History on Display: En Guerre
I’ve spent most of this week in a small carrel in Regenstein library, head down and fingers flying as I try to push my way through a mini-proposal for a book I’d like to write.* It’s not my favorite way to work. Instead of getting up at the end of a stint to make a cup of tea, take care of a task and dance around my study for a few minutes, I have to plan breaks that will let me stretch body and brain.
Yesterday afternoon my brain was dead and my eyes were aching when I walked into the small gallery space connected to the Special Collections department to see an exhibit titled En Guerre: French Illustrators and World War I. Instant wake up!
I’ve been fascinated by the art produced in connection with the First World War for a long time, but this work was new too me: magazine illustrations, postcards, children’s books and prints in the crisp brightly colored style that I associate with advertising posters and children’s illustrations --but with a bite. I was particularly fascinated by the pieces designed to illustrate the diversity of the Allies: pictures of Allied soldiers in uniform, illustrations of national anthems and--my favorite--an odd depiction of the various Allies as flowers** threatened by worms and beetles wearing the distinctive German pickelhaube.
The exhibit is small, but thoughtfully curated--definitely worth a more thoughtful visit than I was able to give it yesterday. I’ll be back.
The exhibit will remain on display through January 2 for any of you in Chicago, or planning a visit. For those of you who aren’t going to be in Chicago anytime soon, the library offers a related on-line exhibit and an excellent catalog.
* Crossed fingers welcome.
**England is a thistle--a subtle suggestion of the prickliness that marked Anglo-French relations for several centuries.
Image courtesy of the University of Chicago Library
When You Take A Road Trip Through History, You Need Luggage
One of the ways you can tell that your blog is starting to gain an audience* is that you start to get random offers of content from people you don't know. Most of it is inappropriate (though I was tempted by the gorgeous interactive map of the kingdoms in Game of Thrones). Some of it is actively offensive. But now and then someone sends you a gem, like this quirky history of luggage by Case Luggage**
Personally, I'd like to see Nelly Bly's famous carpet bag added to the timeline: the intrepid reporter traveled around the world in less than 80 days with one carefully packed piece of hand-luggage.
Any great moments in luggage you think should have been included?
*The best way is getting comments and e-mails from readers. Have I mentioned how much I love hearing from you people?
** Not an ad. Recognition of intellectual property. Copyright is important.
REMINDER: IF YOU RECEIVE THIS POST BY E-MAIL, YOU MAY NEED TO CLICK THROUGH TO THE BROWSER TO SEE THE TIMELINE. JUST CLICK ON THE POST HEADLINE.
Pirates of the…Mediterranean?
In response to my recent post on nineteenth century Chinese pirate Cheng I Sao, Margins reader Davide reminded me of another highly successful pirate* and then made the provocative comment that the subject of piracy in the Mediterranean is very interesting and often neglected by historians.
Challenge accepted. It’s a big question, but let’s take a quick look:
Piracy was a problem in the Mediterranean as early as ancient Egypt** and remained a problem for the next thousand years. By 67 BCE, pirates were such a threat to Roman navigation and commerce that the Roman senate sent Caesar’s ally and rival Pompey to find a solution to the problem. They agreed to provide him with up to 500 ships for up to three years. Pompey divided the Mediterranean into thirteen zones, which he systematically cleared of pirates over the course of three months using fifty warships and fifty transports. (He also used the war against the pirates as the jumping off point for Roman expansion into Syria and Palestine--but that’s another story.)
Pompey reduced piracy to a low grade irritant during the lifetime of the empire, but it picked up again during the Middle Ages when there was no central power strong enough to patrol the seas. Muslim and Christian corsairs alike attacked merchant vessels and sold captives as slaves--sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes because they could. (There is of course, always a question of whether a ship was a pirate or a legitimate warship of a hostile power: both sides were quick to point fingers and say “pirate”.)
The “golden age” of Mediterranean piracy dates from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries when the Barbary corsairs (and their European counterparts, the Knights Hospitallers) terrorized the waves. Just as Elizabeth I of England used licensed privateers as an economical way to fund her lifelong battle against Spain , the Ottomans co-opted the corsairs of Algiers and Tunis as a way to strengthen their navy and expand their influence westward.
The Barbary corsairs were finally repressed in the early nineteenth century, but piracy remains a problem today on a smaller scale, as a quick Google search will reveal.
Anyone have something they'd like to add?
* Barbarossa (Redbeard), a sixteenth century Barbary corsair who worked his way up from pirate to emir of Algiers (1519) and eventually grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet (1533). A successful pirate by any standard and worth a blog post in his own right. Coming soon to a history blog near you.
**At least that's our first documented reference to piracy. An Egyptian document from 1075 BCE describes the voyages of an Egyptian emissary from Karnak who narrowly escaped an attack by pirates from the Phoenician city of Dor, located in modern Israel. In fact, pirates probably existed from the moment that humans tried to ship valuables by water.