century: Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the Atlantic Canada Shipping
Project April 1 – April 3, 1982 (St John’s: Memorial University Group, 1985).
3
A Siren Song 34
It does appear that the staple industries [of the Atlantic Canadian region]
and shipping were mutually self supporting until the 1860s at least, and that
this was no little part of Atlantic Canada’s comparative advantage in
shipping. The new industries of the late nineteenth century did not afford the
same comparative advantage. When in the 1860s and 1870s the shift to iron
and steam might have been made, the local iron industry was not sufficiently
advanced to afford a comparative advantage in shipbuilding. … Thus when
capital, entrepreneurial talent, and expectations for growth shifted away from
the old staple trades, this was a sufficient condition for the decline of the
shipping industry that grew from these trades. … Maritimers chose a
particular path towards industrialization, a path which often departed from
the traditional industries which they knew best. … The alternatives foregone
by Maritimers before the First World War included the modernization of
their shipping industry, the modernization of fishing fleets, and the
development of pulp and paper mills, any of which might have benefited from
local resources or local skills.9
These themes of relative competitive advantage and
alternative opportunity are clearly relevant factors in what occurred,
but as Sager and Panting contend, the industry’s precipitous decline
is “a complex historical phenomenon, still inadequately
understood”.10 Extensive investigations have been undertaken into
the specifics of the Atlantic Canadian economy, the extent of
linkages between landward and seaward industries and returns on
capital invested in sailing ships. However, there has been relatively
little work undertaken to assess the economics of why the shipping
industry in Atlantic Canada failed while that of Norway prevailed.
This is particularly relevant as there is no evidence that economic
returns in shipping were so low as to justify this desertion of an
industry by which the region still defines itself.
In this report the similarities in, and differences between,
two Atlantic regions—the Canadian Maritime Provinces and
Norway—are investigated to determine how such divergent
outcomes arose. Both regions are located towards the northern
Eric W. Sager and Gerry Panting, “Staple Economies and the Rise and Decline
of the Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820-194,” in Change and
Adaptation, ed. Fischer and Panting, 36. The opportunities Sager and Panting
note as being foregone by the Maritimes are notable as being amongst those
grasped by Norway into the twentieth century.
10 Ibid.
9
periphery of major economic engines—North America and
Western Europe respectively—and both developed major
merchant marines based principally on the transport of
commodities for more and more third party countries. In addition,
both were slow to adopt the new technology of steam and iron in
the late nineteenth century; yet their shipping industries showed no
positive correlation in activity after 1880.
In 1879, Norwegian registered vessels had a combined
capacity of 1.5 million tons ranking the nation third behind Britain
and the United States, with Canada in fourth position. Atlantic
Canada alone would have ranked just behind fifth placed Germany
in the global league tables.11
Table 1: Tonnage in the Merchant Marines in 187912
Country/Region
Tonnage (x1000)
Britain 6,833 1
Norway
1,526 3
Maritimes
951
Newfoundland 83
“Atlantic Canada”
1,034
Canada1,322 4
World Rank
Despite the similar positions held by these two regions
early in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, their paths
diverged dramatically thereafter. Today Norway “is a superpower
of the seas, controlling 10 percent of the world’s merchant fleet”,
nearly twice that of a century earlier, while Atlantic Canada’s role in
the sector is almost negligible.13
Canada’s Atlantic Region Evolves in a Maritime Realm
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Atlantic colonies of
British North America were “classic staple producing regions …
[depending] …overwhelmingly upon the production and export of
Sarah Palmer, “The British Shipping Industry, 1850-1914,” in Change and
Adaptation, ed. Fischer and Panting, 96. The term “Atlantic Canada” is employed
loosely as Newfoundland did not become part of the federation until 1949.
12 Keith Matthews, “The Shipping Industry of Atlantic Canada: Themes and
Problems,” (1978), 10;
Helge W Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries of The Scandinavian Countries,
1850-1914,” (1982), 122.
13 Hammer, “The Norwegian Shipping Industry.”
11
A Siren Song 36
unfinished or semi-processed natural resources”.14 In this preConfederation and largely pre-industrial age, two significant
industries emerged to support the primary sector: the provision of
shipping services and the manufacture of ships to supply it.15 This
was an era when the primary sector was perceived as “the great
engine of development”.16 Consequently, at first, these shipping
related enterprises were probably seen more as adjuncts to bolster
this ‘engine’ than as being viable in their own right. Such a view
would likely have been paralleled in Norway where timber made up
at least 50 percent of total freight earnings until the 1870s.17
Numerous articles by twentieth-century historians argue that
the weakening in forward and backward linkages were essential
pre-conditions for the subsequent demise of both the Maritime
shipping and shipbuilding sectors. The initially strong forward
linkage in terms of the development of both endeavours is well
supported. However, the linkage argument does not represent a
critical factor in the later expansion of ship ownership, nor its
eventual demise, as the Norwegian experience proves. Similarly, the
highly visible shipbuilding industry was important to the Maritimes
economy and the well-being of the shipping sector, but was not an
essential determinant of later outcomes.
Two commodities were of particular importance to the
economies of early Nova Scotia and New Brunswick: fish and
forest products respectively, as indeed they were for Norway.18
Fish exports accounted for around 40 percent of the value of Nova
Scotia’s exports in the five years prior to confederation and timber
for 70 percent of exports from New Brunswick.19 Nova Scotia was
also exporting sizable volumes of timber and agricultural
products.20 Britain, its Caribbean colonies and the United States
Eric W. Sager and Gerry Panting, “Staple Economies and the Rise and Decline
of the Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914,” in Change and
Adaptation, ed. Fischer and Panting, 3.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 10.
17 Helge W. Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries of the Scandinavian Countries,
1850-1914,” in Change and Adaptation, ed. Fischer and Panting, 143.
18 S. A. Saunders, “The Economic History of the Maritime Provinces,” in Sources in
the History of Atlantic Canada No.3, ed. P. A. Buckner and E. R. Forbes (Saint
John: Acadiensis Press, 1984), 19.
19 Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 5.
20 Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 5. Agricultural products accounted for
17 percent of Nova Scotian exports in the five years to confederation and
lumber another 11 percent.
14
were the most important export markets. The British West Indies
and the United States were the largest markets for fish, while
timber exports were destined primarily for Britain, and to a lesser
extent the Caribbean.21
Shipbuilding also emerged during this period as a major
industry supporting the expansion of both the fishing and timber
industries, as well as colonial trade in general. In addition, there was
a rapid growth in demand for ships to supply the rest of eastern
British North America and overseas markets, especially Britain.22
For timber exporters in particular, this latter aspect initially
provided a natural forward linkage. Wood merchants could have
ships built of timber from their own holdings to carry lumber
across the Atlantic to Britain and then sell the unloaded vessels to
British businesses as well.23 However, ship ownership became an
increasingly popular option in its own right from the mid-1850s,
nearly a decade before the marked decline in British demand for
sailing vessels, and this lasted until the end of the 1870s.24 During
this period, a distinct ship-owning class emerged in the Maritimes
as “the proportion of capital invested in shipping relative to
investment in staple production expanded rapidly”.25
Thus, the extent of the growth in the industry was far greater
than could be explained by local cargoes alone, and by the mid1860s, Maritime-registered ocean-going ships “operated
infrequently from Canadian ports”.26 The majority of voyages by
vessels such as those registered at Halifax, St John, and Yarmouth
were, by then, on American-British and American-European trade
routes.27
Sager and Panting suggest that this growth phase may be
explained by two events: “first, the sustained high level of freight
rates in major Atlantic carrying trades in the first half of the
[1850s], and second, the beginnings of a decline in returns from the
Saunders, “Economic History,” 19.
Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 6. The authors report that Richard Rice
estimated that between 51 percent and 69 percent of the ships built in British
North America between 1809 and 1864 were sold in the British market.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 16.
25 Ibid.
26 Eric W. Sager and Lewis R. Fischer, “Atlantic Canada and the Age of Sail
Revisited,” Canadian Historical Review, 63 (2), (1982), 133, 134.
27 Eric W. Sager and Lewis R. Fischer, “Patterns of Investment in the Shipping
Industries of Atlantic Canada, 1820-1900,” Acadiensis, 9 (1), (1979), 40.
21
22
A Siren Song 38
staple industries of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia”.28 The
decline in timber prices may well have been a factor, sliding an
average of 2.7 percent per annum between 1853 and 1864.29 This
drop in returns was probably due to the continued growth in
volume of lumber coming into the economic powerhouse Britain
from North America and Baltic countries just as shifts away from
lumber were beginning to occur in some sectors.30 The Norwegians
were responsible for the bulk of shipments from the Baltic
following the relaxation of trade restrictions mid-century, and as
such were affected by a similar return-on-cargoes equation to that
of Maritime shippers.31 Yet their modus operandi on a national basis
does not appear to have been severely dented by these
circumstances. Late in the 1850s, there was also a sharp decline in
demand and prices for sail vessels in Britain which improved the
relative attractiveness of ship retention by Maritime businesses.32
However, as will be shown, such investment was justified on its
own merits.
Maritime ship owners diversified their trade routes and
commodities carried with the international trade to and from the
United States being a major focus for growth.33 The principal
commodities carried through to the 1870s were timber, cotton,
petroleum products, grains, tobacco, and fish.34 Freight rates for
these key cargoes were highly variable over time, as were the prices
achieved in international markets for the commodities themselves.
For example, Sager and Panting report that “freight rates for
American cotton and grain increased rapidly from about 1856 to
1862 or 1863, then declined sharply in the late 1860s, rising to new
Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 19.
Ibid.
30 For example steamships accounted for 19.5 percent of Britain’s total tonnage by
1870 displacing timber and sail vessels.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 17.
33 Ibid., 22; Sager and Fischer, “Patterns of Investment,” 40. Preliminary analysis
reported by various historians “reveals the primary importance of the AmericanBritish and American-European traffic in bulk commodities such as wheat,
cotton and petroleum. Analysis by David Alexander concluded that “the United
Kingdom, the United States and Europe accounted for 76 percent of all
entrances into port by Yarmouth ocean-going vessels.’” The same regions
“accounted for 63 percent of all port entrances by Saint John vessels and 60
percent of all tonnage entering ports.” In addition Sager and Fischer, in “Age of
Sail Revisited,” 134, noted a 70 percent rate for Halifax vessels.
34 Ibid., 25, 26.
28
29
levels in the early 1870s”.35 However, this variability in commodity
freight rates and the Maritime shipping industry’s focus on the
transportation of staples are unlikely to have been the primary
reasons for the coming decline in terms of their involvement in the
sector.
The Maritimes focused on international markets from the
outset, and its businessmen were well seasoned in terms of
international economic cycles. Across these cycles world trade was
continuing to grow rapidly. In fact, shipments by sea increased 56
percent between 1870 and 1900.36 In addition, the United States—
virtually on the Maritimes’ doorstep—represented an enormous
growth opportunity for the owners of ocean going vessels. It was
one which was initially taken up wholeheartedly by the Canadians.
By the early 1880s, as much as 39 percent of the Canadian
merchant marine was engaged in the United States export trade.37
The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 prompted a sharp
withdrawal of American capital from its shipping sector. The
American-owned portion of the rapidly growing international sea
trade to and from the United States was thereafter in sustained
decline.38 Between the 1840s and 1880 the share of American
imports and exports carried by American ships fell from 70 percent
to less than 20 percent.39 This was by no means due entirely to the
Civil War itself, which ended in 1865. The principal culprit was the
restrictive government registry law which required American ship
owners to purchase their ships from American builders despite the
industry’s lack of competitiveness.40 Federal policies protected
coastal shipping within the United States, and so the Americans
concentrated on these routes leaving the international trade open
to foreign players.41 This provided an ideal platform for the
Maritime industry, until the Canadian government’s National Policy
skewed the economic equation away from the sea. It was the
Norwegians instead who wrested the greatest long term advantage
Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 25.
Eric W. Sager and Gerald E. Panting, Maritime Capital: The Shipping Industry in
Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990),
126.
37 Ibid., 102. Sager and Fischer, “Patterns of Investment,” 40.
38 Jeffrey J. Salford, “The Decline of the American Merchant Marine: 1850-1914:
An Historical Appraisal,” in Change and Adaptation, ed. Fischer and Panting, 58.
39 Sager and Panting, Maritime Capital, 99.
40 Salford, “The Decline of the American Merchant Marine,” 58, 59.
41 Salford, “The Decline of the American Merchant Marine,” 58, 59.
35
36
A Siren Song 40
as a result of the myopic political decisions of the United States’
and Canadian governments.
The Vi-Kings of the High Seas
The history of the Scandinavian peoples in general, and
those of Norway in particular, has been closely tied to the sea since
ancient times.42 Indeed, there is a body of evidence that the ancient
Vikings even ventured as far as Labrador and Newfoundland by
1000 AD.43 From those early and somewhat violent times the
Norwegians evolved extensive shipping activities, carrying cargoes
for their own and other nations. Up until the mid-nineteenth
century, this trade was based primarily on the shipping of timber
between Northern and Western Europe.44 After the repeal of
Britain’s Navigation Laws in 1849, Norway expanded and
improved its fleet, and diversified into other raw materials and
foodstuffs.45 However, timber remained the industry’s mainstay
until the twentieth century.46
Total registered tonnage increased 460 percent between 1850
and 1880 and by 1879, Norwegian vessels accounted for 5.6
percent of fleet capacity on the world seas.47 While steam vessels
were added rapidly from the 1870s, the Norwegian shipping
industry was relatively slow to industrialize. In 1879 steam-powered
ships still represented less than 20 percent of the nation’s total
tonnage and seven years later Norway’s metal-hulled steam capacity
made up just 5.4 percent of its total fleet, a tenth that of Britain.48
A. N. Kiaer, “Historical Sketch of the Development of Scandinavian Shipping,”
The Journal of Political Economy 1 (3) (Jun., 1893), 329.
43 William Bakken, “Vikings in the New World: Overview,” (Dec. 28, 1998),
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/vikings/oview.html, accessed
March 13, 2005.
44 Kiaer, “Historical Sketch,” 346. Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries,” 119, 120.
Nordvik records that the fundamental basis for the Norwegian shipping
industry in 1850 was “1: the export of foodstuffs and raw materials to Western
Europe; 2: inter-Scandinavian trade [particularly Norwegian herring, foodstuffs
and timber]; 3: Baltic Trade (Norwegian herring to Prussia and Russia, bringing
return cargoes of rye); and 4: domestic (coastal) shipping.”
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid. The reduction in duties on timber imported into Britain further improved
Norwegian trade opportunities. As a result of relaxed trade laws, Norway also
entered the British North American timber trade.
47 Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries,” 120, 121.
48 Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries,”124. At Jan 1, 1879, the registered tonnage
of British sailing vessels was 43.75 million tons, and for steam 11.11 million
tons. Palmer, “British Shipping,” 96, 97.
42
Nordvik records several factors as contributing to the
growth in Norway’s merchant marine during this period:
The favourable location factors shifted from
access to raw materials for shipbuilding and a
steady local labour force, to access to larger capital
markets and proximities to centres of
communication, and trade, organizational
expertise, and reliance on a well educated, national
labour force.49
Was Atlantic Canada bereft in these respects? Historians have not
suggested any such shortcomings. Indeed, the trade of the growing
American powerhouse was hardly unobtainable. In addition, it
should be noted that the evolution of steam- and metal-ship
technology at first suited coastal trade. It was not until after 1880
that economics began to favour the new technology over sailing
vessels for longer transport routes on the high seas. Thus, in the
early days of the ‘transition’, Norway’s shipping industry was
probably more vulnerable than that of the Maritimes as a higher
proportion of its trade was oriented to short-runs in Europe. While
the Norwegians rapidly lost market share in coastal Europe,
Britain, and the Baltic Sea, they more than made up for this on
longer trade routes, trans-Atlantic voyages being a critical
component of their redeployment. By the 1880s, 44 percent of the
cargoes carried by Norwegian ships were between American and
European ports, including those of Britain.50
Growth in international trade slowed sharply in the 1880s
due to a downturn in the major world economies and, as did
commodity prices and freight rates. However, in contrast to the
Atlantic Canadians, the Norwegians continued to expand their
fleets, albeit at a much slower pace.51 In part, this increase was due
to Norwegian ship owners purchasing ‘pre-owned’, rather than new
sailing vessels, as prices for these dropped rapidly in the secondary
market.52 Their own shipbuilding industry was by then imploding.
Ibid., 124, 125.
Lewis and Fischer, “Change and Adaptation,” 25.
51 Ibid., 130. Norway’s world tonnage increased from 10.0 percent to 10.5 percent
of sailing ships and 1.1 percent to 2.0 percent of steam powered vessels between
1880 and 1890.
52 Lewis and Fischer, “Change and Adaptation,” 139.
49
50
A Siren Song 42
A major source of second-hand vessels was Atlantic
Canada.53 Indeed, the move out of the shipping industry by
Maritimers was probably triply beneficial for the Norwegians:
firstly, a competitor was exiting the sector; secondly the
Norwegians acquired good sailing vessels cheaply, thereby ensuring
solid economic returns on investment even during a period of low
freight rates for commodities and lost markets; and thirdly, these
purchases enabled Norwegian ship owners to defer their purchases
of steam and metal vessels until the technology and economics for
these improved further.
Thus, many Norwegian ship owners avoided the move into
steam and metal in the 1880s, and instead sought alternative
profitable routes and conveyances for their sailing vessels. Shipping
was seen by most as an essential component of Norwegian society
and economy. However, some businesses still regarded shipping
primarily as a service supporting other activities in which they were
engaged, such as the exploitation of often extensive timber
interests. 54 This paralleled the attitudes of some of New
Brunswick’s ship owners.
During the ‘Age of Sail’, ownership of ships in Norway was
mainly by way of merchant partnerships, as it was in the Maritimes,
and there was a close co-operation between the ship builders and
owners.55 By 1890, however, the main issue for the industry was
continued access to sufficient capital in order to finance the
building or purchase of vessels with new technology.56 Nordvik
records that the creation of limited liability companies was only
part of the solution and determines that it was changes to the
Shipping Registry Act in 1901, allowing mortgages to be secured
against ships, that enabled the Norwegian shipping industry to
remain viable.57 However, it is evident that Norway’s ship owners
were able to compete internationally without, at least initially, an
advanced, technological ship building industry of their own.58 The
Sager and Panting, Maritime Capital, 127.
Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries,” 138.
55 Ibid., 130, 132.
56 Ibid., 134. Nordvik records that “the growth in shipping after 1850 was made
possible by the capital accumulated in the timber trade (southern coastal towns),
the herring trade (Stavenger), and the shellfish and stockfish trade (Bergen).
Ibid., 132.
57 Ibid.
58 Nordvik, “The Shipping Industries,” 143. Norwegian ship owners initially
purchased new technology vessels from British shipyards as they had no
53
54
major commercial centres were, for the most part, reasonably well
supplied with entrepreneurial capital and, in a critical difference to
the situation in the Maritimes, were “limited in their scope for
alternative investments”.59
Norway’s shippers continued to focus on a narrow group of
bulky commodities into the late 1800s, although this was changing
by the turn of the century.60 During the last two decades of the
century, one of the most dramatic changes was a doubling in trade
captured between the United States and third countries, chiefly in
basic commodities such as lumber, grain and petroleum.61 This was
driven in part by a need by the Norwegians to offset their declining
competitiveness against steam in coastal Europe.62 By the 1890s,
new and expanding trades included the West Indian and Central
American fruit routes, utilizing specially built and well ventilated
steam ships, and coastal traffic in East Asia, most notably China,
on time charter to British companies.63 There appears to have been
no impediment to Maritime involvement in such Asian trades.
Thus, the Norwegian industry not only survived, but
eventually thrived, despite a period of low profitability in the 1880s
and 1890s.64 This was achieved despite that country’s great
similarities to the Canadian Maritimes where the outcome was so
dramatically different. Such divergent outcomes appear to have
been a consequence of choice. Following the election of the
Macdonald Conservative government in Canada in 1878, new
investment alternatives burgeoned on land for Maritime
entrepreneurs behind the protective barriers erected as a result of
the National Policy tariffs. As David Alexander noted, there arose
“a reversal of investment opportunities” as a direct result of the
steam/metal shipbuilding industry of their own. However, Nordvik reports that
the building of sailing vessels was an integral part of the Norwegian economy
and “the comparatively cheap Norwegian and Swedish raw materials, together
with the low labour costs in shipbuilding meant that Scandinavian owners could
obtain newly built sailing tonnage at very competitive prices, often without
having to finance the entire cost of the vessel if the shipbuilder took shares.”
Ibid., 132. This situation is strikingly similar to that in the Maritimes.
59 Ibid., 138. Consequently, the industry was able to draw “on the combined
resources of local savings banks, emerging private commercial banks and
insurance companies, but first and foremost on private capital.”
60 Ibid., 142, 143.
61 Ibid., 142.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., 143.
64 Ibid., 145.
A Siren Song 44
Canadian government’s policy of “heavily protected
industrialization”.65 In contrast, the Norwegians had little choice
but to continue doing what they did best.
The Maritimes Effectively Becomes ‘Land-locked’
Sager et al. point out that Canadian ship owners were still
making positive returns in shipping in the 1880s, despite a general
decline in freight rates, and that they possessed the capital for
investment in steam and iron.66 These writers point to arguments
by earlier historians that the shifts in supply and demand for
economically competitive carrying capacity in the North Atlantic
may have been a critical factor in the sector’s declining attraction.67
However, the Norwegian experience appears to negate the
explanatory power of this changing aspect in the nature of trade.
Maritime businessmen had also long been exposed to the winds of
international change and were capable of understanding and coping
with economic cycles. Thus, the essential difference between the
Maritimes and Norway appears to have been the surge in new
investment opportunities in Canada onshore.
In the 1870s and 1880s ship owners in Nova Scotia, and
elsewhere in the Maritimes, were being presented with “a plethora
of alternative options in their own communities”.68 These ranged
across banking, financial services, transportation, mining, and other
tertiary sectors.69 Investment in the Maritimes accelerated in the
1880s and 1890s and became increasingly industrial. Iron, steel and
glass works, woollen mills, cotton factories, and sugar refineries
were established and expanded.70 Meanwhile, the total tonnage of
vessels registered in the Maritimes, which peaked in 1878, fell
precipitously over the next 20 years.71
Eric W. Sager, Lewis R. Fischer and Rosemary E. Ommer, “Landward and
Seaward Opportunities in Canada’s Age of Sail,” in Merchant Shipping and
Economic Development, ed. Fischer and Sager. 22, 23.
66 Ibid., 19, 20.
67 Ibid., 19.
68 Ibid., 25.
69 Ibid.
70 Saunders, “Economic History,” 29, 30.
71 Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 18. The authors’ graph showing
‘Tonnage on Registry in Seven Ports (Saint John, Yarmouth, Halifax, Windsor,
Pictou, Miramichi, Sydney,” from 1825 to 1900 provides a vivid illustration of
the industry’s rise and fall.
65
The 1878 election of the Conservative Government led by
John A. Macdonald played a major role in this ‘reversal of
fortunes’. A cornerstone of the Conservative’s election policy
platform was high tariffs to stimulate the rapid development of the
manufacturing sector in Canada.72 In 1879, the existing tariff level
of 15 percent was raised to between 17.5 percent and 35 percent on
various goods.73 Tariffs were further increased throughout the
1880s, “with [Macdonald] reportedly relying on casual billiard room
discussions with entrepreneurs to determine the appropriate level
of protection”.74 Such an environment offered virtual certainty of
profits on landward investment regardless of efficiency. This was in
stark contrast to the situation in world trade markets struggling
with economic recession, especially given that this was a time when
investment in new technology was essential to retain a competitive
position in shipping.
Land-based industrialisation may have come relatively late to
the Maritimes, but once it did, substantial new capital formation
onshore came at the expense of the shipping sector. It is beyond
the scope of this paper to determine the rates of return expected
on these new investments. However, it would later transpire that
more than a few of these enterprises were unproductive in the
longer term and would fail.75 What we can do is assess the
importance of the shipping industry to the Maritimes, its
profitability, and the opportunity forgone as a result of its demise.
Merchant Marine and the Maritime Economy
The evidence suggests that shipping was extremely important
to the Maritimes economy in the late nineteenth century, despite
arguments to the contrary by historians such as Peter McClelland
as reported by Sager and Panting:
It is unlikely that shipbuilding or shipping
contributed as much to final demand in the
Maritimes as the size of such industries might
suggest. By 1870, 7.4 percent of the industrial
Alvin Finkel and Margaret Conrad, History of the Canadian Peoples: 1867 to the
Present, Volume II, Third Edition (Toronto: Addison Wesley Longman, 2002),
43.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Sager et.al., “Landward and Seaward,” 27.
72
A Siren Song 46
labour force, and [just] 1.6 percent of the entire
labour force, were employed in shipbuilding …
[and] … “mariners” accounted for [only] 2.4
percent of New Brunswick’s labour force, and 6.6
percent of Nova Scotia’s labour force. … The
multiplier effects from shipbuilding were likely to
have been limited.76
Sager and Panting merely extrapolated the conclusions
McClelland reached in his extensive 1966 doctoral thesis on “The
New Brunswick Economy in the Nineteenth Century,” to state the
case for the Maritimes as a whole.77 However, in this report
attempt will be made to expand the accepted sphere. As the table
below shows, shipping was more important to Nova Scotia, the
largest province of the region, than it was to New Brunswick.
Table 2: The Relative Importance of Shipping to Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick78
Selected Statistics in
1871
Tonnage of all Registered
Vessels*
Vessels Built
Propn. “Mariners” in
Labour Force
Population (000s)
Nova
Scotia
Total
(000t)
428
44
6.6%
388
Per
Capita
1.103
0.113
New
Brunswick
Total
(000t)
253
34
2.4%
Per
Capita
0.885
0.119
286
Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 27. The authors record that: “These are
McClelland’s conclusions [in his 1966 doctoral thesis ‘The New Brunswick
Economy in the Nineteenth Century’] and so far no one has questioned them.”
This essay does not specifically dispute his findings, but attempts a more
academic regional approach than has been applied to date.
77 Ibid.
78 Keith Matthews, “Shipping Industry,” (1976), 10, 11. Sager and Panting, “Staple
Economies,” (1985), 27. Saunders, “The Economic History” (1984), 105.
76
In 1871, the Nova Scotian shipping registry recorded 69
percent more tonnage than New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had a
population that year 36 percent greater. Thus, there were 1.1 tons
registered for every Nova Scotian compared with under 0.9 tons
per capita in New Brunswick. In addition, mariners made up 6.6
percent of the Nova Scotian labour force, compared with just 2.4
percent in New Brunswick. Recognition of these differences is
essential in order to ascertain the true importance of the shipping
sector to the Maritime economy.
Fischer, Sager and Ommer investigated the profitability of
the Saint John shipping industry in an article presented in 1981.79
Their mid-range estimates for the profitability of the ocean-going
sector in 1871 and 1881 and the return on un-depreciated assets are
included in the table below.80 In an article published in 1985, Sager
and Panting, related their estimates of industry profitability to
McClelland’s estimates of New Brunswick Gross Provincial
Product (GPP).81 These findings are also summarized in the table
below, after modifying the assumption for provincial profitability
as a percentage of GPP.82
Table 3: Estimated Profitability of New Brunswick Shipping
and Contribution to GPP83
Estimates for New Brunswick By Year
Mid-range Estimated Ocean Going Profits ($m)
1871
1.21
1881
0.48
Lewis R. Fischer, Eric W. Sager, Rosemary E. Ommer, “The Shipping Industry
and Regional Economic Development in Atlantic Canada, 1871-1891: Saint
John as a Case Study,” in Merchant Shipping and Economic Development, ed. Fischer
and Sager, 35-53.
80 Ibid., 44.
81 Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 27.
82 Ibid., Sager and Panting assumed provincial profits could be “as much as ten
percent” of GPP. However, making an arbitrary allowance for the impact of
economic cycles on provincial profitability I have applied a rate of twelve
percent for economically buoyant 1871 and nine percent for 1881. This results
in a more conservative estimate of the relative of importance of shipping to the
New Brunswick economy than would otherwise be obtained. Sager and Panting
are conservative in their approach by using their “lower limit” estimates of
profitability: “Even if we take the lowest available estimates of net returns from
[St. John registered] shipping in 1871, profits in ocean shipping may have
accounted for a fifth of [New Brunswick] profits if we assume that profits were
as much as ten percent of Gross Provincial Product.”
83 Sager Fischer and Ommer, “The Shipping Industry,” (1982), 44. Sager and
Panting, “Staple Economies,” (1985), 27. David Stanley, 2005.
79
A Siren Song 48
Return on Capital Invested in Ocean Vessels
Gross Provincial Product ($m)
Assumed Provincial Profits @12%/9% ($m)
Ocean Shipping Profits as Percent of Prov. Profits
17.1%
35.70
4.28
28.3%
6.8%
38.07
3.43
14.0%
The estimates presented above suggest that New Brunswick
ocean shipping may have generated returns on capital invested
(return on investment) of around 17 percent in 1871 and accounted
for about 28 percent of provincial profits that year.84 A decade later
these returns had declined but a return on investment of around
6.8 percent near the cyclical economic low compared favourably
with the average rate the nearby Bank of Nova Scotia was charging
on loans the same year.85 Furthermore, ocean shipping may still
have accounted for around 14 percent of provincial profits in New
Brunswick in 1881.
It has already been established that shipping was probably
even more important to the Nova Scotian economy in the 1870s,
and return on investment is unlikely to have been materially
inferior to New Brunswick’s. Consequently, it is reasonable to
assume that the Nova Scotian shipping industry accounted for
around 33 percent of that province’s profits from business
activities in 1871, and at least 16 percent in 1881. And it is
reinvested profits, not ‘linkages,’ that provide the fuel for the
engine of economic growth over time. 86 If we consider 1871 and
1881 as being close to the cyclical high and low respectively for
ocean-going contributions to the economy, then on average this one
industry directly produced nearly a quarter of the business profits
of the Maritimes during the period. This was definitely not an
industry to be ignored, especially given its downstream service and
The returns for the Norwegian shipping industry were probably only marginally
higher, based on a study of the profitability of Stavanger registered vessels
which determined a range of ROCIs from 11.5 percent to 22.8 percent in the
mid 1870s, with an average ROCI of 18.1 percent. Nordvik, “The Shipping
Industries,” 144, 145.
85 James D. Frost, “The ‘Nationalization’ of the Bank of Nova Scotia, 1880-1910,”
in Industrialization and Underdevelopment in the Maritimes, 1880-1930 ed. T. W.
Acheson, David Frank, James D. Frost (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1985), 41.
The average rate of interest charged on loans by the Bank of Nova Scotia in
1881 was 6.82 percent.
86 The multiplier effect for profits comes in part from their direct re-investment or
indirectly through financial intermediaries, and the repetition of such effects
over time, even when key capital inputs need to be imported. The economics of
this are evident in the ‘globalization’ trends occurring in business today.
84
support aspects for other economic activities, including its direct
and indirect employment implications within the region.
Historical scholars seem to agree that scarcity of capital was
not an issue for the Maritime shipping sector per se. However, this
might be worthy of further investigation given that Nordvik points
to it as being a problem for some Norwegian centres in the 1880s.87
For example, the population of the Maritimes was less than half
that of Norway, whilst registered tonnage in the two regions
amounted to 1.09 tons per capita and 0.83 tons per capita
respectively in 1879. Thus, the Nova Scotian and New Brunswick
commitment to shipping was over 30 percent greater on a per
capita basis than that of Norway. Even without the plethora of
landward opportunities referred to earlier, some degree of
diversification by the Maritime business sector was probably in
order. Furthermore, total capital requirements may indeed have
been an issue. However, there is a strong countervailing argument
against the contention by Sager and Panting that:
It is a paradox of no little importance to the decline
of the shipping industry that as the industry
expanded in the 1860s and 1870s its linkages with
the local economy decreased. The vital linkage with
shipbuilding remained, of course, as did the service
which coastal shipping performed within the local
economy. But it is increasingly difficult to argue that
either shipping or shipbuilding was the “lynch pin”
of the economy, or part of what Harold Innis called
“a magnificent achievement,” an integration of
capital and labour, or lumbering, fishing and
agriculture, on which rested a progressive
community life.88
For example, in their 1982 article Sager et al. contended that “it is clear that
Maritimers lacked neither the talent, the capital nor the resources to embark
upon a major industrializing effort in these decades,” Sager, Fisher and Ommer,
“Landward and Seaward,” 10. In contrast, Nordvik states in his 1985 article that
“in the major shipping region of southern Norway, the depression of the early
1880s meant that by the end of the decade, capital had indeed become a serious
problem. The wooden shipbuilding industry collapsed after 1880, and in a series
of local financial crises discouraged investment in shipping.” Nordvik, “The
Shipping Industries,” 138.
88 Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” in Change and Adaptation, 27.
87
A Siren Song 50
The importance of a forward or backward linkage with the
land-based economy is over-emphasized, and probably misleading.
89 It did not much matter, for example, if the nation of Canada
ended up shipping 90 per cent of its grain exports through the
United States as some feared possible.90 The huge and growing
international trade of the United States was as easily obtainable for
Maritime shippers as it was for the Norwegians, and far more so
than for the American merchant marine which had been locked
into an uncompetitive position by federal government legislation.
Similarly, it was not immediately necessary to develop a
modernised shipbuilding industry to remain competitive in
shipping services, as the Norwegians proved. Businessmen pursue
profits, not linkages and there were definitely profits to be had in
ocean shipping services.
International shipping was, for the most part, a highly
profitable industry and one which justified Maritimes investment in
new technology if, as most historians contend, the funds were
available to do so. World trade as measured by tonnage increased
56 percent between 1870 and 1900 and freight rates also recovered
towards the end of the century once the wheat boom began.91 In
addition, the prospective returns on steam powered and metal
hulled vessels were much greater than for sailing ships, even if
these were purchased from Britain.92 Maritime ship owner Thomas
Kenny observed in 1888: “We, who wish to continue in the
shipping business, have discovered that the iron ship is a more
profitable investment than our wooden ships.”93 However, such
There are few who would make the same argument against the Swiss banking
sector for example.
90 Sager and Panting, Maritime Capital, 165.
91 Ibid., 126. Sager et al., “Landward and Seaward,” in Merchant Shipping, 28.
92 While the new technology ships cost about twice that of sailing vessels, the
effective returns on investment may have been up to 50 percent greater based
on work undertaken by A. N. Kaier and noted by Nordvik in “The Shipping
Industries,” 120-122.
93 Ibid., 159. According to Sager and Panting, N. M Smith, the New Brunswick
Controller of Customs and Registrar of Shipping observed that two “classed
spruce vessels of similar size” could be acquired for the price of one iron ship.
Sager and Panting, “Staple Economies,” 22. However, Kaier estimated in 1893
that “one of the best means of ascertaining [the] relative importance [of steam
versus sail] in the general shipping trade is to calculate their total effective
carrying power, each ton of steam vessels being computed at the usual rate of 3
to 1,” Kiaer, “Historical Sketch,” 360. This implies that returns on investment in
steam could have been up to 50 percent greater than for sail. Over time it is
89
investment was not forthcoming despite its economic justification.
Even more disturbing was the fact that Maritime ship owners
began to liquidate their investment in sailing vessels, selling them to
the Norwegians and others at a fraction of their replacement cost.
This represented a major opportunity cost for the Maritimes, and
the percentage return foregone must have measured well into the
teens. Given that businessmen usually act rationally, they must
have anticipated extremely high returns from their new land-based
investments. For a period these expectations may have been
realized, but in the long run they were not.
Sager and Panting point out that the Maritimes shipping
industry was “doomed not by the inevitable advance of technology
nor by impersonal market forces but by the [decisions of the]
Maritimers themselves,”94 However, this conclusion understates
the over-riding role the Canadian federal government played in the
decision-making process.
The Maritimes’ Opportunity Missed
The decision by Maritime businesses to invest in new landbased industrial opportunities in the latter part of the nineteenth
century is understandable given the apparent certainty of high and
sustained returns under the protection of National Policy tariffs.
However, the Maritimes failed to become “the industrial workshop
of Canada” some sought it to be.95 At the same time, it also
squandered the region’s one true internationally competitive
advantage—shipping. Investment in steam powered and iron
hulled ships could have been justified on an economic return basis,
and retention of existing vessels even more so as part of the full
package.
The practical, or opportunistic, desire of Maritime
businessmen to diversify was probably merited at the time, and
might have meant that there was insufficient capital available to
remain a top-five ranked merchant marine in the region into the
twentieth century. However, the shipping industry could still have
been an internationally competitive and highly profitable
contributor to the Maritimes’ economy had the pitch not been so
severely skewed by the land-based, westward-looking political and
likely that the relative returns on metal hulled, steam powered ships would have
improved further as the technologies developed.
94 Sager and Panting, Maritime Capital, 127.
95 Sager, Fischer and Ommer, “Landward and Seaward,” 27.
A Siren Song 52
economic initiatives promoted by the federal government in
Ottawa. In the final analysis, the almost complete capitulation of
Maritime capital away from shipping into landward industries from
the late nineteenth century was perhaps the greatest misallocation
in the region’s history.
Setting the Record Straight: Churchill,
Appeasement and the Italo-Abbysinian Crisis
B. GAYLE CORMIER
Winston Churchill is known by most historians and others as
having been unequivocally opposed to the policy of appeasement
that was followed by his government in the 1930s. The House of
Commons is commonly perceived as having been polarised as
aggressive nations made territorial and other demands. The
‘appeasers’ were those who were inclined to conciliate Japan, Italy,
and Germany as they sought to expand into neighbouring
sovereign states. The ‘anti-appeasers’ were those who wanted to
maintain the Treaty of Versailles against Hitler’s attempts to violate
it, and stand up to Mussolini and Japanese leaders as they invaded
other independent nations. Historian Neville Thompson has
argued, on the other hand, that “practically everyone was in favour
of appeasement, if not of Germany then of Italy and certainly of
Japan, at one time or another.”1
Although there is near consensus on Churchill’s position
against appeasement, a few have questioned the purity of his
record. The Italo-Abyssinian crisis of 1935-36, and Churchill’s
policy toward Mussolini’s expansionist ambitions are interpreted by
some as evidence that Churchill was not as consistent in his
opposition to appeasement as is so often thought.2 This paper will
demonstrate that this argument is based on a selective
interpretation of evidence. Churchill’s critics have taken in isolation
statements made over the course of years, without allowing for
differences in time period, context, and individual situations. When
all of the factors are taken into account, and everything is put into
its proper context, it becomes clear that Churchill was as strongly
against the appeasement of Mussolini in his conquest of Abyssinia
as he was against Hitler’s attempts to dominate Eastern Europe.
He wanted to take a consistently hard line against Italian
aggression, for many reasons. When Mussolini broke the Stresa
Neville Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers: Conservative Opposition to Appeasement in the
1930s (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2.
2 Richard Powers, “Winston Churchill’s Parliamentary Commentary on British
Foreign Policy, 1935-1938,” The Journal of Modern History 1954 26(2): 179-182,
and J. N. Thompson, “Prophet Without Honour: Winston Churchill and The
Gathering Storm,” Queen’s Quarterly 1968 75(2): 229-246, and Neville Thompson,
Anti-Appeasers.
1
Setting the Record Straight 54
Front, the 1935 agreement between Britain, France and Italy to
resist all future attempts by the Germans to defy the Treaty of
Versailles, Churchill knew there was little chance that he would
work with the Allies against Hitler. Imposing the sanctions
prescribed in Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations
would debilitate Mussolini’s war-making capacity, rendering his
usefulness to Hitler minimal. He wanted to take a consistently
strong stand against the aggression of all of the dictatorships, and
to back down to Mussolini would send the wrong message to
potential allies against Hitler and Japanese leaders.3 Most
importantly, he wanted to preserve the strength and prestige of the
League of Nations. It had already suffered from the Japanese
invasion of Manchuria, but was “the instrument that might in
future be chiefly effective as a deterrent to German aggression.”4
Churchill was out of office for most of the 1930s. He called
this period his “wilderness years” and although he did not have any
direct control over the policies and actions of his government, he
did not allow the time to be wasted. Besides writing, painting,
brick-laying, and digging lakes, Churchill kept himself busy writing
letters and memoranda to those who were determining government
policy. He also maintained an active role in parliamentary debates.
The main foreign policy issue of that decade was dealing with the
dictators of Europe. The spread of communism was still a grave
concern, and new problems arose from Germany, Italy, and Spain,
threatening the balance of power and political status quo.
One of Churchill’s most vehement critics on the consistency
of his policy toward appeasement is historian Richard Powers. He
surveys all of the points when the British government was accused
of “appeasing” dictators. Along with Hitler’s demands, he presents
the British policies surrounding Mussolini’s aggression against
Abyssinia, and the problems presented by the Fascist revolutionary,
Franco, in Spain. Powers examines them all separately to
demonstrate alleged inconsistencies in Churchill’s policy across
these crises. According to Powers’ analysis, Churchill stood out in
W. Mommsen and L. Kettenacker, The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement
(London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1983), 375.
4 Sir Samuel Hoare: Record of a Conversation between Sir Samuel Hoare,
Anthony Eden and
Winston Churchill, 21 August 1935, in Winston S. Churchill, ed. Martin Gilbert
(London:
Heinemann, 1981), vol. 5, companion part 2, 1239-40.
3
opposition to the policies of the pacific government only at the
point of Austrian independence: “the Anschluss had done for
Churchill what even Poland could not quite accomplish for
Chamberlain.”5
Before Hitler became Chancellor, Chancellors Bruning and
von Papen managed to get war reparations drastically reduced at
the 1932 Lausanne Conference.6 Even then, Churchill was
outspoken in expressing his disapproval of the agreement. In the
House of Commons, he complained that, “within less than 15 years
of the Great War Germany has been virtually freed from all burden
of repairing the awful injuries which she wrought upon her
neighbours.”7 The Treaty of Versailles was further weakened when
the British and French allowed Hitler to rebuild the German
military, and introduce conscription. Churchill protested as Prime
Minister Ramsay MacDonald entered the Anglo-German Naval
Agreement, and increased the ‘acceptable’ size of the German
army. He was furious when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland8 and
urged Chamberlain to put a stop to the Austrian Anschluss and the
annexation of the ‘Sudeten Germans’. When the German dictator
marched on Prague and occupied the Czech provinces of Bohemia
and Moravia, Churchill’s warnings were vindicated. Finally, the
reality of Hitler’s ambitions became clear to Chamberlain and he
laid down the tripwire: aggression against Poland would mean war
with the rest of Europe. Churchill and Austen Chamberlain led a
strong campaign against making concessions to Hitler from day
one. The evidence is unambiguous in its indication that where
Hitler was concerned, Churchill had no soft spot.
The common starting point for analyses of the appeasement
policy is with the abrogation of the clauses of Versailles. In fact, to
abrogation did not even start with Germany. The first test showed
itself in 1931 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. The League
suffered a major set-back when it failed to stand up to Japanese
aggression against China, largely in fear of its members of starting a
war with Japan. The League was given a chance to redeem itself in
Richard Powers, “Winston Churchill’s Parliamentary Commentary on British
Foreign Policy, 1935-1938,” The Journal of Modern History 1954 26(2): 181.
6 Churchill, House of Commons Speech, 11 July 1932, Winston Churchill: His
Complete Speeches, ed. Robert Rhodes James (New York: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1974), vol. 5, 5193.
7 Ibid.
8 Churchill, Speech, 6 April 1936, Ibid., vol. 6, 5726.
5
Setting the Record Straight 56
December of 1934 when Mussolini stockpiled arms, equipment,
and men in Italian Somaliland. He began to make allegations of
Abyssinian aggression and to threaten to ‘put them down’ with a
pre-emptive invasion. The Italians had, only forty years earlier,
suffered crushing humiliation when an Abyssinian force, presumed
to be inferior, destroyed the invading Italian army at the Battle of
Adwa.9 In the context of late nineteenth century colonialist
mentality, this was a devastating blow. Mussolini’s motives were of
course diverse and complex, but they have been offered as one of
the long-term causes of Italian aggression in 1935. Churchill added
as another “the real or supposed military and naval weakness of
Great Britain”.10 Mussolini would not have dared make such a bold
move if not for his judgment of the reduced size and strength of
the Royal Navy, weakened from two decades of arms limitations
conferences and stretched between three potential theatres of war.
Article 16 of the League of Nations Covenant stated:
Should any Member of the League resort to war in
disregard of its covenants . . . it shall ipso facto be
deemed to have committed an act of war against all
other Members of the League, which hereby
undertake immediately to subject it to the severance
of all trade or financial relations... It shall be the duty
of the Council in such case to recommend to the
several Governments concerned what effective
military, naval or air force the Members of the
League shall severally contribute to the armed forces
to be used to protect the covenants of the League.11
Churchill stood behind this one hundred percent. He and Austen
Chamberlain fought together in the House for the enforcement of
this principle, demanding that Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, impose economic sanctions against
Italy. Churchill took this principle one step further. He believed
that the Royal Navy was the reason that the League of Nations was
Frank Hardie, The Abyssinian Crisis (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1974), 13.
Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, 24 October 1935, Parliamentary
Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 306 (1935), cols. 358-9.
11 “Article 16,” The Covenant of the League of Nations, in The Avalon Project of Yale
Law School, <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/leagcov.htm#art16>,
1924, posted in 1996.
9
10
so successful in asserting itself.12 As far was he was concerned, the
League and rearmament went hand in hand; a show of force was
required to get the necessary effect of the League. Churchill was
“deeply incensed at the Italian action and more than once pressed
strongly for the reinforcement of the Mediterranean fleet”.13 He
consistently admonished Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, to be “on [his] guard against the capital offence
of letting diplomacy get ahead of naval preparation”.14 Shortly after
the government made a public declaration that it was committed to
upholding Britain’s League obligations in the event of the Italian
invasion, he expressed his concern to Hoare in a letter that “naval
preparations were not sufficient to sustain the policy.”15 He had
opposed all attempts at disarmament since the First World War,
and in the face of this new crisis, he thought it “damnable that for
6 years we should have had to disarm and on the seventh are likely
to have to go to war.”16 As the title of his book suggests, Churchill
trusted in “Arms and The Covenant.”
The debate in the House of Commons was heated and
polarised parliamentarians into pro-sanction and anti-sanction
camps. Sir Austen Chamberlain was a strong supporter of
Churchill. Neville Chamberlain and Sir John Simon, home
secretary, backed Prime Minister Baldwin’s policy. Powers cites the
vote of 11 July 1935, the one that would determine the House’s
policy toward Mussolini, as evidence that even Churchill “was not
anxious to antagonize Mussolini with a policy of sanctions.”17
Churchill did, in fact, vote “nay” to sanctions against Italy, but
Powers’ conclusion takes this out of context. In order to have an
accurate picture of Churchill’s policy, it is necessary to know the
nature of the proposition put forward by the government. Looking
at the debate on foreign policy that took place that day, one can see
that ‘sanctions’ were not the real issue: whether or not they should
Churchill, Speech, Parliamentary Debates, 24 October 1935, vol. 306, col. 275.
Sir Samuel Hoare, “Record of a Conversation between Sir Samuel Hoare,
Anthony Eden and
Winston Churchill”, 21 August 1935, in Winston S. Churchill, ed. Martin Gilbert,
vol. 5, companion part 2, 1239.
14 Churchill to Sir Samuel Hoare, 25 August 1935, in Winston S. Churchill, ed.
Martin Gilbert, vol. 5, companion part 2, 1248.
15 Ibid. 1249.
16 Colin Thornton-Kemsley: diary, 20 September 1935, in Winston S. Churchill, ed.
Martin Gilbert, vol. 5, companion part 2, 1264.
17 Powers, “Parliamentary Commentary,”179.
12
13
Setting the Record Straight 58
be imposed before Britain could be assured of the support of the
League of Nations was the question. This is what Churchill
opposed. He did not want to create the impression that Britain was
“coming forward as a sort of bell-wether or fugleman to gather and
lead opinion in Europe against Italy’s Abyssinian designs”.18
Churchill also suggested that “[it was] not strong enough to be the
law-giver and spokesman of the world.”19 This was Churchill’s view
throughout the entire Abyssinian crisis: the power and confidence
of the League of Nations, in the face of German aggression,
outweighed Italy’s estrangement. In a newspaper article in the
spring of 1936, he wrote,
Europe alone is overwhelmingly strong compared to
any single member of its family. But there must be
Concert and Design guided by far-sighted
unselfishness and sustained by inexorable resolve.
This is no task for France; no task for Britain; . . . no
task for small Powers nor for great; it is a task for
all.20
If sanctions against Italy were to be undertaken, it should be by the
entire League, not Britain alone.21
Churchill had a thin line to walk. He was certainly not in
favour of giving Mussolini a free hand in Abyssinia, but at the same
time, he wanted to be sure that with every step the British took, the
French were on board. Even though Churchill did not agree with
it, he sympathized with their hesitation. Many of the British, such
as Sir Robert Vansittart, took the French line and placed great
emphasis on the importance of the Stresa Front. They “wished to
have Britain and France organized at their strongest to face this
major danger [of the German threat], with Italy in the rear a friend
and not a foe.”22 Churchill felt that the British government was
responsible for French reluctance: Britain’s lack of resolve was not
reassuring to the French. In light of the growing strength of
Churchill, Speech, Parliamentary Debates, 11 July 1935, Commons, 5th ser., vol.
305(1934-1935): col. 545.
19 Churchill, Speech, col. 545.
20 Winston S. Churchill, “Stop it Now!: 3 April 1936,” in Step by Step (London: T.
Butterworth Ltd, 1939), 19.
21 Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (London: Houghton Mifflin,
1948),166-7.
22 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, v. 5, 694. (my emphasis)
18
Hitler’s power and German armaments, the French could hardly be
expected to take any action before they were assured of British
support. Churchill claimed that “it was on the basis of German
rearmament and French apprehension that the Italo-Abyssinian
war and the dispute between Italy and the League of Nations could
alone be considered.”23
In a conversation with Hoare and Anthony Eden, Baldwin’s
Foreign Secretary, Churchill was asked, “Should we . . . use every
possible pressure with the French to bring them up to the
application of sanctions?”24 His answer was that the government
needed to be sensitive to the fragile position in which the French
found themselves, and that they must be careful not to make
“impossible requests” to the French foreign minister, Pierre Laval.
Not only did Churchill want all reaction to Mussolini’s belligerence
to be a joint effort, he also wanted to be sure that the British were
not taking too prominent a role. Indeed, the League Covenant
suggests that members of the League should be mutually
supportive of one another economically and militarily in order to
“minimise the loss and inconvenience resulting from the above
measures.”25 He did not want to allow Mussolini to “speak of ‘fifty
nations led by one,’”26 and take measures accordingly, because of
the “shocking plight” in the condition of the British defences,
wrought by “past neglect.”27 Churchill had constantly advocated
British rearmament since the beginning of the decade, but
disarmament conferences and arms limitation had seriously
impaired Britain’s ability to answer all of the threats to its own
interests and that of the League. This also made the British too
weak to commit and unwilling to take the lead in containing Italy.
The League of Nations was of great importance to Churchill
and others who argued in favour of defending Abyssinia. Certainly
Churchill, Speech, Parliamentary Debates, 24 October 1935, vol. 306, cols. 360-61.
Sir Samuel Hoare: Record of a Conversation between Sir Samuel Hoare,
Anthony Eden and
Winston Churchill', 21 August 1935, in Winston S. Churchill, ed. Martin Gilbert,
vol. 5, companion part 2, 1239-40.
25 “Article 16,” The Covenant of the League of Nations, in The Avalon Project of Yale
Law School, <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/leagcov.htm#art16>,
1924, posted in 1996.
26 Churchill to Lord Cranborne, 22 April 1936, in Winston S. Churchill, ed. Martin
Gilbert, vol. 5, companion part 3, 111.
27 Churchill to Lord Cranborne, 8 April 1936 in Winston S. Churchill, ed. Martin
Gilbert, vol. 5, companion part 3, 93.
23
24
Setting the Record Straight 60
few would have wanted to risk war in the Mediterranean over the
independence of Abyssinia alone. Powers argues that Churchill felt
that the real grievance was Abyssinia’s admission to the League in
the first place and that they should by no means risk war for the
barbarous state.28 This estimation is largely correct. The British had
opposed the admission of Abyssinia into the League, and it was,
ironically, the Italians who had pushed for it. It is also true that
under normal circumstances, Churchill probably would not want
Britain to go to war in defence of a “barbarous state,” but
international events determined that the circumstances were all but
normal. As MP Kinsley Griffith said in his defence of sanctions, it
was the reputation of the League that was at stake.29
The threat from Germany dominated Churchill’s thoughts
since Hitler came to power in 1933. This was reflected in all of
Churchill policies. He agreed with the British consensus that the
treaty of Versailles was unjust, and felt that the best thing for
Europe was a strong and free Germany that could act as a barrier
to the spread of communism.30 He, therefore, did not oppose a
moderate rearmament program in Germany.31 What he did object
to was the prospect of a rearmed Germany with Hitler at the helm
and before any of its other grievances was dealt with:
as surely as Germany acquires full military equality
with her neighbours while her own grievances are
still unredressed and while she is in the temper
which we have unhappily seen, so surely should we
see ourselves within a measurable distance of the
renewal of general European war.32
It was the timing and circumstances to which Churchill objected.
Those who wanted to yield to Mussolini had strong reason
to do so. Those who subscribed to the appeasement policy realized,
along with everyone else, that Hitler was going to demand the
reversal of the Versailles treaty. They also predicted that images of
Powers, “Parliamentary Commentary,” 180.
Churchill, Speech, Parliamentary Debates, 11 July 1935, vol. 305, col. 612.
30 Winston S. Churchill, “24 October 1935” in Arms and the Covenant Speeches
(London: G. G. Harrap, 1938), 270.
31 Churchill, House of Commons Speech, 13 April 1933, Complete Speeches, vol. 5,
5262.
32 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 76.
28
29
Verdun and the Somme would be too vivid for the French to easily
agree to the revival of Germany as a great nation. They too were
looking at the growing army and mounting number of aircraft next
door. Chamberlain was looking ahead to such a time that the
British might be asking the French to be lenient toward Germany.
They understood that if they reacted harshly toward Mussolini, the
French would be much less willing to conciliate to German
demands.33 The peril facing France was clearly more vital than
anything with which the Italians could threaten the British, and
memories of the First World War were there to prove it. Also,
Baldwin and his supporters knew that the Mediterranean Sea was
the “key to Imperial Defence in the Far East,” and a key site for
naval bases in order to safeguard British interests in the area.34
They were concerned that if they aggravated Mussolini, he may
seize these strategic positions.
The perception of the state of public opinion also played an
important role in the considerations of those who resisted
challenging Mussolini. The Peace Ballot was quoted by the pacific
politicians to argue that the country did not wish to go to war. The
ballot indicated that 58 per cent of British public were in favour of
military sanctions against an unrepentant aggressor, and 90 per cent
approved of economic sanctions as a means of preventing war.35 At
the same time, however, the majority did not support a vast
rearmament plan, which of course was a prerequisite for any
meaningful military sanctions.
Most importantly, many in Britain and France felt that it
would be strategically advantageous to keep Italy friendly, and so
were reluctant to antagonize Mussolini. Keeping the two dictators
apart was critical in order to coerce Hitler into maintaining the
peace. For this reason, Hankey, and others, thought that “the
British should grasp the hand held out by Signor Mussolini,
however repugnant it might be.”36 In his description of Neville
Chamberlain’s perspective, Keith Feiling says, “for the peace of
W. Mommsen and L. Kettenacker, The Fascist Challenge, 25.
Ibid., 371.
35 North Ayershire Council, “Public Opinion,” Higher History Supported Study Project:
Appeasement and the Road to War <http://www.ers.northayrshire.gov.uk/History/Publicopinion.htm>, 27 January 2004.
36 Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974), vol.
3, 240.
33
34
Setting the Record Straight 62
Europe the danger was Germany and nothing could be worse then
the elimination of Italy from the anti-German camp.”37
Churchill could think of something that was worse. He
considered that there could not have been
a more complete and perfect catalogue of how not
to do it than has been presented by the events which
have taken place . . . It seems . . . as if there were 4
or 5 different policies at work inside the Cabinet,
and that now one and now the other gain
ascendancy according to the incidents of the hour of
the events of the day bring these or those
considerations for our attention.38
This he said in the summer of 1935. Churchill summarized these
policies as he later perceived them: “the Prime Minister (Baldwin)
had declared that Sanctions meant war; secondly he was resolved
there must be no war; and thirdly he decided upon Sanctions.”39
Little did he know at the time that the sanctions his colleagues did
pursue would be as ambiguous and as much a ‘fiasco’ as they were.
The pro-sanction faction did not disregard any of these
issues: in fact, Churchill and Austen Chamberlain had the same
reasons for advocating a strong reaction to Mussolini as the
‘appeasers’ did for hesitating. Churchill did not want to stand in
Mussolini’s way for the sake of protecting trivial British interests in
the North African region. His reason was to maintain the strength
of collective security in order to prevent having to ask the French
to be lenient toward German demands. To impede Mussolini
would keep Britain and France individually, and collectively, strong
enough to obstruct Hitler.
As far as the Peace Ballot was concerned, Churchill did not
have much regard for public opinion; he pursued the policies that
he thought would be in the best interest of the nation. He did not
believe that the public had been fully informed of the nature of the
threat, or that they would necessarily grasp the gravity of the
Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: MacMillan and Co. Ltd.,
1946), 265.
38 Churchill, Speech, 11 July 1935, Parliamentary Debates, vol. 305, col. 548.
39 Churchill, Gathering Storm, 133.
37
situation if they had.40 At the same time, he contended that,
regardless of what they knew or understood about the nature of the
situation, the public had voted in favour of standing up to Italian
hostility. He interpreted it, persuasively, as an indication that the
public was “willing, and indeed resolved to go to war in a righteous
cause provided that all necessary action was taken under the
auspices of the League of Nations.”41
Churchill recognized the significance of Italy’s loyalty in the
context of a hostile Germany as well as anyone. Rather than
wooing him, however, Churchill thought it likely that in the face of
extremely oppressive economic and financial privation, the Italian
people might depose Mussolini, making way for a government
more favourable to the West. Failing that, if the sanctions were as
crippling as Churchill thought they should be, Italy’s war machine
would be utterly impaired, and the aid it could provide to Hitler
and his designs would be negligible.
The main selling point for Churchill was the maintenance of
the power of the League of Nations. If the coalition of “more than
50 states” could be held intact, which side Italy took would not
matter. This was why it was so crucial that if sanctions were
imposed on Italy, it was under the principle of collective security:
“There is safety in numbers,” he said, “and I believe also that there
may be peace in numbers.”42
If the British did this alone or even appeared to be playing
too prominent a role in pressuring other League members the
effect would be disastrous. This would do nothing for the League,
Britain would be at war with Italy if Mussolini meant what he said,
and the Italians would be ostracized and would likely join Hitler.
As Churchill said, the British were not strong enough to resist him
militarily while maintaining home security against the German and
Japanese threats. Also, if the British alone were to impose
sanctions, they would be ineffective, as other nations could
continue to provide Italy with what it needed. In hindsight, he was
proven right. When all was said and done, in the spring of 1936,
and the nature of the imposed sanctions was made public,
Winston Churchill, “Recollections,” 27 June 1935, in Winston S. Churchill, ed.
Martin Gilbert, vol. 5, companion part 2, 1202.
41 Churchill, “Recollections,” 1202.
42 Churchill, Speech, 6 April 1936, Complete Speeches, vol. 6, 5728.
40
Setting the Record Straight 64
[he] spoke critically of sanctions; they had failed to
save Abyssinia, now being destroyed and subjugated;
they had roused the antagonism of Italy, so that in
future years Britain would need to maintain larger
forces throughout the Mediterranean; and they had
involved costly naval expenditure.43
Collective security was the only way to take action and ensure that
it would work, and would not be debilitating to one nation more
than any other.
Mussolini explicitly stated that he did not care if the League
took measures in protest against his actions, but if these measures
were such that they impeded his plans, it would have meant war.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Chamberlain and others had two
goals: not to estrange Mussolini from the “anti-German camp,”
and to maintain the power of the League of Nations. This was
expressed by Sir John Simon in a letter to the King:
Italy is at present occupied with the Abyssinian
question, as to which Sir John greatly fears that a
serious outcome is probable; but this must be
handled in a way which will not affect adversely
Anglo-Italian relations.44
These two concerns were shown to be mutually exclusive. The
solution for the Conservatives was to put an injunction on Italian
imports that would appear to be severe, but would not in fact
weaken Mussolini’s advance; in other words, the “sanctions
conformed docilely to the limitations prescribed by the
Aggressor.”45 The Italians needed aluminium, and this was strictly
prohibited. However, this was one of the few metals that Italy
could produce on its own in quantities that exceeded domestic
demand. Iron ore was interdicted, but was not needed; especially
since finished steel was not included in the banned items. Oil was
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill (London: Heinemann, 1976), 720.
R. A. C. Parker, “Great Britain, France, and the Ethiopian Crisis 1935-1936,”
The English Historical Review 1974 89(351): 296.
45 Churchill, Step by Step, 42.
43
44
the main point of contention. It was essential to the Italian war
effort, yet imports of it were by no means reduced.46
When the League of Nations finally did impose sanctions on
Italy for the invasion of Abyssinia, Churchill was delighted. He
expressed exultantly in the House on 24 October 1935 that
Mussolini had responded “remarkably” well to the sanctions
imposed on him for his aggression was indicative of the rule of
international law.47 Its power had been saved. This idea has been
used to support the hypothesis that Churchill’s position on the
appeasement of Italy was “obscure.” It appears from this statement
alone that he fully supported the government in these “halfmeasures.”48 This is based on the false assumption that Churchill
knew the true nature of the so-called ‘sanctions.’ One must
remember, however, that at this time, he was not included in the
Cabinet; so although he was free to express his concerns and
recommendations to ministers, he was told very little in return. On
24 October, he declared, “No one has suggested that we could do
more than we have done.”49 This is clearly inconsistent with
everything he had said before and after, and by early 1936, months
after the general election, he was irate that they had not in fact
done all that they could.50 Churchill claimed that it was then that he
learned the half-hearted spirit of the ‘sanctions.’51 In February, he
took up the navy’s side in advocating sanctions “in respect of oil.”52
Powers claims that Churchill meant that they should not risk
war by oil sanctions, but the evidence is clearly not on his side. As
early as the fall of 1935, Churchill declared, “If asked ‘How far will
you go in support of the Covenant of the League of Nations?’ I
shall say we ought to go the whole way with the whole lot.”53 This
was how Churchill approached every problem: he abhorred “halfmeasures.” Had decision-making power been his, he “would either
Ibid.
Churchill, Arms and Covenant, 274.
48 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 176.
49 Churchill, Arms and the Covenant, 277.
50 Churchill, “Why Sanctions Failed,” 26 June 1936, Step by Step, 43.
51 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 176.
52 Churchill, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 309 (1936-1937): col.
189.
53 Churchill, Arms and the Covenant, 275.
46
47
Setting the Record Straight 66
have gone much further at the very beginning, or nothing like so
far.”54
Pre-war Conservative leaders had a propensity for
compromising the worst of both worlds. The war itself was fought
on the worse possible terms because, in his attempt to prevent it,
Chamberlain conceded territories of great advantage to Hitler,
strengthening his strategic position. Similarly, in his attempt to keep
Mussolini “in the anti-German camp,” he went just far enough in
opposing aggression to both defeat the League of Nations and
ensure that Mussolini would abandon the Allied cause. In
Churchill’s words:
We have managed to secure the disadvantages of all
the courses without the advantages of any. We have
pressed France into a course of action which did not
go far enough to help the Abyssinians, but went far
enough to sever her from Italy, with the result that
the occasion was given to Herr Hitler to tear up
treaties and reoccupy the Rhineland.55
In the first case, the war was still fought, only against a much
stronger and more expanded Germany. In the second, Italy was
still lost only along with it the respect of the British government,
domestically and internationally, and the force of the League was
destroyed. In the early summer of 1936, the crisis was over,
Mussolini had declared the King of Italy the Emperor of Abyssinia,
and the members of the League had shown that they would not act
to stop him. “The League has made its first essay in action,”
Churchill remarked, “Let us hope that next time, it will either go in
with overwhelming force, or stand clear.”56
Churchill felt that, at every turn, the pre-war governments
had backed Britain and its Allies into a corner. MacDonald and
Baldwin had failed to maintain the arms needed to meet all of the
threats to Britain and its overseas interests. Meanwhile, Germany
was allowed to become a major military power. Baldwin then
proceeded to destroy the only means by which the major European
nations could work together under the principle of collective
Churchill to Lord Cranborne, Martin Gilbert, vol. 5 companion pt. 3, 8 April
1936, 92.
55 Churchill, Speech, 1 April 1936, Complete Speeches, vol. 6, 5724.
56 Churchill, Step by Step, 44.
54
security. In the process, he managed also to estrange a potential ally
who, if pushed into the arms of Hitler could also present a vital
threat. Chamberlain then went on to guarantee that the war against
Germany would be fought on the most unfavourable terms, with
not only the well-trained German army and other expanded forces,
but also against the armies of those nations the Prime Minister had
‘given’ him. These leaders, in their hesitation, had left Great Britain
with one choice, “the old grim choice our forbears had to face,
namely, whether we shall prepare to defend our rights, our liberties,
and indeed our lives.”57
In order to seek out “obscurity” in Churchill’s opposition to
the policy of appeasement, one must take individual actions and
statements out of their context. Churchill never wavered in his
opposition to the idea of giving in to dictators out of apparent
weakness. Although one may argue that he may not have been as
committed to the autonomy of small, particularly “barbarous”
states, Churchill always advocated keeping Britain and its allies, and
the ties between them, strong enough to protect the vital security
of his country. Recognizing the very real threat from Germany,
whereas others reacted with a panicked willingness to turn a blind
eye to all potential threats, Churchill believed that the only way to
be victorious was to meet all challenges head-on, and confront all
those who stood in his, or Great Britain’s way.
57
Churchill broadcast speech of 16 November 1934, Complete Speeches, Vol. 5,
5435.
Brinksmanship and Backfire:
Nasser and the Six-Day War
NOAH B. SHACK
At 7:10 AM on 5 June 1967, the Israeli Air Force began its
historic attack on Egyptian air bases, marking the beginning of a
war that lasted just six days but resulted in a dramatic Arab defeat
and the reshaping of the modern Middle East. There exist a wide
variety of alternative, often contradictory, narratives regarding the
causes of this war, which all the parties involved seemingly wished
to avoid. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, a conference was held to discuss the
various perceptions and misconceptions about the origins of the
conflict. At the conclusion of this conference, which featured
panels of experts from the various states involved, one crucial
question remained without a satisfactory answer: what made
Egyptian president Gamal Abd al-Nasser act as he did?1 There has
been much debate regarding this question, with many authors
concluding that Nasser behaved in an irrational and reckless
manner. However, on close examination of the domestic, regional,
and Cold War realities facing the Egyptian President, the opposite
appears true. This paper will argue that Nasser in fact acted
rationally, did not seek war, and that it was his misperceptions
regarding the other actors involved that ultimately created the
conditions for the June war of 1967.
The confrontation brewing between Syria and Israel set the
stage for the crisis. The Syrian government had been supporting
guerrilla raids on Israeli territory, and steady escalation of hostilities
served to increase tensions. It appeared that a large-scale military
confrontation between the two countries was not far off, as “Israel
seemed increasingly preoccupied with the problems outstanding
between herself and Syria”.2 There had been multiple Soviet
warnings in 1966 and early 1967 of Israeli troops amassing along
Richard B. Parker, “Conclusions,” in The Six Day War: A Retrospective, ed. Richard
B. Parker (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1996), 289.
2 Robert Burrowes and Douglas Muzzio,“The Road to the Six Day War: Towards
an Enumerative History of Four Arab States and Israel, 1965-67,” The Journal of
Conflict Resolution: Research Perspectives on the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Symposium 16
(1972): 216.
1
Brinksmanship & Backfire 70
the Syrian border, all of which were vehemently refuted by Israel.3
As late as 8 May 1967, reports concerning Israeli mobilisations in
the north were being related to Nasser from Syrian and Lebanese
sources.4 However, “not a great deal of credence had been attached
to the Syrian reports”,5 and as a result Nasser remained on the
sidelines, refusing to involve Egypt (also known as the United Arab
Republic, or UAR) in the conflict. He rejected proposals from his
own top military officials urging him to reoccupy Sinai, evict the
UNEF peacekeeping force that was deployed there, and impose a
blockade on the Straits of Tiran in order to “deny Israel
manoeuvrability in attacking either Jordan or Syria”.6 However, a
massive shift must have occurred in Nasser’s attitude, as these are
precisely the actions he decided to undertake on 13 May 1967.
Nasser perceived the Israeli threat to be increasingly credible
beginning 11 May 1967, when Israeli General Yitzhak Rabin
allegedly stated: “the moment is coming when we will march on
Damascus”.7 Whether Rabin actually said this is highly contested,
but the truth in this matter is hardly significant for the purposes of
this study. What is important is that Nasser believed this statement
to have been made by Israel, and accepted it as an authentic threat.
Therefore, when the Soviets reported yet another massive Israeli
troop mobilisation along the Syrian border, Nasser was more
inclined to believe them. His proclivity was further bolstered by the
claims of his chief military commander, General ‘Amer, that he had
seen aerial reconnaissance photographs that confirmed the troop
build up.8 The conspicuous absence of heavy military equipment in
Israel’s Independence Day parade attributed further significance to
the Soviet warnings. According to Eric Rouleau, Le Monde’s Cairo
correspondent at the time, Nasser believed that an Israeli attack
was imminent, and would likely take place by 17 May.9 As a result,
on 14 May 1967, Egyptian forces were redeployed in Sinai, ending
the era of post-1956 demilitarisation.
Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle
East (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), 43.
4 Hisham Sharabi, “Prelude to War,” in The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967:
An Arab Perspective (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 49.
5 Mohamed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence
in the Middle East (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 174.
6 Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 39.
7 Carl L. Brown, “Origins of the Crisis,” in The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, 30.b
8 Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 55.
9 Sharabi, “Prelude to War,” 50.
3
The shift in Nasser’s position from passivity to activity in the
1967 Arab-Israeli conflict was motivated by a number of factors.
The Soviet Union played an influential role in Nasser’s decision to
mobilise his forces, as it was their prognostication of impending
Israeli aggression that served as a catalyst for Egyptian
involvement. The Soviets
were determined to protect the Syrian
government—and later the Nasser regime in
Egypt—from a complete military defeat that
would not only be another humiliation for Soviet
arms and credibility as an ally, but might lead to
the collapse of their major Arab allies; Soviet
expulsion from Egypt, Syria, and perhaps
elsewhere in the Middle East; and the unilateral
domination of the area by the United States.10
Despite the false nature of their reports regarding Israeli
troop movements, the Soviets were convinced that armed
conflagration was only a matter of time. For this reason they set
out to involve Egypt in the emerging crisis, hoping that the
movement of Egyptian troops into the Sinai would deter any
potential Israeli actions against Syria.11 Nasser was in agreement
with this strategy of deterrence, as he was also concerned about the
toppling of Soviet aligned states in the Middle East. Nasser feared
that “the toppling of the Ba’th could generate the fall, dominostyle, of ‘progressive’ regimes throughout the region – beginning in
Iraq and Yemen and ending possibly in Egypt itself… The entire
Eastern front could collapse”.12
However, it was not Soviet influence or the imperilment of
Syria alone that motivated Nasser to increase Egyptian involvement
in the conflict with Israel. The enumerative historical account
provided by Robert Burrowes and Douglas Muzzio displaces the
presumption that the increased likelihood of Israeli attack was the
most crucial motivating factor for Nasser. Enumerative analysis of
the events leading up to the Six-Day War asserts that the Syrian
fears of Israeli invasion and reprisal were justified, as Syrian-Israeli
Jerome Slater, “The Superpowers and an Arab-Israeli Political Settlement: The
Cold War Years,” Political Science Quarterly 105 (1990-1991): 566.
11 Ibid., 566.
12 Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 57.
10
Brinksmanship & Backfire 72
interaction was characterized by escalation in the period between
November 1966 and April 1967, with Israel as the source more
than the target of conflict with Syria during this time.13 In
comparison, within the UAR-Israeli relationship “conflict for a
long period had been deescalating to near extinction”.14 The
question that remains is how the escalatory relationship between
Israel and Syria led to conflict between Israel and the UAR.
Deterrence alone cannot account for the solution, as Nasser did
not demonstrate his commitment to this strategy in the case of the
at least equal likelihood of a strike against Syria by Israel in early
November 1966.15 Upon final analysis, “[t]here seems to have been
no new input into the Arab-Israeli domain in early 1967 which
rendered it imperative that Nasser restrain Israel from her likely
course of action against Syria”.16
The solution to this puzzle can only be pieced together with
a closer examination of the Inter-Arab sphere, which was
characterised by a great deal of conflict and disunity. By the end of
1966, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were in a virtual alliance against the
UAR. The nature and intensity of their diplomatic offensive
presents an interesting link between the inter-Arab domain and
Nasser’s decision to change his policy regarding Israel.17 Relations
had deteriorated between Nasser and his neighbours to such an
extent that in a speech delivered in February 1967 Nasser called
King Hussein of Jordan the “whore (‘ahir) of Jordan, a pun on the
Arabic word for king (‘ahil)”.18 Thus, even more important to
Nasser’s decision-making than Cold War dynamics and deterrence
strategies were concerns related to inter-Arab relations and his own
domestic political standing.
Nasser had been sitting on the sidelines of the Arab-Israeli
conflict, and as such had drawn a great deal of criticism at home
and from neighbouring Arab states. The Syrians accused Nasser of
going soft on Israel, while Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tall
accused him of hiding “behind UNEF skirts”.19 Burrowes and
Muzzio conclude that being “on the receiving end of a rather
Burrowes and Muzzio, “The Road to the Six Day War,” 216.
Ibid., 225.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 37.
19 Ibid., 19.
13
14
brilliant campaign to discredit him, Nasser had every reason to
conclude that the maintenance of his position of leadership in the
Arab world required that he either deter or respond with force to
any new Israeli reprisal against Syria”.20 Nasser’s prestige and his
position as a strong regional leader were suffering, and the situation
continued to grow worse with each display of passivity.
To truly understand the predicament facing Nasser in
terms of his status within the Arab world, one must examine this
factor in light of the ideology of pan-Arabism and the Free
Officers movement through which he ascended to power in Egypt.
Governing on a platform of pan-Arab nationalism, the ruler
must work, or rather appear to the populace to be
working, to achieve the goals of that value system;
and he needs to be seen as successful in achieving
those goals, if he is not, then his survival in power
cannot be guaranteed.21
In this position, Nasser was obliged to pursue certain goals
in line with the popular slogans he represented, namely “the pursuit
of Arab unity, expulsion of foreign influence, the destruction of
Israel, strength, progress and social justice”.22 By May 1967 it was
overwhelmingly clear that Nasser had not succeeded in securing
any of these goals. Under his leadership the Egyptian economy fell
into a state of acute crisis, the military was severely weakened by
budget cuts and the quagmire of a war being waged in Yemen, a
foreign presence of UN peacekeepers were stationed on Egyptian
soil in Sinai, infighting was rampant among the Arab states, and
Israel was perceived to be on the brink of invading Syria. Nasser’s
situation was certainly untenable, and foreign diplomats began
writing of the regime’s downfall, or the possibility “in which the
military would try to restore Egypt’s pride by plunging the region
into war”.23 Nasser was unsure whether his rule could survive
another failure to come to Syria’s defence in the common Arab
Burrowes and Muzzio, “The Road to the Six Day War,” 226.
Barry Rubin, “Pan-Arab Nationalism: The Ideological Dream as a Compelling
Force,” Journal of Contemporary History: the Impact of Western Nationalisms: Essays
Dedicated to Walter Z. Laqueur on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday 26 (1991): 540.
22 Rubin, “Pan-Arab Nationalism,” 540.
23 Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 37.
20
21
Brinksmanship & Backfire 74
cause against Israel.24 Although he did not seek war, Nasser
mobilised his army in an attempt to rejuvenate an Egyptian sense
of pride, not for irrational romantic or idealistic reasons, but rather
to ensure the survival of his own position of power both regionally
and domestically.
While Egyptian troops were being deployed to Sinai,
General Fawzi was sent to Damascus to gather information
regarding the alleged Israeli troop deployment along the border and
to assure the Syrians of the Egyptian resolve “to destroy Israeli’s air
force and occupy its territory”.25 However, this promise was little
more than words, and the Egyptian mobilisation little more than a
show. As Mohamed Heikal recounts, “Egypt’s moves were meant
to be interpreted as a strong warning, not as a declaration of war”.26
In the afternoon of 14 June, as thousands of soldiers paraded
through the centre of Cairo in a theatrical display, a “near festive
mood was generated by blatant broadcasts reporting every move of
Egyptian troops in Sinai”.27 Had Egypt actually been planning an
attack, they would have proceeded towards the Israeli border with
more stealth and certainly less pomp.
This was a public relations display on the one hand and a
symbolic gesture of deterrence on the other, with no ambition for
war. In fact, the troops were being deployed without orders, being
told to go to Sinai, but not what to do upon arrival.28 There was no
objective other than a symbolic show of force, demonstrating that
despite 50,000 of the army’s finest fighters bogged down in Yemen,
the Egyptian army still posed a formidable threat. In reality the
opposite was true, and all parties involved knew it. With 50,000 of
its best troops in Yemen, Egypt was in no way prepared to engage
Israel in combat. With his army visibly deterring the Israelis and
restoring Egyptian pride, Nasser sought to win the propaganda war
without having to fire a single shot,29 presuming “that if Egypt
signalled its intention to support its ally, Israel would probably
prefer to abstain from attacking Syria than risk confrontation”.30
Ibid., 57.
Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 57.
26 Mohamed Heikal, Secret Channels: the Inside Story of Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations
(London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), 126.
27 Sharabi, “Prelude to War,” 52.
28 Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 59.
29 Ibid., 59.
30 Ben D Mor, “Nasser’s Decision-Making in the 1967 Middle East Crisis: A
Rational-Choice Explanation” Journal of Peace Research 28 (1991), 365.
24
25
Just as Nasser had calculated, no strong response followed
the Egyptian mobilisation from either the United States or Israel.
Both parties assumed that Nasser was averse to bloodshed and was
merely displaying a show of force to fulfil his role as the leader of
the Arab world. The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Levi
Eshkol, believed that at the very worst this was a repeat of the
behaviour displayed by Nasser when he remilitarised Sinai in 1960,
a situation that did not lead to war. General Yitzhak Rabin set out
to devise a reaction strategy, and saw two possibilities before him:
Had we failed to act—giving the Egyptians the
impression that we were either unaware of their
moves or complacent about them—we might be
inviting attack on grounds of vulnerability… On the
other hand, an overreaction on our part might
nourish the Arabs’ fears that we had aggressive
intentions and thus provoke a totally unwanted
war.31
Given the assessment of a low probability of Egyptian
aggression at this point, Eshkol opted for the former option, and
refused to mobilise the reserves. But as the number of Egyptian
troops in Sinai grew, and the UN peacekeeping forces were
eventually evicted, the Israeli leadership began to grow concerned.
Their decision not to take decisive action to deter Egyptian troop
build up would prove to be a mistake.
Rather than pursue a reckless path toward war fuelled by
nationalist rhetoric and visions of glory, Nasser’s actions in the
crisis of 1967 can be explained as being based on strategic
rationality. As Ben D. Mor explains:
The essence of strategic rationality is that, in choosing
a maximizing action, actors take into account the
alternatives, preferences, and possible strategy
choices of other relevant actors. The relevance of
other actors derives from the fact that in an
interdependent environment, outcomes are the
result of the interaction of individual choices.32
31
32
Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 62.
Mor, “Nasser’s Decision-Making,” 364.
Brinksmanship & Backfire 76
In calculating his actions in Sinai in 1967, Nasser’s main
consideration was Israeli response. As Meir Amit, head of the
Mossad in 1967 recounts: “When I’m Nasser, and I’m making one
move, it depends what the response is on the other side, because
wherever you get to a cross-point, you have two or three options
and then you act accordingly”.33 Nasser sought to engage Israel, in
order to strengthen his position, and to alter the status quo in his
favour, but was loath to go to war. Thus each of Nasser’s actions
was undertaken in light of a likely Israeli reaction, and the
escalation of tensions in May and June 1967 followed this path.
Given that Israel was the status quo power in the region, Nasser
perceived Israel “to prefer some level of escalation along the
Egyptian-Israeli border to war between the two countries”.34 This
presumption that Israel wished to avoid war was the fundamental
element underlying Nasser’s strategy. Granted, after a certain level
of escalation, this prerogative could change and war would become
a preferable option for Israel, but at this point “Nasser could
choose to face the risk inherent in a gamble or opt out (i.e. stabilise
or end the crisis), either by abstaining from further escalation or by
de-escalating”.35 For each provocative action taken to which Israel
failed to respond, Nasser concluded logically that he would “get yet
another chance to stabilize the crisis by de-escalating” at the next
juncture. 36
Up to this point, Israel’s dealings with its hostile Arab
neighbours had followed a specific pattern of action, a doctrine of
retaliation, wherein military reprisals were preceded by warnings
from political or military leaders.37 Israel felt that if “harassment
were allowed to continue unanswered, that it would gradually erode
their strategic credibility and viability”.38 In the case of Nasser’s
mobilisation of forces in Sinai, the Israelis strayed from their
normal pattern of Arab relations, failing to provide deterrence for
continued or escalatory harassment by Nasser. It was largely this
lack of deterrence that prompted Nasser, upon learning that the
Bernard Reich, “The Israeli Response,” in The Six-Day War: A Retrospective ed.
Richard B. Parker (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1996): 137.
34 Mor, “Nasser’s Decision-Making,” 366.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 369.
37 Brown, “Origins of the Crisis,” 24-25.
38 Ibid., 24.
33
allegations of Israeli troop deployments along the Syrian border
were in fact erroneous, to continue his militarization of Sinai. As
far as Nasser was concerned, “Egypt could remilitarize Sinai, and
reap the credit for it, without actually risking a war”.39 Based on the
established pattern of Israeli reaction, Nasser could rely on the
verbal warning as the first act of deterrence and react accordingly
without ever having to engage the Israelis in battle. The continuing
build up would serve to dramatically enhance Nasser’s status, and
no measure of Israeli deterrence he had nothing to lose.
After evicting the UNEF from Sinai, Nasser announced
on 22 May that Israeli ships would no longer be permitted safe
passage through the straits of Tiran—an action the Israelis had
previously stated would be considered an act of war. Eight days
had passed without significant deterrence from the Israelis and
without a word reaching Nasser from Washington regarding the
crisis. As a result, Nasser judged that he had room to manoeuvre
without getting too close to the brink.40 As Israel had not taken
immediate action in September 1955 when Egypt had closed the
straits, there was no reason to believe that their reaction in 1967,
with the Egyptian army poised on their borders, would be any
different.41 Two days following his announcement of the blockade,
Nasser began listing his demands and opening the door for
negotiations. His aggressive actions in the straits were not
demonstrating a will to wage war, but rather, were aimed at
strengthening his position in the diplomatic negotiations that he
was certain would ensue. Neither Israel nor the United States had
attempted to restrain him thus far and, in his estimation, would not
resort to war without first pursuing diplomatic means. At this
juncture, “Nasser had achieved a diplomatic victory and was ready
to negotiate a political settlement”.42 As late as one day prior to the
eventual Israeli offensive, United States Special Envoy to Cairo,
Charles Yost, noted “there does not seem to have been any
intention in Cairo to initiate a war”,43 an assessment confirmed by
Nasser on 2 June in a conversation with a British MP, in which
Nasser stated that if the Israelis do not attack “we will leave them
Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967, 65.
Sharabi, “Prelude to War,” 53.
41 Mor, “Nasser’s Decision-Making,” 371.
42 Sharabi, “Prelude to War,” 54.
43 Ibid.
39
40
Brinksmanship & Backfire 78
alone. We have no intention of attacking Israel”.44 Nasser did not
seek armed confrontation in blockading the straits of Tiran. Rather,
he sought to further strengthen his position in any future
diplomatic negotiations that would follow.
Nasser’s conviction that his actions would not provoke a
military response from Israel was further reinforced by UN
Secretary General U Thant’s visit to Cairo on 23 May. Thant
proposed a moratorium on activity in the straits of Tiran to
circumvent confrontation, which was backed by both the United
States and the Soviet Union. In a further communication, received
by Nasser on 29 May, Thant led the Egyptian president to believe
that no offensive action was going to be undertaken by Israel
before 14 June “to allow the [Security] Council to deal with the
underlying causes of the present crisis, and to seek solutions”.45
Nasser believed that this proposal had superpower backing and
thus would be imposed on Israel by the United States given the
patron-client relationship that existed between those two countries.
This gave Nasser the confidence he needed to pursue yet another
escalatory act, signing an alliance with King Hussein of Jordan on
30 May. The failure of this further escalatory action to trigger a
shift in Israeli policy, and the continuing restraint displayed by
Israel further reinforced Nasser’s conviction that he would still be
afforded a chance to de-escalate. When the Israeli Air Force
mobilized on 5 June, Nasser was under the impression that they
were being restrained by the United States and the United Nations
and would not attack, as “both superpowers were actively trying to
prevent war”.46 When Israel struck, and the Egyptian Air Force was
destroyed before they could scramble a response, Nasser’s
miscalculations and misperceptions were made all too clear.
Throughout the crisis of 1967, Israeli response, and the lack
thereof, was characterised by restraint for fear of provoking Nasser
to war, as elucidated in Rabin’s comment cited earlier. This policy
of cautious restraint was one vehemently advocated by the United
States, who wanted to avoid confrontation with the Soviet Union
in the Middle East as they already had their hands full in Vietnam.
Ephraim Evron, counsellor at the Israeli Embassy in Washington,
D.C. during the crisis in 1967 recounts:
Ibid., 55.
Heikal, Secret Channel, 128.
46 Ibid.
44
45
What dominated U.S. activity was restraint on
Israel—don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t send the
ships through the strait, don’t test the blockade,
don’t provoke Nasser. That was the view that
prevailed at the same time, and after all, you would
say, how foolish could you be, just accepting that
and letting things deteriorate.47
As American defence secretary Robert McNamara recalls,
“the Israelis had intended to strike out against Nasser on 23 May,
but had been persuaded not to do so by the American ambassador,
Waldorf Barbour”.48 Barbour had threatened that any such action
would result in the withdrawal of Western support, and therefore
Israel was obliged to allow Nasser to enforce his blockade despite
their declaration of this being an act of war:
Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban argued that
Israel could not passively accept these Egyptian
moves, lest Israel’s deterrent power and
international credibility be destroyed. However, he
noted the importance of taking international
repercussions into account, especially U.S. desires to
defuse the crisis and avoid war. Going to war against
the diplomatic tide might mean winning the war
militarily but losing the victory politically.49
Therefore, in lieu of American policy demands, Levi Eshkol
asserted: “the IDF will not attack before the political options have
been exhausted”.50
As far as the Israelis were concerned, their restraint in the
face of Nasser’s aggression and submission to American demands
was conditional upon the United States living up to commitments
made in 1957 to keep the Straits of Tiran open for Israeli
shipping.51 It was clear to the Western powers that “Israel would
Reich, “The Israeli Response,” 129.
Robert McNamara, “Britain, Nasser, and the Outbreak of the Six Day War,”
Journal of Contemporary History 35 (2000): 627.
49 Dan Reiter, “Exploding the Powder Keg Myth: Preemptive Wars Almost Never
Happen,” International Security 20 (1995): 17.
50 Ibid.
51 Reich, “The Israeli Response,” 125.
47
48
Brinksmanship & Backfire 80
only be deterred from war if she felt sure that her oil supplies
would be allowed through the Straits”.52 This would require either
an American or British led naval expedition, an action that could
potentially bring the Soviet Union into direct conflict, and as such
was not considered an attractive option. On the other hand, “the
consolidation of the UAR victory could lead to the rapid
undermining of the Arab states where [Western] economic interests
are concentrated and expanding”,53 shifting the regional balance of
power overwhelmingly in favour of the Soviet aligned Arab states.
Something had to be done, and as the pursuit of diplomatic
solutions appeared to be increasingly fruitless and exhausted, Israel
took action.
The issue of whether Israel received some measure of
approval for its 5 June attack is highly contested and will not be
discussed in this paper at any length. The important factor in
Israel’s departure from the established American policy of restraint
are the implications that policy shift had in terms of evaluating
Nasser’s decision-making. The sudden shift from restraint to attack
was devastating for Nasser and the framework for decision-making
he had adapted to this crisis. Based on the perceived assurances of
Secretary General U Thant that all hostilities were being postponed
until 14 June and observations regarding the dominance of
American policy on Israeli decision-making, Nasser presumed quite
rationally that while each of his actions brought the situation closer
to war, sufficient constraints still existed that would provide him
enough time to de-escalate and avert armed confrontation.
Nasser did not escalate irrationally, pushing Israel until it had
no recourse but that of pre-emptive attack. Instead, he pursued a
course of incremental escalation, and in the absence of Israeli
deterrence, reasonably calculated that he could proceed without
provoking war. Ben Mor describes this phenomena as follows:
By failing to attempt to teach the challenger where
the red line will be drawn, a defender traps itself in
an attribution error. It attributes the challenger’s
boldness to the latter’s preferences and concludes
there-from that a defense of the status quo requires
nothing less than war.54
McNamara, “Britain, Nasser, and the Outbreak,” 631.
McNamara, “Britain, Nasser, and the Outbreak,” 632.
54 Mor, “Nasser’s Decision-Making,” 372.
52
53
Nasser did not seek to provoke Israel to attack, but due to
the nature of his escalation, incremental and tempered in his mind
but sudden and extreme in the Israeli perception, war became a
virtual inevitability. Nasser did not see the looming war on the
horizon, as his actions were carefully calculated to avoid such an
occurrence. However, the unseen tensions between Israel, who
fearfully sought deterrence, and America, who sought to impose
restraint, skewed Nasser’s criterion for evaluation, thus producing a
gross misperception about the likelihood of armed confrontation.
From Nasser’s perspective, rational escalation of the crisis was met
with irrational pre-emptive war pursued by Israel, while in contrast,
the Israelis perceived Nasser’s aggression as an irrational
provocation. While in June 1967 not a single state actor wanted
war, due to these misperceptions and miscalculations, the conflict
that ensued seems to have been unavoidable.
Tormenting the Bear:
The Russian Defeat in Chechnya, 1194-1996
PETER MCGUIRE
On 11 December 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
ordered Federal troops into the break-away republic of Chechnya
in order to quell the growing violence and instability. Less than two
years later the Russian military, defeated and humiliated, was forced
to withdraw after signing a peace agreement with the secessionist
Chechen forces. The ability of the numerically smaller and
meagrely supplied Chechen forces to inflict such a catastrophically
humiliating defeat on a larger and better equipped professional
army hinges on three primary factors. The Russian military was
unable to defeat the Chechen forces militarily, due to deficiencies
in leadership, training, and morale. The Russian state was unable to
garner popular support from within Chechnya because of the
actions of the military which pushed the vast majority of the
Chechen population to support the insurgents. Finally, both the
Russian military and the politicians in the Kremlin underestimated
the fighting capabilities of the Chechen separatists, as well as
misunderstood the culture and history of the Chechen people.
Analysing and understanding these three factors leads to an
explanation of how one of the largest and most powerful militaries
in the world could be brought to its knees by such a small and
loosely organized insurgent force.
The origin of the 1994-1996 war in Chechnya has its roots
deep in the history of the Russian occupation and colonization of
the North Caucasus, as well as the Chechens’ experience with the
Soviet government. Resistance to Russian rule in Chechnya began
in the late eighteenth century, when Chechen insurgents, led by the
Muslim cleric Sheikh Mansur waged a guerrilla war against Russian
imperial forces bent on colonizing the North Caucasus region.1
Although Mansur was defeated in 1791,2 Chechen resistance to the
Russian occupation continued despite the brutal occupation
overseen by General Alexi Yermolov, the Russian commander
Alec Rasizade, “Chechnya: The Achilles Heel of Russia- Part I,” Contemporary
Review 286 (2005): 193-197.
2 John B. Dunlop, Russian Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11-12.
1
appointed to quell the resistance in the North Caucasus.3
Yermolov’s main tactic consisted of subjugating the Chechen
population through terror, and his methods included wholesale
massacres and destruction of villages which left thousands of
Chechens dead.4 These savage tactics would be used again by
Russian forces more than a hundred years later in the 1994-96 war,
as they attempted to terrorize the Chechen population into denying
support to the separatist fighters.
Yermolov’s general attitude on Chechnya can be summed up
in one of his more infamous statements, still remembered by many
Chechens today: “I desire that the terror of my name should guard
our frontiers more potently than chains or fortresses, that my word
should be for the natives a law more inevitable than death”.5 The
haunting memory of Yermolov is still very much alive in Chechnya.
The capital city of Grozny was founded by the General in 1818
(Grozny literally means “terrible” in Russian) and the memory of
his brutal treatment can be summed up in the inscription written
on a statue of Yermolov, erected in Grozny in 1949. The
inscription reads: “There is no people under the sun more vile and
deceitful than this one”.6 The memory of Russian subjugation and
brutality in Chechnya is very much part of Chechen culture, and
the injustices of the past have never been forgotten by the Chechen
people.7 The high morale of the Chechen fighters in the 1994-96
war can be attributed to their collective memory of 200 years of
Russian subjection, and is a significant aspect of their fierce
defence of their culture and independence during the war.
Perhaps the most famous and celebrated hero of Chechen
resistance is the legendary Imam Shamil, who led a guerrilla war
against Russian forces in the mid-nineteenth century, which ended
Thomas De Waal & Carlotta Gall, Chechnya: A Small Victorious War (London:
Macmullin Publishing Ltd., 1997), 39.
4 Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya, 15.
5 Brian Glyn Williams, “Commemorating ‘The Deportation’ in Post-Soviet
Chechnya: the Role of Memorialization and Collective Memory in the 19941996 and 1999-2000 Russo-Chechen Wars,” History and Memory 12 (2000): 101.
6 The statue of Yermolov was repeatedly bombed and attacked by the Chechen
population in Grozny until it was finally removed in the late 1980’s. Timothy L.
Thomas, “The Battle for Grozny: Deadly Classroom for Urban Conflict,”
Parameters 29 (1999): 87-102.
7Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven & London: Yale
University Press, 1998), 306.
3
Tormenting the Bear 84
with his capture in 1859.8 Shamil is remembered for his devastating
attacks on Russian forces, as well as his achievement of creating a
virtually independent state in the North Caucasus.9 The example of
Imam Shamil is very descriptive of the character of Chechen
resistance to Russian subjugation and occupation since Russian
forces set foot in the North Caucasus region. The anger and hatred
of the Chechen people for their Russian occupiers is made evident
in a description of a Russian attack on a Chechen village, written by
Leo Tolstoy in 1852.
No one spoke of hatred for the Russians. The
feeling which all Chechens felt, both young and old,
was stronger than hatred. It was not a hatred but a
refusal to recognize these Russian dogs as people
and such a revulsion, disgust, and bewilderment at
the senseless cruelty of these beings, that the desire
to destroy them, like a desire to destroy rats,
poisonous spiders, and wolves, was as natural as the
instinct of self-preservation.10
Chechnya has had a long history of fighting and resisting the
Russians, but one event is most remembered and reviled by the
Chechen people: the deportations of 1944.
The Chechen experience with the Soviet Union was
characterized by violence, resistance, and promises of autonomy
which were never fully realized.11 However, the most horrendous
episode of Soviet brutality was the decision in 1944 by Soviet
dictator Josef Stalin to uproot and deport the entire Chechen and
Ingush nations. On 23 February 1944, the NKVD (the precursor
to the KGB) herded nearly 500,000 Chechens and Ingush into
cattle cars and deported them to Kazakhstan, Siberia, and
Kyrgyzstan on the charge that the Chechens had supported the
German army during the Second World War.12 The deportations
were an obvious attempt to destroy the Chechen people and were
accompanied by the “Russification” of Chechen place names and
the destruction of Chechen mosques and graveyards, as well at the
Rasizade, “Achilles Heel, Part 1,” 193-197.
De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 46.
10 Ibid., 49.
11 Rasizade, “Achilles Heel-Part I,” 193-197.
12 Williams, “Commemorating,” 101.
8
9
settlement of thousands of ethnic Russians in former Chechen
villages.13 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev allowed the Chechens
to return in 1957, only after an estimated 150,000 had perished in
exile.14
The memory of the 1944 deportations is a significant aspect
of the Chechen national consciousness, in the context of 200 years
of brutal Russian subjugation. In planning the 1994 invasion,
Russian leaders overlooked the Chechens’ powerful memory of
Russian oppression, and underestimated the extent to which the
Chechen secessionist fighters would oppose the Russian forces to
insure their independence. One Chechen fighter, when asked why
he continued to fight against the Russian forces answered: “It is
better to sleep on the ground than to live on your knees”.15
Chechen history and culture was a significant aspect of the conflict;
the popular support to the fighters that the Russian forces faced in
1994 was based on a history and culture dominated by the memory
of fierce Chechen resistance to Russian rule.
The Republic of Chechnya proclaimed its independence in
the summer of 1991 and in October of the same year elected
Jokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet Air Force general as the president
of the autonomous Republic of Chechnya.16 For almost three years
the small republic survived independently of the Russian
Federation, although the fledgling state was beset by widespread
drug and weapon trafficking, corruption, and violence between pro
and anti-Dudayev forces.17 Throughout the three year period of
independence, Moscow had been directly or indirectly supporting
the opposition to President Dudayev, and after a failed assault on
the capital city of Grozny by opposition forces in November of
The burial of the dead is a very important facet of Chechen culture, so much so
that many of the returnees in 1957 were bringing the remains of their dead
relatives back from Kazakhstan with them in order to bury them in their own
villages. Williams, “Commemorating,” 101.
14Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya, 70.
15 John Colarusso, “Chechnya: The War Without Winners,” Current History 94
(1995): 329-336.
16 Vera Tolz, “The War in Chechnya,” Current History 95 (1996): 316-321.
17 “First Chechnya War- 1994-1996,” Global Security.org, April 24, 2005, November
18, 2005,
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/chechnya1.htm>
13
Tormenting the Bear 86
1994, Russian president Boris Yeltsin decided to launch a full-scale
war on the break-away republic on 11 December.18
The Russian leadership claimed that its intervention in
Chechnya was aimed at combating the rising level of crime and
violence in the region, and showing the upstart regime in Grozny
that the integrity of the Russian Federation would not be tested.19
However, evidence suggests that the decision to go to war in
Chechnya was made for the purely political reason of boosting
Yeltsin’ flagging popularity within Russia.20 Whatever the reasons,
under Yeltsin’s orders, Russian forces invaded Chechnya from
three directions on 11 December and immediately ran into
problems.
The Russian military defeat in Chechnya was an
unprecedented disaster, and highlighted the state of decay that had
grown in the Russian military after the fall of the Soviet Union.21
The poor quality of the training and equipment of the troops sent
into Chechnya was brutally revealed in the assault on the Chechen
capital of Grozny on 31 December 1994. Fully confident that a
strong show of force could convince the Chechen fighters to
surrender, the Russian leadership, with Defence Minister Pavel
Grachev at its head, ordered the Russian forces surrounding
Grozny to advance into the city and secure the Presidential Palace,
which was the center of the Chechen opposition.22 Grachev is
quoted as making the prediction that he could take Grozny with a
single airborne regiment in two hours.23
Grachev’s statement could not be further from the truth.
Within hours, the assault had turned into a bloodbath for the
Russian forces, with entire armoured columns wiped out and
hundreds of Russian casualties taken.24 Russian columns were
repeatedly surrounded, isolated, and destroyed in ambushes
coordinated by determined, lightly armed Chechen fighters.25 The
Alec Rasizade, “Chechnya: The Achilles Heel of Russia- Part II,” Contemporary
Review 286 (2005): 277-284.
19 De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 171.
20 Valery Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War Torn Society (Berkley & Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2004), 127.
21Robin Knight, “Soldiers of Misfortune,” U.S. News & World Report 121 (1996):
32-35.
22 Thomas, “The Battle of Grozny,” 87-102.
23 Ibid.
24 De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 4.
25 Lieven, Tombstone, 110.
18
reasons for the humiliating defeat of the 31 December assault are
only too clear. The bulk of the Russian troops sent into the city
were barely trained conscripts rather than professional soldiers,
which resulted in a complete lack of proper military coordination
and efficiency.26 To make matters worse, virtually none of the
troops used in the assault had any training in urban combat and
panicked when attacked, running for whatever cover they could
find, leaving their dead and wounded comrades lying in Grozny’s
streets, where they stayed for weeks.27
Coordination and communication between individual units
was virtually non-existent, and many times a unit sent to reinforce
another would find itself embroiled in a fierce firefight with the
unit they were meant to reinforce.28 Even the professional “elite”
units of the Interior Ministry were formed from individual soldiers
all across the Russian Federation only days before going to the
front, without even a day to train together.29 To make things even
more disastrous for the Russian forces, the Chechen fighters were
operating in a city that they knew well, and it was often all too easy
for them to ambush and brutalize unit after unit of poorly trained,
unprepared Russian conscripts.30
Poor coordination between the Russian leadership was also a
significant factor in the Russian defeat in Chechnya. Troops from
three “Power Ministries” (Defence, Internal Security, and Internal
Affairs) were all involved in the conflict, but integration between
them was minimal at best.31 The lack of communication between
the ministry’s forces became blatantly apparent when Interior
Ministry troops were unprepared to take over defensive positions
in Grozny when Army forces withdrew from them in February
1995.32 The lack of effective communication and coordination
were significant aspects of the Russian defeat, made even more
“First Chechnya War- 1994-1996,” Global Security.org,
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/chechnya1.htm> April
24, 2005, November 18, 2005.
27Lieven, Tombstone, 110.
28 De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 209.
29 Anatol Lieven, “Russia’s Military Nadir: the Meaning of the Chechen Debacle,”
The National Interest 44 (1996): 24-30.
30 Calorusso, “The War Without Winners,” 329-336.
31 Thomas, “The Battle of Grozny,” 87-102.
32 Knight, “Soldiers of Misfortune,” 32-35.
26
Tormenting the Bear 88
apparent by the effective communication and organization of
mainly volunteer separatist Chechen units.33
The slaughter of the Russian forces inside Grozny caused
their already teetering morale to hit rock bottom. One Russian
soldier, after experiencing the fighting in Grozny, remarked to a
journalist: “Right from the beginning we were saying, ‘Why are we
fighting?’ No one knew what we were doing there. No one was
fighting for anything concrete”.34 The low morale of the Russian
soldiers was endemic in all of the Russian units in Chechnya and
made the scenario of a Russian defeat all the more possible. The
morale and bravery of the Chechen separatists was just the
opposite of the Russian soldiers. Chechen fighters were fully aware
of the war they were fighting and were more than ready to sacrifice
themselves for the cause of national independence, which led them
to fully commit themselves to the battle and to compel the Russian
forces to fight for every inch of ground they took.35
Russian tactics in Chechnya were far from refined. The
widespread use of air strikes and artillery transformed the center of
Grozny into a lunar surface, pockmarked with hundreds of craters
and shell holes.36 The ceaseless and indiscriminate bombardment
flattened the center of the city and killed hundreds, if not
thousands of Chechen civilians.37 This strategy was repeated again
in many other villages and cities in Chechnya, highlighting the
failure of Russian forces to meet and defeat the Chechen
separatists without the advantages of heavy artillery and airpower.
33Tishkov,
Life in a WarTorn Society, 95.
De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 211.
35 Tishkov, Life in a War Torn Society, 144.
36 Anthony Lloyd, a war correspondent who was inside Grozny during the January
and February fighting described the impact of the bombardment thusly: “A
concrete killing zone, it was as if a hurricane of shrapnel had swept through
every street, leaving each perspective bearing the torn, pitted scars, the irregular
bites of high-explosive ordinance. The remaining trees were shredded and
blasted horizontal, while the snow on the pavement became covered in a
crunching carpet of shattered glass. Anthony Loyd, My War Gone by, I Miss it so
(New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000): 244.
37 It is helpful here to compare the scale and destruction of the winter bombing in
Grozny with the siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo during the countries civil
war in the early and mid-nineties. During the heaviest shelling of Sarajevo, an
estimated 3,500 detonations were reported in the city daily while the rate of
Russian bombardment in Grozny during the winter of 1995 was estimated at
4,000 detonations an hour. David Remnick, Resurrection: The Struggle for a New
Russia (New York: Random House, 1997): 264.
34
The Russian leadership was again humiliated on 14 June
1995, when Shamil Basayev, one of the top Chechen commanders,
along with 100 fighters, launched a daring raid on the southern
Russian city of Budyonnovsk.38 Shamil’s forces took nearly 1,000
hostages and demanded a safe return for his forces and an
immediate cease-fire in Chechnya.39 The same scenario was
repeated in January, when another Chechen commander, Salaman
Ruduyev, led a raid on the Russian city of Kizliar, and after taking
nearly 2,000 hostages, fought a prolonged battle with Russian
forces in the village of Pervomaiskoye before making his eventual
escape.40 The failure of the Russian forces to ensure the security of
their citizens was a serious humiliation for the Russian military and
political leadership, and proved that the Chechen separatists were
far from being defeated. In fact, Basayev’s raid ensured a short
cease-fire in Chechnya, giving the insurgency a much needed break
from the fighting, which they used to reorganize and re-equip their
forces.41
The importance of these operations is made evident by the
fact that within months of the hostage raids, the Chechen fighters
who had previously been pushed into mountain strongholds in the
south of the country had begun to launch offensives in the
northern plains and cities, highlighting the failure of Russian troops
to hold onto ground that was thought secure.42 The fact that both
of the raids took place hundreds of miles from where the Chechen
insurgency was located suggests that the Russian forces were
extremely unprepared to deal with the aggressive and well
organized attacks of the Chechen insurgency, let alone securing
Russian territory.43 Moreover, even with extensive air and artillery
resources, Russian forces were hard pressed to inflict easy defeats
on the Chechen fighters, and when meeting the Chechen forces
Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia go the Way of the Soviet Union?
(Washington, Brookings Institution Press, 2002), 40.
39 Tolz, “The War in Chechnya,” 316-321.
40 Lieven, Tombstone, 138-139.
41 Evangelista, The Chechen Wars, 40.
42 De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 305.
43 In his comments after the raid, Basayev is quoted as saying that his original
intention was to push even further into Russian territory, perhaps even to
Moscow, but had to stop because he ran out of money with which to bribe
Russian troops at checkpoints. Lieven, Tombstone, 124.
38
Tormenting the Bear 90
face to face the Russian troops were usually unable to isolate or
destroy them without taking heavy casualties of their own.44
The final humiliating defeat of the Russian forces in
Chechnya came on 6 August 1996, the same day that Boris Yeltsin
was being inaugurated for his second term as President.45 At dawn,
1500 Chechen fighters assaulted the city of Grozny, quickly
isolating and surrounding Russian outposts and establishing
defensive positions to repel Russian counter attacks.46 Within 48
hours three quarters of Grozny was in Chechen hands, and the
Russian military faced the possibility of virtually starting the entire
campaign over again. The retaking of Grozny was a devastating
end to Russia’s poorly coordinated and planned campaign. The 6
August attack pitted 12,000 Russian Interior Ministry and Army
troops with access to heavy artillery, helicopter gun ships, and
bomber support against fewer than 4,000 Chechen fighters, armed
with Kalashnikovs and rocket propelled grenades; the Russian
forces lost badly.47 The Russian military had waged a poorly led,
planned, and coordinated campaign, and had been savagely beaten
by a relatively small group of largely volunteer fighters who waged
war for the dream of Chechen independence, not for the political
aims of men in the Kremlin.
The final aspect of the Chechen war which cinched Russian
defeat was the widespread and immediate loss of popular support
for the Russian troops within Chechnya. When Russian columns
crossed the border into independent Chechnya on 11 December
1994 they were immediately met by crowds of thousands of people
who swarmed the columns of armoured vehicles and forced them
to stop. In several of the instances Russian soldiers were attacked
and their vehicles burned by crowds of demonstrators pledging
their support to an independent Chechnya.48 The immediate and
widespread popular support that the majority of the Chechen
population had for their independence was shown in the first few
44Lieven,
“Russia’s Military Nadir,” 24-30.
Tombstone, 141.
46De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 331.
47 The Chechen fighters had acquired their weapons by seizing the KGB arsenal in
Grozny in 1992. Estimates on the amount of weapons seized included hundreds
of vehicles and weapons systems, aircraft, and nearly 40,000 light arms. During
the war, Chechen forces actually purchased a large amount of their weapons and
ammunition from corrupt elements of the Russian military; the weapons were
then used to kill Russian troops. Dunlop, Russia Confronts, 165-168.
48 Lieven, Tombstone, 103.
45Lieven,
hours of the Russian invasion, and this support only multiplied as
the campaign dragged on.
Although the support that the fighters received from the
civilian population in Chechnya was at first spontaneous and unprovoked, the actions of the Russian military were often counterproductive to their intended goals, and pushed the Chechen
population to support the rebels. The bombardment of Grozny in
January and February of 1994 did little to win the “hearts and
minds” of the Chechen population in the city, as they watched their
homes, businesses, family members, and neighbourhoods literally
blown apart underneath the weight of the barrage.49 Despite the
fact that the Russian bombardment left tens of thousands homeless
and nearly 25,000 dead, it also distanced ethnic Russians living in
Grozny from the military.50 Once Russian forces were able to exert
control over Grozny’s center, the war took on a particularly brutal
nature, as Russian forces began a savage “cleansing” operation in
the city.51 Drunken Russian troops ran rampant in Grozny,
indiscriminately robbing and killing Chechen and ethnic Russian
civilians, with little or no thought as to what effect their actions
would have on the civilian population in the city.52 The effect of
treating every civilian in Grozny as an enemy was that any support
that the Russian forces may have garnered for themselves by a
humane and ethical treatment of the Chechen population vanished
immediately.
If the orgy of violence and looting that accompanied the
Russian forces into Grozny put a wedge between the civilian
population and the Russian military, the infamous “filtration
camps” that the Russians created to pick out suspected fighters
only drove the wedge deeper. Chechen men were arbitrarily picked
out and detained at Russian checkpoints and then sent to “filtration
camps” where they would be brutally interrogated by Russian
forces.53 The arbitrary and indiscriminate nature of the filtration
camps can be explained by the fact that they were primarily used by
the Russian forces as a tool to terrorize the Chechen population
into refusing support to the separatist fighters. Ultimately, the
savagery of the filtration camps only succeeded in provoking the
Rasizade, “Achilles Heel-Part II,” 277-284.
Calorusso, “The War Without Winners,” 329-336.
51 De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 229.
52 Evangelista, The Chechen Wars, 40.
53 Calorusso, “The War Without Winners,” 329-336.
49
50
Tormenting the Bear 92
Chechen population into retaliating against the Russian forces by
lending more support to the separatist fighters.54
As the war moved out of Grozny and into the Chechen
countryside, the actions of the Russian forces caused a further loss
of popular support from the Chechen population. Villages
suspected of harbouring or supporting fighters were punished by
heavy air and artillery bombardments on their civilian
populations.55 With their heavy handed approach, the Russian
forces pushed the civilian population to support the fighters. To
the Chechen population, the Russian forces were ultimately seen as
an occupying force, and even though Chechnya was full of political
cleavages, the brutal actions of the Russian troops solidified
Chechen anger at the invasion and made popular support for the
Chechen fighters even more prevalent than it had been
previously.56 The indiscriminate and arbitrary violence that the
Russian forces employed to terrorize Chechen civilians was
counter-productive at best. Moreover, villages had extensive family
and community ties to individual fighters or units, and provided
them with significant support, regardless of their political affiliation
or attitude on the war.57
After the 6 August assault on Grozny, the Russian leadership
decided that the Chechen war was not worth winning. Public
opinion of the war in Russia was extremely poor, and the morale of
the troops in Chechnya had hit rock bottom.58 The 1994-96
Chechen war ended with the humiliating defeat of the Russian
military. After almost two years of heavy fighting, one of the
world’s most powerful militaries had been torn to pieces by a small,
loosely organized, and overwhelmingly volunteer force which had
The brutality and inhumane conditions of the Russian filtration camps is widely
documented and rarely questioned. Torture and murder appear to have been
commonplace in the filtration camps, which has led to the high number of
Chechen civilians who have ‘disappeared’ without a trace. It is assumed that the
‘disappearances’ are the result of the arbitrary detention and subsequent
execution of hundreds of Chechen civilians in the filtration camps. Lieven,
Tombstone, 132.
55 Often the bombings were accompanied by massacres, such as the actions of the
Russian forces in the village of Samashki, in April 1995. By all reports, hundreds
of Civilians were massacred by rampaging Russian forces as punishment for an
attack by separatist forces on the Russians as they moved into the town. Lieven,
Tombstone, 122.
56 Williams, “Commemorating,” 101.
57 Lieven, “Russia’s Military Nadir,” 24-30.
58 De Waal & Gall, Chechnya, 341.
54
none of the heavy artillery or air-strike capabilities of the Russian
military. The roots of Russia’s defeat are evident in three main
aspects of the war. Firstly, the Russian leadership failed to
recognize the cultural and historical context of the Chechen war.
From the standpoint of the Chechen separatists, this war was
merely an extension of a 200 year struggle to regain independence
from Russian occupation. Most Chechen fighters did not join the
war in support of a particular leader or political party, but were
instead fighting for their independence and homeland, which
provided them with a strong source of morale and inspired them to
commit acts of personal bravery and sacrifice.
The military aspects of the Russian defeat in Chechnya are
also very important in understanding how the Russian forces were
so decisively beaten. The troops used in the Chechen campaign
were predominantly conscripts who had little experience, and
virtually no training in urban combat or counter-insurgency tactics.
To compound this, the coordination between the three ministries
involved in the conflict was virtually nil, which made planning
coordinated attacks nearly impossible.59 Exacerbating the
challenges facing the Russian leadership, the morale of the average
Russian soldier was so low that the troops were unprepared to risk
their lives for a war that most believed had nothing to do with
them. Lastly, the brutality that the Russian forces showed toward
the civilian population in Chechnya caused the Chechens to
overwhelmingly support the separatists. Russian forces relied
exclusively on threats and terror in their attempts to pacify the
Chechen population, but their tactics were so counterproductive
that in nearly every village and town in Chechnya the separatist
fighters were assured food, shelter, and support from the
inhabitants, making it nearly impossible for the Russian forces to
secure any area for too long.60 The eventual Russian defeat left
nearly 7,500 Russian soldiers dead inside Chechnya, and left the
world with an image of the Russian military broken and humiliated
by a small, fiercely determined insurgent force.61
Lieven, “Russia’s Military Nadir,” 24-30.
Calorusso, “The War Without Winners,” 329-336.
61 Rasizade, “Achilles Heel-Part II,” 277-284.
59
60