Modern History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Modern History’
Social niceties are essential for the smooth operation of society, but neither boxing a man’s ears nor calling in the lawyers will bring them back.
Shortly after the Great War, a haughty customer entered a lift and barked ‘Top!’ Moments later he came tumbling out, ejected by the attendant on the grounds that he would not say ‘please’. A. G. Gardiner, who had watched in fascination, felt some sympathy for the lift-man, but feared the consequences for society if we began to think each man had a right to avenge every affront to his sensibilities.
Amid the Don Pacifico Affair, William Gladstone told Lord Palmerston that pride in his own country did not excuse bossing others about like a global schoolmaster.
In 1850, Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston sent the British fleet to Athens, to force the Greek Government into paying compensation to David ‘Don’ Pacifico, a British subject, for losses suffered during a riot. In a stormy session on June 25th Palmerston won over the Commons by asserting that a British subject should enjoy all the security once enjoyed by Roman citizens. William Gladstone disagreed.
Months after promising England would help Holland escape the clutches of Catholic Europe, Charles II did a secret deal with France to sell out Holland and England together.
In 1668, Charles II formed the ‘Triple Alliance’ to stop Louis XIV of France from forcing Holland, a Protestant country, into a European league of Catholic states. Just two years later, egged on by his brother James, Duke of York, Charles not only offered to carve up Holland with Louis, but engaged to bring England along too. Barely a soul knew until Sir John Dalrymple broke the story a hundred years later.
After one of the worst outrages in modern British history, Winston Churchill stood up in the House of Commons to label the Amritsar Massacre an act of terrorism.
On 13th April 1919, thousands of Sikhs crowded into the Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar in the Punjab for a religious festival. Led by intelligence reports to believe that Bolshevik (communist) agitators were among them, General Reginald Dyer quietly shut the gates and gave the order to fire on the crowd. A year later, Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill rose in the Commons to deliver his verdict.
After word came that Harry Demane had been lured aboard a slave-ship, Granville Sharp had only a few hours in which to make sure he did not sail.
Thanks to campaigner Granville Sharp, ‘Somersett’s Case’ in 1772 proved that slave owners could expect no help from our courts. But they could still sell their African servants into slavery in far-off British colonies, and when Mr Jeffries of Bedford Street did just that, the race was on to find Harry Demane before his ship left port — even as London was settling down for the weekend.
In 1680, Samuel Pepys sat down with Charles II to record how, many years before, a bold double-bluff saved the King from Cromwell’s men.
Following defeat at Worcester on September 3rd, 1651, King Charles II (who was just twenty-one at the time) reluctantly fled to France, stumbling in disguise towards the south coast, never more than a step ahead of Cromwell’s men. In 1680, the King looked back in the company of Samuel Pepys on those anxious days, and what happened one famous night at Boscobel House in Shropshire.