Journal of Historical and European Studies

Volume 1 December 2007

Published by the School of Historical and European Studies
La Trobe University
Bundoora 3086
Web: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/histeuro
Tel: 61 3 9479 2572
Fax: 61 3 9479 2879

Published in Melbourne 2008

ISSN 1835-3509

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Contents

Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4
Professor Tim Murray......................................................................................................................4

‘Old Men of the Mountains’: a comparative study of the Ghūrids and the Ismā‘īlīs of Alamūt..........5
David C. Thomas..............................................................................................................................5

Depending Upon Diligence: Chinese at Work in Bendigo 1861-18811..............................................17

Valerie Lovejoy..............................................................................................................................17

‘Lawyers jailed!’ The New York Times’ Coverage of the Arrest of Four Defence Lawyers in the
‘Chicago 8’ Trial.................................................................................................................................33
Nicholas Sharman..........................................................................................................................33

Could Poetry Define Nationhood? The Case of Somali Oral Poetry and the Nation.........................46
Ali M. Ahad...................................................................................................................................46

The Multicultural Values of the Melbourne 1843 Rioting Irish Catholic Australians........................54
Jennifer Gerrand.............................................................................................................................54

HISTORIA BAETICA: Dramatic Play or Historical Document?......................................................69

Cristina Potz...................................................................................................................................69

Clothing as a Political Tool in the Ottoman Empire: Two Miniature Paintings From a Sixteenth-
Century Illustrated History of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520 -1566)............................................76
Susan Scollay.................................................................................................................................76

Classic Maya Polity, Identity, Migration and Political Vocabulary: Reconceptualisation of Classic
Period Maya Political Organisation....................................................................................................89
Peter Biro.......................................................................................................................................89

Archaeologies of Utopia?..................................................................................................................104
Geoff Hewitt.................................................................................................................................104

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Introduction
Professor Tim Murray
Welcome to the first edition of the Journal of Historical and European Studies, a journal
devoted to publishing the work of graduate students in the School of Historical and European
Studies at La Trobe University.

The papers included in this edition were first given at the School’s postgraduate conference
on Friday 23rd November 2007, and they were refereed and selected for inclusion by a panel
made up of the Professoriate of the School. For the bulk of our contributors this will be their
first experience of academic publishing, and I hope that they have found the experience to be
sufficiently rewarding to encourage them to do it again – frequently! This was (and remains)
our primary purpose. Notwithstanding the experience of our authors, I am much impressed
by the quality of the work presented here, which reflects very well on our graduate student
body, and on the staff who have supervised the research.

The organisers of the Conference (postgraduate students Francesca Strada and Susan Scollay)
and the staff who attended also deserve acknowledgement and our thanks. The conference
was itself an innovation in 2007 and was widely regarded as being a great success. We shall
be staging it again in 2008 and look forward to another suite of excellent contributions from
our postgraduates.

The Journal of Historical and European Studies would not exist without the dedicated work
of School staff, particularly Wei Ming (responsible for cover design) and Josie Ryder
(desktop publishing). The whole project was managed by the School’s Executive Officer
Deborah Hewitt. It is worth noting that this Journal was produced barely five months after the
papers were delivered, which is speedy publication in anyone’s language.

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‘Old Men of the Mountains’: a comparative study of the
Ghūrids and the Ismā‘īlīs of Alamūt
David C. Thomas

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE saw tumultuous political and social upheavals in
central and western Asia. The ‘Abbāsids, the erstwhile regional power and leaders of the
Muslim world, were incapable of repelling the threat of the Crusaders – the Saldjūks, Turkic
nomads from the steppe, had virtually imprisoned the ‘Abb āsid caliphs in their harems, after
seizing control of Baghdād in 447 AH / 1055 CE.1 Less than a century later, however, the
Saldjūk’s greatest sultan, Sandjar b. Malik Shāh, was himself held captive by nomads
encroaching on the sedentary Muslim world, in search of pasture and bounty. As the political
landscape continued to fracture, quasi-independent fiefdoms emerged. Two such fiefdoms
were the Ismā‘īlī Nizārīs (known colloquially to Crusader chroniclers as the ‘Assassins’) and
the Ghūrid dynasty in central Afghanistan.
Striking parallels exist between these two dynasties – marginalised and despised by their
neighbours, they established secure mountain strongholds, which acted as refuges and bases
from which to expand. They reached their zenith under charismatic and astute leaders, who
extended Ismā‘īlī and Ghūrid domains far beyond their heartlands. Ultimately, however, both
dynasties succumbed to invading nomad armies from the steppe – the Khwārizm-Shāh and
then Ögedey’s Mongol armies overran the Ghūrids in 619/1222, while thirty-five years later,
Hülegü’s Mongol armies forced the surrender and dismantlement of the Ism ā‘īlī fortresses.
Both dynasties were lost to the vagaries of history – all that remains, apart from the tumbled
stones of their fortresses, are the often biased and exaggerated accounts of medieval
chroniclers.
Amidst the similarities between the Ismā‘īlīs and the Ghūrids, distinct differences are evident
which help to explain their changing fortunes. The Ism ā‘īlīs were an oppressed Shī‘a
minority, viewed as heretics by the majority of their Muslim brethren. Consequently, they
developed a strong sense of identity and ideology that ensured unquestioning allegiance to
their ‘Grand Master’. Ismā‘īlī leaders generally recognised their limitations, and modified
their goals and tactics in the light of the prevailing political and military circumstances.
The Ghūrids were more prone to internecine rivalries, but once united, they were territorially
more ambitious than the Ismā‘īlīs. Seizing upon the weaknesses of their neighbours, they
rapidly accumulated an empire stretching from eastern Iran to Bengal in India. The primary
purpose of Ghūrid expansion, however, seems to have been to extract tribute and appropriate
booty. These external sources of income enabled them to aggrandise their urban centres and
sustain a population beyond the natural carrying capacity of the land.
Although the histories of these two dynasties are now relatively well understood, they have
received little archaeological attention. Archaeological fieldwork at Djām (the Ghūrid
summer capital of Fīrūzkūh) in central Afghanistan, and exploration around Alam ūt, the
Ismā‘īlī fortress capital in the Alburz mountains north-west of Tehran, are starting to
complement the historical sources. This paper will present some of the historical and
archaeological data available and conclude by comparing the reasons for the downfall of
these two intriguing dynasties.

‘Old men of the mountains’

A plethora of quasi-independent fiefdoms emerged in the eastern Islamic world during the
twelfth century CE, as the power of the ‘Abb āsid caliphate waned. None was more infamous
than Hasan-i Sabbāh’s Ismā‘īlīs of Alamūt, who were labelled by the chroniclers of the
Crusades as ‘The Assassins’. Marco Polo visited Alam ūt in 1273 and perpetuated the tales of

5
Hasan-i Sabbāh, the Shaykh al-Djibāl (‘Old Man of the Mountain’), 2 whose secretive Shī‘a
sect had seized and established a series of fortified strongholds in the Alburz mountains
around Alamūt, in Kūmis and Kūhistān (also in Persia) and in parts of Syria. Despite several
more recent, scholarly studies,3 the ‘Assassins’ continue to be associated with drug-fuelled,
fanatical political killings, partly as a result of the literary works of Dante, Vladimir Bartol
and William Burroughs.4
Only forty years after the death of Hasan-i Sabbāh in 518 AH / 1124 CE, another, less well-
known ‘mountain warlord’ came to prominence at the head of the Ghūrid dynasty in central
Afghanistan. The rise of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muhammad (d. 599/1203) coincided with the demise
of the Ghaznavids to the south and the diminishing power of the Saldjūks to the north. Unlike
many of his ancestors, Ghiyāth al-Dīn set aside fraternal rivalry and ruled in conjunction with
his younger brother Mucizz al-Dīn Muhammad (d. 602/1206). From their remote,
impoverished power-base, the Ghūrids accumulated a large ‘empire’ stretching from
Nīshāpūr in eastern Persia to Bengal in India.
In this paper, I will use historical and archaeological data to outline the characteristics of the
Ismā‘īlīs of Alamūt and the Ghūrids. I hope to demonstrate that although both dynasties have
much in common, the significant ideological, strategic and geo-political differences between
the dynasties explain their respective life-cycles and ultimate demises.

Geographical, historical and religious backgrounds

The Ismā‘īlī and Ghūrid heartlands lie in remote, rugged, mountainous environments at
opposite ends of the Persian world. The hostile terrain, in particular the harsh climate, limited
water resources, thin soils and dearth of arable land played a significant role in shaping the
lifestyles of their inhabitants – subsistence-level transhumance and opportunistic dry-farming
predominate in the Alburz5 and semi-nomadic pastoralism in Ghūr.
Sixty-six villages were known in the Alam ūt district at the time of Wladimir Ivanow’s visit in
1928, although many were uninhabited.6 Ivanow argues that the Alamūt valley had almost no
chance of being self-sufficient without imported supplies. 7 Other travellers in the 1930s also
noted the poverty of the mountain folk around Alam ūt, although Freya Stark states that “...
except for sugar and tea and paraffin, and rice, of which the home supply is inadequate, and
which comes with the tea from the Caspian, the Alamut valley seems to be sufficient to
itself.”8
The Ismā‘īlīs of Alamūt periodically raided the more fertile lowlands around Kazwīn, 80 km
to the south-west, in part to supplement their food-stocks. Such raids, however, often proved
counter-productive. Although secure in their near impregnable fortresses, the Ism ā‘īlīs were
relatively powerless to prevent the destruction of their own fields and orchards during reprisal
raids, and the massacres of their co-religionists who could not take refuge in the fortresses.
The Saldjūk forces of Sultan Muhammad Tapar, for example, destroyed crops in the area of
Alamūt for eight consecutive years prior his death in 511/1118. 9
Although slightly lower in altitude, the Ghūrid heartland in central Afghanistan was, and
continues to be, as inhospitable as the Alburz. The larger area and deep narrow valleys
dissecting the mountains have throughout history made the region difficult to penetrate – the
road running east-west along the Her ī Rūd on a recent map is a figment of the cartographer’s
imagination.10 As recently as the 1960s, when studies estimated that 15% of the Afghān
population was semi-nomadic, Ghūr formed one of the centres of summer pasturage and
kuchis (nomads) are still a common sight in the region , living off their flocks of sheep and
goats, exchange and trade.11 Ghur province still relies on imported and stockpiled food aid
during the snow-bound winter months.12
Preliminary archaeo-botanical and -zoological studies at Djām, the Ghūrid summer capital of
Fīrūzkūh,13 provide evidence of a comparable lifestyle during the medieval period. Wheat,
barley, pulses and fruits were cultivated locally or imported, while sheep/goats dominate the
faunal remains and seem to have been kept primarily for secondary products rather than their

6
meat. Anthracological studies and comparison of photographs taken in 1959 point to denser
and more varied vegetation at Djām in the past than that found lining the Herī Rūd today.14
The Ismā‘īlīs lacked the cohesive heartland that formed the Ghūrid core. They were
concentrated in dozens of fortresses with surrounding lands and villages, and a few towns,
scattered from Syria to eastern Persia. 15 This geographical disparity, however, was in marked
contrast to what Farhad Daftary has described as ‘... a remarkable cohesion and sense of unity
both internally and against the outside world’. 16 Although periodically semi-autonomous, the
Ismā‘īlī centres continued to acknowledge and follow the leadership of the ‘Grand Master’ of
Alamūt.17 Conversely, the more cohesive Ghūrid heartland was prone to fracture politically
because it lacked a dominant geographical, political and ideological focal point. The rival
branches of the ruling Shansabānī family and other chieftains, ensconced in the myriad
valleys of central Afghanistan, tended towards independence whenever the opportunity
arose.18
The medieval landscape of Ghūr was dotted with towers, strategically positioned to defend
the valley pastures and routes leading north to F īrūzkūh.19 These defensive precautions are
understandable given the historical, geo-political and religious milieu. The Ghūrids were
regarded by their neighbours as little more than backward mountain brigands – Islam did not
penetrate the region until the campaigns of the Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmūd in 401/1010-11.20
The Ghūrids subsequently adhered to the parochial Karr āmiyya branch of Sunnī Islam until
595/1199, when Ghiyāth al-Dīn officially abandoned it in favour of the more mainstream
Shāfi‘ī school of jurisprudence.21 This was an unpopular move domestically – rioting broke
out in Fīrūzkūh and other urban centres. Bosworth interprets the shift as an attempt by the
Ghūrid elite to gain greater acceptance in the wider Islamic world. 22

The Shī‘a Ismā‘īlīs had their own religious upheavals. They were persecuted as heretics by
many of their Sunnī neighbours (including the Ghūrids), prompting them to adopt an even
starker doctrinal shift – under their ruler Hasan III (r. 607-618/1210-1221), the Ism ā‘īlīs
converted en masse to Sunnī Islam. The Ismā‘īlī populus accepted this apparent theological
volte face within their tradition of occultation or concealment, and belief in the infallibility of
the Grand Master. Although this flirtation with orthodoxy gradually lapsed after Hasan III’s
death, it was sufficient to end temporally the Ism ā‘īlīs’ theological isolation and Ghūrid raids
on their territories, and thus was deemed expedient. 23

The Ghūrid raids exemplify the periodically fractious relationship that existed between the
two dynasties, despite the 1,280km separating their isolated capitals. The tensions were partly
due to the Ghūrid’s adherence to the anti-Ismā‘īlī Karrāmiyya sect24 and the proximity of
Ismā‘īlī strongholds in Kūhistān to the south-west of Ghūr. The Ismā‘īlīs sent emissaries to
Ghūr ca 550/1155, and considerable quantities of Ghūrid gold coins have been found at
Alamūt, possibly sent as tribute by Ism ā‘īlīs in Kūhistān.25 Ismā‘īlī attempts to gain a
foothold in Ghūr, although initially tolerated, were soon ruthlessly extinguished by the Sunn ī
Karrāmiyya establishment; the Ghūrid historian al-Djūzdjānī enthuses that following the
accession of Sayf al-D īn Muhammad (r. 556-8/1161-3) the ‘... slaughter of all heretics was
commanded. The whole of them were sent to Hell, and the area of the country of Ghūr, which
was a mine of religion and orthodoxy, was purified from the infernal impurity...’ 26 Al-
Djūzdjānī also attributes the assassination of Mu cizz al-Dīn in India in 602/1206 on local
Ismā‘īlīs, although the Ismā‘īlīs claimed to have acted for the Khwārizm-Shāh, possibly in
an attempt to divert reprisals.27

Historical evidence
Al-Djūzdjānī’s chronicle highlights some of the problems with the historical sources from the
period. His Tabakāt-i Nāsiri is a history of the Muslim dynasties of Asia down to the
‘irruption of the infidel Mughals [Mongols]’; it is the main historical source for the Ghūrids.

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The Tabakāt-i Nāsiri was completed in 1260, when al-Djūzdjānī was in the service of the
Ghūrids’ successors in Delhi and is, unsurprisingly, highly partial in their favour.
Unfortunately, it is also incomplete and often contradictory – Major H.G. Raverty had to draw
on twelve copies of the chronicle for his translation and describes it as ‘hopelessly defective’
in places.28

Al-Djūzdjānī’s Sunnī prejudices are shared by another major chronicler of the period,
Djuwaynī, who also completed his Ta’rīkh-i djahān-gushāy (The history of the world
conqueror – i.e. Čingiz-Khān and the Mongols) in 1260. Djuwaynī accompanied the Mongol
Khān Hülegü during his campaign against the Ism ā‘īlīs and drew up the terms of the
surrender of the last Ism ā‘īlī ruler, Rukn al-Dīn Khur-Shāh, in 654/1256. He went on to
become the Mongols’ governor in Baghdād and its dependencies in 657/1259 and survived an
assassination attempt (blamed on Ism ā‘īlīs) in 669/1270.29 Given these factors, Djuwaynī’s
anti-Ismā‘īlī bias and the influence of his patrons are equally unsurprising – as the historian
David Morgan notes, in a piece of masterful understatement: ‘A degree of tact and caution
was doubtless expected of a Mongol government servant’. 30

Like most medieval Islamic dynasties, the Ism ā‘īlīs and the Ghūrids placed high value on
intellectual activities and built up libraries of scholarly and literary works, scientific tracts and
equipment.31 Patronage attracted astrologers, poets, philosophers and religious scholars to the
remote Ghūrid royal courts,32 while Ismā‘īlī fortresses in Kūhistān acted as refuges for
scholars such as the prominent astronomer and Shī‘a theologian Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī during
the initial Mongol campaigns.33 Djuwaynī’s exalted position in Hülegü’s entourage enabled
him to select many ‘choice books’ (Kur‘āns, some Ismā‘īlī treatises and astronomical
instruments) from the library at Alamūt, before consigning the rest to the flames. 34 The
thirteenth century historian Rashīd al-Dīn also seems to have had direct access to some of the
books from the Alamūt library, by virtue of his grandfather being present at the Ism ā‘īlī
surrender.35 Unfortunately, little archaeological evidence of the intellectual vibrancy and
patronage of either dynasty’s court has been unearthed thus far.

Archaeological evidence
Most of the archaeological evidence that has survived consists of architectural remains – the
monumental minarets, madrasas (religious colleges) and towers of the Ghūrids, and the
Ismā‘īlī fortresses. The historian Hamd Allāh al-Mustawfī refers to nearly fifty strongly
fortified Ismā‘īlī castles in the neighbourhood of Alam ūt, while Hülegü is recorded as having
taken seventy Ismā‘īlī castles in Kūhistān.36 Most of these were destroyed by the Mongols,
although Djuwaynī’s assertion that ‘... there remains not one stone of the foundations upon
another’ at Alamūt is clearly an exaggeration – elsewhere, he records that Ism ā‘īlī renegades
briefly re-took the fortress at Alamūt in 673/1275.37

The limited archaeological studies and excavations that have been undertaken in the Alam ūt
region leads Daftary to conclude that the ‘non-literary sources on the Niz ārīs of Persia are
rather insignificant’,38 although he overlooks Ivanow’s 1960 study Alamut and Lamasar. Two
mediaeval Ismaili strongholds in Iran. An archaeological study and Peter Willey’s 1963 work,
The castles of the Assassins.39 Willey has more recently published Eagle’s nest: Ismaili castles
in Iran and Syria, the product of more than twenty expeditions to Ism ā‘īlī fortresses, spread
over forty years.

The remote mountainous terrain and the turmoil in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in
1979 have similarly limited the archaeological investigation of the Ghūrid heartland – the
Minaret of Djām only came to world attention following a French expedition in 1957. 40 Even
after its re-discovery, the archaeological remains around the minaret were largely overlooked,
prior to the inception of the Minaret of Jam Archaeological Project in 2003. Djām became

8
Afghanistan’s first World Heritage Site in 2002, but this international recognition of the
unique importance of the site has merely resulted in further restrictions being placed upon
fieldwork – indeed, UNESCO and the Afghan authorities have now inexplicably put on hold
all archaeological fieldwork at the ca twenty hectare site,41 until efforts to stabilise the leaning
minaret are completed. The extensive looting of the site, which occurred during the mid-
1990s and early 2000s, has also significantly hampered archaeological research at the site. 42

Despite these challenges, two recent seasons of fieldwork by the Minaret of Jam
Archaeological Project have added considerably to our knowledge of this well-organised,
sophisticated medieval urban centre. 43 The architectural and engineering skills of the Ghūrids
are evident in the standing remains at Djām – the magnificent sixty-three metre tall minaret is
merely the most obvious architectural monument. To its east, robber holes, exposed sections
of the river bank and soundings excavated in 2003 and 2005 have revealed evidence of a large
courtyard building (probably a mosque or madrasa) extending for over ninety metres; the
robust fortress of Kasr Zarafshān overlooks the centre of the medieval capital, while four-
hundred metres higher up are the more ephemeral remains of a badly looted elite mountain-
top residence of Kūh-i Khāra. The most prominent surviving feature of the residence is a
baked-brick cistern with a capacity of over 85,000 litres. The remnants of a baked-brick
bridge are also visible beside the minaret. This monumental architecture vividly portrays the
pretensions and piety of Ghiyāth al-Dīn and the Ghūrid elite, as well as the resources in
materials and labour available to them during the Ghūrid fluorescence – nothing of
comparable scale or durability has been built at Djām in the intervening eight hundred years.

Ghūrid appreciation of aesthetics is also evident in the small finds from Djām, such as
fragments of ornate stucco, carved brickwork and the repeated plastering and painting of
domestic structures.44 The high quality ceramics from China and Iran, glass shards, bronze
objects and coins littering the surface of the site and spoil heaps around innumerable robber
holes indicate access to a wide range of imported products. 45 The importance of trade, and the
existence of ethnic diversity and religious tolerance are also evident in the fifty-four
tombstones, inscribed with Hebrew, Persian and Aramaic names in a cemetery to the south of
the minaret.46

Al-Djūzdjānī states that the fortress and city of F īrūzkūh were founded by Ghiyāth al-Dīn’s
uncle Kutb al-Dīn Muhammad (d. 541/1146/7) and completed by another uncle in 544/1149. 47
Alamūt has a much longer history – the Daylamite fortress at the site dates back to 246/860,
although it was re-built after Hasan-i Sabbāh took possession of it in 483/1090.48 He
immediately made improvements to the fortifications, storage facilities and water supply, as
well as irrigation systems and cultivation in Alam ūt valley. The fortress is built on the Rock
of Alamūt, a 365 m long ridge, no more than 32 m wide, towering 275 m above the
surrounding valley.49 The military astuteness of the Ismā‘īlīs in their selection of defensive
locations and preparations for long sieges impressed even their implacable enemy
Djuwaynī,50 and Willey compares it favourably with that of the Crusaders. 51

The fortress at Alamūt was in an ‘extremely dilapidated’ state when visited by travellers in the
1920s and 1930s, due in part to fifty years of robbing by treasure-hunters. 52 Laurence
Lockhart, however, was able to discern major stretches of defensive walls, two reservoirs cut
into bedrock and tunnels and caves for stores during his visit to the site in 1928. Possible
foundations for superstructures, burnt brick and good mortar, and masses of broken pottery
give tantalising glimpses of the former glory of the site. Willey has since published a
relatively detailed sketch map, although it is unclear how many of the discernible remains
date to the site’s re-use as a royal prison by the Safawids in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.53
High quality ceramics dating to the twelfth-thirteenth centuries have been collected at
Alamūt,54 although several Ismā‘īlī leaders were renowned for leading ascetic lives and

9
forcing their followers to do the same.55 These include lustre painted wares, underglaze
painted pottery, plain turquoise vessels, sgraffiato ware and one piece of imitation porcelain.
Thousands of comparable medieval ceramics were noted by Stark at Lamasar, another major
Ismā‘īlī fortress, built by Hasan-i Sabbāh’s successor Kiyā Buzurg-Ummīd.56 Many of these
ceramics probably came from the major production centres at Rayy and/or K āshān, although
the fifteen kilns found in the nearby valley of Andidj and a seggar (used to keep bowls
separate during firing)57 indicate that Alamūt may have been more self-sufficient in ceramics
than Djām where only one kiln has thus far been located.

The demise of the Ismā‘īlīs and the Ghūrids

External sources of income – in particular tribute and plunder from India, for the Ghūrids,58
and bribes to gain immunity from assassinations for the Ism ā‘īlīs59 – played a major role in
the twelfth to thirteenth century fluorescence of Djām and Alamūt. Political and ideological
differences, however, help to explain their demise. The Ghūrids, under the inspired leadership
of Ghiyāth al-Dīn and Mucizz al-Dīn, seized upon the weakness of their enemies in the late
twelfth century, but remained pre-occupied by the threat from their traditional enemies, the
Ghaznavids, to the south.60 They made little attempt to co-opt or establish administrative,
social and ideological structures to consolidate their territorial gains, particularly in India – a
short-termist desire for booty seems to have been their primary motivation. The Ghūrids
reverted to internecine conflicts following the deaths of the ruling brothers, just when they
most needed unity to counter the emerging power of the Khwārizm-Shāh and the Mongols, to
the north and east. The rapid collapse of their empire is, consequently, unsurprising.
Ironically, it was the tradition of centralised authority and hierarchism that proved to be the
Ismā‘īlīs’ downfall. They survived the initial Mongol campaigns in Persia in the 1220s, but
were betrayed by weak leadership thirty years later. It is important, however, to take into
account the relatively small number of Ism ā‘īlīs and the psychological effects of massacres
and repeated attempts to unseat them from their fortresses. 61 The sheer size and terrifying
reputation of the Mongol forces 62 may have intimidated Rukn al-D īn Khur-Shāh and
persuaded him to attempt to appease rather than resist Hülegü. He may have been hoping that
Mongol succession disputes would dispel the invasion, as had happened following the death
of Ögedey in 1241.63

Hodgson and others have pointed out that at least some of the Ism ā‘īlī fortresses could have
held out given the thirteen year long resistance at Girdk ūh, where eventually a lack of
clothing, rather than provisions forced their submission. 64 Rukn al-Dīn Khur-Shāh’s stalling
tactics, however, merely infuriated the Mongols and their Sunn ī advisors (as well as some of
his own followers). The eventual surrender of the Ism ā‘īlī fortresses was followed by their
dismantlement, the murder of Rukn al-D īn Khur-Shāh and massacres. The capitulation of
Alamūt and internal divisions disheartened the Ism ā‘īlīs in Syria, who eventually submitted
to Baybars I (r. 658-676/1260-1277), the Mamlūk sultan of Egypt.
Despite the rather tame ends to these medieval dynasties and the desolate remains at their
capitals, the Ismā‘īlī and Ghūrid legacies live on.65 Ismā‘īlī communities remain dotted
around the region and their spiritual leader, the Agha Khān, is one of the wealthiest men in the
world. The Ghūrids have become an important national symbol in post-Taliban Afghanistan;
their magnificent minaret adorns postcards, books and election posters and continues to attract
tourists (and archaeologists) from around the world.

Endnotes

10
1 The Islamic calendar is lunar, and thus on average 11 days shorter than the solar Julian calendar. It starts
with the Prophet’s Hidjra or emigration from Mekka to al-Madīna in 622 CE, hence the AH (Anno
Hegirae) Islamic dates. I have followed the Encyclopaedia of Islam with regard to diacritics.
2 Ronald Latham, ed., The Travels of Marco Polo (London: The Folio Society, 1968), 4-57; see Henry
George Raverty, ed., Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī: a General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia,
including Hindustan; from A.H. 194 (810 A.D.) to A.H. 658 (1260 A.D.) and the Irruption of the Infidel
Mughals into Islam. (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1970), 1187 fn. 7 and Laurence
Lockhart, “Hasan-i-Sabbah and the Assassins.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 4
(1930): 681 fn. 1 for explanations of the mistranslation of the appellation Shaykh al-Djibāl. Ghūrid
rulers were known as Malik al-Djibāl (‘king of the mountains’) – Finbarr Barry Flood, “Ghurid
Monuments and Muslim Identities: Epigraphy and Exegesis in Twelfth-century Afghanistan.” The
Indian Economic and Social History Review 42(3) (2005): 266.
3 Farhad Daftary, The Isma’ilis: their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990); Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis (London: Tauris, 1994); Bernard
Lewis, The Assassins: a Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
4 Vladimir Bartol, Alamut (Seattle: Scala House Press, 2005); Burroughs dedicates his work to Hasan-i
Sabbāh, amongst others – William Seward Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night (London: John Calder,
1981), xviii; Alighieri Dante, Inferno (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971). See also the 1986
film The Alamut Ambush, directed by Ken Grieve, based on the 1971 Cold War novel by Anthony Price,
The Alamut Ambush (London: Gollancz, 1971).
5 Freya Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (London: J. Murray, 1934), 207 ff.
6 Wladimir Ivanow, “Alamut.” The Geographical Journal, 1 (1931): 39.
7 Wladimir Ivanow, Alamut and Lamasar. Two Mediaeval Ismaili Strongholds in Iran. An Archaeological
Study (Teheran: The Ismaili Society, 1960), 20.
8 Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins, 226.
9 Ivanow, Alamut and Lamasar, 20; Daftary, The Assassin Legends, 363. Ivanow, Alamut, 43 notes that
the word for ‘fortress’, kal‘a, can refer to a fortified refuge, left unoccupied when not under attack.
10 Reise Know-How 2001, 1:1,000,000 map. In 2003, the 215 km drive east from Hārat to Djām took
twelve hours to complete, while in 2005, the 70 km drive west from Chaghcharān, the capital of Ghūr
province, to Djām took six hours by four-wheel drive.
11 Ludwig W. Adamec, ed., Herat and Northwestern Afghanistan (Graz: Akademische Druck - u.
Verlagsanstalt ADEVA, 1975), 57-64; Sophie R. Bowlby, “The Geographical Background,” in The
Archaeology of Afghanistan from Earliest Times to the Timurid Period, eds Frank Raymond Allchin and
Norman Hammond (London: Academic Press, 1978), 25-33.
12 “One month to avert mass displacement in Ghor”, IRIN 23 October 2007.
13 For a summary of the debates over the identification of Djām as Fīrūzkūh, see David Colin Thomas,
“Firûzkûh: the Summer Capital of the Ghurids,” in Cities in the Pre-modern Islamic World: the Urban
Impact of State, Society and Religion, eds Amira K. Bennison and Alison Lucy Gascoigne (London:
Routledge Curzon, 2007), 118-121.
14 See Holmes, Hald and Deckers in David Colin Thomas, Katleen Deckers, Matilda Holmes, Mette Marie
Hald, Marco Madella and Kevin White, “Environmental Evidence from the Minaret of Jam
Archaeological Project, Afghanistan.” Iran XLIV (2006): 253-276.
15 Willey calculates that the Ismā‘īlīs seized up to two hundred fortresses during their history, although not
all of these were held simultaneously. Available [Online] – http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?
ContentID=105073 [25 February 2008]. Both dynasties are thought to have used pigeon postal system to
communicate between their isolated fortresses and towers – Enno Franzius, History of the Order of
Assassins, (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969), 109; Raverty, ed., Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī I: xlvi.
16 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 324.
17 Ibid., 381.
18 Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “The Early Islamic History of Ghur.” Central Asiatic Journal 5 (1961):
118-119. More recently, with regard to the post-Soviet breakdown of Afghanistan, Gannon noted: “Each
of the seven big mujadedeen factions had hundreds of local commanders, who imposed their own rules
in their own area, like little fiefdoms... It was a system of medieval simplicity.” Kathy Gannon, I is for
Infidel: from Holy War to Holy Terror: 18 Years inside Afghanistan (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), 8.
19 Warwick Ball, “The Towers of Ghur: a Ghurid Maginot Line?” in Cairo to Kabul. Afghan and Islamic
Studies Presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, eds Warwick Ball and Leonard Harrow (London: Melisende,
2002).

11
20 Bosworth, The Early Islamic History of Ghur, 120, 125 ff.
21 Flood, Ghurid Monuments and Muslim Identities, 281.
22 Bosworth, The Early Islamic History of Ghur, 130-131.
23 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 405-406.
24 Flood, Ghurid Monuments and Muslim Identities, 269.
25 David Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 176.
26 Raverty, ed., Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī I, 365.
27 Franzius, History of the Order of Assassins, 86.
28 Raverty, ed., Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī I, 392, fn. 6; 400, fn. 3; 404, fn. 9, inter alia.
29 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 327; Franzius, History of the Order of Assassins, 144; Shafique N. Virani, “The
Eagle Returns: Evidence of Continued Isma’ili Activity at Alamut and in the South Caspian Region
following the Mongol Conquests.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 2 (2003): 355.
30 Morgan, The Mongols, 18.
31 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 382.
32 Bosworth, The Early Islamic History of Ghur, 131; Khaliq Ahmed Nizami, “The Ghurids,” in History of
Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume IV. The Age of Achievement: A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth
Century. Part One. The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, eds M.S. Asimov and Clifford Edmund
Bosworth (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1998), 189.
33 Hamid Dabashi, “The Philosopher / Vizier: Khwāja Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī and the Ismacilis,” in
Mediaeval Ismacili History and Thought, ed. Farhad Daftary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996); Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 406, 408-409. See Timothy May, “A Mongol-Ismâ’îlî Alliance?: Thoughts
on the Mongols and Assassins.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Series 3) 14/3 (2004) on a possible
alliance between the Mongols and the Ismā‘īlīs until some time between 1243 and 1246.
34 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 327. The library at Alamūt had already been purged of ‘heretical’ texts by
scholars from Kazwīn during Hasan III’s Sunnī phase (Ibid., 406).
35 Ibid., 329. Rashīd al-Dīn was a Jew who converted to Islam and provides a more objective appraisal of
the Ismā‘īlīs in his Djāmi‘ al-tawārīkh (Collection of Histories) than most of his contemporaries.
36 Guy Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. Mesopotamia, Persia and Central Asia from the
Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur (New York: AMS Press Inc, 1976), 221. Lewis feels the hundred
fortress taken by Hülegü is “certainly an exaggeration” (Lewis, The Assassins, 94).
37 Lewis, The Assassins, 95.
38 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 326.
39 Peter Willey, Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005). See also
Pinder-Wilson’s study of the ceramics of the period – Ralph Pinder-Wilson, “Appendix C: Persian
Pottery at the Time of the Assassins,” in The Castles of the Assassins, by Peter Willey (London: George
G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1963).
40 The Illustrated London News, 10 January 1959 – Andre Maricq, “The Mystery of the Great Minaret: the
Remarkable and Isolated 12th-century Tower of Jham Discovered in Unexplored Afghanistan”; Andre
Maricq and Gaston Wiet, Le Minaret de Djam: la Découverte de la Capitale des Sultans Ghurides (XIIe-
XIIIe siècles) (Paris: Mémoires de la délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan, 1959); Janine
Sourdel-Thomine, Le Minaret Ghouride de Jam. Un Chef d’Oeuvre du XIIe Siècle (Paris: Memoire de
l‘Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 2004).
41 See David Colin Thomas and Iain Shearer, “Accessing Firuzkuh, the Summer ‘Capital’ of the Ghurids,”
in Papers from the Archaeology of the Inaccessible Session 2005 TAG Conference in Sheffield, ed.
Thomas L. Evans (in prep.), for estimates of the site’s size and medieval population, using fieldwork
data and satellite images.
42 David Colin Thomas, “Looting, Heritage Management and Archaeological Strategies at Jam,
Afghanistan.” Culture Without Context 14 (Spring, 2004); David Colin Thomas and Alison Lucy
Gascoigne, “Recent Archaeological Investigations of Looting around the Minaret of Jam, Ghur
Province,” in Art and Archaeology of Afghanistan: its Fall and Survival. A Multi-disciplinary Approach,
ed. Juliette van Krieken-Pieters (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006).
43 David Colin Thomas, Giannino Pastori and Ivan Cucco, “Excavations at Jam, Afghanistan.” East and
West 54 (2004); Thomas et al., Environmental Evidence; Thomas, Firûzkûh; see also Werner Herberg and
Djelani Davary, “Topographische Feldarbeiten in Ghor: Bericht über Forschungen zum Problem Jam-
Ferozkoh.” Afghanistan Journal 2 (1976).
44 Miranda Semple, “Micromorphological Report.” Unpublished, 2007.
45 Thomas and Gascoigne, Recent Archaeological Investigations; Thilo Rehren, “Metallurgical Report.”

12
 Unpublished, 2005.
46 Walter Joseph Fischel, “The Rediscovery of the Medieval Jewish Community at Firuzkuh in Central
Afghanistan.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 85 (1965); Erica C.D. Hunter, “More Hebrew-
script Tombstones from Jām, Afghanistan,” in prep.
47 Raverty, ed., Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī I: 339-341; Leshnik suggests a date of ca 1146, although the Hebrew
tombstones at Djām point to some occupation of the site dating back to 1115 – L.S. Leshnik, “Ghor,
Firuzkuh and the Minar-i Jam.” Central Asiatic Journal 12 (1968-69): 39.
48 Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 340.
49 Lockhart, Hasan-i-Sabbah, 692-693.
50 Cited in Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 429; note, however, Hillenbrand’s analysis of why Djuwaynī may have
over-emphasized the Mongol achievement in forcing the submission of the Ismā‘īlīs – Carole
Hillenbrand, “The Power Struggle between the Saljuqs and the Isma cilis of Alamūt, 487-518/1094-1124:
the Saljuq Perspective,” in Mediaeval Ismacili History and Thought, ed. Farhad Daftary (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
51 Available [Online]: http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106256 [25 February 2008].
52 Laurence Lockhart, “Some Notes on Alamut.” The Geographical Journal 1 (1931): 47; Ivanow, Alamut
and Lamasar, 30. Monteith was the first Westerner to visit the site, a century earlier. He noted a strongly
built enclosure wall and tower. “A bath reservoir and extensive place are the only buildings now
remaining” – Colonel Monteith, “Journal of a Tour through Azerdbijan and the Shores of the Caspian.”
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 3 (1833): 16-17.
53 Lockhart, Hasan-i-Sabbah, 693; Sylvia A. Matheson, Persia: an Archaeological Guide (London: Faber
and Faber Ltd, 1972), 57.
54 Pinder-Wilson, Appendix C, 323-324.
55 Anthony Campbell, 2004. The Assassins of Alamut. Available [Online]:
http://www.acampbell.ukfsn.org/assassins/assassins-html/index.html, 37, 56; [14/11/2007]; Daftary, The
Isma’ilis, 366-367; Lockhart, Hasan-i-Sabbah, 685.
56 Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins, 231, 247. Of Lamasar, Stark noted: “There is nothing left of the
buildings except a bit of wall here and there; a piece of the keep still upright with a loop-hole on the
highest point; and masses of débris of masonry over all the top of the crest, which is a good-sized place
and must have contained a little hamlet as well as the castle itself.” (Ibid., 231, although she gives much
more detailed descriptions on pages 246-248). Lamasar guarded the western approach to Alam ūt and
was renowned for its ample water resources and cisterns, fine buildings and gardens (Daftary, The
Isma’ilis, 438).
57 Pinder-Wilson, Appendix C, 327; see also kiln photographs, 2007, available from
http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=105078#6, [25 February 2008].
58 Peter Jackson, “The Fall of the Ghurid Dynasty,” in Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth
Vol. II. The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture, ed. Carole Hillenbrand (Leiden:
Brill, 2000), 210; see also Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Artifacts, Elites and Medieval
Hindu-Muslim Encounters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, in press).
59 Monteith, Journal, 16.
60 Ball, The Towers of Ghur.
61 Three hundred Ismā‘īlīs are reported to have relieved the siege of Hasan-i Sabbāh and seventy followers
in Alamūt in 485/1092 (Daftary, The Isma’ilis, 341; Franzius, History of the Order of Assassins, 42). In
511/1118, however, Hasan-i Sabbāh boasted to Sultan Sandjar that he had 60,000 followers ready to die
at his command (Ibid., 65).
62 Raverty, ed., Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī I: 1191 fn. 1 refers to the Mongol force amounting to 120,000-180,000
horse, plus 1000 families of catapult workers, naphtha-throwers and shooters of fiery arrows worked by
a wheel.
63 Hülegü did indeed return to Mongolia with many of his forces from the west following the death of
Möngke, but this was in 1259, two years too late to save the Ismā‘īlīs.
64 Marshall Goodwin Simms Hodgson, The Order of Assassins. The Struggle of the Early Nizari Isma’ilis
against the Islamic World (The Hague: Mounton & Co, 1955), 259-260; Franzius, History of the Order
of Assassins, 138. Cholera forced the surrender of the garrison of Lamasar in 655/1258, after a year of
resistance.
65 The ‘Hashish Assassins’ featured in the ‘Great moments in Science’ slot on Triple J in 2007, although Dr
Kruszelnicki is at pains to dismiss the hashish link. Available [Online]
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1842501.htm [25/02/2008].

13
Bibliography
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u. Verlagsanstalt (ADEVA), 1975.
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and Islamic Studies Presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, edited by Warwick Ball and Leonard
Harrow, 21-45. London: Melisende, 2002.
Bartol, Vladimir. Alamut. Seattle: Scala House Press, 2005.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. “The Early Islamic History of Ghur.” Central Asiatic Journal 5
(1961): 116-133.
Bowlby, Sophie R. “The Geographical Background.” In The Archaeology of Afghanistan from
Earliest Times to the Timurid Period, edited by Frank Raymond Allchin and Norman
Hammond, 9-36. London: Academic Press, 1978.
Burroughs, William Seward. Cities of the Red Night. London: John Calder, 1981.
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Daftary, Farhad. The Isma’ilis: their History and Doctrines. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Daftary, Farhad. The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis. London: Tauris, 1994.
Dante, Alighieri. Inferno. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971.
Fischel, Walter Joseph. “The Rediscovery of the Medieval Jewish Community at Firuzkuh in
Central Afghanistan.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 85 (1965): 148-153.
Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Ghurid Monuments and Muslim Identities: Epigraphy and Exegesis in
Twelfth-century Afghanistan.” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 42(3) (2005):
263-294.
Flood, Finbarr Barry. Objects of Translation: Artifacts, Elites and Medieval Hindu-Muslim
Encounters. Princeton: Princeton University Press, in press.
Franzius, Enno. History of the Order of Assassins. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969.
Gannon, Kathy. I is for Infidel: from Holy War to Holy Terror: 18 Years Inside Afghanistan.
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Herberg, Werner and Djelani Davary. “Topographische Feldarbeiten in Ghor: Bericht über
Forschungen zum Problem Jam-Ferozkoh.” Afghanistan Journal 2 (1976): 57-69.
Hillenbrand, Carole. “The Power Struggle between the Saljuqs and the Isma cilis of Alamūt,
487-518/1094-1124: the Saljuq Perspective.” In Mediaeval Ismacili History and Thought,
edited by Farhad Daftary, 205-220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Hodgson, Marshall Goodwin Simms. The Order of Assassins. The Struggle of the Early
Nizari Isma’ilis against the Islamic World. The Hague: Mounton & Co, 1955.
Hunter, Erica C.D. “More Hebrew-script Tombstones from Jām, Afghanistan,” in prep.
Ivanow, Wladimir. “Alamut.” The Geographical Journal 1 (1931): 38-45.
Ivanow, Wladimir. Alamut and Lamasar. Two Mediaeval Ismaili Strongholds in Iran. An
Archaeological Study. Teheran: The Ismaili Society, 1960.
Jackson, Peter. “The Fall of the Ghurid Dynasty.” In Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund
Bosworth Vol. II. The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture, edited by
Carole Hillenbrand, 207-235. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

14
Latham, Ronald (ed.). The Travels of Marco Polo. London: The Folio Society, 1968.
Le Strange, Guy. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. Mesopotamia, Persia and Central Asia
from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur. New York: AMS Press Inc, 1976.
Leshnik, L.S. “Ghor, Firuzkuh and the Minar-i Jam.” Central Asiatic Journal 12 (1968-69):
36-49.
Lewis, Bernard. The Assassins: a Radical Sect in Islam. New York: Oxford University Press,
1987.
Lockhart, Laurence. “Hasan-i-Sabbah and the Assassins.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies 4 (1930): 675-696.
Lockhart, Laurence. “Some Notes on Alamut.” The Geographical Journal 1 (1931): 46-48.
Maricq, Andre. “The Mystery of the Great Minaret: the Remarkable and Isolated 12th-century
Tower of Jham Discovered in Unexplored Afghanistan”. The Illustrated London News, 10
January 1959, 56-58.
Maricq, Andre and Gaston Wiet. Le Minaret de Djam: la Découverte de la Capitale des
Sultans Ghurides (XIIe-XIIIe siècles). Paris: Mémoires de la délégation archéologique
française en Afghanistan, 1959.
Matheson, Sylvia A. Persia: an Archaeological Guide. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1972.
May, Timothy. “A Mongol-Ismâ’îlî Alliance?: Thoughts on the Mongols and Assassins.”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Series 3) 14/3 (2004): 231-239.
Monteith, Colonel. “Journal of a Tour through Azerdbijan and the Shores of the Caspian.”
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 3 (1833): 1-58.
Morgan, David. The Mongols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Nizami, Khaliq Ahmed. “The Ghurids.” In History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume
IV. The Age of Achievement: A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century. Part One. The
Historical, Social and Economic Setting, edited by M.S. Asimov and Clifford Edmund
Bosworth, 177-190. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1998.
Pinder-Wilson, Ralph. “Appendix C: Persian Pottery at the Time of the Assassins.” In The
Castles of the Assassins, by Peter Willey, 320-327. London: George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd.,
1963.
Price, Anthony. The Alamut Ambush. London: Gollancz, 1971.
Raverty, Henry George (ed.). Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī: a General History of the Muhammadan
Dynasties of Asia, including Hindustan; from A.H. 194 (810 A.D.) to A.H. 658 (1260 A.D.)
and the Irruption of the Infidel Mughals into Islam. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint
Corporation, 1970.
Rehren, Thilo. “Metallurgical Report.” Unpublished, 2005.
Semple, Miranda. “Micromorphological Report.” Unpublished, 2007.
Sourdel-Thomine, Janine. Le Minaret Ghouride de Jam. Un Chef d’Oeuvre du XIIe Siècle.
Paris: Memoire de l‘Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 2004.
Stark, Freya. The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels. London: J. Murray,
1934.
Thomas, David Colin. “Looting, Heritage Management and Archaeological Strategies at Jam,
Afghanistan.” Culture Without Context 14 (Spring, 2004): 16-20.
Thomas, David Colin. “Firûzkûh: the Summer Capital of the Ghurids.” In Cities in the Pre-
modern Islamic World: the Urban Impact of State, Society and Religion, edited by Amira K.
Bennison and Alison Lucy Gascoigne, 115-144. London: Routledge Curzon, 2007.

15
Thomas, David Colin, Katleen Deckers, Matilda Holmes, Mette Marie Hald, Marco Madella
and Kevin White. “Environmental Evidence from the Minaret of Jam Archaeological Project,
Afghanistan.” Iran XLIV (2006): 253-276.
Thomas, David Colin and Alison Lucy Gascoigne. “Recent Archaeological Investigations of
Looting around the Minaret of Jam, Ghur Province.” In Art and Archaeology of Afghanistan:
its Fall and Survival. A Multi-disciplinary Approach, edited by Juliette van Krieken-Pieters,
155-167. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006.
Thomas, David Colin, Giannino Pastori and Ivan Cucco. “Excavations at Jam, Afghanistan.”
East and West 54 (2004): 87-119.
Thomas, David Colin and Iain Shearer. “Accessing Firuzkuh, the Summer ‘Capital’ of the
Ghurids.” In Papers from the Archaeology of the Inaccessible Session 2005 TAG Conference
in Sheffield, edited by Thomas L. Evans, in prep.
Virani, Shafique N. “The Eagle Returns: Evidence of Continued Isma’ili Activity at Alamut
and in the South Caspian Region following the Mongol Conquests.” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 2 (2003): 351-370.
Willey, Peter. The Castles of the Assassins. London: George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd, 1963.
Willey, Peter. Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005.

16
Depending Upon Diligence: Chinese at Work in Bendigo 1861-
18811
Valerie Lovejoy
This paper explores the working lives of the Chinese migrants who lived in Bendigo, a
significant nineteenth century Victorian gold mining centre, between 1861 and 1881. Using
archival and local sources it presents a new view of Chinese as active participants in post
gold rush Victoria. Though alluvial mining remained the most significant form of
employment, some found alternative pathways in market gardening and storekeeping. With
skill and diligence Chinese workers extended the lives of alluvial goldfields thought to be
exhausted, and enhanced the health of communities with fresh vegetables and fruit. A nucleus
of successful Chinese became employers and formed the basis of a settler community.

George Ah Tie’s application for naturalisation in 1887 declared that he was a storekeeper and
market gardener who had acquired property in Bendigo which he had made his permanent
home since his emigration from Guangdong Province in 1866. 2 At the time he was living with
Gertrude Hansen, with whom he had seven children. 3 When their youngest child was born in
1880, George owned a flourishing wholesale fruiters business, ‘Ah Tie & Sons’, in central
Bendigo.4

This paper will explore the working lives of the Chinese who lived in Bendigo between 1861
and 1881. During this relatively harmonious twenty year period, a breathing space between
legislation designed to restrict Chinese immigration 5, a window of opportunity opened for
Chinese residents to broaden their occupational bases and actively compete in the Victorian
workforce. In this period, Chinese residents could remain connected to their ancestral village
and family, and pursue their working lives in Victoria. Some, like George Ah Tie, chose to
marry, have children and settle permanently. Chinese ancestors of families in regional
communities like Bendigo established themselves at this time. I will argue that a study of
Chinese participation in the economic life of regional communities following the goldrush
challenges a limited view of Chinese immigrants as poor alluvial miners, sojourning briefly in
Victoria. The complexity of cross-cultural communication also complicates a perception of
the Chinese as victims of European prejudice and hostility, yet underlying tensions
foreshadowed the renewed xenophobia of the 1880s.

Bendigo, known as Sandhurst until 1891, 6 was one of six Victorian goldmining centres that
attracted thousands of Chinese goldseekers in the 1850s from Guangdong Province in China. 7
In 1857, over five thousand Chinese resided in Bendigo, close to forty per cent of the male
population.8 In the twenty years from 1861, Victoria’s Chinese population more than halved
from 24,724 to 11, 869.9 The post gold rush period is a neglected area of historiography for
Chinese in Victoria. The most important study, Kathryn Cronin’s Colonial Casualties, is
limited to the ‘golden age’ of the 1850s, while other historians have been more concerned
with finding reasons for the steep decline in population than with those who remained in
Victoria.10 Preoccupation with anti-Chinese agitation and its connection with the White
Australia Policy rather than discovering the lived experience of Chinese in Victoria is
suggested by renewed interest in the Chinese after immigration restrictions were reintroduced
in 1881.11 Although Geoffrey Oddie commented on the neglect of the post gold rush period,

17
his thesis, covering from 1870-1890, also gave centre stage to the anti-Chinese movement. 12
After the Rush, a recent special edition of Otherland addressed the absence of Chinese after
the goldrush, but it too has a strong focus on White Australia themes and a slim coverage of
1861-1881.13

Another explanation for the silence about Victoria’s Chinese in this period may be the
difficulty of finding reliable source material. After the dismantling of the Chinese
Protectorate, records of Chinese movements and population were scanty. Apart from two
reports in 1868, the Chinese largely disappeared from the public gaze. 14 Mining surveyors’
quarterly reports and the Mineral Statistics of Victoria rarely mention the activities of Chinese
miners. Even gauging population accurately is difficult as census figures vary according to
the different boundaries of towns, electoral, and gold mining districts. Cronin estimates as a
percentage of the total population of Victoria the Chinese declined in this period from 4.6 per
cent in 1861 to 1.4 per cent in 1881 and as a percentage of the male population 7.5 per cent in
1861 to 2.6 per cent in 1881. 15 Yet in goldmining areas the Chinese still formed a significant
minority of the male population: 15.3 per cent in 1861, 10.4 per cent in 1871 and even by
1881, still 6.2 per cent.16 According to one census source, (birthplaces of the people),
Bendigo’s Chinese population declined from 2455 in 1861, to 1278 in 1871 and 779 in
1881,17 but interim reports based on information gathered by local police and interpreters
place the Chinese population much higher, for example, at 3500 in 1868 and 1707 in 1873. 18

The role Chinese workers played in Bendigo is worthy of consideration, as Bendigo was a
particularly significant town in nineteenth century Victoria. While other centres of alluvial
mining declined in the late nineteenth century, Bendigo grew to a major provincial centre on
the back of its quartz mining industry. 19 It was connected by rail to Melbourne in 1862, and
declared a city in 1871.20 As equipment was developed to extract gold, often at great depths,
the richness of Bendigo’s quartz reefs made its name famous throughout the world. 21

A micro study of a local community provides important demographic detail and nuances not
possible with a broader study, but which nevertheless can cast light on the whole. Keir
Reeves recently applied this approach in his nineteenth century landscape history of Chinese
in Castlemaine.22 To explore Chinese working lives, in this paper I have used rate notices
supplemented by lands records, inquests and newspapers. Newspapers provide the only
descriptions of Chinese at work and also monitor cross cultural interaction.

Figure 1: Chinese rate payers Bendigo. biennial comparison 1868-1872

Occupation 1868 1870 1872 1874 1876 1878 1880 1882

BUSINESS
Agent 2 1 3
Baker
Bark Seller 1 1
Beer Seller
Boarding House 1 1
Butcher 6 7 4 1 4 4 2 5
Chemist 2
Cooking House 2 1 3
Dealer 1 2 2 1
Draper 1 1 2 1 1

18
Fishmonger 1 1 1 1 1
Gaming House 2 10 6
Hawker 3 2 21 5 7 10 8
Joss House Keeper 1 1
Lottery Agent 5 4 4 6 8
Merchant 3 1
Opium Dealer 2 2 1 1 1
Pea Seller 1
Peddler 1
Publican 4 9 7 6 5 4
Restaurateur 3
Society 4 1 1
Occupation 1868 1870 1872 1874 1876 1878 1880 1882
Storekeeper 23 24 14 22 22 19 29 22
Tea Dealer 1 1 1 3
Ticket Agent 1
TOTAL 38 36 53 33 64 55 73 58
SKILLED
Barber 4 2 3 3 2 1 1
Blacksmith 1
Carpenter 3 2 1 1 1 3
Cook 1 2
Engine driver 1 1
Foundry man 1
Goldsmith 1
Jeweller 1 1 1 1
Painter 1
Shoemaker 1 1
Silversmith
Tailor 2 4 2 1 3 1
TOTAL 9 9 9 2 6 4 7 9
GOLD MINING
Digger 185 1 10 15 9 8
Fossicker
Miner 114 106 9 7 28 44 20 39
Puddler 5 1 16 1 4 10 17 9
Sluicer 2
TOTAL 119 107 212 9 42 69 46 56
UNSKILLED
Carter 1 1 2 1 3 1 2
Cabman 1 1 1 2 2
Occupation 1868 1870 1872 1874 1876 1878 1880 1882
Groom 3
Labourer 4 1 1 1
Laundress 1
Railway worker 1
Splitter 1
Waterman 1 1 1 1
Wood carter 1

19
TOTAL 5 1 7 2 6 4 4 7
AGRICULTURE
Gardener 29 22 26 26 47 28 33 32
TOTAL 29 22 26 26 47 28 33 32
PROFESSIONAL
Doctor 5 2 5 2 5 4 3 3
Gambler 7 1 10 2 5
Gentleman 1 2
Detective
Interpreter 3 2 2 1 2 2 1 1
Missionary 1 1 1 1 1
Pauper 1
Preacher 5 1
Widow 1 1 2 3
TOTAL 9 4 19 6 9 20 10 13
UNSTATED 17 31 5 74 12 33 19 30
TOTAL RATE 226 210 331 152 186 213 192 205

Source: Bendigo City Rate Books, Strathfieldsaye Shire Rate Books, Marong Shire Rate Books. [Accessed at
Golden Dragon Museum Bendigo, and Goldfields Library Corporation Bendigo].

Local rate books give occupational detail not available from other sources as census statistics
do not provide occupational breakdowns by locality. Bendigo’s Chinese were involved in an
increasing range of occupations from 1861-1881. Rate books from 1861-71 enumerate thirty-
seven occupations, and from 1871-1881, sixty-one occupations for Chinese residents. The
occupational spread suggests that some were able to avail themselves of new opportunities in
Bendigo. In 1871, approximately twenty-five per cent and in 1881 twenty-three per cent of
the Chinese population paid rates. The numbers involved in each occupation were far greater
than the rate books suggest.23 In 1873, thirty-two Chinese market gardeners paid rates but a
Bendigo Advertiser census counted two hundred.24

Nor were the Chinese simply fringe dwellers. Although the Ironbark Chinese Village was the
largest residential area and centre of business, the Chinese lived in many different locations
within Bendigo as well as on its rural edges. 25 That those Chinese who stayed in Bendigo
became more settled is suggested by a movement from tents to huts and houses. There were
no tents recorded on rate assessment notices after 1869.

Some Chinese stayed in Bendigo for long periods, particularly those in niche occupations. Fat
Chung, a doctor who lived at Ironbark Chinese Village, paid rates every year from 1866 to
1882. Chen Appoo, Chinese interpreter, appeared continuously on rate notices as an
interpreter from 1866 to 1883. The information that can be gleaned from rate notices is
limited. Many were never ratepayers while others were living in Bendigo long before they
were ratepayers. James Lee Wah, Anglican Chinese Missionary, appeared in the rate books in
Bendigo from 1874 until 1905, but actually spent thirty-five years in Bendigo from his
appointment in 1869.26 The prosperity of some individuals is suggested by the rate notices.
James Ni Gan, a resident for over forty years, who married and raised four children in
Bendigo, paid rates on several properties. He was listed as a butcher and publican, and in
1881 paid rates on four properties with a combined net annual value of £86. 27

20
Though the range of occupations broadened, the vast majority of Chinese were involved in
three umbrella occupations of storekeeping, market gardening and alluvial goldmining, with
goldmining still occupying up to eighty per cent at the time of the Young Report in 1868. 28
This paper will briefly discuss those three occupations, to show that Chinese workers made a
competitive contribution in each area and reflect on the complexity of Chinese-European
relationships.

Mining

Figure 2: Miners employed in the mining district of Sandhurst 1861-1881

Date Alluvial Miners Alluvial Miners Quartz Miners Quartz Miners

European Chinese European Chinese

1861 6596 1319 3553 0

1862 6412 1520 3341 0
1863 8054 1769 3297 0
1864 7160 1664 3504 0
1865 5250 1427 3876 0
1866 4870 1853 4318 0
1867 4781 1418 3698 0
1868 9256 693 3597 0
1869 4355 953 4755 6
1870 3239 862 4893 0
1871 2549 824 5429 26
1872 2306 760 5088 42
1873 2124 775 5046 32
1874 2023 714 4476 50
1875 1498 1062 4481 45
1876 1137 1012 4373 50
1877 1227 948 4302 40
1878 1158 864 4301 30
1879 1193 870 4330 30
1880 1222 790 4546 30
1881 1246 783 4698 30

Source: Population of the Goldfields, Statistics of Victoria, VPP.

Because Bendigo’s reputation as an enormously rich goldfield has been based on its quartz
mines, the role alluvial miners played in the years 1861-1881 has been neglected. Yet in

21
1861, 6596 Europeans and 1319 Chinese in the Sandhurst Mining District were alluvial
miners.29 As Figure 3 demonstrates, though the ratio of European alluvial to quartz miners
decreased in the following twenty years, alluvial mining continued to occupy a considerable
number of European miners and almost all Chinese miners between 1861 and 1881.
Importantly, the ratio of Chinese to European miners increased from one in six in 1861 to one
in two in 1881 and while the number of European miners decreased by eighty per cent in this
period, Chinese miners decreased by forty per cent. The Chinese increased in relative
strength in alluvial mining as yields declined and the opportunity for wealth decreased.

Chinese miners worked alongside European miners. While the majority lived in town, others
lived where they worked in groups ranging from three to sixty-nine in at least thirteen
different ‘gold workings’.30 They were a mobile population, participating in rushes to new
fields such as the one to Myers Flat (about five miles north of Bendigo) in 1866. Of the four
thousand who joined the rush in September of that year, five to six hundred were Chinese. 31

Alluvial miners in Bendigo, a locality devoid of river or permanent water supply, were
particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of climate. Before the coming of the Coliban scheme in
the late 1870s, which brought water to the thirsty city from Victoria’s central highlands,
Bendigo was known as the ‘winter diggings’. In summer alluvial mining came to a standstill
and washdirt piled up waiting for the winter rains to come. In the terrible 1865 drought, the
Chinese suffered more than most. Seventeen Chinese deaths were investigated in inquests
held in the fourteen months between January 1865 and March 1866. 32 When Ah Kim died in
March 1866, the Chinese interpreter Chen Ah Poo remarked at the inquest, ‘like many
Chinese, Ah Kim was very poor in consequence of the want of water on the goldfield’. 33

Nevertheless, with diligence and careful water management, many Chinese took advantage of
new openings in alluvial mining to become successful miners. In September 1865, the local
mining surveyor reported that the Chinese, many of whom owned puddling machines, were
able to make a good living out of ground supposed worthless by European miners. 34 Puddling
machines, involving the construction of a dam, machinery, and purchase of a horse were
expensive, but a more sophisticated and efficient form of mining than tub and cradle. 35
Chinese miners often purchased them cooperatively, forming small companies in equal shares
with their mates. Records of mining leases show a degree of interchange and negotiation
among Chinese and European miners in the transfer of ownership of puddling machines. 36

Once Bendigo’s water supply was secure, Chinese miners were the first to become heavily
involved in sluicing, which involved the use of man made channels to direct the flow of water
for gold extraction. In March 1880, 118,000 gallons of water was sold for sluicing. 37 Between
1878 and 1882, twenty-three Chinese sluicing claims were registered in Bendigo. 38 The
Chinese companies constructed long channels and flumes to bring the water to the site from
the main race, entirely at their own expense. In December 1878 the Bendigo Advertiser
reported that the Chinese companies were working three shifts a day with no intermission and
using three million gallons of water a week. 39 Chinese and Europeans were working in
partnership. For example, Gim Ni Gan and Company, with six partners, four Chinese and two
Europeans, took up a sluicing claim in January 1879 in White Hills which employed thirty
men.40 Chinese/European partnerships demonstrate European recognition of the Chinese
miners’ skill with water management, adapted from the agricultural aquatic knowledge of
their homeland to mining practices.

22
In 1869, for the first time, the number of European quartz miners in Bendigo exceeded
alluvial miners. The shift to quartz mining among European miners reflected the declining
alluvial yield and the opportunity to earn an improved wage by working for mining
companies. As the relative average annual earnings from quartz and alluvial mining show, on
average quartz miners earned twice as much as alluvial miners. (See Figure 3). However,
Chinese in Bendigo rarely worked on wages for Europeans or Chinese, preferring to work
independently in small companies of six to ten men. The Chinese were among the poorest
alluvial miners if Young’s figures are correct. In 1868, he estimated that Chinese fossickers
earned a lowly 8/- to 10/- a week while puddlers earned from 15/- to £1 with rations. 41

Figure 3: Average Annual Earnings of Alluvial and Quartz Miners, Victoria

Average Weekly Wages of European and Chinese Miners Working in Bendigo Mines
1868-1881
Alluvial Miners Quartz Miners Weekly wages
Date Average Annual Average Weekly wages Weekly wages
paid to Chinese
Earnings* Annual paid to European paid to labourers
working in
(Victoria) Earnings* miners working in working in
Sandhurst
Sandhurst mines Sandhurst mines
Mines
(pounds) (Victoria)
1868 £87 £166 No Chinese 45/- 42/-
1869 £64 £128 35/- 45/- 42/-
1870 £61 £133 No Chinese 45/- 42/-
1871 £66 £165 No Chinese 47/6 42/6
1872 £65 £159 No Chinese 45/- 40/-
1873 £60 £165 No Chinese 50/- 40/-
1874 £59 £183 No Chinese 45/- 40/-
1875 £63 £183 No Chinese 45/- 40/-
1876 £52 £161 30/- 45/- 40/-
1877 £47 £140 30/- 45/- 40/-
1878 £47 £118 30/- 45/- 40/-
1879 £49 £138 20/- 45/- 40/-
1880 £50 £130 20/- 45/- 40/-
1881 £62 £142 30/- 50/- 45/-
Source: Mineral Statistics of Victoria.
*Annual averages were ascertained by dividing the gold yield by the number of miners

From 1871 onwards, as Figure 3 shows, a small number of Chinese worked as quartz miners
in Bendigo. Several Chinese quartz claims were granted in the 1860s and 1870s, but these
were worked from the surface. Once the water table was breached it was impossible to mine
without expensive machinery to extrude the water. As the gold was contained in veins within
the quartz, expensive crushing equipment was also needed to extract the gold. By 1870 there

23
were one hundred and forty companies registered and operating with their own pumping and
crushing equipment.42

Chinese miners were able quartz miners, as they proved in the Northern Territory, 43 but they
were largely excluded from working for European mining companies in 1874 on a motion
from the newly formed Australian Miners’ Association (AMA) which prohibited miners from
working in mines where Chinese were employed. 44 This action followed an incident at Clunes
in 1873 when the miners’ action had foiled the mine owner’s attempt to bring in Chinese
miners to break a fourteen week strike over working hours and conditions. Before this time
Chinese miners were beginning to compete effectively in quartz mining on tribute. 45 From
1881 Government legislation reinforced the AMA’s actions, imposing restrictions on new
immigrants that limited their potential to engage in quartz mining in Victoria. 46

Like alluvial mining, quartz mining involved different occupations. In Bendigo the Chinese
were involved in the treatment of tailings from quartz mines. In 1868, William Young
estimated that nine hundred Chinese washed quartz tailings in companies. 47 In 1866, a rare
and most marvellously detailed description of a Chinese quartz tailings company appeared in
the Bendigo Independent.48 This company had purchased old tailings deposited in the early
days of quartz crushing for £550. Thirty-six workers,using Chinese cradles and an ingenious
system for recycling water, systematically washed the tailings. 49

Market Gardening

Next to mining, agricultural pursuits were the most important avenues of work for Chinese in
Bendigo. William Young reported in 1868 that two hundred Chinese were market gardeners
while two hundred Chinese were also involved in seasonal harvesting and shearing. 50 Some
miners worked on local farms in the dry Bendigo summer and autumn months. As the returns
from alluvial mining dwindled, some miners left for more lucrative fields, but others turned to
market gardening.

As most Chinese in Bendigo came from an intensive farming background in overpopulated

Guangdong Province, growing several crops a year on small plots of land, their expertise
made the Bendigo soil productive.51 An 1862 Bendigo Advertiser editorial, in support of its
claim that the Chinese would make excellent colonists, praised the profusion of excellent
quality vegetables produced in Chinese gardens throughout Bendigo. Chinese gardeners were
paying £1 per annum for twenty perches (1/8 of an acre) and amalgamating their ground to
lay out a ‘goodly sized garden’. The editor particularly admired the facility with which the
Chinese could take infertile land situated in the midst of old gold workings, all ‘stiff clay’ and
‘quartz pebbles’ and make it fertile. 52 In a plea to the government to attend to Bendigo’s
severe water shortage in 1863, the Bendigo Advertiser claimed that the Chinese in Bendigo,
‘have by great patience and the application of knowledge acquired in their own country, made
their vegetable gardens the admiration and envy of European cultivators’. If there were no
Chinese, according to the editor, ‘we should have to pay at least fifty per cent more for our
cabbages, lettuces, onions and radishes’. 53 One Chinese company with six partners received
strong community support in 1863 when the Board of Works ignored their petition and
constructed a storm water channel right through the centre of their garden of one acre in
White Hills.54 In 1865, the Bendigo Agricultural and Horticultural Society encouraged
Chinese gardeners, by distributing leaflets in Chinese, to enter exhibits in the Bendigo Show. 55

24
After 1865, Chinese wishing to establish market gardens took advantage of Section 42 of the
Amending Land Act which allowed people to reside on and cultivate Crown Land in and
around the goldfields under annual licenses. The Sandhurst District Rent Rolls include
twenty-seven Chinese licensees including some long stayers like Hoo Yep who paid £1 rent
annually for his one acre garden from 1877 to 1892. 56 The occupation stories of some
Chinese market gardeners challenge ideas about the Chinese as short term sojourners in
Australia. Under Section 31 of the Land Act of 1869, people who had been in possession of
Crown Land for two and a half years and had made improvements on it were permitted
exclusive right to purchase the land. In September 1866, Ah Sing was granted permission to
cultivate five acres at Solomon’s Gully as a market garden. He lived on site, paid an annual
license fee of £5 and operated his market garden for thirty six years before successfully
applying to purchase the land in 1902. In that time he had made over £80 of improvements.
His market garden was fenced on two sides with a paling fence and two sides with a sapling
fence. He had built two small huts and had a dam about ¼ acre in size for watering his
garden.57

Chinese market gardens were beneficial for Chinese and Europeans alike. New South Wales
Government statistician, T. A. Coghlan, claimed that the Chinese almost had a monopoly in
market gardening in Australia before 1870.58 In 1877, J. Dundas Crawford, commenting on
the impact of Chinese immigration to Australia, said that Chinese gardeners had ‘reduced
vegetables from an expensive luxury…to a cheap and universal article of diet’. 59 Colin Webb
and John Quinlan, in their history of agriculture in the Bendigo district, give credit to the
Chinese for beginning the tomato industry that flourished in the nineteenth century before
moving north to more stable irrigation districts.60
Chinese market gardens were scattered throughout Bendigo close to water sources, many of
them on abandoned alluvial diggings. Golden Square was a particular area of concentration as
was Emu Point in Sandhurst East, which adjoined the Ironbark Chinese Village. In 1870, of a
total of twenty-two market gardeners paying rates, ten were in Golden Square and four were
at Emu Point.61 Other Chinese gardens could be found along the Bendigo Creek which
meandered through Kangaroo Flat, Golden Square and White Hills, Back Creek, which ran
through Spring Gully and along the edge of Quarry Hill, at Grassy Flat on the northern edge
of Bendigo where a reservoir had been established in 1861, 62 and at Myers Flat in the
Eaglehawk District. Beyond the township Chinese market gardens established along the
Loddon and Campaspe Rivers also supplied the Bendigo district.63

The professions of market gardener and hawker were intimately connected. Successful
Chinese market gardeners employed hawkers to distribute their vegetables throughout the
Bendigo district, while, as Chan remarks of Californian truck gardeners, small gardeners
probably combined their own production with distribution which increased the geographic
range of their markets.64 Many market gardeners became established by first hawking
vegetables in the local district. A newspaper report on the Bendigo fruit and vegetable market
in 1874 commented on the scores of Chinese who came to the market at the first streak of
light, filled their baskets with enormous loads and set off to serve their customers in outlying
districts.65 The market was a place of cross-cultural contact where Chinese and European
growers, buyers and sellers negotiated, bargained and competed. As Kate Bagnall has
suggested, the vegetable sellers and the hawkers were those Chinese most visible in public
spaces and on the thresholds of private homes. From personal encounters new understandings,

25
friendships and marriages sprang. 66 The ancestors of many Bendigo families were market
gardeners.67

Storekeepers

Like market gardeners, storekeepers began by providing their own countrymen with goods
imported from China and gradually moved into more central areas. In 1873 of the fifty-five
storekeepers paying rates in Bendigo, twenty-one were based at the Ironbark Chinese Village.
A further twelve were at Bridge Street, in central Bendigo. 68 At Ironbark, as well as general
storekeepers, butchers, barbers, hotel keepers, restaurateurs, opium sellers, lottery agents and
doctors catered for the needs of the local Chinese population. 69

Louey Douh Hoi migrated to Australia in 1863. He paid rates on a premises in Bridge Street
from 1879 although he also operated a store and owned land in the Ironbark Chinese Camp
before this time. Louey Douh Hoi bequeathed the business to his eldest son in 1903, and
returned to China.70 From the surviving account books it is apparent that Louey Douh Hoi
sold a variety of goods including silk, Chinese tea, ceramics, dried pork and fish, preserved
fruits and ginger, clothing, and, most lucratively, herbalist supplies for the whole of Northern
Victoria. The store, Sun Ack Goon, also acted as a community hub. According to his
grandson Dennis O’Hoy, Louey Douh Hoi received mail and wrote letters to accompany
remittances to China.71

In Bridge Street, located on the periphery of central Bendigo, Chinese and European
storekeepers operated side by side. In 1878 there were seven rate paying Chinese
storekeepers: three general storekeepers, one jeweller, one restauranteur, one opium dealer
and one hawker. Trouble erupted when a neighbouring storekeeper attempted to have the
Chinese evicted, claiming that the precinct had become a hotbed of vice. 72 He presented a
petition with forty signatures to City Council, but his attempts, probably initiated from a
desire to eliminate competition, were unsuccessful as the Chinese storekeepers gained strong
support from neighbours, the City Council and the Inspector of Nuisances who emphasised
their respectability, cleanliness and wealth. 73

In Victoria, a society where advancement came from the often random wealth that gold
seeking had provided,74 Chinese storekeepers, who made handsome profits from providing for
the needs of their countrymen, found a level of respectability and power they would not have
enjoyed at home. One Bendigo firm, Sing Cum Cheong, had stores in Bendigo, Melbourne,
Castlemaine, Maryborough, Avoca, Ararat, Ballarat, Dunolly and Eaglehawk. 75 Storekeepers
were leaders in supporting charity events such as the Bendigo Easter Fair. 76 Hospital and
inquest records show that they played a charitable role in supporting their less fortunate and
sick brothers, and in negotiating on their behalf with police and hospital officials. 77
Numerous examples can be found in inquest records. For example, in February 1869, Charles
A’Ying, storekeeper and private interpreter residing at the Ironbark Chinese Camp, acquired a
subscriber’s ticket, and paid for a cab to take Kin Hook, who was very poor and earned his
living peddling Chinese flutes, to hospital. 78 Sadly, it was too late, as Kin Hook died of
dysentery shortly afterwards.

Conclusion

26
The story of Chinese work in Bendigo in the period 1861-1881 is a microcosm of a broader
story. Like miners on other Victorian goldfields, many Chinese miners left Bendigo in the
1860s and 1870s. But for those who stayed, this was a linking period when they found their
own niche in Victorian society. Without relinquishing their Chinese identity, some spent their
working lives in Victoria while others remained permanently. Local Chinese Australian
families descend from first generation Chinese immigrants mentioned in this paper.

Paying close attention to those who stayed in regional communities addresses an absence in
Victorian historiography and uncovers a different story from Cronin’s ‘colonial casualties’.
The Chinese migrants were a vital part of the Bendigo workforce. As producers they extended
the life of alluvial goldfields, contributed to the health of the community, and brought the
exotic foods and materials of China to local households. As consumers, they contributed to
local revenue through their rates, to the Victorian economy through import and export duties,
and through their consumption of local goods. In all their fields of endeavour, the Chinese
workers depended on diligence to establish their unique place in Bendigo.

Endnotes

1 Sincere thanks to Anita Jack, Russell Jack and Carol Holsworth of the Golden Dragon Museum
Bendigo, Vivien Newton of the Goldfields Regional Library Bendigo, Dennis O’Hoy, Des Lougoon, Dr.
Charles Fahey and Dr Richard Broome for their assistance and generosity in making research material
available.
2 Ah Tie. Naturalisation Papers. Australian Archives. Series A712. Item 1887/H1591. Accessed at the
Golden Dragon Museum.
3 George married Gertrude on 10 October 1890 at All Saints Church of England, Bendigo. Victorian
Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, (VBDM) 1890/7207.
4 Ah Tie Family File. Accessed at the Golden Dragon Museum.
5 18 Vic. No 39, 1855; 21 Vic. No. 41 1857; 45 Vic. No 723, 1881, in Iain McClaren, The Chinese in
Victoria: Official Reports and Documents, (Ascot Vale: Red Rooster Press, 1985), 95.
6 Frank Cusack, Bendigo, a history ( Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1973), 188.
7 The other centres were Castlemaine, Ararat, Avoca, Ararat, and Beechworth. The Gippsland rushes did
not begin until 1868. Annual Mineral Statistics of Victoria. Submitted by the Secretary of Mines.
Victorian Parliamentary Papers (VPP).
8 Fortnightly Reports Resident Warden, Sandhurst Gold field 1857, VPRO, VA 475 Chief Secretary’s
Department, VPRS 1189, Inwards Correspondence 1.
9 Census of Victoria, Birthplaces of the People,(1861,1881).
10 Geoffrey Blainey, The Rush that Never Ended. A history of Australian Mining (Carlton: Melbourne
University Press, 1963), 87; Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred. Purifying Australia and California
1850-1901 (Marrackville: Southwood Press, 1979), 67; Bon Wei Chou, “The sojourning attitude and the
economic decline of Chinese society in Victoria 1860s-1930s,” in Histories of Chinese in Australasia
and the South Pacific. ed. Paul Macgregor (Melbourne: Museum of Chinese Australian History, 1993),
59.
11 See for example, Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 ( Carlton: Melbourne
University Press, 1967); Charles Price, The Great White Walls Are Built. Restrictive Immigration to
North America and Australasia 1836-1888 (Canberra : ANU Press, 1974); Verity Burgmann, “Capital
and Labour,” in Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Working Class in Australia, ed. Ann Curthoys
and Andrew Markus (Neutral Bay: Hale & Iremonger, 1978), 20-34.
12 Geoffrey Oddie, “The Chinese in Victoria 1870-1890” (MA, University of Melbourne, 1959).
13 Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald and Paul Macgregor, eds, After the Rush. Regulation, Participation
and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860-1940. Special edition of Otherland 9 (December 2004).
There are exceptions, as in the fine chapters by Pauline Rule and Rod Lancashire.
14 Revd W. Young, Report on the Condition of the Chinese Population in Victoria 1868, VPP 3 (1868),
1271-1300; Police Department Reports on Chinese Camps, Public Records Office of Victoria

27
 (PROV)VA 724, Victoria Police, VPRS 937, Inward Registered Correspondence, Unit 105, File 1869,
Bundle 3.
15 Kathryn Cronin, Colonial Casualties. Chinese in Early Victoria. (Carlton: Melbourne University Press,
1982), 140. Based on Census of Victoria, Birthplaces of the People.
16 Ibid.
17 Census of Victoria, Birthplaces of the people, (1861,1871,1881).
18 Young, Report on the Condition; “ Our Chinese Population,”Bendigo Advertiser, 29 August 1873,2.
19 Cusack, Bendigo,137-147.
20 Ibid., 158.
21 Charles Fahey, “Labour and Trade Unionism in Victorian Goldmining. Bendigo 1861-1915”in Gold.
Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia ed. Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook and Andrew
Reeves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 70.
22 Keir Reeves, “A Hidden History: the Chinese on the Mount Alexander Diggings, central Victoria, 1851-
1901” (PhD., University of Melbourne, 2006).
23 I have not had access to the Borough of Eaglehawk rate books. The census suggests that ninety-six
Chinese lived in Eaglehawk in 1871 and seventy-three in 1881.
24 “Our Chinese Population,”Bendigo Advertiser, 29 August 1873, 2.
25 Ibid. Sixteen localities are listed as places of residence within Bendigo.
26 Chris Lee. “Unfolding the silence”, in Secrets, Silences and Sources, ed. Sophie Couchman (
Melbourne: Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria, 2005) ; Keith Cole, The Anglican Mission
to the Chinese in Bendigo and Central Victoria 1857-1918 (Bendigo: Keith Cole Publications,1994), 63-
72.
27 Bendigo Council Rate Book, 1881.
28 Young, Report on the Condition, 43.
29 The Sandhurst Mining District included the neighbouring districts of Waranga South (Heathcote),
Raywood, Waranga North (Rushworth) and Kilmore, but eighty to ninety per cent were mining in
Bendigo and its immediate environs, (Eaglehawk, Huntly, Kangaroo Flat, Marong and Strathfieldsaye).
30 Census of Victoria,. Birthplaces of the people, Bendigo, VPP 2,(1872), 1535.
31 Sandhurst Mining District, Mining Surveyors Reports (MSR), September 1866.
32 Inquest deposition files, PROV,VA 2889, Registrar General’s Office, VPRS 24/P0.
33 Ah Kim, Inquest, 22 March 1866, PROV,VPRS 24/P0,1866/294.
34 Sandhurst Mining District, MSR, September 1865.
35 A puddling machine cost around two hundred pounds to build. A dam to supply water cost another fifty
pounds. Ralph Birrell estimates they were fifty per cent more efficient as grades to less than one penny
weight per load were economical. Ralph Birrell, Staking a Claim. Gold and the Development of
Victorian Mining Law (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998).
36 Mining Registrars Register of Claims, Sandhurst Mining Division, PROV, VA 3801, Bendigo Mining
District, VPRS 6946/1.
37 Sandhurst Mining District, MSR, March 1880.
38 Bendigo Mining District, PROV,VPRS 6946/1, Units 6-8.
39 “The Water Supply,”Bendigo Advertiser, 24 December 1878, 2.
40 Ibid., “Sluicing at the White Hills,” 5 March 1879, 3.
41 Young, Report on the Condition, 43.
42 Cusack, Bendigo: a history, 134.
43 Timothy Jones, Pegging the Northern Territory:The History of Mining in the Northern Territory of
Australia 1873-1946 (Darwin: Northern Territory Government Printer, 1987), 64.
44 Ann Curthoys, “Race and Ethnicity: A study of the response of British Colonists to Aborigines, Chinese
and non British Europeans in New South Wales,1856-1891” ( PhD., Macquarie University, 1973) 381-
82.
45 “The Miners Conference,”Bendigo Advertiser, 25 June 1874,2; Markus, Fear and Hatred, 76.
46 Anna Kyi, “Unravelling the Mystery of the Woah Hawp Canton Quartz Mining Company,
Ballarat,”Journal of Australian Colonial History 6 (2004): 72.
47 Young, Report on the Condition, 43.
48 “A Chinese Hive,”Bendigo Independent, 27 April 1866, 2.
49 Ibid.
50 Young, Report on the Condition, 43.

28
51 Sucheng Chan, This Bitter-Sweet Soil. The Chinese in California Agriculture 1860-1910 ( Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989),18-19.
52 “Chinese gardens,”Bendigo Advertiser, 22 July 1862, 2.
53 Ibid.,”Our great need,” 3 December 1863.
54 Ibid., “Plea for the Chinese,” 30 January 1863.
55 Ibid. “Chinese in Riverina,” reprinted from Pastoral Times, 18 September 1865.
56 Land Selection Files, Sections 47 and 49, PROV, VA 538, Department of Crown Lands and Survey.
VPRS 13617, Land Act 1869, Unit 1. This series contains details of twenty-seven Chinese licensees in
the Bendigo district which included Lyell and Nerring as well as Sandhurst.
57 Land Selection Files, Section 31, PROV, VA538, Department of Crown Lands and Survey, VPRS
627/P0, Land Act 1869, Unit 322, Item 22200/31.
58 Timothy Coghlan, Labour and Industry in Australia 3 (South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1969), 1331.
59 J. Dundas Crawford,“Notes by Mr Crawford on Chinese Immigration in the Australian Colonies,”
Foreign Office Confidential Print 3742, National Library of Australia, 3.
60 Colin Webb and John Quinlan, Greater than Gold. A History of Agriculture in the Bendigo District
from 1835 to 1985, (Bendigo: Cambridge Press, 1985), 270.
61 Bendigo City Council Rate Book 1870. Accessed at Goldfields Library Corporation.
62 Cusack, Bendigo, 135.
63 Webb and Quinlan, Greater than Gold, 237.
64 Chan, Bitter Sweet Soil, 87.
65 “The City Vegetable Market,” Bendigo Advertiser, 6 February 1874, 2.
66 Kate Bagnall, “Across the threshold: White women and Chinese hawkers in the white colonial
imaginary.” Hecate. St Lucia: 28, 2 (2002): 9-33.
67 Among them are the Chinn, Jack, Ah Tie and Lougoon families.
68 “ Our Chinese Population,” Bendigo Advertiser, 29 August 1873, 2.
69 Bendigo Council Rate Books, 1868-1881.
70 D. O’Hoy, Interview with Valerie Lovejoy, 25 April 2007. Louey Dou Hoi was Dennis’s grandfather.
71 O’Hoy Family File. Accessed Golden Dragon Museum; D. O’Hoy, Interview.
72 “Chinamen in Bridge Street,” Bendigo Advertiser, 15 November 1878, 3.
73 Ibid.,”In defence of the Chinese,” 26 November 1878, 3.
74 David Goodman. Goldseeking. Victoria and California in the 1850s.(Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994),
60-61.
75 “In defence of the Chinese,”Bendigo Advertiser, 26 November 1878, 3.
76 Ibid., “Subscription list of Chinese and District,” 13 May 1882, 6.
77 Ah Choy, Inquest, 6 March 1863, VPRO, VPRS 24/P0. Unit 125. Item 1863/206.
78 Kin Hook, Inquest, 5 February 1869, VPRO,VPRS 24/P0. Unit 219. Item 1869/108.

Bibliography
Manuscript Sources

Australian Archives, Canberra

Victorian Naturalisation Records, 1850-90.
Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo
Family Files - Ah Tie, Chinn, Jack, Lougoon, Oh Hoy.
North Central Goldfields Library, Bendigo
Bendigo City Council Rate Books, 1864-1883
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Crawford, J. Dundas, “Notes by Mr Crawford on Chinese Immigration in the Australian
Colonies”. Foreign Office Confidential Print 3742.
Public Records Office, Victoria
Chief Secretary’s Department, Inwards Correspondence 1854-83.

29
Resident Warden, Sandhurst Goldfield, Fortnightly Reports, 1854-61.
Department of Crown Lands and Survey, Land Selection Files, Sections 31, 47,49.
Mining Registrars Register of Claims, 1862-1885.
Bendigo Mining District Registrar General’s Office, Inquest Deposition Files, 1854-1880.
Victoria Police. Inwards Registered Correspondence Police Department Reports on Chinese
Camps 1869.

Parliamentary Sources

Acts of Parliament
18 Vic No. 39, 1855
21 Vic No. 41, 1857
45 Vic No. 723, 1881
Victorian Parliamentary Papers
Annual Mineral Statistics of Victoria, 1854 - 1880
Census of Victoria, 1861, 1871, 1881
Mining Surveyors Reports,Sandhurst Mining District, 1854 - 1882
Young, Revd W., Report on the Condition of the Chinese Population in Victoria 1868, vol.3,
1868

Newspapers

Bendigo Advertiser, 1854-1880

Bendigo Independent, 1866

Interviews

Des Lougoon 11 March 2007

Dennis O’Hoy 25 April 2007

Books, Book Chapters, Journal Articles and Unpublished Theses

Bagnall, Kate. “Across the Threshhold: White Women and Chinese Hawkers in the Colonial
Imaginary.” Hecate 28, 2 (2002): 9-33.
Birrell, Ralph. Staking a Claim. Gold and the Development of Victorian Mining Law.
Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998.
Blainey, Geoffrey. The Rush that Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining. Carlton:
Melbourne University Press, 1963.
Burgman, Verity. “Capital and Labour.” In Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Working
Class in Australia, edited by Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus, 20-34. Neutral Bay: Hale
and Iremonger,1978.
Chan, Sucheng. Bitter-Sweet Soil. The Chinese in California Agriculture 1860-1910.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Chou, Bon-Wei. “The sojourning attitude and the economic decline of Chinese society in
Victoria 1860s to 1930s.” In Histories of Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, edited
by Paul Macgregor, 59-74. Melbourne: Museum of Chinese Australian History, 1993.

30
Coghlan, Timothy. Labour and Industry in Australia. 3. South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1969.
Couchman, Sophie, John Fitzgerald and Paul Macgregor, (eds). After the Rush: Regulation,
Participation and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860-1940. Special edition of Otherland.
December 2004.
Cole, Keith. The Anglican Mission to the Chinese in Bendigo and Central Victoria 1857-
1918. Bendigo: Keith Cole Publications, 1994.
Cronin, Kathryn. Colonial Casualties:Chinese in Early Victoria. Carlton: Melbourne
University Press, 1982.
Curthoys, Ann. “ Race and Ethnicity: A Study of the Response of British colonists to
Aborigines, Chinese and non British Europeans in New South Wales, 1856-91.” PhD,
Macquarie University, 1973.
Cusack, Frank. Bendigo: A History. Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1973.
Fahey, Charles. “ Labour and Trade Unionism in Victorian Goldmining, Bendigo.” In Gold,
Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia, edited by Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook
and Andrew Reeves, 67-84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Goodman, David. Goldseeking. Victoria and California in the 1850s. Sydney: Allen and
Unwin, 1994.
Jones, Timothy. Pegging the Northern Territory: The History of Mining in the Northern
Territory of Australia 1872-1946. Darwin: Northern Territory Government Printer, 1987.
Kyi, Anna. “ Unravelling the Mystery of the Woah Hawp Canton Quartz Mining Company,
Ballarat.” Journal of Australian Colonial History 6 (2004) 59-78.
Lee, Chris. “Unfolding the Silence.” In Secrets, Silences and Sources, edited by Sophie
Couchman. Melbourne: Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria, 2005.
Markus, Andrew. Fear and Hatred. Purifying Australia and California 1850-1901.
Marrackville: Southward Press, 1979.
McLaren, Ian. The Chinese in Victoria: Official Reports and Documents. Ascot Vale: Red
Rooster Press, 1985.
Oddie, Geoffrey. “The Chinese in Victoria 1870-90.” MA, University of Melbourne, 1959.
Price, Charles. The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America
and Australasia 1838-1888. Canberra: ANU Press, 1974
Reeves, Keir. “A Hidden History: the Chinese on the Mount Alexander Diggings, Central
Victoria 1851-1901.” PhD. University of Melbourne, 2006.
Webb, Colin and John Quinlan. Greater than Gold. A History of Agriculture in the Bendigo
District from 1835 to 1985. Bendigo: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Willard, Myra.The History of the White Australia Policy to 1920. Carlton: Melbourne
University Press, 1967.

31
‘Lawyers jailed!’ The New York Times’ Coverage of the Arrest
of Four Defence Lawyers in the ‘Chicago 8’ Trial
Nicholas Sharman

his paper considers the coverage by America’s most prestigious newspaper, the New
York Times, of a key incident in the trial of the ‘Chicago 8.’ It will demonstrate that
despite its reputation as the newspaper of record in the United States the Times failed
to fully report the level of injustice perpetuated on the defendants in the case. This
failure stemmed from the influence of liberal assumptions about the authority of the
Federal Courts and unwillingness to engage with the defendants political agenda in
the case.

The New York Times… occupies such an exalted place in the political and moral

imagination of influential Americans and others as the most authoritative source of

information and guidance on issues of public policy. 1

On 24 September 1969 eight defendants charged with conspiring and acting to incite a riot at
the Democratic Convention in 1968 went on trial in the Chicago courtroom of Judge Julius
Hoffman. Within moments of the trial beginning Judge Hoffman had issued a bench warrant
for the arrest of four defence lawyers who had sought to withdraw from the case by telegram.
The lawyers’ arrest was the first among the myriad of conflicts that were to occur between the
parties throughout the five-month trial.

This paper will analyse the way the New York Times framed its coverage of the arrest of the
four defence attorneys. It will argue that the Times’ coverage of the lawyers’ arrest framed the
incident as part of the unwinable and slightly absurd war taking place in the courtroom
between the Judge and the prosecution on one side and the defendants on the other. The use of
this frame by the paper was consistent with much of its coverage of the trial as a whole. In so
doing, however, this limited the consideration of the injustice of Judge Hoffman’s actions
throughout the case. An analysis of the reasons for the judge’s arrest of the four lawyers
contained in the trial record as well as the comments of the court of appeal on the case will
reveal the injustice of Judge Hoffman’s actions in arresting the four attorneys. The New York
Times’ unwillingness to represent the injustice of Judge Hoffman’s actions was the product of
routine assumptions about the authority of the courts and the judicial system and the deviant
nature of protest. As chief reporter on the case J Anthony Lukas notes in his book on the trial,
liberals like himself had a high ‘respect for the courts and the law… this faith attached most
strongly to the federal courts, which… played a major role in the desegregation of the
South.’2 This respect for the courts and the need, reinforced by editorial policy, to maintain
the authority and prestige of the judicial system, made it very difficult for the New York
Times, as a representative of elite liberal opinion, to accurately represent the degree of
injustice perpetuated on the defendants in the trial.

32
As Claire Wardle notes there has been scant attention paid to the press reporting of trials and
much of the work done fails to compare the press treatment with a detailed examination of the
trial proceedings.3 This paper will in a small way seek to rectify this omission. This article is
also significant in terms of the literature of mediatised conflict as it considers the media
construction of a clearly observable event - a trial in an American Federal Court. J Anthony
Lukas, the Times reporter, was present throughout most of the proceedings and, unlike in a
demonstration, was able to observe much of what was occurring including the deprecatory
tone and behaviour of Judge Hoffman towards the defence. Major studies of the media
coverage of dissent, such as Gitlin, Hallin and Murdock, have considered media reporting of
demonstrations where reporters can observe only a small segment of what occurs. 4 This
limitation partly explains the reliance on official versions of the events recorded in these
accounts.

The charging of the defendants and the arrest of the four defence lawyers.

The trial of the ‘Chicago 8’ took place against the backdrop of the conflicts over the war in
Vietnam and lifestyle choices of American youth that dominated the decade of the 1960s. The
eight defendants had come to Chicago, along with many others, in 1968 to protest at the
Democratic Convention being held to decide the nomination of the party’s candidate for
President. Unable to get permits from the city, the demonstrators continued attempts to protest
their opposition to the war and the Johnson Administration’s policies inevitably led them into
conflict with law enforcement officers of the city. The sight of pitched battles between
demonstrators and police during the convention were conveyed nightly on television sets
throughout the country. The political fallout from these conflicts, which some suggested cost
Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey the election, continued long after the parks of
Chicago had been cleared of protesters.

In an attempt to hold the demonstrators responsible for the violence that occurred as well as
put a dent in the organising capability of the New Left, Nixon administration Attorney
General John Mitchell charged eight of the leading figures in the movement with the Federal
count of crossing state lines to incite a riot. The eight leaders were Tom Hayden, Rennie
Davis, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, John Froines and Lee
Weiner. The result was that on 24 September 1969 the eight showed up to Chicago Federal
court to defend themselves on the charges laid. The presiding judge was Julius J Hoffman, a
74-year-old jurist with a reputation for being a strong disciplinarian in court.

In a precursor of the dramatic events that were to be a continual feature of the case, in the first
hour of the trial the chief prosecutor, Thomas Foran, asked the judge to arrest four defence
lawyers who had sought to withdraw from the case by telegram. Foran charged that the
unprofessional nature of the lawyers’ actions in failing to withdraw personally from the case
necessitated their arrest and punishment by Judge Hoffman. He did note, however, that should
the defendants be prepared to waive any Sixth Amendment claims that they may have then he
would withdraw the request for Judge Hoffman to arrest the lawyers. 5 The defendants had
protested that they were without counsel of their choice as Judge Hoffman had denied a
continuance for the trial to enable Charles Garry, who was to have been lead counsel in the
case, to recover from a gall bladder operation. Garry was particularly important to Bobby
Seale as he had been the chief lawyer for the Panthers for a number of years. In Garry’s
absence Seale sought to fire the other lawyers and represent himself in the trial. Subsequent to

33
the defendants’ refusal to waive any Sixth Amendment claims the judge ordered that the four
lawyers be arrested and brought to Chicago to account for their actions.

I shall now outline in more detail the circumstances of the lawyers’ arrest by the judge and the
way that the New York Times’ framing of the case minimised consideration of the injustice of
their treatment by Judge Hoffman. I will also refer to the trial record to illustrate the reporter’s
awareness of the improper nature of the judge’s attempt to use the lawyers as a means to get
the defendants to accept that their sixth Amendment rights had not been violated by Charles
Garry’s absence from the trial.6 It was only later in the incident, through the intervention in
support of the lawyers of authoritative sources such as the ACLU and the Harvard Law
faculty that the paper came, to an extent, to represent the injustice and true intention of the
judge’s actions.

At the start of the trial William Kunstler for the defence stated to the court that the defendants
believed that they were not adequately represented by counsel as Charles Garry, who was to
have been lead counsel in the case, was not present in the court. Garry had sought a
continuance of six weeks to delay the trial so that he could have a gall bladder operation. He
had presented medical records to the court to support his need for an operation yet the judge
had rejected any delay to the trial. Gerry Lefcourt, one of the four lawyers arrested by Judge
Hoffman, who is now head of the New York Bar Association described Hoffman’s denial of
Garry’s motion for a continuance as ‘outrageous’ particularly for a long Federal trial. ‘You
could get a six week continuance for a parking ticket,’ Lefcourt stated. An initial delay was
‘pretty standard’ when there had been no previous adjournment to the case, Lefcourt
recounted in his interview with the author. 7 In his book on the case, published shortly after the
trial’s conclusion J. Anthony Lukas noted that while waiting for the verdict in the Chicago
trial Judge Hoffman granted a six-week continuance in another case to a lawyer who had once
been an Assistant District Attorney. The lawyer’s only reason for the delay was that he wanted
to take a Caribbean holiday. Lukas sarcastically concluded, ‘It made one wonder what might
have happened if Charles Garry had been going to Antigua or Matinique instead of to the
hospital for a gall bladder operation.’ 8 Although this incident occurred after the end of the
trial, the Times reporting mentioned the Garry incident only briefly and made no comment on
the validity of Judge Hoffman’s decision to deny the continuance.

Charles Garry was particularly important to Bobby Seale as Garry had acted as the Panthers
chief legal counsel for a number of years and had been successful in defending Panther
founder Huey Newton, in a number of major cases in California. The importance that Seale
had attached to Garry was the reason that the other defendants had agreed to him being named
chief counsel even though Dave Dellinger, for one, had not been particularly happy with
Garry’s involvement in the case. Kunstler’s initial statement that the defendants were unhappy
with their counsel was an attempt then to build into the record grounds for a future appeal
should the defendants be found guilty.

As a means of averting grounds for reversible error, the prosecutor, by appealing to the
technical requirements of the law code that require an attorney to withdraw in person, not by
telegram, then requested the judge arrest the four defence attorneys who had been responsible
for preparing pre-trial motions. Judge Hoffman dutifully granted the US Attorney’s request
and issued ‘bench warrants for those lawyers who are obligated in law to be here.’ 9 US
Attorney Foran had two strategies in seeking the lawyers’ arrest. Firstly, he hoped to use the

34
threat of the attorneys’ arrest to get the defendants to waive any grounds for appeal based on
their sixth Amendment rights to the counsel of their choice. Foran openly stated that he would
withdraw the requirement for the lawyers to be arrested if the defendants waived their sixth
amendment objections.

If the defendants are prepared at this time to represent to this court that they are

satisfied with their counsel in this case… and they waive any claim that their Sixth

Amendment rights are abridged, then we would ask the court not to issue an order to

have the lawyers… brought in before this court.10

As the above statement makes clear this aspect of the strategy was evident to all those in the
court. Not surprisingly the defendants rejected and chastised the US Attorney for his
‘outrageous’ offer. Despite the defendants’ rejection of this offer, having arrested the lawyers
and brought them to Chicago the judge, acting for and in support of the prosecutor, continued
to suggest that the defence that they ‘had the keys to the lawyers cell’ if only they would
waive any sixth Amendment claims.

The second aspect of the prosecution strategy to undermine any sixth amendment objections
was to force the four lawyers to act for Bobby Seale. Although it is less clear from the trial
record that this is what was happening there are a number of references to conferences
between the prosecutors and defence counsel, which the judge was aware of, to try and broker
a deal for the lawyers’ release. 11 Again this clearly illustrates the judge’s willingness to go
along with the prosecution strategy to use the lawyers as a bargaining tool. Gerry Lefcourt
and Michael Tigar stated in interviews with me that Hoffman and Foran’s intention was to get
them to convince Seale to accept them as his lawyer. 12 The threat of what might happen to
them over the weekend in Cook County jail was the stick used to threaten them to persuade
Seale.

All of the lawyers refused to act as Seale’s lawyer and viewed Judge Hoffman’s actions as
wholly indefensible. Lefcourt describes his response to Hoffman’s actions in the following
terms, ‘We are supposed to be Bobby Seale’s lawyer, we refuse to represent him because his
lawyer is Garry and that is who he wants and you are not going to play that game with me. I
have never spoken to him about his case.’ 13 Eventually, late on Friday night, a court of appeal
in Chicago released the lawyers, thus avoiding the need for them to spend the weekend in jail.

As further evidence of the unjust nature of the actions of the prosecution and the judge in
relation to the arrest of the four lawyers, consider the views expressed by the court of appeal
on this aspect of the case. The appeal court used the lawyers’ arrest as evidence of the
‘deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude towards the defense’ that the judge and the
prosecution exhibited from the start of the trial – that is prior to any misbehaviour by the
defendants. The appeal judges also recognised the illegitimacy and unjustified use of power in
the judge’s actions.

The district judge’s antagonistic attitude toward the defence is evident in the record

from the very beginning. It appears in remarks and actions both in the presence and

35
 absence of the jury. On the first day… the district judge issued bench warrants for

four of the attorneys who had earlier appeared for the defendants and who were not

present for the trial… Although the four had obligation until relieved by the court,

and thus were technically subject to its direction in the matter, there appears no real

justification for the extent to which the court exercised its power. Two days later, on

motion of the government, the court vacated the contempt proceedings and gave the

four leave to withdraw. These events occurred well in advance of alleged defence

misconduct at trial.14

One senses, with John Schultz, that had the appeals judges not been associates with Judge
Hoffman they would have been even more scathing in their indictment of his actions in the
trial.15 In any case they clearly state that Hoffman and the prosecutions’ attitude to the
defendants would on its own, even without the other errors in the case, have been sufficient to
set aside the verdict.16 Further evidence of the extraordinary nature of Hoffman’s actions in
arresting the lawyers is provided by both the prosecutor and the judge sitting on the appeal for
the contempt charges against the defendants. In considering the extent to which the
defendants’ conduct arose out of provocation from Judge Hoffman’s actions the appeal judge,
Gignoux, inquired of prosecutor, James Thompson, about some of the more outrageous
actions by the Judge: ‘ “Did this happen?” and to each item Thompson had to answer, “Yes
your honor, it did” or, as in the case of Judge Hoffman’s arresting the four lawyers, “Yes your
honor, I’m afraid it did.” [my italics] You could see the judge [Gignoux] physically changing
up there on the bench.’17

The New York Times’ coverage of the lawyers’ arrest

Given this evidence about the injustice of the judge’s actions, how did the New York Times
represent the issue? To what extent did the paper explore the rationale and probity of Judge
Hoffman’s actions?

The lawyers’ arrest is framed squarely within the conflict which the paper was representing
was taking place between the defence on one hand and the Judge and prosecution on the
other. This conflict, between established authorities and protesters that dated back to the
convention, had been developed in the paper’s coverage before the trial had even begun. The
following provided the opening to the paper’s coverage of the case:

More than a year has passed. The grass has grown over the scuffle marks in Grant

Park. The tear gas and the stink bombs have been flushed from the Conrad Hilton’s

lobby. But there is still no truce in the Battle of Chicago. [My italics]18

In representing the lawyers’ arrest as part of the mutual and equally blameworthy conflict
between two fairly matched sides, rather than an unjustified act of repression instigated by the

36
prosecution and acted upon by the judge, the paper minimised the extent of the injustice
perpetuated on the defence and their lawyers.

The first article on the lawyers’ arrest by the Times directly associates the conflicts occurring
in the trial with the conflicts occurring on the streets in the demonstrations against the
proceedings. Although the paper refers to the demonstrations in fairly measured tones, unlike
for example the right-wing Chicago Tribune,19 Lukas’ article nevertheless linked protest, and
by association the dissidents in the courtroom, with violence. This link implies some
justification for the judge’s actions, particularly when they are explained in terms of the
defendants’ apparent lack of respect for authority and the rules of the court. The association of
movement activism with violence was one that, as Gitlin demonstrates, was well established
in the media coverage of the 60s protests and served as a means of denigrating the
movement.20 It would not take much then for an audience to potentially identify the
defendants as responsible for the arrest of the four lawyers, particularly coupled with the
strident and partly decontextualised way that their opposition to the judge’s actions were
represented.

Consider the initial framing of the lawyers’ arrest around the, sometimes violent, conflict
between established authorities and the dissidents and their supporters associated with the
trial.

Judge Julius J. Hoffman ordered the arrest of four absent defence attorneys today as

the trial of the eight leaders of demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic

convention got off to a stormy start. [My italics] A few minutes after the trial began,

feelings were running almost as high inside the stately wood-panelled courtroom of

the Federal District Court as they were outside the building, where more than a

thousand demonstrators gathered to show their support for the defendants. The crowd

listened to speeches, shouted slogans and waved pennants. But they were generally

restrained until late in the day when some of the demonstrators began throwing stones

and scuffling with policemen. Three policemen were reported injured and Richard

Elrod, an assistant corporation counsel, was hit on the head with a stone. 21

The lawyers’ arrest continued, as it was explained in more detail later in the article, to be
framed as part of the unstinting conflict between the two sides

Inside the courtroom the verbal wrangling began when Thomas Foran… complained that five
of the nine lawyers listed for the defence were not present. One of the four – Charles Garry –
is about to undergo an operation on his gall bladder. But Mr. Foran demanded that the other
four men be produced in court… Judge Hoffman said, ‘My wishes are that a lawyer respect
the court. You cannot withdraw from a case by telegram. I wish to have the four men brought
here as expeditiously as possible. Bench warrants will be prepared for their arrest.’ Angered

37
by the action against his colleagues, Mr Weinglass asked, ‘How about Mr. Garry, Your
Honour, wouldn’t you like him brought in too?’… You take care of your orders; I’ll take care
of mine’ the short 74-year-old judge said.22

Weinglass’ opposition to Hoffman’s order seems, out of context, a slightly childish and
petulant response to the fairness of the judge’s action, given the fact that Garry was in
hospital. Weinglass’ statement quoted by the Times, occurred, however, out of frustration at
the end of a sustained period of protest against the prosecutor’s statement and the judge’s
ruling by both defence attorneys William Kunstler and Len Weinglass. 23 This opposition
included Kunstler describing the attempt to use the lawyers as a bargaining chip to get the
defendants to waive any sixth amendment claims as ‘outrageous a statement as I have heard
in a Federal court.’24 The New York Times report did not mention this as the reason for the
lawyers’ arrest, nor does it acknowledge the defence’s protest as based on this issue.

The conflict frame and the apparent minimisation of the injustice of the lawyers’ arrest was
maintained in the next article that dealt with the issue, printed in the Times two days later.
Two of the lawyers had been taken into custody by the court –the other two having
successfully had their arrest warrants quashed in their own districts because they did not
properly state an offence.25 The Times’ frame for the lawyers’ arrest is identical to the original
story. Again the arrest is framed in terms of the conflict between the two warring parties in the
court and again an extraneous incident – this time a challenge to the authority of the court by
Bobby Seale – is thrown in immediately after. The effect is thus to divert attention away from
the injustice of the judge’s actions and infer at least a significant proportion of the blame for
the conflict in the court on to the defendants.

Two defence attorneys were held under arrest in court on contempt charges today as

the trial of the ‘Chicago eight’ continued to be marked by sharp clashes between the

defence and Judge Julius J. Hoffman. The dispute over which lawyers should

represent the eight leaders… reached an emotional peak [My italics] when Bobby

Seale… told the judge; “if my constitutional rights are denied, I can only say that the

judge is a blatant racist. Seale’s outburst followed his insistence that only Charles R.

Garry, a West coast lawyer who has often represented the Panthers, can represent him

here.26

After establishing the conflict frame at the end of the page one section of the article Lukas,
for the first time, gave some weight to defence criticism of the judge’s actions. He noted
defence charges that Hoffman was trying to ‘intimidate and harass lawyers who take up
unpopular cases.’27 Although this reported charge by the defence was much more moderate
than their criticism that the lawyers’ arrest was indicative of the repression of dissent
represented by the trial it did indicate some shift in the Times’ representation of the incident.28
This criticism is followed up on the jump page by the first quote from a defendant, in this case
Dave Dellinger, criticising the judge’s actions as well as a statement by the American Civil

38
Liberties Union executive director expressing his ‘deep concern’ over the judge’s actions. The
opposition to the lawyers’ arrest expressed by authoritative sources recognised by the New
York Times, such as the ACLU, was to prove significant in generating a more critical stance
by the paper to the judge’s actions. It did not, however, mean that the conflict frame was
abandoned by the paper in representing the incident.

In recognising greater criticism of the judge’s actions in the story on 27 September Lukas
mentions for the first time the attempt to ransom the lawyers’ freedom for the defendants’
willingness to forgo any sixth amendment claims. As the following quote illustrates, however,
the equivocal and incorrect representation of the issue weakened the paper’s criticism of the
judge’s actions.

This morning, however, they [the defendants] felt they had detected another

motive [for the lawyers’ arrest] when the judge offered to release the attorneys if

the defendants would agree that they were being adequately defended. The

defence refused insisting that its case was prejudiced by Mr. Garry’s absence. 29

The judge had, along with the prosecution, stated from the first moments of the trial that the
lawyers would be left alone if the defendants waived their sixth amendment claims hence the
inaccuracy of the Times statement that the defendants had only recently detected this as a
motive. As Michael Tigar and Gerry Lefcourt noted in interviews with me Len Weinglass had
telephoned them and informed them of the Judge’s motivations before they were even
arrested.30

The criticism expressed against the judge’s actions by the defendants and the ACLU are
further diluted in the article by the photograph on the second page of the 27 September story
that reiterated the conflict frame rather than any criticism of authority. The photo of a defiant
Bernadine Dohrn, one of the leaders of the Weathermen faction of Students for a Democratic
Society, being arrested by Chicago police again frames the trial as a conflict – in this case one
where the defendants and their supporters were over zealously challenging established
authorities. Dohrn is said to have been accused of ‘taking part in disorders’ and her arrest and
the clear association made between her actions and the defendants, whom she is supporting,
affirmed the dominant representation of the trial by the New York Times.31 This representation
suggested that the defendants and the authorities were equally responsible for the conflict that
occurred in the case.

The linking and criticism of the defendants’ protests against their treatment in the trial with
apparently violent ‘disorders’ on the street was solidified by the Times in an editorial three
days later. The editorial, although criticising the judge’s actions in arresting the four lawyers,
reserved equal criticism for the defendants’ behaviour as well as chastising the protests of
their supporters. ‘The probity of the proceedings has not been helped by the flamboyant
behaviour of some of the defendants and the provocative conduct of some of their
supporters.’32 The frame of joint responsibility for the disruption that occurred in the trial and
minimisation of criticism of the judge and maximisation of criticism of the defendants and

39
their lawyers conduct was one that was to continue to inform the New York Times’ coverage
as the trial proceeded.

The defendants, not surprisingly, sought to use the lawyers’ arrest to generate opposition to
the trial. The defendants and their lawyers held –often daily- press conferences in a specially
assigned room in the Chicago Federal court building. These press conferences, attended
regularly by the press contingent covering the trial, were designed to generate positive
publicity for their stated position that the trial was a political vehicle designed to stifle dissent.
They also attempted to highlight the judge’s repressive actions as evidence of the political
nature of the proceedings and the impossibility that they could receive a fair hearing on the
charges. As Gerry Lefcourt notes, the defendants sought to use the lawyers’ arrest to
emphasise both these points and as the basis for calling for an immediate end to the trial. 33

Given that the prosecution refused to speak to the press about the case, preferring, as
prosecutor Foran stated repeatedly, to try the case in court rather than in the media 34 one
would perhaps expect the defendants’ statements to have received significant press coverage.
This, however, was not the case. The defendants’ statements outside the court were quoted
only rarely throughout the five month trial. There are only two statements, for example, by
the defendants quoted as criticising the lawyers’ arrest and both were printed towards the end
of the news article.

As an illustration of the New York Times’ reluctance to quote, let alone positively represent,
the defendants’ views without support from authoritative sources recognised by the paper
consider the Times’ coverage of an additional press conference held in Gerry Lefcourt’s New
York office to protest the lawyers’ arrest. The article was the most positive piece, from the
defence’s point of view, on the incident. Unlike the other stories, which were framed in terms
of the conflict between the defendants and the authorities in the trial, the story by Emanuel
Perlmutter was written from the point of view of those who opposed the trial. Although the
press conference was organised by Abbie Hoffman it was the measured statements of Gerry
Lefcourt and the opposition by lawyers throughout the country to Judge Hoffman’s actions
that provided the positive frame to the story. The article begins as follows:

Plans were disclosed yesterday for a mass demonstration by lawyers in Chicago

tomorrow to protest the action of a Federal district judge who jailed two defense

attorneys in the conspiracy trial of the ‘Chicago eight.’ The proposed protest was

disclosed by Gerald B. Lefcourt of New York who was paroled by an appeals court

after… [being] held without bail [by Judge Hoffman] on contempt charges. 35

Although Abbie Hoffman is quoted denouncing the political nature of the trial towards the
end of the article the primary frame is the mass support amongst lawyers against the four
attorneys’ arrest. It seems that only when authorities recognised by the New York Times
intervened to support the defendants, in this case a large group of lawyers, their opposition to
events in the trial could be expressed. This point is reiterated by the article on the day when
the lawyers were finally released that quotes extensively from the petition signed by the

40
Harvard Law faculty against the lawyers’ treatment as the primary expression of opposition to
the judge’s actions.36 No statements by the defendants were quoted.

Although the intervention of so-called primary definers, Stuart Hall’s term for official sources
whose views are continually represented in the media, 37 increased the criticism of the judge’s
actions it did not, except for the one article, printed all be it on page sixty one of the paper,
change the overall frame of the incident. This frame represented the lawyers’ arrest within the
context of the ongoing conflict between the two sides in the trial and prior to that at the
convention. At the same time the paper did not allow the representation of the incident, except
through one brief quote from Abbie Hoffman, to provide evidence of the political nature of
the trial and that the trial should be ended. This is despite the fact that the lawyers in their
press conference on the day they came to Chicago and were released from their undertakings
by Judge Hoffman, emphasised this as the reason why they believed they had been arrested. 38
Although their picture at the press conference and the story of their release appeared on the
front page of the paper no mention was made of their criticisms of the political nature of the
trial. Instead their smiling faces seem to represent that order has been restored and that
established authorities, in response to responsible protest, had justly allowed their release. As
Gitlin notes, the standard media frame represents responsible authorities as fully able to
resolve any claims of injustice.39

In framing the trial as a clash between two warring parties the New York Times implied that
the case was part of a political conflict between two sides with opposing views. The Times’
coverage, however, suggested the clash was one in which both parties were evenly matched
and were equally responsible for the conflicts that occurred. In so doing the Times’ coverage,
whilst it accepted the trial had political elements, did not represent the prosecution as being
politically motivated. Nor, as it became increasingly clear that the judge was acting to achieve
the political aims of the prosecution, did the Times adjust its coverage to emphasise the
political, as opposed to judicial, actions taking place in the courtroom.

The Times’ failure to do justice to the injustice surrounding the lawyers’ arrest by Judge
Hoffman is evidence of the paper’s unwillingness to step outside of the standard frames used
for reporting. These frames, as Gitlin notes, give respect and deference to officials whilst
representing protesters as largely other and deviant. 40 Despite the presence in the court of a
respected and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist viewing the case the New York Times failed to
do justice to the level of injustice associated with the lawyers’ arrest. Rather than seeing the
lawyers’ arrest as part of a concerted, and legally unjustified, attempt by the judge and the
prosecution to get Bobby Seale to waive his right to the counsel of his choice the paper
framed the judge’s actions within the context of a war between two equally matched and
slightly absurd parties. The paper’s unwillingness to fully engage with the injustice of Judge
Hoffman’s actions has implications for the newspaper’s role as a public watchdog and
protector of free speech. Recent failures by the Times to adequately investigate Bush
Administration claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq illustrate that the issue of
journalistic questioning of official sources that I have made in relation to the Times’ coverage
of the trial are not related solely to the turbulence of the 1960s.

Endnotes

41
1 H, Friel and R, Falk The record of the paper: how the New York Times misreports US foreign policy
(London: Verso, 2004), 2.
2 J Anthony Lukas The Barnyard Epithet and other obscenities (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 2.
3 C. Wardle “The ‘Unabomber’ vs ‘The nailbomber’: A cross-cultural comparison of newspaper coverage
of two murder trials” Journalism Studies 4, 2, (2003): 239-251.
4 See T. Gitlin The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the making and unmaking of the New Left
2nd Edition, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) D. Hallin The‘Uncensored War’: the Media
and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) G. Murdock “Political deviance the
presentation of a militant mass demonstration” In J Young and S. Cohen (eds) The Manufacture of News
– Deviance Social Problems and the Mass Media (London: Constable, 1973), 156-175.
5 United States v David Dellinger et al 212 U.S. (1970) Later referred to as Trial Transcript pp A385-
395.
6 The sixth amendment to the United States constitution, the first 10 amendments of which form part of
what is referred to as the Bill of Rights, states that ‘In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy
the right to a speedy and public trial… and to have Assistance of Counsel for his defence.’ The Supreme
Court has since the 1930s considered the right to counsel as an absolute right, See Powell v Alabama 287
U.S 45 (1932). And, as we shall see, also recognised that right to counsel of one’s choice is also an
important legal right. See Chandler v Fretag 348 U.S. 3 (1954)
7 See Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25th, 2005.
8 Lukas The Barnyard Epithet p 104.
9 Trial Transcript p 397.
10 Trial Transcript p A 392.
11 See Trial Transcript p 750
12 See Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25 th, 2005. Author Interview with Michael Tigar May
22nd, 2006 and M Tigar (2003) Fighting Injustice New York, American Bar Association.
13 Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25th, 2005.
14 United States of America vs. David Dellinger et al 472 F. 2d 340, 1972 295.
15 J. Schultz The Chicago Conspiracy trial (New York: Da Capo Press edition, 1993) 368.
16 See United States of America vs. David Dellinger et al 472 F. 2d 340 1972, 250.
17 J. Schultz “The substance of the crime was a state of mind: how a mainstream, middle-class jury came
to war within itself” UMKC Law Review Summer, 68, 4, (2000): 650.
18 Lukas, J. Anthony “8 go on trial today in another round in 1968 Chicago Convention strife” New York
Times 1969, Sept 24, 29.
19 See R. Koziol “Court’s security tightened for conspiracy trial here” Chicago Tribune Sept 24, 1969, 2,
Chicago Tribune “1500 Hippies Hold march to trial site” Sept 24, 1969, 2. Chicago Tribune “A trial not
a circus” Editorial Sept 25, 1969, 24. The Tribune Editorial on the trial provides clear evidence of what
the paper thought of the defendants and this is reflected in its news reporting of the case. Whilst the New
York Times stance is more reserved the Tribune was not coy about representing its hostility to the
defendants. The first Tribune editorial frames the trial, as did the two news articles quoted above, in
terms of the threat of violent protest orchestrated by the defendants. This representation served to
demonstrate the threat that the defendants and their supporters posed to the city that justified the actions
taken by the police, and later the judge in the courtroom, in quelling that threat. Further illustration of the
overt hostility of the Tribune to the defendants’ is evidenced by their description of what the Times
describes as ‘a conspiracy spokesman.’ The Tribune describes this source delivering an identical quote
as, ‘One of the long-haired hominoids’ whilst those who attended the Woodstock Festival are referred to
as ‘frenzied aberrants of the human species.’ Editorial Sept 25, p 24.
20 See Gitlin The Whole world is watching, 94-95.
21 J. Anthony Lukas “Judge orders arrest of 4 defence attorneys as trial begins for Leaders of ‘68” New
York Times Sept 25, 1969, 28. Later in the article the generational conflict between the establishment is
further emphasised as the ‘stately wood-paneled courtroom’ is contrasted with the ‘unorthodox garb’ of
the defendants.
22 Lukas “Judge orders arrest of four defence attorneys” 28.
23 See Trial Transcript pp A 395-411.
24 Trial Transcript p A 395.
25 The paper made only a brief reference, under a separate heading at the end of the Sept 27 th article, to the
fact that in San Francisco and Oakland two of the lawyers, Michael Kennedy and Dennis Roberts, had
their arrest warrants thrown out. It was also only in the final paragraph that the Times acknowledged that
not only had the judge ruled that the warrants were invalid but that this had also been supported by the

42
 US attorney in San Francisco, Cecil Pools. See ‘Warrants ruled invalid’ New York Times Sept 27, 1969,
21. According to Gerry Lefcourt Pools had joined the lawyers in their motion to have the arrest warrant
quashed. See Author interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25th, 2005.
26 J. Anthony Lukas “2 lawyers at ‘Chicago 8’ trial arrested on contempt charges” New York Times Sept 27,
1969, p 1
27 Ibid.
28 As Lefcourt, one of the lawyers arrested, notes the main message that the lawyers, in consultation with
the defendants, were seeking to get across to the press was that the lawyers’ arrest was evidence that the
trial should be stopped. See Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25 th, 2005. Lefcourt was Abbie
Hoffman’s lawyer and the press conference to protest the lawyers’ arrest organised by Abbie Hoffman
was held in his New York office. I will speak in more detail about the defendants’ press strategies in
relation to the incident shortly.
29 Lukas “2 lawyers arrested,” 1.
30 See Author interview with Michael Tigar May 22 nd, 2006 and Author interview with Gerry Lefcourt
May 25th 2005
31 See the caption to photo of Dohrn in Lukas “2 lawyers arrested,” 21.
32 New York Times “Civil liberties in Chicago” Editorial Sept 30, 1969, 46.
33 See Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25th, 2005.
34 See for example Trial transcript pp 278
35 E. Perlmutter “Lawyers’ rally to assail jailing” New York Times Sept 28, 1969, 61.
36 See J, Anthony Lukas “Judge drops contempt citations against 4 defending the ‘Chicago 8’” New York
Times 1969, 1 and 35.
37 See S. Hall, S. Clarke, J. Critcher, T,.Jefferson, and B. Roberts Newsmaking and Crime Occasional
Paper Centre for contemporary cultural studies, University of Birmingham, 1975.
38 See Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25th, 2005.
39 See Gitlin The Whole world is Watching
40 Gitlin The Whole world is Watching, 37-38

Bibliography

Author Interview with Gerry Lefcourt May 25th, 2005.

Author interview with Michael Tigar May 22nd 2006.
Chicago Tribune “1500 Hippies Hold march to trial site” Sept 24, (1969), 2.
Chicago Tribune “A trial not a circus” Editorial Sept 25, (1969), 24.
Friel H and Falk, R The record of the paper: how the New York Times misreports US foreign
policy London, Verso, 2004.
Gitlin, T The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the making and unmaking of the New
Left 2nd Edition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003.
Hall, S, Clarke, J, Critcher, C, Jefferson, T and Roberts, B Newsmaking and Crime Occasional
Paper Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1975.
Hallin, D The‘Uncensored War’: the Media and Vietnam New York, Oxford University Press,
1986.
Koziol, R “Court’s security tightened for conspiracy trial here” Chicago Tribune Sept 24,
(1969), 2.
Lukas, J. Anthony “8 go on trial today in another round in 1968 Chicago Convention strife”
New York Times Sept 24, (1969), 29.
Lukas, J. Anthony “2 lawyers at ‘Chicago 8’ trial arrested on contempt charges” New York
Times Sept 27, (1969), 1.
Lukas J, Anthony “Judge drops contempt citations against 4 defending the ‘Chicago 8’” New
York Times Sept 30, (1969), 1 and 35.

43
Lukas J, Anthony “Judge orders arrest of 4 defense attorneys as trial begins for Leaders of
‘68” New York Times Sept 25, (1969), 28.
Murdock, G “Political deviance the presentation of a militant mass demonstration” In J Young
and S. Cohen (eds) The Manufacture of News – Deviance Social Problems and the Mass
Media London, Constable, 1973.
New York Times “Civil liberties in Chicago” Editorial Sept 30, (1969) 46.
New York Times ‘Warrants ruled invalid’ Sept 27, p 21.
Perlmutter, E “Lawyers’ rally to assail jailing” New York Times Sept 28, (1969) 61.
Schultz, J The Chicago Conspiracy trial New York: Da Capo Press edition, 1993.
Schultz, J “The substance of the crime was a state of mind: how a mainstream, middle-class
jury came to war within itself” UMKC Law Review Summer, 68, 4, (2000) 630-690.
Tigar, M (2003) Fighting Injustice New York, American Bar Association.
United States of America vs. David Dellinger et al 472 F. 2d 340, 1972
United States v David Dellinger et al 212 U.S., 1970
Wardle, C “The ‘Unabomber’ vs ‘The nailbomber’: A cross-cultural comparison of newspaper
coverage of two murder trials” Journalism Studies 4, 2, (2003) 239-251.

44
Could Poetry Define Nationhood? The Case of Somali Oral
Poetry and the Nation
Ali M. Ahad

n this paper I will try to explore relationships of causality and determination between the
discursive practices of Somali oral poetry and the national identity formation process within
a clan- structured Somali society.

Somalia as imagined community

Somali society has an important characteristic, which is its common language, and this allows
it to be configured as an ‘imagined community’ in Benedict Anderson’s terms, that is a
community whose members share attributes and common cultural habits and traditions.
Dialect variations exist1 between different parts of Somalia but these do not diminish the
validity of that image of a community unified by language and belief. This image of unity in
Somalia could appear paradoxical if we consider the present day clan-dominated situation
where Somali society goes back to its fragmented reality prior to the beginning of the 20 th
century colonial experience.

In earlier times, harsh environment and social fragmentation, which are characteristics related
to the economic and social life of the nomadic Somali pastoralists, impeded the development
of any form of unifying stable political organization. In the absence of such an institution
none of the orthographies invented by Somalis were adopted for the writing of the Somali
language because each clan feared the cultural predominance of the other to which the
inventor of the orthography belonged. The Somali language in fact did not exist in written
form until recently (1972).

Although the Somali has been a written language since 1972, ‘orality’ continues to prevail in
Somali culture, particularly in poetry. During the almost two decades between 1972 and 1991,
written language and oral literature continued to develop in parallel. Political instability,
including civil war, then impeded the wide circulation of both literacy and written literature.
Somali culture thus remains fundamentally oral and poetry still represents the medium for
artistic representation of Somali culture.

Somali oral poetry and its characteristics

Oral poetry is the most prestigious Somali literary form. 2 The supremacy of oral poetry over
any other artistic form or expressive medium in Somali culture is probably due to practical
considerations. Oral compositions in alliterative verse lend themselves best to memorization
and to further transmission and cultural diffusion.

Oral poetry recitation is performed by the author himself or by another performer who has
memorized the poem by heart. The particular tune of voice and rhythm with which the poem
is recited also helps its memorization and successive recitation by heart. The same persons
who have memorized it spread the poem by mouth over Somali territories. There are poems
and songs known in every part of Somalia, which were transmitted by mouth and are familiar

45
to many people. Somali oral poetry is also a historical discourse that transmits utterances from
one generation to another.

In Somali oral poetry there are features which the poet is bound to observe. These are
alliteration and rhythmic pattern, which distinguishes poetry from prose. Another shaping
characteristic is the genre, of which there are several. The different genres of Somali oral
poetry are distinguished by criteria of quantitative patterns, which only recently have been
studied and defined by Somali scholars.

Whichever the genre of a Somali oral poem, alliteration is compulsory. That is the initial letter
and its sound determines the alliteration of the entire poem. That means that every line must
contain at least one word beginning with the first alliterative sound.

The poet is talented both in creativity and in the use of Somali language. He is a living
dictionary and master craft’s person of new terms that become part of the language once
employed in a poem which is also a treasury and repository of the Somali language. The
power to create poems and the capacity to give existence to something previously non-
existent, and to name things, makes the poet an object of popular admiration.

Characteristics of Somali oral poetry are that it is: thematic, contextual, message bearing,
allusive, metaphoric, figurative, and double-meaning. These characteristics are related to the
role of poetry itself within the Somali society in general and to the particular position of the
poet who gives ‘voice’ and represents his group as well as expressing his own feelings. The
frequent use of figures of speech and words with shades of meaning, which demand to be
interpreted, gives the Somali poet a specialist role.

Many different devices and plots are implied in the creation of a Somali oral poem such as the
use of expressive images drawn from the nomadic pastoralist’s daily life, as well as
metaphorical expressions related to nomadic life and the camel. As the culture is mainly based
on oral communication, the use of these devices and plots in poetry is part of a vocabulary-
conservation strategy that maintains unchanged a certain way of life. Rules and codes of
behaviour, for example, related to gender and values are transmitted through oral poetry.
Somali oral poetry, therefore, is thus profoundly conservative.

Discursive formation

Somali oral poetry is not only a form of artistic expression concerned with lyricism and
beauty but is also an instrument that conveys political issues and influences opinion within
Somali society. Somali oral poetry as a particular medium of communication that influences
opinions and comments on the current situation in order to modify or restore it, is a
‘discourse’3 with its particular criteria of ‘discursive formation’.

The ‘discursive formation’, or the set of rules that specify the poetic discourse, works in such
a way that contributes enormously to the formulation of a Somali national identity which is
exclusively based on camel culture.

The most important pattern in Somali oral poetry is the one-sided creativity or ‘hal-abuur’
which means ‘sowing-she-camel’. That is, perpetuating the traditional pastoral way of life.
The versatile nomadic pastoralist mind projects through this pattern the imaginary and the

46
object of its poetic creativity that is the camel into the mainstream of Somali oral poetry. So
deep is this process that a she-camel symbolizes the concepts of Somali nation and
sovereignty. The set of conventions associated with the social institution of the clan in
nomadic pastoralist Somalia constitutes the orders of discourse for oral poetry. Orders of
discourse are ideologically shaped by power relations within the society according to
Fairclough.4

The ‘hal-abuur’ pattern of Somali oral poetry regards as its main object the camel; with a
camel oriented discourse oral poetry establishes a particular discursive formation; relations
between individuals and identity run through the ideological meaning of oral poetry. The
content of Somali oral poetry, which is the camel, produces beliefs and myths that are partly
ideological and which are important in the power relationship within the wider society.
Sometimes mythical and sometimes other social constructs, genealogies are the most visible
aspect of the ideological framework within which Somali individuals acquire their identity
and placement in Somali society and through which every person defines his/her relationship
with each other.

The particular discursive formation of Somali oral poetry defines the social relationships
between the nomadic pastoralists, who are camel breeders and herders, and those who are not.
The content of Somali oral poetry (the camel) and the social relationships (in terms of power)
established through the particular discursive formation of Somali oral poetry, construct a
human subjectivity and define its identity.

This social situation where identity is linked and produced by the particular “orders of
discourse” of oral poetry becomes so evident at a moment of celebration of the newly
independent Somalia’s sovereignty. Abdullahi Suldaan Timacadde is the poet who composed
the poem, which was called Maandeeq that is the ‘she-camel which satisfies the mind through
her milk’. This powerful imaginary of a she-camel which through her milk nourishes and
satisfies the mind of everyone is without doubt the highest and conclusive point in the process
of Somali identity formulation. This coincides with the emergence of a nationalistic tradition,
which amalgamates two previous well distinct identities, defined by different occupations. In
other words, the domain of a discourse emanating from the predominant pastoralist clan
institution and system sees the maturing of the Somali identity, which is a product of Somali
oral poetry. Discourse ‘as practices that systematically form the object of which they speak’. 5
The poem Maandeeq, the she-camel, is part of these practices.

The poem being broadcast by the national Radio strongly contributed to an extensive
diffusion of what could be termed ‘the camel concept of state’, because the camel’s name
Maandeeq does not symbolize only the nation, but also the state. The Somali nation-state in
these verses is a she-camel:

Gumaysigu hashuu naga dhaceen /gurayey raadkeeda

gu’yaal iyo gu’yaal badan hashii /gama’a noo diiddey

goobtay istaagtaba hashaan /joognay garabkeeda

guuraa habeennimo hashaan /gebi walboow jiidhnay

47
gaashaandhiggeedii hashuu /galowgu eedaamay

hashii geeddankeedii rag badan /goodku ku casheeyey

hashii labada gaal ee is-barkani /geydh u diriraysey

gacmaa lagu muquunshaye xornimo /noogumay garane

garre iyo guntane maalintay /gees isugu booddey

Allaa noo gargaaraye markuu /shicibku guuleystey

geeraarradeedii hashaan /annigu googooyey

galool iyo maraa iyo hashaan /kidiga geylaanshey

gaajiyo harraad badan hashaan /ugu garaacaynay

goortuu sidkeedii go’eey /galabtii foolqaaday

iyada oo candhada giijisoo /godol ku sii deysay

garaad midan lahayn bay la tahay /waad ka gaagixine

annagoo gantaalaha dhaciyo /haysan qori gaaban

hashaan gaadda-weynow libaax /uga gabboon waayney

Inaan goroyacawl uga tagaa /waa hal soo gudhaye.

The poem of the she-camel Maandeeq could be translated in this way:

The she-camel carried off from us by colonialism whose tracks I’ve kept following

The she-camel on account of which, for so many, springtime sleep has escaped

The she-camel we clung to wherever she was

The she-camel for whom we sleepwalked over every obstacle

The she-camel whose protection is the night owl’s wailing call

The she-camel whose rearguard poison-snake struck death

The she-camel whose possession the two foreign accomplices contended

Clasped was freedom by force, it wasn’t bestowed on us

Grown men and youths on the day they leagued together

When God helped us and victory was the people’s

The she-camel whose victory chant I composed and sang

48
The she-camel for whom I spread out thorny fronds of acacia and maraa-tree

The she-camel for whose sake we bore hunger and such thirst

When her time came at the noonday of the birth pangs

Her udders full ready to suckle

Only the man of un-wisdom holds her lactation can be stopped

When we had no missiles, nor automatics

The she-camel to defend whom from the lion we dared not back away

Leaving her to the ostrich is something that will not happen!

Continuity of the discursive formation

In recent times (1980s), more than one leading oral poet has stressed the fact that Somali oral
‘literature’ (oral poetry, in particular) exists by reason of the camel. Verses describing this
condition sound like:

Suugaanta waa deeq

Dalka waxay ku joogtaa

Maandeeq dusheedoo

Dareen bay ku tirisaa6

***

Poetry is a gift

And is in the fatherland

By reason of Maandeeq

Whose feelings it expresses7

***

In other words, the Somali state is conceived as a milking she-camel. In the tradition of
Somali pastoralists, camels are common property for which theft and raids are not considered
illegal. From the beginning of its independence as a sovereign state, in most Somali oral
poems the core concept links the state to this symbolic she-camel of which everyone could
claim possession by force.

The implication of such a vision is politically disastrous and, when it is added to the
fragmented Somali social structure derived from the pastoralist’s clan system, it produces a
form of anarchic behaviour both for individuals and groups.

49
The use in Somali oral poetry of figurative language, which implies camel and camel related
objects, has in the long run produced social reality that is symbolized by the camel. In other
words this means that Somali oral poetry is the poetry of the camel. This is a sufficiently clear
discursive formation which establishes the space of Somali oral poetry.

In the setting of this discourse formation a determinant role was played by those who are
considered today the most important among non-Somali scholars of Somali oral poetry, who
accepted and reproduced this imposition of the space of Somali oral poetry. That happened
because their informants ideologically supported the discursive formation which they
themselves had established.

‘Deelleey’ poetry debate (1979-1980) and it’s ‘context of situation’

After the Ogaden war of 1977 between Somalia and Ethiopia, and after a military coup d’état
in 1978, the Somali internal situation deteriorated politically and opposition groups emerged.
One of the earlier militant groups also used oral propaganda via radio in its fight against the
weakened military regime of Barre in Somalia. As in the best tradition of Somali political
conflict, an important part of propaganda against the regime was played by oral poetry. The
‘Hurgumo’ poetry-chain, which has tribal and clan characteristics, quickly spread across the
country. The re-emergence of clan loyalty inside the institutional apparatus, and an openly
clan-based politics outside, shook the nationalistic character of the regime, which was
indicated by the opposition groups as a totally dominated by clan oligarchy. In the quagmire
of political and social dissatisfaction determined by the poetry propaganda of the opposition,
the regime looked for support among the poets.

One interesting Somali oral poetry debate, the ‘Deelleey’, took place from December 1979 to
April 1980, and involved the participation of some fifty leading poets. The ‘Deelleey’ oral
poetry debate was sponsored by the government and commissioned by the Somali Academy
of Arts and Science. The governmental sponsorship of the debate granted free expression for
the poets and potentially everyone had the opportunity to participate in safety, despite the
censorship regime in force at the time.

The aim of that debate as conceived by its proponents was to rekindle nationalism and
national values versus clan ideology and kinship. The Deelleey poetic debate was coordinated
by one of the modern Somali poets, the scholar who discovered the metrics of Somali poetry.
Although most of the poets who participated in the debate knew how to read and write, their
poems were in oral form and were tape-recorded. The fixed rules were that every poet must
alliterate his/her poem in D and must produce the poem in jiifto or maanso genre.

The opening poem produced by the moderator himself is a strong attack on the clan system
which the poet associates with every evil disposition and disagreeable savagery that produces
murder and determines the under-development of Somalia. He also indicates the clan system
as a legacy of colonialism exploited by Somali political leaders and uneducated people
holding high positions in government. A Somali poem always rouses the interest of the
listeners and attracts criticism as well as praise, both expressed often in poetry form. Leading
poets who were famous because of their current membership of the state departments of
broadcasting and theatre and many other less known but equally skilful oral poets participated
in the ‘Deelleey’ poetry debate with their own poems, responding to the call. Although the

50
participants were numerous, only forty nine were included in the time-frame conceded by the
Somali authority and the regime of censorship in force. And within this number only one
woman was included, all the other being men.

The poetry debate proceeded for about four months and touched upon a large spectrum of
themes within which clan and nation occupy the first place. Within the ‘Deelleey’ poetry
debate, the two contradicting concepts of clan and nation were discussed in verse by each
participant in such a way that the development of the poetic debate became itself an
unprecedented political criticism of government.

The ‘Deelleey’ is a highly structured poetry debate through which poets tacitly operate within
a set of basic conventions. In a sense the poetry debate is like a game and often participants
mention the rules of Somali ‘chess’ when they introduce arguments and make their moves as
the dialogue proceeds.

Although most of the poets are urbanized and, in some cases, highly educated figures holding
important positions within institutions, the mannerisms and figurative expressions they use in
their poems are inscribed within the space of the above-mentioned discursive formation of
Somali oral poetry. Most often the settings of the poems are represented by the nomadic and
pastoral reality of Somalia. The field, the tenor and the mode of discourse are all related to the
social context of nomadic pastoralist Somalia. What is important to understand in this poetic
discourse is the nature of the message. According to Marshall McLuhan, it is the case to say
that ‘the medium is the message’ 8. Beyond arguments and criticism, the poem is a highly
satisfying linguistic competition and for the poets a demonstration of their rare ability in the
use of Somali language. The particular dialect variations of the Somali language which poets
adopt as medium, together with the life style of those nomadic populations who speak it, are
the message.

Considering all that has been said, the following questions arise:

Does the social practice of Somali oral poetry produce subjectivity or define identity?

Could the social practice of Somali oral poetry constitute a useful element in the explanation
of power relationships within the Somali social and political system?

Do the orders of discourse or the set of rules established by pastoralist Somali oral poetry
exclude any other discourse but that related to camel? For example, the sedentary
agriculturalist population in southern Somalia seems not to hold an adequate position in the
system of representation of national identity. Do the verbal performances of Somali
agriculturalists’ oral poetry present an aesthetic ‘discursive formation’ which is antagonistic to
the established ‘hal-abuur’ or ‘sowing of the she-camel’?

Which methodology could be adequate to assess and give answers to those questions?

Endnotes

1 Cfr. David Laitin, Politics, Language, and Thought (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press,
1977): 23-24.
2 B. W. Andrzejewsky and I. M. Lewis, Somali Poetry, An Introduction (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964).

51
3 “Discourse is defined as: every utterance… [with] the intention of influencing the other in some way”.
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse, (London, Methuen, 1983): 41.
4 Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (London, Longman, 1989): 28-31.
5 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, (London, Routledge, 2005): 54.
6 Yusuf Adan Hussein, “Dood Qaran”, 14/01/1980, in Deelleey. Another variant of translation is:
Poetry is given
Fatherland-born
By Maandeeq
Whose feelings it expresses.
7 Translations are mine.
8 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (London, Sphere Books, 1967): 15-30.

Bibliography

Andrzejewski, I M Lewis and B W. Somali Poetry. An Introduction. Edited by Oxford Library

of African Literature: Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964.
Easthope, Antony. Poetry as Discourse. Edited by Terence Hawkes, New Accents. London:
Methuen, 1983.
Fariclough, Norman. Language and Power. Edited by Candlin Christopher N., Language in
Social Life. London: Longman, 1989.
Foucault, Michel. The Archelogy of Knowlidge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith.
Routledge Classics, 2002 ed. London: Routledge, 2002.
Laitin, David D. Politics, Language, and Thought. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1977.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. London: Sphere Books Ltd, 1969 (1967, 1968).

52
The Multicultural Values of the Melbourne 1843 Rioting Irish
Catholic Australians
Jennifer Gerrand

Exploring the meaning of violence in the Melbourne 1843 riot between Irish Catholics and
Scottish  Presbyterians, the question is asked: ‘Is this manipulated riot based in moral
community values?’  The answer, in this case, is: ‘Yes - to an extent.’

It is argued that a protest against the deployment of black police, on the grounds that it was
‘unconstitutional and illegal’ because British laws prohibited ‘… authorities … be supported
by a foreign armed force’ supports the thesis that the more relaxed attitude towards Irish
Catholics was in part due to the Aborigines providing Empire with a new enemy ‘other’.

Day of Riot1

In June 1843 Australia held its first elections for two-thirds of the positions on the Legislative
Council. The one Melbourne seat had two candidates: Edward Curr, an English Catholic, and
Henry Condell, an English Presbyterian.

By polling day Saturday 17 June, Melbourne was gripped with excitement. From 9:00 a.m.
thousands of men milled around the polling booths to witness and respond to the open voting,
or wandered to the candidates’ camps for free alcohol. When polling closed at 4:00 p.m. and it
was clear Curr had lost, the Irish Catholic men execrated – screamed profuse swear words –
and expressed violent intentions to their enemies. Searching for Condell they first moved to
the Golden Fleece Hotel where he and his campaign committee had stationed themselves for
the day. He wasn’t there. The crowd swarmed to the space outside the main polling site, the
Mechanics Institute in Collins Street, where the results were to be announced. Thinking
Condell might be inside, the Irish Catholics brawled fiercely with special constables to force
entry. The Chief of Police and Chief Magistrate, Major St John arrived on horseback, baton
in hand, followed by Dana, Chief of the Native Police, with four white and six black mounted
police, swords drawn.

St John, Dana and his white mounted police rode to the brawling mob, the black troopers
staying on the street. The sanguine St. John good humouredly reasoned with the crowd. The
insults intensified. An infuriated St. John signaled to Dana and his men who brandished but
did not use their swords, except once to fend off one of the drunken rioters who tried to unseat
a trooper. The brawling and attempts to unseat troopers continued. St. John read the Riot Act.
There was no response. Edward Curr appeared at a window and told the crowd to go home
peacefully as they would see on Monday he had won. 2 Behind the Mechanics Institute some
Condellites screamed that they were being attacked, the shindig attracting a large section of
the mob. St. John and the mounted police followed, but by the time they arrived, the fight
had dissolved. Forming into groups of fifty to a hundred, the Irish Catholics then raged
through parts of Little Collins, Collins and Elizabeth Streets, and with stones and brickbats
and at least one large rock, smashed windows and the exteriors of buildings owned or
occupied by prominent Condell supporters.

53
A vehement stone-throwing mob besieged the auctioneer E. C. Greene, who had kept order
during the day, in his home in Elizabeth Street between Little Collins and Bourke Streets.
Greene eventually shot into the crowd, wounding two men, one in the back, one in the foot.
St. John, Dana and the mounted police, and some foot soldiers arrived. St. John again bravely
read the Riot Act. The clamour intensified, the crowd screaming that they would lynch
Greene. St. John bargained and the mob eventually agreed to leave Greene to St. John, if St.
John arrested him. The military arrived, led by a Waterloo veteran, their front extending from
house to house. The soldiers were ordered to charge, and with their bayonets forced the
rioters ‘man to man’ along Elizabeth Street up to St Francis Church. Lewis told the mob to go
home, and warned if they reassembled he would shoot to kill. The crowd dispersed from that
site. A group of men armed with broad wood palings raged around the streets screaming ‘We
will tear the hearts out of every dash Scotsman!!!!’ Further attacks on buildings in Little
Bourke Street occurred. Hotels were closed, the mounted police patrolled the town, and
eventually the streets were peaceful. At the theatre that evening, an Irishman was arrested for
violently assaulting a patron and heading a mob of about fifty, shouting ‘I’ll murder every
dash Orangeman!!’3

The arrested were dealt with summarily, the penalties standard for the assumption that some
provocation had occurred.4 Greene was exonerated due to ‘mitigating circumstances’. The
claims for compensation by property owners were ignored by authorities.

The local press viewed the episode very differently. Most of the colony’s newspapers were
run by and represented the wealthy and various interest groups. 5 The Patriot, edited by the
Scot Presbyterian Orangeman William Kerr, predictably blamed ‘the rioters.’ 6 The pro-
aristocracy and conservative Gazette commented that the riot displayed, for the first time in
Australia Felix, the ‘political excitement’ and behaviour typical at elections in Great Britain
and Ireland.7 The pro-Catholic and pro-English aristocracy Herald understood the event as a
not unexpected, traditional Mother country response to the humiliations and provocations the
Irish Catholics had recently endured, especially from the Patriot which ‘denounced Roman
Catholics as the vilest of the vile.’8

The main concern of the pro-Irish and pro-aristocracy Melbourne newspaper The Melbourne
Times was surprisingly different, focusing on the deployment of Aborigines as riot police.
The main part of its statement reads:

How far it may be advisable or even prudent to put arms into the hands of these
savages and teach them the use of their weapons and the value of union and regular
discipline, is an affair upon which opinions may vary much, especially when the great
proneness of such men to throw off the restraints of civilization and return to their
native wild habits is considered. … it is not, however on these grounds, the prudence
or policy of employing these men that we object to the use made of them in this town
on Saturday last. We denounce the act as unconstitutional and illegal, and as protests
are much in the fashion at Melbourne, we protest against it most strongly. For the
government or any authorities under it be supported by a foreign armed force is
contrary to the laws and constitution of Britain. We remember when the Hanoverian
troops, popularly known as the German legion, were in England during a part of the
great continental war, a body of them were called in by the magistrates upon one
occasion to quell a riot. Although these men were national subjects of his Majesty,

54
 Geo.111, as Elector of Hanover the circumstance caused such a sensation in England
that it was found expedient to send the whole of these troops out of the kingdom. If it
was necessary to guard so jealously against the employment of an un-English force in
Britain where the liberty of the subject is established upon a secure and broad basis,
the necessity is ten fold greater for such vigilance in these colonies, where liberty is
only beginning to dawn upon the population at large. …

Governor Gipps in Sydney commented on the Sydney elections at that time: ‘Ours have gone
off tolerably well, notwithstanding a good deal of rioting and the death of one man.’ 9

Factors underpinning the riot

A significant facet of this riot is that it wasn’t spontaneous, it was manipulated. The
community expected an election stoush, as revealed in this article in the Gazette, immediately
after Condell’s nomination:

A FRIENDLY HINT- It being generally rumoured that fighting will be the order of
the day at the Borough Election, we recommend all parties who anticipate being
present, and of course being present, having a brush with the enemy, to take a few
lessons in fencing and boxing from that inimitable artist Monsieur E. C. Greene, and
by this method save their perecraniums from being cracked. Some of the heads that
will be present are, it is rumoured, extremely hollow. 10

Greene, a former French chasseur, ran a fencing academy in Melbourne.11

Manipulation, however, doesn’t preclude agency. To understand the range of meanings this
riot contains, I draw upon the Marxist historian E. P. Thompson. Searching for the seeds of
revolutionary activity, Thompson distinguished between spontaneous and manipulated riots,
and focused on the former. His classic study of eighteenth century English labouring poor
bread riots reveal how these were based in a moral economy. This paper asks the questions:
‘Is this manipulated sectarian riot also based in moral community values?’ and, ‘What does
the riot say about the multicultural values of this community?’ It is argued that the riot was
underpinned by two main paradigm changes in the Old World: religious tolerance, and
electoral reform.

In the Old World, the 1829 Catholic Relief Act, supported by the growing spirit of religious
tolerance, especially among propertied, highly and formally educated Protestants, was
hastened by the need for the British Government to achieve internal national unity and
appease O’Connell’s threatening Repeal movement. Catholics’ right to vote, restored with
Union in 1800, was now supplemented with the right of Catholics to serve in parliament, and
the removal of most of the remaining Catholic penal codes. Preceding the British electorate,
12
the 1829 Catholic Relief Act disturbed the interiority of the staunchest anti-Catholics –
Anglican English, members of the Church of Scotland, Protestant Irish, and evangelical
millenarian Protestants. By completing Catholic civil rights, the Act re-vitalised anti-
Catholicism. Not that the ‘profound significance’ of the 1829 Catholic Relief Act - the
consequence that ‘the composite British state [was] no longer legally defined by its exclusion
of Roman Catholicism’13 – was entirely lost on the British population. For the rest of the
nineteenth century, these undercurrents surfaced throughout Britain’s colonies during inter-
denominational dialogue around issues of state recognition, financial support and planning for

55
education, through a scattered minority of individual Protestant voices, and in the form of
Orangeism.

The chasm between Protestant and Catholic was the ‘towering feature of the United Kingdom
religious landscape.’14 Catholics were, for most Protestant Britons, 15 the negative Other, and
anti-Catholicism was still a core aspect of English, Scottish, Welsh and British national
identity.16 ‘The category of the other is as primordial as consciousness itself,’ says Simone de
Beauvoir.17 She noted the Lithuanian-French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas’ point that
alterity (alterité), ‘otherness’, is not necessarily oppositeness or oppositional, but can be a
constant aspect of core identity. 18 ‘The Other is what I myself am not,’ 19 Lévinas says,
adding: ‘The personal relationship of self with Other ‘expresses the subject’s power over the
world, meanwhile protecting its personality.’ 20 And further: ‘A relationship with the Other
requires the absence of the other … ’ 21

Colley reports that ‘[t]he most common slang adjective for Catholics was “outlandish” and
this was meant literally’.22 ‘Outlandish’ means foreign, strange, beyond the pale of
civilization.23 Catholics, even when born in Britain, were foreigners: ‘they did not and could
not belong’.24 Catholicism denoted an absence of Britishness.

The Emancipation Act, by legally annulling the compulsory absence of Catholics from the
British political decision-making arena, undermined the Otherness of Catholicism and dented
triumphant Protestantism. The fear of Irish Catholic supporters of O’Connell and wealthy
Irish Catholics now gaining too much political power through rotten boroughs and political
corruption,25 added to the two main electoral reform campaign issues: the exclusive
parasitism of the aristocracy’s political power, and the waste of the nation’s resources on
continual wars.26

Electoral reform heightened these anxieties. ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the
Bill’ clamoured the British middle classes. Initiated by Whig aristocrats, the clamour by the
middle classes, however, was not for democracy, but for the franchise for themselves. The
combination of the 1832 Great Reform Act27 and 1832 Scottish and Irish Reform Acts widened
and instituted more transparent electoral systems. The increased equality for the elite
minority of electors, however, threatened Protestants wanting to retain ascendancy vis-à-vis
Catholics, while also providing more opportunities for both Catholics and Protestants in the
burgeoning middle classes to gain political power. These opportunities and tensions were
played out by aspiring emigrants in the new colonies.

In the New World of New South Wales, while religion wasn’t a prime priority of the ruling
class, the colonial government perceived religion as essential for maintaining law, order and
moral standards in a colony emerging from convict origins and military government.
Religious tolerance was not the government’s initial stance, but it increased incrementally.
From 1788 to 1820, while one quarter to one third of the transported convicts were Irish
Catholics, there was an official paid Catholic chaplain only from 1803-4, the Vinegar Hill
uprising ending that policy.28 In 1820, two Catholic priests were employed by the government,
but paid from the colony’s police fund. 29 In January 1830, the Legislative Council’s passing
and enacting of legislation replicating the British 1829 Catholic Relief Act, formalised the
colony’s commitment to religious tolerance. The colony’s first Catholic bishop, John Bede
Polding, arrived in Sydney in 1835. By 1836 the new assisted immigration scheme had

56
increased the colony’s Catholic population to 22,000. 30 In that year Governor Richard Bourke
radically instituted the paradigm of religious toleration in his Church Act 31 which gave
relatively equal financial assistance to the four main denominations – Anglican, Catholic,
Presbyterian, and Methodist.

Two main exceptions to the upper class aspiration of religious tolerance were the colony’s
Anglican archdeacon, Bishop William Grant Broughton, and its first Presbyterian minister,
the Rev. John Dunmore Lang, a member of the Church of Scotland. Broughton, from the
upper echelons of British society, appointed in 1824, was opposed to Catholicism on religious
grounds.32 Politically astute, and needing and benefiting from state aid, his criticisms were
mostly contained in private communications.33 His criticisms were persistent however, and
‘with constant reference to the State Law of England and the Oath of Supremacy, [he]
challenged every Catholic claim to public equality, and notably Polding’s appearance at the
Governor’s levees in his garb as a Catholic bishop.’ 34

Lang, aptly described by Manning Clark as ‘the preacher of an avenging Jehova… another
wild boar [who] had strayed into the vineyards of the Lord in New South Wales’, 35 arrived in
Sydney in 1823. From a lower middle-class Scottish lowland farming family, Lang was a
vituperative critic of many things including horse racing, homosexuality, the New South
Wales exclusivist society, but most especially, ‘Popery’. An evangelical apocalyptic member
of the Church of Scotland, Lang supplemented his extreme religious bigotry with zealous
inflammatory political interventions, seizing every possible public opportunity to provoke and
condemn through his newspaper The Colonist. His inflammatory views were also expressed
in formal sermons in which he could not mention Protestantism or Presbyterianism without
damning Catholicism; his anti-popery lecture programme which comprised one in four of his
scheduled Sunday sermons; his published sermons and pamphlets; and through his insignia
publication, the 1841 booklet titled: The Question of Questions! OR Is This Colony to be
Transformed into a Province of the Popedom? A Letter to the Protestant Landholders of New
South Wales by John Dunmore Lang, D.D.36 That booklet, written from Lang’s concern about
the disproportionately high number of poor unskilled Irish Catholics arriving in the colony
through assisted immigration, was peppered throughout with such essentialist statements as:
‘Irish Catholics are the most ignorant, the most superstitious and the very lowest in the scale
of European civilization.’37 ‘...the counties of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galaway and
Tipperary…. are the strongest holds of popery, bigotry, superstition and immorality, in the
British Empire.’ 38

In this publication, Lang analysed statistics of the ratio of Irish Catholics vis-à-vis non-Irish
Catholics in prisons in England, Ireland and America. From these he drew the essentialist
view: ‘Such then is the fearfully prolific character of Irish Popery wherever it exists, in giving
birth to crime and criminals.’39…concluding that ‘Emigration to the Colony is best not from
Ireland – send them to other British colonies.’ 40 Lang believed that for ‘the moral welfare of
the Colony … the last place from which we should send Bounty immigrants is the South and
West of Ireland’. He recommended they be sent from ‘the locality from which the best
agriculturalists are to be procured. 41 The following year Bishop Broughton, in a speech to the
Legislative Council, produced statistics showing that between 1 January 1841 and 30 June
1842, of 25,330 immigrants to the colony, 16,892 were from Ireland, mainly Roman Catholics

57
from the South and West, and a total 8,438 were from England and Scotland. 42 Lang’s alarm
increased.

Lang’s anxiety was not sourced only in his anti-Catholicism; it was also in his millenarianism.
One consequence of the social turmoil within late eighteenth century British Society was the
rise in apocalyptic thinking amongst the middle classes. Apocalyptic thinking wasn’t viewed
as a theory, said its historian Harrison, but ‘a means of expression and communication’.
Harrison added, it was ‘... a common language and set of images and concepts in which
people could express both individual and collective needs [e.g. recognition of social change
occurring, hope for salvation], and in which at times the two might even be merged.’ 43
Harrison identifies the three characteristics of apocalyptic thought: ‘a polarized view of the
universe, a catastrophic explanation of events, and a firm concern with prophecy and its
fulfilment.’44 It provided continuity for Christians with the Old Testament Jewish dualism
and millennialism, and New Testament Revelations 20. Intrinsic to millenarianism was the
enemy Other. By not challenging the relationship of ‘Self’ with ‘Other,’ this thinking also
assisted the avoidance of both uncertainty and self-criticism, and sustained a fixed view of
Self in relation to Other, that is, of Protestant as against the enemy Catholic. With its
polarising lenses of good and evil, apocalyptic thinking accentuated differences and
reinforced essentialist moralistic views of people. Although a relatively mainstream view of
Evangelical Protestants at this historical period, it was based in superstition, and compelled
apocalypts to align with one side, the side perceived as ‘the good’, as the only alternative to
becoming ‘the evil’.

There is no evidence millenarianism was particularly prevalent in New South Wales or Port
Phillip. However, it was perfectly compatible with prevailing strands of good/evil binary
thinking including the racism which grew in the 1830’s with frontier violence. 45 In the
absence of an alternative theory for social change, millenarianism was relatively unchallenged
when it did emerge.46 The optimism of apocalytpicism, predicting that your side, in Lang’s
case Protestantism, would win out over Catholicism, combined with its non-requirement of
testability, provided the energy and extraordinary confidence Lang demonstrated in a range of
circumstances, including his imprisonment for debt and libel, as he strove to achieve his
evangelical Protestant aims.

Not that Lang was entirely confident as a person in this New World society. To impress, in at
least two instances during his first years in the colony, Lang elevated his credentials beyond
the facts. Lang’s public claim that Governor Brisbane, a neighbour of his mother in Scotland,
had invited him to Australia was quickly denied by Brisbane. 49 And Lang’s statement in his
memoirs that he ‘took the degree of Master of Arts (AM)’ is refuted by the fact that the AM
was not then generally offered to Scotch students. 50 In Glasgow, where there were so many
Presbyterian ministers it was difficult to secure employment, 47 and where his choice of the
Australian colony as a destiny was ridiculed, 48 Lang had been a relatively small fish. He was,
perhaps, determined to be viewed as a big fish in New South Wales where the Anglican
English and the exclusive society were in the ascendancy. Many of the New South Wales
ruling class men, from Britain’s aristocratic diaspora, held very impressive academic
qualifications, illustrious careers, and/or upper class background status besides which Lang’s
initial profile was decidedly lack-lustre.

58
Lang was certainly not alone in his lower middle rank social insecurity. McGowan’s research
of the Port Phillip District indicates the society was mainly a two-tiered society with ‘higher’
and ‘lower’ ranks, and ‘social, cultural and civic life organised for a leisured class’. Below the
upper, however, were a middle class ‘striving to become upper class, the mercantile middle
class vying with the ‘landed gentry’ or squatters, for social importance, and modelling their
lifestyles on the squattocracy.’ 51 De Serville describes the colourful contestations between
Port Phillip gentleman, conflicts he attributes to both the status insecurities of an embryonic
colonial society and the querulous individuality of the Regency period. There is, however, a
confidence sourced in their upper class position which Lang lacked. Perhaps Lang’s self-
righteousness towards and judgment of the Other, was a means of protecting his vulnerable
inner ‘self’.52

The ethnic composition of Port Phillip further unsettled Old World patterns. The Scots were
initially in the ascendancy in Port Phillip. Cliff Cumming’s 1988 research shows
conclusively how close-knit a group were the Presbyterian Scots in Port Phillip: between
1838 and 1851, of 1,062 Scots Presbyterian marriages, 1,027 resulted in Scots Presbyterians
marrying Scots Presbyterians, the proportion similar for country and town settlers. 53
Cumming also convincingly argues that with regard to the Scots identity, ‘nothing is more
important than religion’,54 and that ‘from the Reformation onwards, this religious element was
undoubtedly that which identified itself as Presbyterianism.’ 55 Cumming explains that ‘The
loss of other symbols such as the monarch and court in 1603 and the parliament in 1707 left
Scotland with her Presbyterian Institution as one of the few remaining tangible evidences of
national identity. It was the Church of Scotland which, from the sixteenth century, had
‘consistently upheld Scotland’s nationhood and identity.’ 56 Religious issues were the pivotal
factors in Scotland’s disputes with England leading to the Bishops’ War in 1638, won by the
Scotch peer Covenanters, who refused Charles 1’s attempt to impose the Episcopalian prayer
book and the Episcopalian Bishops onto the Scots in 1637. Thus religion was also a
statement of Scottish national independence from England. In the early nineteenth century,
each departing Scottish emigrant was given, by the Church of Scotland Colonial Committee, a
letter reminding them of their distinctiveness, imploring the emigrants

… [in moving and tender words] to remember, above all else, that they were a
“covenanted people”. Neither this covenant, nor the God of this covenant was …
rendered null and cold merely because they had left Scotland - a nation under
covenant. They were of Israel wherever they settled. “You cannot go where god is
not. Though you go forth to a distant, it is not a strange country. The God of your
fathers will go before you.”57

‘They were a people, even though far removed from the familiar surrounding and patterns of
worship, who were not removed from the convenant sense of identity as a single people.’ 58

Cumming found that the Scots were also imbued with a fierce sense of equality, adding ‘Thus
any discrimination, whether real or imaginary, was enough to call forth a response which
demonstrated a unity of purpose and identity among the Scots. 59… The Scots were the first to
organize a national association … – as early as 1838. The Church of Scotland and Lang’s
very strong identification with the Jews, evidenced in his sermons, 60 expressed a superiority
based on collective feelings of inferiority via-à-vis the English, and also carried the baggage
of being the persecuted people.

59
From 1832, Wakefield’s system for the emigration of Britain’s ‘surplus population’ totally or
partly funded from land sales, 61 was welcomed for its rapid alteration of the convict/free
demographics of New South Wales.62 Until 1842 almost all the land revenue of New South
Wales paid for ‘free … or very cheap passages, for [voluntary] artisans - under thirty years of
age if single, under forty years if single, and their families’. 63 The emigrants had to be
‘agricultural labourers, shepherds, carpenters, smiths, wheelwrights, bricklayers or masons,
and single women, domestic or agricultural servants,’ 64 of ‘sober, industrious’ character and
recommended by respectable citizens such as local clergy. 65 Only voluntary emigrants came
to Port Phillip by sea, and in 1839 the first of the Bounty immigrants arrived in Melbourne, in
the Hope, via Sydney. Between 1839 and 1842 over 12,000 assisted immigrants, 66 almost all
labourers, predominantly agriculturalists from southern England, Scotland and southern
Ireland,67 arrived in Melbourne, usually directly from Britain. Port Phillip’s population of 224
in 1836 increased to 11,738 in 1841.68

Prior to 1840, Australia’s pastoral industry was flourishing, and these new emigrants were
quickly absorbed.69 Rapid absorption, however, did not equate with rapid assimilation. The
strong nexus between nation and religion at that time resulted in the immigrants, bereft of
their original extended family and community networks, grouping around their national-
religious cultural networks. In 1841, Melbourne’s total population of 9,814 people
comprised 48.8 percent Church of England, 20.1 percent Irish Catholic and 14.3 percent
Scots Presbyterian. Of the Irish Catholics, one in ten were from Tipperary. 70 Linda Colley
highlights the fact that national identities forged in war are deeply embedded, 71 and that the
identity of the British at that time was based in ‘much older allegiances’ 72 than that of the
‘Great Britain’ invented only in 1707’.73

For many poorer and less literate Britons, Scotland, Wales and England remained
more potent rallying calls than Great Britain, except in times of danger from abroad.
And even among the politically educated, it was common to think in terms of dual
nationalities, not in terms of a single nationality. 74

In the Old World, the divide between the English, Scottish, and Welsh on the one hand, and
the Irish on the other, arose from the combination of Ireland’s geographic separation by sea,
and its Roman Catholicism. These factors positioned Ireland as a potential ally with foreign
Catholic nations and a threat to the ascendancy of Protestantism. Lang’s prejudices reflected
this divide, perhaps most intensely felt by Northern Irish Protestants, many of whom had been
transplanted to Ireland from England to support and sustain English and Protestant
ascendancy in Ireland.

The New World colonial territory was therefore, a contested site, not merely between the
colonisers and the indigenous peoples for their geographic territory and its resources, but
between different immigrant cultural groups for social status, affirmation, ascendancy and
non-ascendancy.

In the New World of Port Phillip, social status positions were relatively fluid, and social ranks
and classes at all levels socially and even economically insecure because of pioneering
conditions. The first Melbourne land boom collapse in 1841 led to losses by speculators and
pastoralists as the price of sheep plummeted. Working people were subsequently in distress
in 1842 and 1843. By 1845, over 300 colonists were bankrupt. 75 In all this turmoil, in an era

60
where there was no universal education, and immigrants were bereft of their original extended
family and traditional community networks, for the middle and labouring classes, religion
remained a solid constant factor. However, religion isn’t separate from politics, culture and
economy,76 and religion was used then as both a resource for individual and network support,
and as a weapon for politics. For Protestants, their political weapon was Orangeism, its
narrative sourced in the 1688 Battle of the Boyne, during which James II’s Catholic Irish
army was defeated by William of Orange. Orange Lodges first formed in Ireland in the 1790s
to combat the British government’s removal of some of the Catholic penal codes.

The first political involvement of Orangemen in Melbourne occurred in 1842 when the Scot
Presbyterian Orangeman and newspaper editor, William Kerr, succeeded in the 1842
Melbourne Corporation elections with the help of Orangemen newly arrived in Melbourne
from Northern Ireland. Two other successful candidates were from Northern Ireland,
including the Orangeman King, Melbourne’s first Town Clerk. No Catholics had been
nominated.77 The sectarianism of that election spread into a January Corporation by-election,
and into the Legislative Council elections when Lang nominated for one of the five Port
Phillip regional seats. The only candidate for the Melbourne town seat was the highly
respected but very dogmatic and quarrelsome Edward Curr, an English Catholic. In March
there was a violent brawl in the English Golden Fleece hotel initiated by two Irish Catholics
who came in saying: “We’re Irish and what do you English think of this?” and kicked a
cripple. They returned the next day and were violent to patrons and the building. Were these
Irish Catholics testing if, in this New World, they were still at the bottom of the pile? The
Irish Anglican solicitor Redmond Barry, who appeared for the defendants, put this down to an
‘election squabble’.78

In March Lang wrote a provocative letter to the paper which criticized the fact that the only
candidate for Melbourne was a Catholic. Lang’s letter reframed the Melbourne seat election
as a do-or-die sectarian struggle, and intensified sectarian feelings. His bigoted views as
stated in his 1841 booklet were referred to in letters to the paper and at his public
electioneering meetings, where his sarcasm about O’Connell’s popularity in Ireland further
stimulated sectarian emotions. On St. Patrick’s Day, the St Patrick’s Society abandoned its
previous and founding ecumenical principles, and presented a solidly Catholic presentation,
the Catholic priest Patrick Geoghegan addressing non-Catholics as ‘dissenting brothers’.
Protestants were outraged.

Although Curr was the only candidate, the boisterous and rough behaviour of some of his
Irish Catholic labouring class supporters at election meetings nearly caused further riots,
feeding Lang’s stereotypes of the Irish Catholics, and associating Curr with sectarianism.

By 9 June, Edward Curr was still the only Melbourne candidate. That night, Lang and
William Kerr met secretly with the lowly regarded Melbourne Mayor, the Scot Presbyterian
Henry Condell, who agreed to nominate for the election provided Lang wrote his speeches.
Sectarianism intensified: an altercation in Mr Williamson’s drapery store where Port Phillip’s
resident judge Willis provocatively expressed his anti-Curr views, resulted in Edward Curr
seeking a restraining order against Willis. An anti-popery slogan circulated around town:

PROTESTANT ELECTORS OF MELBOURNE

Remember what your fathers have suffered from Popery, and will

61
 you again give it the ascendancy by returning
a Popish Member
For Melbourne.
You are three to one in number, and so down with The Rabble,
And no Surrender.

On the morning of polling day, Saturday 17 June 1843, the whole District was in a state of
great excitement. Men occupying houses valued at £20 per annum could vote for the one
Melbourne seat on the Legislative Council. Of a total town population of about 11,000, there
were 566 men enrolled to vote.

The Riot’s meanings

So what meanings did the election riot contain? Riot with violence is a form of punishment.
Violence is defined by the contemporary Oxford English Dictionary, as ‘the exercise of force
so as to inflict injury or damage to persons and property’. Public violence, by this definition,
was a main form of State punishment at this time in Britain and Port Phillip. The sociologist
Foucault views the eighteenth and early nineteenth century as a period during which ‘the
entire economy of punishment [in the Western world] is redistributed’. 79 Foucault here is
analysing punishment in the State penal system, which is top-down punishment, punishment
by the ascendant group – the State - onto the social body below. But public violence can be
wielded by the other than the State. It is argued that the 1843 Melbourne riot can be seen as a
phenomenon of bottom-up punishment whereby the non-ascendant Irish Catholic Australians
collectively inflicted punishment, and discipline, on ascendant social bodies – the Scot
Presbyterian Australians, and less directly, on the ‘State’ – in this case the Colony’s ruling
class social body via the constabulary, and the ruling class in that it was property occupied by
the propertied Scot Presbyterians which was attacked.

From this perspective, the Melbourne 1843 riot can be viewed as a multi-layered socio-
political strategy to redistribute the economy of punishment (sending punishment inflicted on
the Irish-Catholics back to the Scot-Presbyterians) in order for the Irish-Catholic distinct
socio-national-religious group to exist within the same society as the ascendant ‘enemy other’
group. That the riot imposed punishment and discipline, albeit less directly, on the State, is
seen in it signalling to the ruling class that the Irish-Catholic labouring class community,
although in the non-ascendant position, had some power, and some grievances. This group
were prepared to challenge the system of class deference and the State’s preferred self-image
of being a peaceful, internally united society, to achieve redress for injustice.

The grammar of class explains why violence was applied. In the early 1840’s in Port Phillip,
labouring classes were, for the upper classes, ‘the other’, 80 in a similar way women at that
time were ‘the other’ for men. By virtue of their class, they were often without formal
education, and illiterate,81 and thereby excluded from civic participation and even from some
community activities. For most labouring class Port Phillipians, religion was the only
institution to which they belonged.82

The riot punishment inflicted, however, was relatively restrained. The rioters did not come
armed with guns, and despite their execrating rhetoric of violence, did not seriously injure any

62
person. The violence and hatred were all specifically aimed at the property of people
perceived as being the enemy other. Thus the riot violence by the Irish Catholics was not,
apart from that outside Greene’s house, indulgent hatred, but symbolical, restrained and an
appropriate exercise of power for that pre-democratic era. Their violence was utilised as a
tool for taking back control of a situation in which their core-group identity was being
humiliated and threatened with further social marginalisation.

The Irish Catholic rioters were therefore acting upon an emerging moral community value
reinforced by the liberal Governor Richard Bourke’s 1836 Church Act, that exclusion of one
European community group by another, was unjust. This value was upheld by the wider
community as evidenced by the tolerance of the violence by most of the press, the press
condemnation of both Lang and the Patriot, and the meagre legal penalties meted out to the
accused rioters. Toleration of the Irish Catholics’ violence in this instance was toleration of
their presence in the field of action, and this undermined their othering.

The anti-popery slogan circulated in the week before the election powerfully triggered fears in
the Irish Catholics of another conquering, but also expressed the besieged mentality of the
Melbourne Scottish Presbyterians, who no doubt felt threatened by the growing Irish Catholic
and English Anglican population in Port Phillip District, initially a Scottish settlement. In this
respect the meaning of the threats for both the provoked and the provocateurs were sourced in
myths of conquest originating hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away. This is the
shared mental terrain of the provocateurs and the provoked.

Thus, while the rioting community was physically based in the geographic terrain of 1843
central Melbourne, the boundaries of their mental territory was based in myths of conquest, at
a different time and place, long ago and far away. However, the responses to the riot suggest
that this mental terrain was shifting in the new colonial world. Understanding and justice
were extended to the Irish Catholics in the form of tolerance of their riotous outburst. The
different European settler national-religious groups in Port Phillip District were learning to
share their different mental territories in New World conditions, one of which was that the
New World had no immediate foreign national enemy. However, the significance of the
Melbourne Times’ view that the black native police, who were trained by, worked
cooperatively with, and were led by the European Dana, constituted a ‘foreign army’, is
significant. This is surely a projection of the need to have a foreign enemy other at a time
when immigration to the one place was making the Irish less so. The Melbourne Times’
analogy of the situation in 1873 when German troops, allies of Britain on leave in England,
were utilized to control a riot, and subsequently expelled for their un-Englishness, illustrates a
hierarchy of ‘otherness’ in which the German troops are placed as ‘Other’ above their own
riotous people.

It is argued that this view of Aboriginal Australians as a new British enemy other may account
in part for the growing tolerance towards Irish Catholic Australians: the Old World Empire
now had a new enemy ‘other’: the black savages of Port Phillip.

Endnotes

1. This riot is reported differently by primary sources, the local press: Melbourne Times, Port Phillip Gazette

63
(Gazette), Port Phillip Herald (Herald), Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser (Patriot);and in books:
Edmund Finn alias ‘Garryowen’, The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, 1835-1852, Historical, Anecdotal and
Personal (Melbourne: Fergusson and Mitchell, 1888, vol. 1), 331-40; Thomas McCombie, History of the Colony
of
Victoria. From Its Settlement to the Death of SirCharles Hotham (Melbourne and Sydney, London: Sands and
Kenny, Chapman and Hall, 1858), 99-100; John Waugh, “Personal Reminiscences of John Waugh,” Drouin,
Victoria,
1909, RHSV, Box 35/6 MS 000091, 23-24.
2. Curr lodged a very unsubstantial protest, which was not upheld.
3. From details of charges and sentences against the rioters in Patriot, 22 June 1843.
4. Thanks to Paul Mullaly, retired Victorian judge and author, for personal communication July 2007. Paul is the
author
of a book on crime in Port Phillip District, in press.
5. Sandy Blair, “The Sydney Gazette and its Readers 1803-1842,” in The Australian Press – a Bicentennial
Retrospect,
eds Victor Isaacs and Rod Kirkpatrick, (Middle Park, Queensland: Australian Newspaper History Group, 2003),
7-33, 26-7.
6. Patriot, 22 June 1843.
7. Gazette, 21 June 1843.
8. Herald, 20 June 1843.
9. A. G. L. Shaw, ed., La Trobe Correspondence 1839 – 1846 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press at the
Miegunyah Press, 1989), Letter 201, Letter 199 from Governor George Gipps, Sydney, 17 June 1843, to La Trobe,
Melbourne, 214. La Trobe’s correspondence for this period has been lost.
10. Gazette, 10 June 1843.
11. From Kenyon Index, SLV.
12. See A. A. Aspinall, “The Catholic Question, Party Fragmentation, and Reform”, [from A. A. Aspinall, Three
Early
Nineteenth-Century Diaries, (London: 1952,) xiv, xx-xxix] in The Great Reform Bill of 1832. Liberal or
Conservative?, Gilbert A. Cahill, ed., (Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, Raytheon
Education Company, 1969), 23-28, passim; and John Wolffe, “A Transatlantic Perspective: Protestantism and
National Identities in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States”, in Protestantism and National
Identity. Britain and Ireland, c.1650-c.1850, Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, eds, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), 1998, 295.
13. Wolffe, 291.
14. Linda Colley, “Britishness and Otherness: an Argument.” Journal of British Studies, 31, October 1992, 309-
29,
317.
15. The threat of Catholicism differed between nations and times - see Trystran Owain Hughes, “When was Anti-
Catholicism? A Response.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History [Great Britain] Journal of Ecclesiastical History
[Great Britain], Vol. 56(2), 2005, 326-33, 326.
16. Colley, 316-21, discusses the notion that Catholics were the hereditary enemy.
17. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England:
Jonathon Cape, 1952), 17.
18. Emmanuel Lévinas, “Time and the Other,” in de Beauvoir, p.17. Similarly expressed in Emmanuel L évinas,
Time and the Other and Additional Essays, trans. Richard A. Cohen, (Pittsburg, PA: Duquesne University Press,
c.1987), 85.
19. Ibid., 83.
20. Ibid., 81.
21. Ibid., 90.
22. Colley, 319-320.
23. C. T. Onions, rev. and ed., The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Vol. 2, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1973), 1474.
24. Colley, 320.
25. Aspinall, 27.
26. G. Lowes Dickinson, ’Whigs Were Aided by the Middle Class’, in Cahill, 7-15, 13.

64
27. 2 & 3 Will. IV, c. 45. An Act to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales, 1832, also
known
as: Representation of the People Act 1832.
28. The first paid Catholic in New South Wales, Fr. Dixon, an Irish convict priest, began officially celebrating
mass on
May 13th 1803. His his permission to conduct mass was withdrawn following the 1804 Vinegar Hill uprising,
despite the fact that his collusion in the episode was never established.
29. Ibid., 13.
30. Ibid., 14.
31. 7 Wm IV, No. 3. An act to promote the Building of Churches and Chapels and to provide for the maintenance
of
Ministers of Religion in New South Wales (29 July, 1836), popularly called ‘Bourke’s Church Act’.
32. The main Protestant objections to Catholicism as a religion were that it was too centralized and authoritarian,
the
Pope having a deity role; too dependent upon priests reading and interpreting the Bible; its excommunication of
Catholics who marry non-Catholics or send their child to a Protestant school; the ornate interiors of Catholic
churches and the high profile of the Virgin Mary were viewed as examples of idolatry. With thanks to Dr. Eric
Turner, personal communication, Sydney, December 2006.
33. Patrick O’Farrell, The Catholic Church in Australia. A Short History: 1788-1967 (Sydney: Thomas Nelson
(Australia) Limited, 1968), 47. In a letter to Lord Glenelg 14 September 1836, Bourke complains about ‘His
Lordship’s [i.e. Broughton’s] antipathy to the tolerant principle of the Act.’ In HRV, Series 1, Vol. xviii, 537.
34. Ibid.
35. Manning C. Clark, History of Australia, Vol. 2, New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, 1822-1838, (Carlton,
Vic: Melbourne Univ. Press , 1963-1987), 31.
36. John Dunmore Lang, The Question of Questions! OR Is This Colony to be Transformed into a Province of the
Popedom? A Letter to the Protestant Landholders of New South Wales by John Dunmore Lang, D.D., George-
Street, Sydney, J. Tegge and Co., 1841.
37. For example at Lang’s Geelong meeting 9 June 1843, as reported in Gazette, 10 June 1843.
38. Lang, 10.
39. Ibid., 29.
40. Ibid., 30.
41. Ibid., 30.
42. Baker, Days of Wrath : a Life of John Dunmore Lang (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press,
1985), 197.
43. J. F. C. Harrison, The Second Coming. Popular Millenarianism 1780-1850 (New Brunswick, New Jersey:
Rutgers
University Press, 1979), 6.
44. Ibid.
45. Henry Reynolds, “Racial Thought in Early Colonial Australia.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.
xx, no. 1, April 1974, 45-53, 46-7.
46. The editor of The Gleaner, published in Sydney from April - September 1827, Dr. Lawrence Hynes Halloran, a
Doctor of Divinity, was a millenialist.
47. David. S. Macmillan, Scotland and Australia 1788-1850: emigration, commerce and investment (Oxford:
Clarendon
Press, 1967) 22, in J. Wansbrough, “The Early Career of John Dunmore Lang 1823-1840. Its relationship to his
increasing participation in public affairs and his growing conviction to be active in this area of political and social
matters. The relation of this to his theology and to his idea of the role of a clergyman in society,” MA Thesis,
University of Sydney, Arts Department, 1970, 13, states that from 1815-23 there were more young ministers
looking for churches than there were positions to be filled.
48. See John Hirst, The Strange Birth of Democracy, New South Wales 1845–1884 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin,
1988),
7, 77.
49. Wansbrough, 3-4.
50. Ibid., 4.
51. McGowan, 164.
52. I hold the views that there is, in fact, no such thing as a solid, continuous ‘Self’, that ‘Self’ is a socially
constructed
concept, similarly as ‘Other’ is socially constructed.

65
53. Clifford Cumming, “Vision and Covenant – Scots in Religion, Education and Politics in Port Phillip District
1838-
1851”, PhD, Deakin University, 1988; and Cliff Cumming, “The Force of National Identity: Scots in Port Phillip
1838-1851”, paper delivered at ‘Young Historians’ Series, Royal Historical Society of Victoria, 25 th July 1989, 10.
These figures drawn from his analysis of the Early Church Records (Records of Baptisms, Marriages, Burials)
1837-58.
54. Wallace Notestein The Scot In History, (London, Jonathan Cape, 1947), 150, in Cliff Cumming, ‘The Force of
National Identity: …’, 2.
55. W. Stanford Reid, “The Nationalism of the Scottish Reformation.” Scottish Tradition, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring,
1973,
22, cited in Cumming, “The Force of National Identity…”, 2.
56. Notestein, 150, cited in Cumming, “The Force of National Identity..”, 2.
57. The Home and Foreign Missionary Record of the Church of Scotland, 169, in
ibid., 15.
58. HFMR, 168, in ibid., 16.
59. Ibid., 8- 9.
60. For example, in a published sermon Lang devotes a separate end section to discuss the similarity of the Scot
Presbyterians and the Jews, including financial frugality and superiority as a people: John Dunmore Lang, D.D.,
“The Present Aspect and Prospects of the Church; with a Plain Statement of the Case of the Church of Scotland
and the British Colonies: A Sermon, preached in Trinity College Church, Edinburgh, 20th February, And in St.
Andrew’s Church, Edinburgh, 3rd May, 1831,” (Glasgow: Printed for the author, sold by M. Ogle, W. Collins, and
M. Lochhead, Glasgow; Waugh & Innes, and W. Oliphant, Edinburgh; and J. Nisbet, London, 1831), 29.
61. K.H. Bailey [and others] and F. W. Eggleston Editorial Committee, P. D. Phillips [and others], eds, The
Peopling
of Australia: Further Studies (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1933), 48.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., 48-9.
64. Broome, The Victorians. Arriving, (McMahons Point, NSW: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1984), 47.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., 48.
67. Ibid., 49.
68. The 1842-4 depression slowed this growth which reached 8,300 in 1843, and
10,954 in 1846.
69. Ibid., 49. From 1832-41 about 40-45,000 transported convicts and 100,000 voluntary arrivals in New South
Wales, 60,000 of the latter per assisted passages.
70. Until 1848 this was the ratio - ibid., 50.
71. Colley, 314.
72. Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992),

373.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Richard Broome, The Victorians. Arriving, 35, 37.
76. William T. Cavanaugh, “Does Religion Create Violence?” paper presented University of Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia, International Public Lecture Series, 18 May 2006, passim.
77. Of the (twelve) first elected Town Corporation members, 5 were originally from Scotland, 4 from England, 2
from
Northern Ireland, and 1 from New South Wales. Of these, there were 5 Presbyterians, 5 Anglicans, and 2
Independents. ‘Garryowen’ considered these men ‘a fair representation of the then commercial, professional and
industrial interests of the community’, comprising: 2 doctors, 2 general merchants, 2 wine and spirit merchants, 1
newspaper proprietor, 1 editor, 1 brewer, 1 master-builder, 1 butcher, and 1 hotelkeeper -from ‘Garryowen’, The
Chronicles of Early Melbourne, 1835-1852: Historical, Anecdotal and Personal (Melbourne: Fergusson and
Mitchell, 1888), 263-4.
78. Thanks to Paul Mullaly for this information he retrieved from VPRS Series 30P Box 2 – 1-19-7;  Willis Note
BookNo 14 page 119; (Willis has the wrong date of trial in his note book); Herald, 21 March 1843. 
79. Ibid., 7.

66
80. An example of the ‘othering’ of the labouring class is seen in the speech by candidate Nicholson, a member of
the
exclusive aristocracy, 2 March 1843, Melbourne Times, 11 March 1843, 4, cc1-4, c4, in which he discusses his idea
to import cheap Coolie labour from India “the introduction of Coolies [providing] a relief for our present urgent
and
pressing wants without regarding them as the permanent occupants of the soil …”.
81. Broome, 49; Cumming’s Vision and Covenant:…, 380. And James Jupp, in an address to Melbourne Irish
Seminar Series, Melbourne, 2005, stated that most of the assisted English immigrants to Australia were
illiterate.
82. Phillips, 272, states:
The politics of class [in English electoral behaviour, 1818-41] dominated neither unreformed nor reformed politics,
but a strong, consistent pattern of religious differentiation marked the partisans at every election tested in each of
these constituencies both before and after Reform. …

67
HISTORIA BAETICA: Dramatic Play or Historical Document?
Cristina Potz

In my paper I discuss the possibility that Carlo Verardi, author of the Historia Baetica,
could have had knowledge of a secret agreement between the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand
and Isabel of Castile and Boabdil, king of the Islamic emirate of Granada, regarding the
take-over of the fortress of the Alhambra by Gutierre de Cárdenas, during the night between
the first and second of January 1492, preceding the official hand over of the Alhambra to
Ferdinand, planned for the second of January.

Several scholars have indicated the Historia as a probable documentary source of the event.
I propose that the author did perhaps know of the ‘first’ unofficial take over of the Alhambra
by Gutierre, but that he did not have any knowledge of the secret agreement. My hypothesis
would provide a reasonable explanation as to why Verardi appears to have incorporated
into his encomiastic play details telling of the secret agreement which Ferdinand, the
Castilian king, wished to keep secret.

The historical background

When the news of the capitulation of Granada reached Rome on the second of February
1492, it was marked by religious as well as public celebrations. The public festivities
resulted in a body of literary works, primarily epic poems and orations praising the Catholic
Kings, written in Latin by Roman humanists.

Verardi wrote the Historia Baetica, a dramatization of the final events of the war of
Granada, exalting Ferdinand, Spain and the Christian religion, for the influential Italian
cardinal Raffaele Riario, an intimate acquaintance of the Catholic Kings. The play was
performed in Rome on 21 April 1492, at the cardinal’s official residence, in the presence of
eminent prelates of the papal Court.

The Italian scholar Carlo Barrera Pezzi was apparently the first to propose the hypothesis
that Verardi might have had knowledge of the overnight, secret entrance of the Spanish
troops into the Alhambra. His assumption was based on a document, titled the ‘Anonimo
italiano’, which Barrera Pezzi published in 1864. 1 In the document, a copy of a letter neither
dated nor signed, the writer claims to have been part of Gutierre’s contingent and to have
brought the Christian prisoners to the Catholic Kings during the official ceremony of the
second of January. More recently, the Spanish scholar Maria Del Carmen Pescador Del
Hoyo confirmed the Baetica amongst the documentary sources of the secret take-over. 2

Del Hoyo’s investigation began upon her discovery of an unpublished document, a private
letter unknown up until then, bearing the signature Cifuentes, dated and written from Vega
and addressed to the Archbishop of León, Don Alonso de Valdivieso, to whom the writer
reveals interesting, hitherto unknown details regarding the real reasons for the first, secret
entry into the Alhambra.3 It appears that Cifuentes was amongst the privileged witnesses of
the private meeting between Gutierre and Boabdil. He seems adamant in claiming that the

68
Catholic Kings entered the Alhambra when it was already securely in Spanish hands. He
writes:

Having taken possession of the Alhambra el Comendador Mayor requested that the
Kings send the count of Tendilla.. And his captains...and the crossand their insignias
of Santiago to the Alhambra.4

Cifuentes is the only witness to specify that before handing over the keys of the fortress to
Gutierre, Boabdil requested: ‘A paper signed by Gutierre confirming he was taking charge of
the Alhambra, on behalf of the Catholic Kings.’5

Afterwards, the Muslim king left and Gutierre ordered his men to take charge of the fortress. 6
Cifuentes explains that with the arrival of the Muslim hostages at Ferdinand’s camp at dusk
on the first of January, as agreed previously with Boabdil, the Muslim king sent a message in
which he asked Ferdinand to take possession of the Alhambra overnight and in secret.

What prompted Boabdil’s request? The contemporary Spanish and Arabic narrative sources
agreed that the Muslim king feared an insurrection of the citizens of Granada, who were not
too keen to surrender to Ferdinand. Cifuentes claims that in his message Boabdil warned
Ferdinand that the Muslims posted in the Alhambra represented a serious threat for the
Spanish king and himself during the ceremony of the hand-over of the fortress’s keys the
following day and for these reasons he asked Ferdinand to send secretly a military contingent
to the Alhambra that same night. 7 Ferdinand, writes Cifuentes, sent a contingent of his men,
at Gutierre’s orders, to whom Boabdil handed over the keys of the Alhambra, whereby when
Ferdinand took over the fortress officially the following day, it was done in all safety, a mere
symbolic formality, the fortress being securely in Spanish hands. 8

Cifuentes’ testimony confirms and corroborates the information given by Alonso De Palencia
in a private letter to the Bishop of Astorga, Juan Ruiz de Medina, dated Seville 8 January. De
Palencia, chronicler of the Castilian court, 9 whilst referring the events of Boabdil’s surrender,
specifies that on the first of January, Boabdil received in the Alhambra, and apparently in
secret, some Spanish soldiers who took charge of the fortress. Palencia claims that the
Catholic Kings did not enter the city of Granada on the first of January but instead they
returned to Santa Fé, waiting for the population to be disarmed and therefore ensuring there
would be no danger to themselves during the official ceremony. 10

The handing over of the hostages and the subsequent secret arrival of Spanish troops at the
Alhambra, in the night between the first and second of January, have been confirmed by other
witnesses. However, the reasons given by them seem to differ noticeably from the testimonies
of Cifuentes and Palencia. For example, Bernardo Del Roi, in charge of the Christian
prisoners as the Anonimo italiano, in his missive sent to the government of the Republic of
Venice on 7 January 1492, explains the reason for the overnight takeover as follows:

The Moors of Granada, forced by hunger and the strength of Ferdinand’s arms,
surrendered to the Kings on the second of January 1492. And to secure a safe enter to
the city of Granada for the said King and Queen, the above mentioned Moors sent
600 hostages.11

69
The following day at sunrise, writes Del Roi, ‘el Comendador Mayor de León’ with 900
horsemen and soldiers, headed towards the Alhambra where he met Zabí, a Muslim chief
who guided him to the iron door of the fortress. Zabí handed the keys to Gutierre who, after
having opened the door, ordered his men to the most strategic positions in the fortress. He
then went to the Royal palace where he met Boabdil who was accompanied by 300 armed
men who, upon the arrival of the Spanish commandant, left by a secret door, a detail
mentioned also by the Anonimo italiano.

Del Roi, contrary to Palencia and Cifuentes, does not mention that the overnight entrance of
the Spanish troops into the Alhambra had been secretly arranged between the two Kings, and
we could assume that probably Del Roi considered it as part of the security measures
stipulated in the official documents of the capitulation.

Another witness, called the Anonimo francese, appears to be in the dark as well. In his report,
dated Granada, 10 January 1492, the Frenchman claims that the date for the city’s surrender,
planned for 25 January, was brought forward due to humanitarian reasons: ‘so that the Moors
could work and plant the land, the date of the contract was brought forward to the first of
January.’ 12

The testimony of the Anonimo francese agrees with those already mentioned, insofar as the
delivery of the hostages to Ferdinand’s camp on the first of January is concerned and in
indicating Gutierre as the leader of the expedition that a Muslim delegation took to the
Alhambra, which was left in his charge. This last detail does not appear to prick the
Frenchman’s curiosity because he seems assured that surrender of the city was a ‘fait
accompli’.

As pointed out by Del Hoyo, several scholars have not given much consideration to these
private documentations, preferring instead the official chroniclers, considered a more reliable
source of information,13 without taking into consideration the fact that the arrangement
between the Muslim King and Ferdinand was kept secret and therefore unknown to the
official chroniclers of the Spanish court. Furthermore, it seems probable that even if they
knew about it they would not have mentioned it in their official ‘cronicas’. 14

Let us take in consideration some passages from Verardi’s Baetica which could be interesting
for the purpose of this paper.

Ferdinand, upon receiving the offer of surrender by Boabdil’s ambassador, commands

Gutierre:

Be ready, with your group of soldiers…to take possession of the city…and to occupy
all the most strategic positions of the fortress. When that is done, raise our insignias
on the highest tower.15

Gutierre’s reaction seems particularly significant:

In all my life I have never done anything more pleasing than what I am about to do
now, even if I had to face a mortal danger (which however does not exist)… my
soldiers, take up your arms and let’s approach the doors of the city. 16

70
If we take into consideration Cifuentes’ testimony, it would seem possible to suppose that
Gutierre knows Boabdil will hand him the keys of the Alhambra, as agreed with Ferdinand.
However, Verardi could have became privy to information similar to the testimonies of Del
Roi, of the Anonimo fancese and probably the Anonimo italiano, who appear not to know the
real reason behind the secret take over of the Alhambra. In this instance Verardi could have
considered the event as an integral part of the surrender agreement and not as a secret hand
over of the fortress to the Spanish troops, plotted by Ferdinand and Boabdil. It is noteworthy
that amongst the original documentation cited, only Palencia and Cifuentes appear to be
aware of the secret agreement and of its reason; the former perhaps because, as the official
chronicler of the Castilian court, he would supposedly have had access to privileged
information, and the latter due to his supposedly high military ranking or position of trust.

If Verardi knew of the hand over of the keys, he does not mention it in the Baetica; however,
in the exchange between the characters of Cardinal Mendoza and Ferdinand, he explicitly
depicts Gutierre as the first to enter the Alahmbra. 17

Cardinal Mendoza:

Our Gutierre is the first to enter, victorious in your name, the fortress of Granada.

King:

Now everything is going well, our Gutierre has been welcomed warmly in the city. 18

The testimony of the Anonimo italiano appears to leave no doubt that Gutierre was the first to
occupy the Alhambra, before the arrival of the count of Tendilla, who took charge of Granada
as its first Spanish “alcaide”. He claims: ‘The Preceptor maior gave the place of the Alhambra
to the count of Tendilla’, an assertion which seems clearly indicative that Gutierre had entered
the fortress before the count.

Verardi depicts Ferdinand and the Cardinal, who are waiting for Gutierre to raise Ferdinand’s
insignias as previously agreed, as attentive but uncertain observers of the events, apparently
due to the distance separating them from the Alhambra:

King:

Do I see the flag bearing the cross being raised on the top of the fortress?

Cardinal:

You see correctly. It is indeed our flag. The fortress as well as the whole city is free
and in your hands. I thought I heard the herald calling for silence with his trumpet,
from atop the fortress.

The episode of the Christian prisoners of the Alhambra, meeting with the Catholic Kings, is
mentioned in all of the documentary sources cited, notwithstanding some discrepancies;
however, it is not mentioned in the official chronicles until the sixteenth century.

In regard to the episode the Anonimo italiano explains: ‘I brought the captives in the presence
of the king of Spain [who] welcomed them, commanding we’ll wait for the Queen.’ 19 Del
Hoyo does not say whether the Anonimo italiano specifies that the prisoners were singing.

71
Del Roi, unlike Cifuentes and Palencia, does not mention it; the Anonimo italiano describes
them carrying an image of the Mother of God and three crosses, whereas Del Roi claims they
were carrying a single cross and an image of Mary while he was taking them to Ferdinand.

Verardi appears to have knowledge of the episode. However, his depiction differs from those
given by the eyewitness sources. He depicts the prisoners as singing, but does not specify
the Te Deum. Instead, he represents them as reciting an ode to Ferdinand, a detail which is
not mentioned by any other documentary source and could perhaps be ascribed to Verardi’s
artistic freedom.20

If Verardi had indeed access to privileged information, such as the document by the
Anonimo italiano, as proposed originally by Barrera Pezzi, we wonder whether he was
aware how controversial it was or, like the Anonimo italiano, Del Roi e l’Anonimo francese,
he was in the dark regarding the secret agreement between Boabdil and Ferdinand. 21 In this
instance he would have considered the first, overnight entrance of Gutierre into the
Alhambra as perhaps a security measure which had been previously agreed upon and
concerning the negotiations of the surrender. Verardi would have considered the information
as an unexpected source of hitherto unknown details, with which to enrich his play, allowing
him to show knowledge of events not yet made public.22

Endnotes

1 The document has been published in Documenti inediti italo-ispani nei reali archivi di Milano. It is
thought that the original document was sent to an official of the Castilian court, who subsequently sent it
to a Spanish bishop in Rome, perhaps the secretary of the Vicecancelliere Rodrigo Borgia.
2 Maria Del Carmen Pescador Del Hoyo, ‘Cómo fue de verdad la toma de Granada.’ El Andalus (1955),
239-344:239. Ten years later Luis Suárez Fernández and Juán De Mata Carriazo Arroqui confirmed the
Baetica amongst the primary sources of the event. See ‘La España de los Reyes Católicos (1474-
1516),’in Historia de España, ed. Ramón Menendéz Pidal (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1969), Tomo. XVII,
vol. 1.
3 Vega is the name of the plane surrounding Granada where Ferdinand’s troops were camped. The date,
Granada 8 January has been added in different color ink and handwriting. Amongst the original details
provided by Cifuentes: the troops left Ferdinand’s camp at midnight and arrived at the Alhambra at
sunrise, due to the longer route taken to enter the Alhambra by a secondary entrance, in order to avoid
being noticed. The muley, upon their arrival, informed Boabdil and the Muslim king gave order for
Gutierre and his men to enter the fortress. Subsequently, Gutierre with some of his captains, went to
Boabdil’s private apartments, in the tower of Comares. Cifuentes ’ document has been published by Del
Hoyo, Cómo fue de verdad, 285-87.
4 Ibid., 286.
5 Del Hoyo excludes the possibility that Cifuentes might have been the brother of the Count of Cifuentes,
whose participation in the event is mentioned by Del Roi, on the basis that the writer does not mention it.
However, it is probable that Cifuentes and Valdivieso knew each other and there was no need for the
sender to identify himself more than by his name. Very probably Cifuentes occupied a position of trust if
he was present at the secret hand over of the keys to Gutierre, as it appears by his description of the
event, the only known testimony of it.
6 Cifuentes claims that, upon the arrival of Gutierre, Boabdil ordered his men to leave the royal
apartment through a secret passage, perhaps in order to avoid embarrassing eyewitnesses. Del Roi and
l’Anonimo italiano both appear to agree with Cifuentes’ testimony.
7 The Islamic chronicles, such as the Anonimo of the Escurial and Al Maqquari, claim instead that
Ferdinand was afraid. However, it has been ascertained that rumors regarding secret privileged accords
between Boabdil and Ferdinand had caused resentment amongst the citizens of Granada and even
Palencia confirms it. Furthermore, groups of refugees from Baza were determined to continue fighting
the Castilian army. The sudden rounding up of the hostages, signaled to the population that surrender

72
 was imminent, stirring up anger in the city, whereby Boabdil began to fear for his own safety.
Bernaldez in his Memorias confirms it. Andrés Bernaldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes
Católicos, edición y estudio por Manuel Gomez Moreno y Juan De M. Carriazo ((Madrid, 1969), 231;
Garrido Atienza, published a letter by Aben Comixa, mediator of the agreements between Boabdil and
Ferdinand, in which he explains the events to the Catholic Kings. Miguel Garrido Atienza, Las
capitulaciones para la entrega de Granada, estudio preliminar por José Enrique López De Coca
Castañer (Granada, MCMXCII), 217-218.
8 The chronicles of the official ceremony claimed that Boabdil handed over some keys to Ferdinand. Del
Hoyo supposes that Boabdil gave Gutierre only the keys of the Alhambra, keeping those of the city for
the official ceremony the day after.
9 Alonso De Palencia is the author of the chronicle, Guerra de Granada, 8 volumes, traducción castellana
por D. A. Paz Mélia.
10 Palencia’s document ‘Epistola ad Joannem episcopo Astoricense de bello Granatensi’ was published by
Marin Oçete, ‘Una obra poco conocida de Alonso de Palencia.’ Anales de la Facultad de Filosófia y
Letras, (1929), 93-111:102-111. Oçete doubts whether Palencia was an eyewitness, however his detailed
narration of the events seems to confirm it. Palencia’s Cronica concludes with the fall of Armeria in
1489 and Oçete emphasizes both the value of the document which completes the Cronica as well as its
originality, which distinguishes it from contemporary chronicles. The original document is held in the
Copenhaghen Library.
11 The original document is held in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. It was published, in the Spanish
translation, by Juan Facundo Riaño, Alhambra (1898) and by Garrido Attienza, Capitulaciones, 314-
315. Del Hoyo published it in the original Italian version, ‘Dos cartas ineditas al dux de Venecia sobre la
toma de Granada.’ Estudio de edad media de la corona de Aragón 6 (1956): 477-483:481-483.
12 ‘Le tres digne de memoire at victeriuse prinnse de la cite de Granada’. Incunabile held in the Biblioteca
de la Universidad de Granada and in the Biblioteque Nationelle of Paris. The original text was published
by Garrido Atienza, Capitulaciones, 316-321. The Anonimo francese claims that the Spanish contingent
entered the Alhambra on the 2nd of January, the count of Tendilla arrived on the 3rd and that only on
Sunday 8th of January the Catholic Kings took possession of the city. It remains doubtful whether the
Frenchman took part at the expedition, due to the dates of the events he provides. On the date of the 2nd
of January, the majority of Arabs and Christian sources seem to agree.
13 Amongst these scholars are the Miguel Lafuente Alcántara, Modesto Lafuente and Victor Balaguer.
14 An exception is Hernando de Baeza, chronicler of the Muslim court, who mentions the secret take over
of the Alhambra but omits those names and details that could be compromising for Boabdil. Hernando de
Baeza, Las cosas que pasaron entre los reyes de Granada desde el tiempo de el rey don Juan de Castilla,
Segundo de este nonbre, hasta que los Cathólicos Reyes ganaron el reyno de Granada, scripto u
copilado por Hernando de Baeça, el cual se halló presente a mucha parte de lo que cuenta, y lo demás
supo de los moeor de aquel reyno y de su Corónicas. Two copies of the manuscript are extant; one is
held in El Escorial and the other in the Biblioteca Nacional. The chronicle has been published by E.
Lafuente Alcántara, Relaciones de algunos sucesos de los últimos tiempos del reino de Granada
(Madrid, 1868).
15 I translated into English from the Italian translation of the Latin text by Miriam Chiabò, Carlo Verardi
Historia Baetica La caduta di Granata nel 1492 (Roma nel Rinascimento, 1993), 131, from now on
Historia. For the history of the play and the number of extant incunabula, see Paola Farenga,
‘Circostanze e modi della diffusione della Historia Baetica,’ in Carlo Verardi, XV-XXXV. The Italian
translation is based on the incunabulum 160, 57, held in the Biblioteca Malatestiana, Cesena.
16 Historia, 131.
17 There is only a brief statement in the concluding speech by Boabdil to Ferdinand that could perhaps
refer to the hand over of the keys: ‘A short while ago I handed over the city to you.’
18 Historia, 132.
19 Del Hoyo, ‘Cómo fué de verdad.’ El Andalus, 327.
20 Del Roi claims that the Te Deum Laudamus was sung during the second ceremony of thanksgiving in
the presence of the Catholic Kings and the Spanish prelates, during the raising of the cross.
21 In this regard, a phrase by Baudelis’opening speech, in which Verardi explains apparently the reason for
the surrender, seems significant: ‘We are overwhelmed by hunger, by the strength of Ferdinand’s army,
and by our exhaustion.’ Historia, 85. The reasons given by Verardi seem to agree with the testimonies of
both Del Roi and the Anonimo italiano.
22 In the Prefatio, Verardi’s justification for Boabdil’s surrender appears similar to that given by Del Roi
and we are inclined to believe by the Anonimo italiano: ‘Baudelis, exhausted by hunger and by the war,
surrendered.’ Historia, Prefazione, 82.

73
74
Clothing as a Political Tool in the Ottoman Empire: Two
Miniature Paintings From a Sixteenth-Century Illustrated
History of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520 -1566)
Susan Scollay
The Ottoman state, like other Islamic and pre-modern dynasties, regulated the appearance and
personal presentation of its officials and citizens. Costume signalled distinctions in religious
status, occupation, and regional affiliations. It helped maintain social order and promote
communal unity.1 This paper will examine two miniature paintings in the collection of the
Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, and assess what they might tell us about the uses and,
above all, the meaning of aspects of costume and textiles in the Ottoman realm.

My approach goes beyond an inventory of what people wore and when. Rather, it is an
attempt to follow a line of questioning suggested by Roland Barthes in the 1950s when he
called for costume study to be linked to what he described as the ‘mentality’ of the eras and
cultures in which it had been worn.2 Almost half a century later, despite the potential of the
study of clothing as material ‘mirrors of reality’ 3 in contributing to the understanding of the
social and cultural milieu of the Ottoman Empire, research in the field remains sporadic. 4 This
situation persists despite a large corpus of Ottoman costume and related materials surviving in
museums and private collections in Turkey and other parts of the world. 5

At the Ottoman court, luxurious dress and presentation of ceremonial robes was a significant
means of projecting royal status and power. ‘Conspicuous consumption’, to use a phrase
coined by the sociologist, Thorstein Veblen, was a necessary component of life at the court
and without it social and political advancement was unlikely. 6 Silk robes acted as a form of
currency and rewarded outstanding service. When they were presented to court officials and
when accepted by foreigners and diplomats, they also served as indicators of honour, loyalty
and subservience.7

Above all, costume and textiles were a key component of the imperial image deliberately
created to project the power of the Ottomans both inside and outside the borders of the
empire.8 The colour, technicalities of weave and the designs all contributed to the creation of a
visual identity that symbolised the legitimacy and longevity of the sultan and his supreme
power. In a patrimonial society such as that of the Ottomans, social and political status was
defined by the absolute power of the ruler. Patronage of the arts was the responsibility and an
obligation of the sultan as head of state, whose ready access to precious materials and skilled
craftsmen allowed him and his advisors to direct the creation of artworks embodying the
visual language of the court.9

Both miniatures accurately portray events that can be verified from textual sources. One
portrays the Sultan Süleyman I flanked by high-ranking members of his court, seated in his
royal enclosure while engaged in one of the many successful military campaigns of his reign.
The other depicts Ottoman officials occupied with ongoing bureaucratic procedures in the
provinces at some distance from the capital, Istanbul. The former is a scene that aims to
convey the limitless luxury, splendour and power of Süleyman’s court; the latter a poignant

75
rendition of the modesty and simplicity of the small town life experienced by the majority
rural population.10 Both scenes are located in Balkan south-east Europe, a core region of the
empire, and depict the Ottomans in direct contact with Christian populations: as a military
enemy in the first, and as subjects of the sultan in the second. Of the three great early modern
Islamic empires - the Safavids, the Mughals and the Ottomans - only the Ottomans shared
borders with Christian states and incorporated large numbers of Christian subjects into their
population.

The two images are part of a deluxe, bound manuscript in the collection of the Topkapi Palace
Museum: the Süleymanname of Arifi, the fifth volume of the court historian’s Şahname-i Al-i
Osman completed in 1558.11 The work was commissioned by Süleyman I in the last decade of
his reign, and Arifi’s 617 pages of verse in the Süleymanname volume alone were illustrated
by 69 paintings, thought to be the work of 5 different artists. 12 The scenes of court
ceremonies, entertainment, sieges and other royal activities are characterised by their mostly
opulent settings, identifiable figures and a wealth of detail of court costume, accessories and
procedure.

The first miniature shows the Ottoman imperial tent complex, Otağ -ı Hümayun, on
campaign. Süleyman I is seated in a tented pavilion just outside the royal enclosure
accompanied by three viziers, three young pages, and other court officials. 13 The sumptuous
and highly decorated construction of the royal campsite is consistent with what Lisa
Golombek has termed the ‘draped universe of Islam.’ 14 In the great Islamic empires, the
relatively simple and uncluttered architecture of the royal palaces and tent complexes were
embellished by textile hangings. These fabrics were suspended in doorways and stretched on
simple frames to create barriers and private spaces in gardens and military encampments.
Carpets and precious rugs were laid on the floors and along royal pathways. Through these
royal spaces, as Golombek notes, there ‘marched a continual procession of richly clothed
personages.’15

Regular palace ceremonies and processions of robes and robing provided opportunities for the
state to transmit messages of imperial power to all levels of society, including from the
imperial tent complex while engaged in a military campaign. Here the seated sultan and his
attendants are splendidly robed in standard court attire of several layers of patterned silk robes
in the deeply saturated, secondary colours that distinguished the Ottoman court. The patterns
-- like those of the tents, canopies and screens that surround them -- are accurate renditions of
the non-figurative, floral style with which the Ottomans chose to identify themselves. 16 The
whole effect is one of luxury, elegance and calm.

Yet if we follow the intense gaze of the central figures in the painting to the folio on the
opposite side, we see that they are closely watching a scene of direct contrast: Ottoman troops
attacking Belgrade, the city that is crucial to their eventual success in Hungary. The sultan’s
retinue has set up their camp on the outskirts of the city. In this scene the rooftops and domes
of the city tilt precariously. Flames engulf a defence tower as its hapless denizens clasp their
heads in horror and pray alongside modestly dressed monks, soldiers and citizens in the local
church.

76
The difference in the adjoining folios is marked. The scene in Belgrade has all the hallmarks
of grim reality. The image of the sultan in his tented enclosure, essentially a mobile palace,
appears idealised by comparison. And yet the exquisitely worked tents, screens and costumes
of the protagonists in the Ottoman camp scene are accurate reflections of the imperial style
consciously developed by the Ottomans from the fourteenth century onwards.

This distinct and instantly recognisable floral style had its origins in the sixteenth-century
ateliers of the Turkoman-Persian city of Shiraz. 17 It then flourished in the fifteenth and
sixteenth century court of the second Ottoman capital in the European-Thracian city of
Edirne. It reached its artistic maturity in Istanbul and Edirne during the reign of Süleyman I. 18
The period of Süleyman’s patronage (1520-60) is generally recognised as the one in which the
classic Ottoman style was finally synthesised, its unique visual language eventually being
disseminated to the widest limits of the empire. 19

A significant question in any discussion of the Ottoman imperial style is why the Ottoman
patrons and designers chose not to adopt the figurative bird and animal designs of the Seljuk
court that preceded them in Anatolia, and the kindred hunting images of the Safavid court in
neighbouring Iran. Safavid cultural prestige in jewellery, textiles, miniatures and belles letters
was otherwise admired and emulated by other Islamic empires, including the Ottomans. The
corpus of Ottoman material culture is remarkable for its dearth of representations of human
and animal figures.20 Textiles and decorative items made for Ottoman use were uniformly
floral and abstract in their design repertoire. Yet Ottoman textile production centres were
technically capable of making high quality cloth with figural designs; during the sixteenth
century in particular Ottoman looms in commercial workshops produced figured cloth for use
as church vestments, but not for local consumption by Muslims. 21

One explanation is that from the early days of the empire the Ottomans began to develop what
might be termed a ‘garden culture.’ In 1360 as soon as Ottoman power was entrenched in the
Balkans, the fledgling dynasty formed a new capital at Edirne, a strategic city previously
known as Adrianople, situated in a verdant valley at the confluence of three rivers. 22 Edirne
was the furthest point west that any Turkic group - indeed any Muslim tribal group - had
settled.23 The region’s gently undulating Thracian landscape, temperate climate and abundant
water contrasted with the arid extremes that characterised previous Turko-Mongol -Mameluk
capitals in Egypt, Central Anatolia and Central Asia.

Now located deep in Christian Europe, the Ottomans evolved from their nomadic past and re-
defined their image. In transforming themselves from a group of nomadic Turkic warriors into
what was to be one of history’s most sophisticated and long-lasting imperial regimes, the
early sultans were able to draw on the cultural legacy they inherited from the Byzantine
Empire and the classical world. Thus in 1451 when Murad II decided to build a new palace
complex near the river just outside Edirne, the surrounding parklands were augmented by
extensive gardens.24 In the words of the Greek chronicler, Kritovoulos, a contemporary of
Mehmed II and a member of his inner circle, when Mehmed II took over the Edirne Palace
project after his father’s death, these gardens were:
full of fruit trees and various plants. On every side flowed streams of cold, clear water which
could be drunk, and there were attractive groves and meadows… Moreover, there were many

77
other varied ornaments and decorations in keeping with the Sultan’s taste and for his
enjoyment. The Sultan designed all these in splendid profusion. 25

Later, an early seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller described the gardens as ‘enormous and
fertile’. By then the court had long since moved to the Topkapi Palace at Istanbul, but kept the
previous place at Edirne as a summer retreat and as a staging point for the frequent military
campaigns staged in the Balkans, as depicted in Figure 1. 26 According to Evliya Çelebi the
palace grounds extended the equivalent of 70 square kilometres and were surrounded by
orchards and vineyards. His descriptions of Ottoman palace gardens abound in detail and
superlatives and yet in his own estimation:
…on this earth there is not a similar paradise-like environment…With the rose and hyacinth
and tulip, violet, and sweet basil and jasmine and judas flowers and narcissus and wild roses,
wall flower, peony, carnation and other sweet smelling numerous flower species…the Edirne
gardens are beautiful.27

The earliest documented Ottoman miniature paintings depict elements of these gardens at the
Edirne palace. Even after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it was some years before
Mehmed II moved his court ateliers from Edirne to the new capital, Istanbul. 28 The output of
the early Ottoman miniaturists therefore, although modest, remained in Edirne, in the
previously Christian controlled territories of south-east Europe long subject to Orthodox
Christian cultural predominance.

The Edirne ateliers in lush garden settings influenced the style of the empire that Mehmed II
was creating. Manuscripts produced at this time allow tantalising glimpses of court ceremony,
relaxation and preoccupations. Several depict court activities in garden settings. 29 Among
these sources, the Dilsuznama manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is especially
significant. Written in Farsi in an elegant nasta’liq script, embellished with gold leaf, this
poetic treatise was copied and illustrated at Edirne in the year of the Prophet 859 or 1455-56
CE. Its five miniature paintings show a remarkable amount of detail of the gardens at
Edirne30, especially the rose gardens planted during the time of Mehmed II. 31 These become
the setting for a poetic allegory in the Persian literary tradition that describes the love between
a rose and a nightingale.

This theme was used extensively in mystical poetry of the time. Roses and other flowers
played an important role in the symbolism of the mystic Sufi brotherhoods, influencing the
early sultans.32 In the belief system of the Sufi orders the fragrance of the rose came from the
sweat of the Prophet himself: the so-called rose of Muhammed was often drawn in religious
texts. The prophet was alluded to in poetry and in literature in language that incorporated
references to roses and other flowers. 33

Gardens and floral imagery were in a wider sense an Islamic rendition of the biblical gardens
of Paradise. Since Muhammed regarded himself as the last prophet it was natural that his
other-worldly garden promised for the after life would continue a Judaeo-Christian tradition.
Court poets such as Ahmet Pasha (d.1497) and Necati (d.1509) often took up these sacred
themes and combined them with the traditions of the royal pleasure garden that had existed in
the Near and Middle East centuries before the arrival of Islam. 34 Garden lore permeated

78
Ottoman lyric poetry. Conventional images such as the nightingale and the rose conveyed a
subtle range of meanings reflecting cherished values of Ottoman society. Paramount among
these was the mystical-religious interpretation of the relationship between the natural world
and the supernatural.35 According to Annemarie Schimmel,
certain religious ideas that form the centre of Islamic Theology…can turn into symbols of a
purely aesthetic character …thus poetry provides almost unlimited possibilities for creating
new relations between worldly and other-worldly images, between religious and profane
ideas; the talented poet may reach a perfect interplay of both levels and make even the most
profane poem bear a distinctly ‘religious’ flavour.36

Religion underpinned Ottoman culture, and Islamic mysticism or Sufism permeated almost all
social groups, including the court.

Another reason why poetic garden imagery resonated throughout society was because poems
and songs of the day belonged to a tradition that was still predominantly oral rather than
written. It also, according to Walter Andrews, ‘reflected…[the] gardenlike security and order’
of the dynasty itself which, although it suffered tumultuous times and eventual military
setbacks, ruled uninterrupted for nearly six hundred years. In describing the theoretical role of
their government the Ottomans used the notion that ‘the world is a garden, its walls are the
state’. Court poetry and the imperial art objects that represented the dynasty placed the central
figure of the sultan in the ‘emotional sanctuary’ of the gardens in which so many of the daily
activities and entertainment of the court and its subjects were carried out. 37

If the allegorical visual idioms of miniature paintings produced in the early years of the
empire with their depictions of idyllic garden settings are best explained by an understanding
of court entertainment and mystical poetry, the migration of those images to woven textiles
and other decorative forms should not be surprising. There were established linguistic and
symbolic links between poetry and the complex process of weaving the luxury fabrics that
accessorised every aspect of life at the court. 38

This cultural predilection for flowers, considered alongside the ongoing military rivalry and
territorial skirmishes between the Ottomans and Safavids and their increasingly divergent
ideologies,39 might account for the Ottomans’ apparent wish to distinguish their visual style
from that of their Iranian neighbours.40

As well, close examination of the second image of the Süleymaname manuscript suggests that
the Ottomans used political messages conveyed by clothing in subtle and sophisticated ways.
The style and colour of the clothing might have been an important component of the message.
The second miniature is a unique depiction of the process of the forcible recruitment of
Christian boys for education at the Ottoman court and eventual life-long service to the empire.
The devşirme system was established in the Balkans by 1430 and was probably operating less
formally much earlier.41 All the grand viziers of the empire were recruited this way and many
eventually married into the Ottoman dynasty.42

The setting for the painting is an unnamed town in the Balkans. The officer responsible for
recruitment, the devşirme emini, a representative of the sultan, is shown seated on a red rug

79
wearing the tall plumed hat that distinguished his office. He is counting the money that will
be given to the recruits to cover their expenses in travelling either to Edirne, or to Istanbul for
processing and training.43 In these centres they would be chosen for birun (outside) service
which usually meant the Janissary corps, or endurun (inside) service at the palace. An
assistant records the boys’ ages and family details. Opposite, amongst a group of dismayed
townspeople including a priest or monk, a mother gesticulates to a janissary, who would have
been recruited during his boyhood in a similar manner. In the foreground stand six boys with
their meagre possessions wrapped in cloth ready for the journey.

This is the only known visual rendition of the Ottoman practice of dressing the newly levied
Christian children in special red robes. They are being paraded in front of their families and
fellow townspeople before they were taken away to be converted to Islam, most to serve in
the janissary armies, a few to join the Ottoman court. Generally seen as a controversial aspect
of Ottoman state building and a means of centralising power, 44 the child levy might also be
interpreted as a rite of passage and one of the ritual spectacles conducted by the Ottomans far
away from the imperial centre.45 The dressing of the Christian children in such a public
fashion mimicked the court robing ceremonies carried out on a regular basis for the duration
of the empire.

For example, the official history of Mehmet IV written by the chronicler Abdi Pasha tells us
that Mehmet was addicted to hunting and gave that as one of his main reasons for moving his
court to Edirne from 1661 to 1676. But, according to the chronicle, Mehmet also claimed that
one of his main roles there was that of distributing gifts of sable furs and robes of honour to
the leading men of his establishment.46 As well, as the sultan travelled around the region
either to hunt or on campaign, non-Muslims often approached him seeking conversion. This
was achieved by the sultan publicly investing them with a white turban, a simple robe and
some coins. Ottoman law declared this sufficient for conversion to Islam, provided, in the
case of male converts, that the change of dress was soon followed by circumcision. 47

The distinctive red colour of the devşirme children’s robes 48 was extensively used and valued
by the Ottoman court. Its role as a signifier of power dated to medieval Turko-Mongol
cultural practices that placed great emphasis on the colour of clothing used in investiture and
other ceremonies and the symbolism and political meaning of cloth. 49 Red was also the
identifying and spiritually symbolic colour of the Bektasi dervishes, with whom most
Janissaries were aligned.50 Once identically robed in red in full view of their local community
and possibly with their heads shaven,51 the boys were clearly identified as members of a
distinct group, and marked as the property of the sultan and by extension, the Ottoman state
and the realm of Islam.

The transfer of status and power through the exchange of costly textiles and the practice of
investiture with robes, hilat, was a feature of court ritual not only in the Ottoman state, but in
varying degrees right across Eurasia from the Mediterranean to China. The historic practice
became a centrepiece of Islamic court life under the Mongols in the fourteenth century. The
Ottomans kept separate accounts for their large expenditure on robes; the palace cloakroom
was positioned in close proximity to the meeting hall of the court viziers to facilitate the

80
frequent ceremonial wearing and gifting of luxurious garments. 52 The robing of the Christian
boys, albeit on a more modest scale, fits clearly into this established cultural model.

A critical feature of robing and investiture ceremonies, however, was that the robe as a
symbol could have differing meanings for the giver and receiver. 53 This potential for ‘semiotic
ambiguity’ allows the possibility that while the Ottoman officials used the process to convey
the infinite power of the sultan and to identify the boys with the Janissaries and Bektashi
dervishes, their families and neighbours might have seen the process differently.

Robing and investiture ceremonies were also known in the Christian courts of the Byzantines
and were used extensively in church ritual.54 The implications of investiture would be well
understood in Christian communities, no matter how humble. Morover, under Ottoman rule,
Christians were discouraged from wearing red; it was a colour favoured by, and generally
restricted to the Muslim population.55 By contrast, the colour of the cloaks bestowed on their
levied children almost certainly would have mostly resonated with alternative Christian
associations of Christ’s passion, of sacrifice, and of martyrdom -- all key concepts in
Christian tradition, and part of the elaborate rites of the Orthodox church. 56 The process of
robing the devşirme children fits the model of ‘semiotic ambiguity’. It suggests the Ottomans
had devised a subtle means of signalling, by means of clothing, messages that had profound
meaning for both Muslim and Christian citizens of the empire.

Returning to the first image of the sultan in his military camp, we might consider ways in
which the floral designs of the Ottoman court were just as ‘ambiguous’ in a cultural sense.
Floral and springtime themes had been popular with Byzantine authors. 57 Literary traditions
known in these once-Christian-only provinces were modelled on those of the classical world
and were very likely easily absorbed (in the ateliers of Edirne and Istanbul) into the literary
and artistic production of the Ottomans.58 These conventional and rhetorical symbols had been
used to illustrate manuscripts in the workshops of Constantinople, and elsewhere in the
Byzantine Empire, centuries before its defeat by the Ottomans. 59

Just as the sultan was sometimes addressed in poetry as a flower or a slender cypress tree, and
just as the Prophet was alluded to as a rose, Byzantine precedents described the Virgin Mary
as a ‘sweet smelling meadow …a flower,…the fount of a perennial stream’ 60. Images from
nature, especially floral motifs, were set in mosaic tiles in Byzantine churches from the fifth
century onwards. Despite their connection with paganism, the symbolic language of flowers,
trees and vines came to represent the over-arching power of God, and by association, political
power and empire. Floral images had meaning for Muslim and Christian rulers, as
demonstrated by the shared gesture of holding a flower in poses adopted independently by
Sultan Mehmed II for the portrait he commissioned in 1480 and for the coat of arms of his
contemporary, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (r. 1458-90), seen here carved in stone on
a fragment of a gateway.

In Süleyman I in the imperial tent complex, 1521. Süleymanname of Arifi, 1558, Topkapi
Palace Museum, Istanbul, H 1517, folio 108 Sultan Süleyman is portrayed deep in his
Christian European territory having set out from his summer and military capital at Edirne in
Thrace. A major concern of Süleyman and the sultans who preceded him was to assert

81
Ottoman claims of legitimate rule in a largely Christian European context. They needed to
develop effective political and cultural tools that would be understood in the framework of
both religions. Whether this process was conscious or not, the significance of the devşirme
system which transformed talented, Christian children into loyal Muslim courtiers of high
rank should not be underestimated. Key advisors of the sultan’s inner court were a
multilingual and multicultural group whose influence on the emergence of the imperial style
was paramount.62

These two costume paintings from the Süleymanname manuscript suggest that the style and
colour of clothing at the Ottoman court, and the ritual occasions on which it was displayed,
was an effective political tool. Costuming, robing and parading not only reinforced the
supreme power and imperial ambitions of the sultan, but it also sent powerful messages to the
mixed population of the oldest Ottoman controlled provinces. In these regions, at least
initially, Muslims were outnumbered by Christians, 63 yet the visual brand of the empire was
readily understood by everybody.

Endnotes

1 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Why and How One Might Want to Study Ottoman Clothes,” in Ottoman Costumes: From
Textile to Identity, eds. Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann (Istanbul: Eren, 2004), 15.
2 Roland Barthes, “ Histoire et Sociologie du Vêtement: Quelques Observations Methodologiques.” Annales ESC
3, (July-Sept. 1957): 430- 441, quoted in Faroqhi and Neumann (2004) 49.
3 A method used and eloquently described by Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982) 323-351.
4 Faroqhi and Neumann, Ottoman Costumes, 15-19.
5 There are 2,500 items of court costume and textiles in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum (TPM) in
Istanbul. The TPM also houses extensive collections of other objects associated with textiles and their production,
and miniature paintings that depict them. Smaller but significant collections are in the State Hermitage Museum in
St. Petersburg, the Benaki Museum in Athens, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Applied
Arts in Budapest, Hungary, and the National Museum in Crakow Poland.
6 Filiz Adigüzel Toprak, Arifinin Süleymannamesindeki Minyatürlerde Sültanata İliskin Simgeler (Signs of
Sultanate in the Miniature Paintings of Arifis Süleymanname) (İzmir: Dokuz Eylul Üniversitesi, Güzel Sanatlar
Enstitüsü Yayınlar, 2007), 33-34.
7 For an excellent overview of the process and significance of robing throughout Eurasia, although with no
specific reference to the Ottoman court, see Stewart Gordon, ed., Robes and Honour: the Medieval World of
Investiture (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
8 Gülru Necipoğlu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-
Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry.” The Art Bulletin 71, 3 (September, 1989): 401- 427. Also her Architecture, Ceremonial
and Power: the Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Architectural History
Foundation, 1991).
9 Toprak, Arifinin Süleymannamesindeki, 33-35. Also Tim Stanley, Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the
Middle East (London: Victoria and Albert Museum Publications, 2004) 23.
10 Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London: I.B. Tauris,
1995) 9-10.
11 Esin Atıl, Süleymanname: the Illustrated History of Süleyman the Magnificent (Washington, DC: National
Gallery of Art, 1986).
12 Esin Atıl The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1987) 89.
13 For an excellent overview of the Ottoman imperial tent complex see Nurhan Atasoy, Ota ğ-ı Hümayun:the
Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex (Istanbul: Aygaz, 2000).
14 Lisa Golombek, “The Draped Universe of Islam,” in Priscilla Soucek ed., Content and Context of Visual Arts in
the Islamic World: Papers from a Colloquium in Memory of Richard Ettinghausen (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1988) 25-38.

82
15 Ibid. 26.
16 Eyewitness accounts attest to this. Dr John Covel, “Covel’s Diary” (1675), Early Voyages and Travels in the
Levant, ed. Theodore Bent, vol. 87 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893) 165-167, 196.
17 Lale Uluç, Turkmen Governors, Shiraz Artisans and Ottoman Collectors: Sixteenth Century Shiraz Manuscripts
(Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2006) 469-477.
18 Susan Scollay, “Branding the Empire: Edirne and the Ottoman Imperial Style,” paper given at the 11th
International Congress of Turkish Art, National Museum of Hungary, Budapest, September 2-9, 2007.
19 Gülru Necipoğlu, “A Kanun for the State, a Canon for the Arts: Conceptualising the Classical Synthesis of
Ottoman Art and Architecture” in Gilles Veinstein, ed., Soliman le Magnifique et Sons Temps (Paris:
Documentation Française, 1992) 194-216. Also Necipoğlu, “Süleyman and the Representation of Power,” 424.
20 Contrary to popular understanding figural representation is not forbidden by the Koran, and was in fact
widespread in medieval Islam. See Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1973) 82-93; Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam (Paris: Flammarion, 2004) 49-51. Tim Stanley, “
The Issue of Images” in Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Middle East, ed. Stanley (London: Victoria and
Albert Museum Publications, 2006) 43-49.
21 Nurhan Atasoy, Walter B. Denny, Louise W. Mackie, and Hulya Tezcan, Silks for Sultans: Imperial Ottoman
Silks and Velvets (London: Azimuth Editions, 2001) 101-102.
22 The French crusader historian, Geoffroy de Villehardouin, reported early in the thirteenth century that Edirne,
or Adrianople as it was known then, was a prosperous city and that outside its walls and gated towers along the
banks of the Tunca River were ‘some of the most beautiful meadows in the world’. Joinville and Villehardouin,
Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. M.R.B. Shaw (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963) 141.
23 The Umayyad dynasty that settled in southern Spain in the eighth century was an urban, Arab group from
Baghdad. Mariam Rosser-Owen, “The Poetic Environment,” in Palace and Mosque, ed. Tim Stanley (London:
Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006) 77-83.
24 There were most likely gardens already established in parts of the city and its surrounds. Its Byzantine rulers
had an established garden tradition of their own based on Greek and Roman prototypes. See Antony Littlewood et
al., eds., Byzantine Garden Culture (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002) 1-22, 87-104.
25 Nurhan Atasoy, A Garden for the Sultan: Gardens and Flowers in the Ottoman Culture (Istanbul, Aygaz, 2002)
223.
26 Mehmet II captured Constantinople in 1453 and moved his entire court there some years later after the Topkapi
Palace, built along the lines of the island palace at Edirne, was completed. See Necipoğlu, Architecture,
Ceremonial and Power, 108-109.
27 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname (1640’s -1680’s) quoted in Gonül Evyapan, Old Turkish Gardens (Ankara: Middle
Eastern Technical University, 1999) 16.
28 Filiz Çagman, “Turkish Miniature Painting” in The Art and Architecture of Turkey, ed. Ekrem Akurgal (New
York: Rizzoli, 1980) 223.
29 Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım, “A 1498-99 Khusraw va Shirin: Turning the Pages of an Illustrated Manuscript.”
Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World 22, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu (Leiden: Brill, 2005)
95-109.
30 Ayşin Yoltar -Yıldırım, “The 1455 Oxford Dilsuznama and its Literary Significance in the Ottoman Realm,”
paper presented at the symposium in honour of Günsel Renda, Tradition, Identity, Synthesis: Cultural Crossings
and Art, Haceteppe University, Turkey, November 2005, in press.
31 For hundreds of years the Edirne gardens provided nearly all the attar of roses, or precious rose oil, used in the
Ottoman perfume industry. The rosewater by-product of the distillation of the oil was also used in religious
ceremonies and in the sophisticated cuisine that developed at the court. Gerry Oberling and Grace Martin Smith,
The Food Culture of the Ottoman Palace (Istanbul: Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture, 2001) 57, 85, 137,
140.
32 Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2005) 335.
33 Beşir Ayvazoğlu, “The Rose,” in The Turkish Rose, ed. Süheyl Ünver and Gülbun Mesara (Istanbul: Kule
Iletism Hizmetleri, 1999) ix.
34 Nermin Menemençioğlu, ed., Turkish Verse (London: Penguin Books, 1978) 68, 71-72.
35 Walter G. Andrews, Poetry’s Voice, Society’s Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1985) 36, 62.
36 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1975) 288.
37 Andrews, Poetry’s Voice, 156, 207.
38 The verb, tiraz, in Farsi, the language of the Persian Safavids, which was also spoken and written by the

83
Ottoman elite, means to weave, to adorn and to compose poetry. Jerome W. Clinton, “Image and Metaphor:
Textiles in Persian Poetry” in Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart, ed., Carol Bier (Washington, D.C.: The
Textile Museum, 1987) 8. The words for weaving and story telling were also linguistically linked in the classical
world, i.e. the English language words ‘textile’ and ‘text’ from the Latin root textere. Susan Scollay, “The
Fabrication of Culture and Identity” in Threading the Commonwealth: Textile Tradition, Culture. Trade and
Politics (Melbourne: RMIT Press, 2006) 56.
39 An additional question here is the part played by moves towards a more orthodox interpretation of Islam in
promoting the development of a strictly floral style. There is evidence that when Bayezid II succeeded Mehmet II
he may have actively pursued a policy of developing court designs that conformed to the anti-figural artistic
traditions of the religious establishment. This is a topic for a separate paper.
40 Tim Stanley, “The Issue of Images,” 58.
41 Godfrey Goodwin, The Janissaries (London: Saqi Books, 1997) 26 -28, 237. Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman
Empire: the Classical Age 1300-1600 (London: Phoenix, 1994) 78.
42 Atıl, Süleymanname, 94.
43 Konstantin Mihailovic, Memoirs of a Janissary, trans. Benjamin Stolz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1975) 157.
44 Inalcik, Ottoman Empire, 78.
45 Charles H. Argo, Ottoman Political Spectacle: Reconsidering the Devşirme in the Ottoman Balkans, 1400
-1700. PhD, University of Arkansas, USA, 2005.
46 Official registers and chronicles contain hundreds of references to government officials and ambassadors
receiving robes and furs during Mehmet IV’s reign. Silahdar Findıklılı Mehmet Ağa, Nusretname Vol. 1 (The Book
of Victory) (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basimevi, 1962) 5, 30-33, 54, 113, 115, 133, 144, 146, 242-244, 265, 274, 277,
302, 306, 339, 340, 342, 348, 352.
47 “Osmanlı Kanunnameleri,” Milli Tetebbu’lar Mecmu’ası, Vol. 1, 542. Dr John Covel visiting the court of
Mehmed IV in 1675 reported that hundreds of Christian men converted in this way during festivities celebrating
the circumcision of two of the sultan’s sons: “Covel’s Diary,”1893, 209.
48 The distinctive red colour of the children’s robes is one that was later highly prized in Europe as “Turkey red”
or “red of Adrianople.” Its production was a speciality of Edirne, and a key component of the city’s economy.
Robert Chenciner, Madder Red: a History of Luxury and Trade (London: Curzon, 2000) 188-198.
49 Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 46, 71.
50 John Kingsley Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes (London: Luzac Oriental, 1994) 47. Franz Babinger,
Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time, ed. William C. Hickman, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1978) 448. Frederick DeJong, “Pictorial Art of the Bektashi Order,” in The Dervish Lodge:
Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, ed. Raymond Lifchez (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1993) 228.
51 Argo, Ottoman Political Spectacle, 143.
52 Marc Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: the Ottoman State, non-Muslims, and Conversion to Islam in
Seventeenth Century Istanbul and Rumelia. (PhD, University of Chicago, USA, 2001) 160-165.
53 Stewart Gordon, “Robes, Kings and Semiotic Ambiguity,” in Robes and Honour, ed. Stewart Gordon (New
York: Palgrave, 2001) 379-384.
54 Averil Cameron, “The Construction of Court Ritual: the Byzantine Book of Ceremonies,” in Rituals and
Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, eds. David Cannadine and Simon Price (Cambridge,UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1987) 106 -136.
55 Kitabu Mesalihi’l Muslimin ve Menafi’il-Mu’minim 1639-41 (The Book of Affairs of the Muslims and the
Interests of the Believers), commented on laxity of enforcement of maintenance of social order through regulation
of costume. This anonymous document asserted that non-Muslims should not be wearing red linen headgear and
red woollen caps as Muslims did; if they were to wear any colour apart from black, it should be yellow, which was
traditionally a non-Muslim colour. Marc Baer, Honored by the Glory, 17.
56 Argo, Ottoman Political Spectacle, 183.
57 Costas N. Constantinides, “Byzantine Gardens and Horticulture in the Late Byzantine Period, 1204-1453: The
Secular Sources,” in Byzantine Garden Culture, ed. Antony Littlewood et al. (Dumbarton Oaks: Washington, DC,
2002) 87-88.
58 Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981) 43.
59 Ibid., 44.
60 Ibid., 46.
61 Henry Maguire, Rhetoric, Nature and Magic in Byzantine Art (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 1998) 132-153.
62 Toprak, Arifinin Süleymannamesindeki , 35-37.

84
63 And to a lesser extent by Jews, although in general terms the Jewish population of the empire were more
‘complementary to the Ottoman Turks and not in competition with them.’ Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) 139.

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of Washington Press, 1985.
Andrews, Walter G. and Mehmet Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds. Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2005.
Argo, Charles H. Ottoman Political Spectacle: Reconsidering the Devsirme in the Ottoman
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Atasoy, Nurhan. Otağ-ı Hümayun:the Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex. Istanbul: Aygaz,
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Atasoy, Nurhan. Walter B. Denny, Louise W. Mackie, and Hulya Tezcan, Silks for Sultans:
Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets. London: Azimuth Editions, 2001.
Atasoy, Nurhan. A Garden for the Sultan: Gardens and Flowers in Ottoman Culture. Istanbul:
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Atıl, Esin. Süleymanname: the Illustrated History of Süleyman the Magnificent. Washington,
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Atıl, Esin. The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. Washington, DC: National Gallery
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Babinger, Franz. Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time, ed. William C. Hickman, trans. Ralph
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Baer, Marc. Honored by the Glory of Islam: the Ottoman State, non-Muslims, and Conversion
to Islam in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and Rumelia. PhD, University of Chicago, USA,
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Evyapan, Gonül. Old Turkish Gardens. Ankara: Middle Eastern Technical University, 1999.
Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Why and How One Might Want to Study Ottoman Clothes,” in Suraiya
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London: I.B. Tauris, 1995.
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Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World: Papers from a Colloquium in Memory of Richard
Ettinghausen. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988, 25-38.
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Gordon, Stewart ed. Robes and Honour: the Medieval World of Investiture. New Yor
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Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.
Lewis, Bernard. The Jews of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
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Oaks, 2002.
Maguire, Henry. Art and Eloquence in Byzantium. Princeton: New Jersey, Princeton
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of Michigan Press, 1975.
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and Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1991.
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Synthesis of Ottoman Art and Architecture,” in Gilles Veinstein, ed., Soliman le Magnifique
et Sons Temps. Paris: Documentation Francaise, 1992, 194 - 216.
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Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture, 2001.
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86
Scollay, Susan. “The Fabrication of Culture and Identity,” in Threading the Commonwealth:
Textile Tradition, Culture. Trade and Politics. Melbourne, RMIT Press, 2006.
Scollay, Susan. “Branding the Empire: Edirne and the Ottoman Imperial Style,” paper given
at the 11th International Congress of Turkish Art, National Museum of Hungary, Budapest,
September 2-9, 2007.
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Eğitim Basimevi, 1962.
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Albert Museum, 2004.
Toprak, Filiz Adigüzel. Arifi’nin Süleymanname’sindeki Minyatürlerde Sültanata İliskin
Simgeler (Signs of Sultanate in the Miniature Paintings of Arifi’s Süleymanname). Izmir,
Turkey: Dokuz Eylul Universitesi, Güzel Sanatlar Enstitusu Yayinlar, 2007.
Uluç, Lale. Turkmen Governors, Shiraz Artisans and Ottoman Collectors: Sixteenth Century
Shiraz Manuscripts. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2006.
Yoltar-Yıldırım, Ayşin. “A 1498-99 Khusraw va Shirin: Turning the Pages of an Illustrated
Manuscript” in Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, Vol. 22, ed.
Gülru Necipoğlu. Leiden: Brill, 2005, 95-109.
Yoltar -Yıldırım, Ayşin. “The 1455 Oxford Dilsuznama and its Literary Significance in the
Ottoman Realm,” paper presented at the symposium in honour of Günsel Renda, Tradition,
Identity, Synthesis: Cultural Crossings and Art. Istanbul: Haceteppe University, November
2005, in press

87
Classic Maya Polity, Identity, Migration and Political
Vocabulary: Reconceptualisation of Classic Period Maya
Political Organisation

Peter Biro
The Classic Maya (AD 250-900) civilisation was one of the few Mesoamerican cultures which
have developed a full writing system. The texts give a unique window to examine the ideal
image created by the elite for consumption to themselves and to the non-elite. Researchers
from different disciplines used various anthropological and evolutionary theories to interpret
Classic Period political organisation. The proposed interpretations suggested either a ‘weak’
or a ‘unitary state’ model, while a third proposal envisioned the existence of two ‘hegemonic
states’ which ruled and fought over the Maya Lowlands. While the critique of the ‘weak’ and
‘unitary’ state models has been strong and they are hardly accepted by archaeologists or
epigraphers, the ‘hegemonic state’ model is generally held valid among researchers. By the
analysis of more than 1,000 inscriptions from the Western Maya Region I have arrived at the
conclusion that the ‘hegemonic state’ model needs substantial revision and I will suggest an
alternative interpretation of Classic Period political processes. In my paper I shall present
that through the analysis of the conceptualisation of polity, identity formation, the migration
of dynasties and political vocabulary documented in the literary inscriptions, it is possible to
reach a new understanding of Classic Period political organisation and historical
development in general and the process of the Classic Maya collapse in particular.

The Classic Period Maya (figure 1) is one of the few Mesoamerican civilisations that had
developed a full writing system which has been deciphered in the last 100 years 1. Also, it is
one of the very few civilisations which had developed in a tropical environment.

The question from the first explorers is always the same: how indeed was the combination of
civilisation and rainforest possible? What are the similarities and differences of this particular
human cultural phenomenon to other organisations, even to our own culture?

From Aristotle originates two assumptions of the humanities and social sciences. First humans
are zoon politikon (or political animals) who live in communities, and second they are zoon
logon ekhon who speak language. Polity (community formation) is communication, and if a
researcher is interested in Classic Period Maya political organisation then he/she should try to
find a way to language. One possible route is through writing, which is a form of
communication and a repository of ideas about a given community. In this paper I examine
the texts of the Classic Period from several angles which are all connected to political
organisation. This presentation is more a series of reflections then a well-defined model,
hoping to open some new avenues in the understanding of one aspect of Classic Period Maya
civilisation.

Antecedents

88
From the 1970’s, scholars from anthropology and archaeology departments developed models
to fit the Classic Period Maya political organisation into their conceptual schemes. The
models were the result of the combination of theory, and archaeological and epigraphic
information; they were forming part of a passionate debate where ideas crystallised into two
opposite stances2.

Joyce Marcus, Richard Adams and Diane Chase and Arlen Chase explicitly argued for the
existence of ‘regional states’ where one territorial and non-kin based political entity with a
centre ruled over a well-defined territory with multiple second, third and fourth-tiered order
centres (figure 2)3.

The entities were relatively stable and lasted during the entire time of the Classic Period.
Although not always said explicitly, the model implies the existence of a pre-industrial
bureaucratic system and administration with territorial divisions. The role of archaeological
data and geographical theories are much more important than any other data set in the
formation of these models.

A contrary view of Classic Period political organisation was presented by Peter Mathews,
Stephen Houston and various archaeologists who maintained that polities were small and
basically consisted in one main centre and its hinterland (figure 3) 4.

While Mathews’ original description was devoid of any explicit anthropological

categorisation, later both ‘segmentary state’ and ‘galactic state’ models were used explicitly to
locate Maya polities in the science of anthropology 5. According to these conceptualisations,
Classic Period polities were territorially small. Lineage or other kin-based corporate
organisation were the bases of politics, administration was relatively underdeveloped, and
they were unstable entities with frequent fluctuations of powers, factional conflicts within the
elite, especially the royal and non-royal families. This latter suggestion derived from the
model and interpretations of texts led scholars to propose a status rivalry model which
explained the collapse of the Classic Period civilisation 6.

The debate about ‘weak’ vs. ‘regional’ states was never resolved as the attacks on
neoevolutionary theory made the problem non-relevant to understanding political
organisation7. Also, with the advancement of the decipherment it became possible to translate
the entire corpus of inscriptions. As a consequence of these intellectual changes a third model
of Classic Period polity has been proposed in the 1990’s by Simon Martin and Nikolai
Grube8.

Avoiding to answer the questions referring to the internal organisation of polities, they
investigated the interactions of political entities, or those phenomena which were represented
in the inscriptions by ’emblem glyphs’, an assumption of Maya studies built in the former
models. They have proposed that in the Late Classic period (600-900) two powerful entities
centred in the Northeast Peten cities of Tikal and Calakmul, fought a continuous war in which
most of the other emblem glyph bearing entities participated, either as allies, or as direct
dependencies9. They called these entities ‘hegemonic states’ or ‘superpowers’ and suggested
that this particular form of political process was similar to the formation of the Postclassic
Mexica Empire.

In this system, the ’hegemonic states’ ruled indirectly the constituent dependencies.
Nevertheless, in specific cases evidence was found that armed conflict was also involved
when explicit attempts to secession occurred. They have proposed that the ‘hegemonic states’
were more stable than the polities according to the ‘weak state’ models, but no bureaucracy
was present as in the ‘regional state’ models. Also, they have explicitly accepted the equations
of emblem glyphs with territorial entities, but suggested that the ‘hegemonic states’ were non-
contiguous territorial formations. This new model was accepted by most of the archaeologists

89
and epigraphers, and various reconstructive scenarios were created about the situations of
polities in the hegemonic matrix10.

Recently, this consensus is breaking apart as epigraphers and archaeologist are hard to find
the proposed hegemonic systems in other regions of the Maya Lowlands. They are also still
trying to understand the internal organisation of polities11. As an alternative to the previous
models, I suggest that a philological and historical investigation about politics in the
inscriptions can open new avenues for scholarship. This statement derives from the
assumption about the role of the elite in organising the Classic Period society. If this is valid,
then I can begin to investigate one aspect of elite expression, namely the Classic Period
inscriptions. I do not contend, of course, that the elite represented all of the society, or that the
remaining inscriptions make a complete assessment about politics, however I maintain that
they give substantial information about some basic concepts which can be helpful to
understand some facets of Classic Period political organisation.

In the following, I try to reflect on several issues concerning Classic Period political
organisation concentrating on some neglected questions which are all connected to the self-
referential image presented in the inscriptions. Before this however, I shall briefly introduce
some theoretical standpoints, a framework which helps to situate my reflections.

Writing, Self-Representation, Collective Memory and Collective Identity

Pierre Bourdieu in his treatment of dominance and domination, points to the role of self-
representation in writing, gestures and everyday speech 12. It is by language and its capacity to
represent that symbolic domination is achieved. In every culture there are socially legitimate
ways to perceive and represent the world. An individual or a group of individuals is dominant
if they are able to impose a way to being seen. In turn an individual, or a group of individuals
is dominated if they are less successful to impose their self-perception. In Classic Period
Maya culture, the content of the writing and the narratives only mention individuals and
groups who hold certain titles and perform some political functions. Thus far, epigraphers
have not found any texts which write about the non-elite part of the society. Therefore, what
one finds in Classic Period texts is an ideational self-image of one segment of the society to
the total exclusion of other segments. Indeed, this dominance was so pervasive that not even
artistic representations show any sign of non-elite persons.

In this sense, Classic Maya writing and iconography form part of the ‘public transcript’ of the
elite13. Or as Adam Smith14 has suggested inscriptions are ‘imaginative aesthetic guiding
representation of the world at hand’. Also, texts are the collective memory of the elite 15.
Collective memory is a frame to which every individual adjusts him/herself in a society. To be
retrievable, collective memory has to be connected to specific spaces and times; it is group-
connected and cannot be transferred to another group freely. These figurations of memory are
always ‘models, examples and teachings’ and they reflect the general behaviour of the group
creating them16. A group who is organised as a community of collective memory retains its
past according to the community’s difference and endurance. Thus the group emphasises its
difference from outsiders but its similarity to insiders. The events, actions and behaviours are
therefore reconstructed to be a certain way, the ‘ideational aesthetic’.

Nevertheless, it is important to emphasise that this is not propaganda in the sense of

convincing others to ‘join’ and ‘participate’ but a constraint on outsiders to join, and insiders
to depart from the group. Also, insiders have to adjust themselves to the image in actual
behaviour especially in ‘public’ when both insiders and outsiders can perceive whether a
certain individual is appropriately follows the ‘public transcript’ of a given community.
Collective memory is inherently connected to collective identity, or the belief in the existence
of a ‘we-consciousness’17. Identity is strongly connected to politics and political organisation;
by the creation of various identities organisation becomes possible. Classic Period Maya

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writing is therefore a repository of collective memories and collective identities, a form of
organising and presenting the elite to themselves and to outsiders, other parts of the society.

As a consequence of this theoretical framework various questions can be asked about politics
and political organisation during the Classic Period. First and foremost: was there a ‘Classic
Period Maya polity’ ever? This is a question which was never asked by former researchers.
Other possible points of reflections revolve around the identity formation of the elite, their
conceptualisation of the past (what to be remembered) and political actions expressed by
agency formulas. All these are forming part of what researchers understood under the fluid
matrix of politics and political organisation, however they are not exhausting it.

Classic Period Maya Polity

One possible definition of polity is given by Adam Smith according to which it is a ‘bounded
territory within which a sovereign regime rules the community of subjects integrated by a
shared sense of identity that binds them together in place’ 18.

Where are the bounded territories in the Classic Period Maya landscape? What was a
sovereign regime? Who constituted the community of subjects? What identity did they share?
If there was a ‘Classic Maya polity’ as such, was there any change in it during the centuries?

If inscriptions are self-representations of a dominant group then a researcher cannot find out
from them the ‘Classic Maya polity’; rather he/she can make inferences about the self-
referential ideal concepts referring to practices concerning the ‘politic’. In a simple way, it is
equally important what is perceived and what is not. In light of this I think there was a general
conceptualisation of the political landscape which was used all over the Southern Maya
Lowlands. This can be imagined as a pool, which contains concepts that in turn were applied
differently both in space and time. However, I do not think that there were multiple ways of
polities, or multiple sets of conceptualisation as some suggested in the case of mythological
narratives (as does Pharo19, but see Carrasco20 who argues to the contrary), only that there
were multiple ways of representation which can indicate applications. The main concepts of
this pool were ch’e’n (and its combinations) and ajawil/lel. On this single dyad a whole
political idea was built.

A general concept of the political landscape can be ascertained to have existed with one well-
defined spatial category, the ch’e’n and its multiple varieties combined with kab’ and chan. It
is hard to discern an evolving change in the conceptualisation of this particular entity and its
reference is not very clear. I have argued elsewhere that all of its varieties refer in a general
sense to ‘inhabited places’ not only by humans but also by non-human deities 21. There is not
any concept which would refer to the landscape as ‘forest’, however there are many natural
phenomena which are named such as ha’ (‘water’ or in a narrow way ‘river’), witz (mountain,
hill), naahb’ (‘pool’ or ‘bajo’), k’ahk’naahb’ (‘ocean’, or even some ‘primordial water’) and
palaw (‘ocean’ or ‘lake’) etc.

While ch’e’n is certainly a natural phenomenon with a semantic field of ‘cave, pool’ thus
referring to empty or filled cavity, it went into the semantic construction of ‘inhabited place’.
This can be ‘high’ or ‘heavenly’ or ‘low’ and ‘earthly’, but sometimes both at the same time
which concurs with the notion that there is no discernible difference in the use of the
diphrasismos according to events or different type of beings. From the very first time, it is
recorded alone and with chan and kab’, but regional differences can be discerned. It is

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important to make a difference between chan/kab’-ch’en and various suffixes such as -u’ul
and -iil which form place names, and probably have a very general meaning of ‘place’.

Indeed, I have argued that che’n could have had a connotation of ‘built place’ as possibly is
attested by the derived noun ochch’e’n~’[built] place-entering’. Interestingly, I have not
found any evidence about grade-distinction within ch’e’n such as ‘big’ or ‘small’ ch’e’n, or
anything similar to the western concept of ‘city’, ‘town’, ‘village’, ‘hamlet’ etc. It does not
mean that such a gradation did not exist, however it was not significant enough to be
mentioned, which in turn leaves a quite different conceptualisation of the landscape from the
one used by archaeologists. A slight difference between kab’-che’n and chan-che’n is that the
first refers to ‘property’ and is frequently connected to buildings (or naah and otoot) while the
latter exclusively refers to every built place, thus the first is a more exclusive term than the
last. The Classic Period imagined landscape therefore consisted in ‘built inhabited places’ and
natural phenomenon, and parallels between the two are not as significant as was once
suggested by epigraphers22. The creation of ‘built space’ which can be ‘inhabited’ was one of
the main tasks of the ruler of any Classic Period polity. When David Stuart noted that Classic
Period texts are narratives around dedications, he discovered an important nature of the being
of a ruler23. Adam Smith noted the ‘heroism’ invoked in text by constructing new buildings on
the landscape in the 8th century BC Urartu polity24. While Urartu kings had a unique
prerogative to build and transform the landscape, and made it very conscious in their
inscriptions, Classic Period Maya rulers were less concerned with recording transformations
of natural features or with the emptiness of the previous landscape. Indeed, there are no
records of constructions that can be interpreted to be ‘public’ in the sense of current western
thinking (canals, granaries or public schools). Nevertheless, from archaeological evidence it is
well known that water management was important and played a part in the transformation of
the natural landscape25.

The importance of plazas as ‘public spaces’ were also attested in the archaeological record 26,
however in the inscriptions there is no mention of their dedication (or not yet discovered).
There is also archaeological evidence which attest to the constructions of defensive walls
around settlement, nevertheless save some records of pa~`fortress, walled enclosure’ and two
mentions of kot~`wall’ which implies their constructions, these ‘public features’ are also
unattested in the inscriptions.

Therefore, constructions mainly refer to structures called naah and otoot, the planting of
lakamtuun and altars, and other inter-building elements such as panels, tablets, thrones and so
on. The rulers were not the only ones who built, non-royal nobles were not just participating
in the building dedications but sometimes they were the main actors.

The record of special structures built for deities is an important feature of the texts-they can
be naah, otoot, pibnaah, wayb’il etc. Constructing places to deities is one of the most
important tasks of the builder, and the construction of residences delimits plazas, thus
restructures places formerly not inhabited. Therefore, a polity is a built landscape which does
not have boundaries only by the natural features waiting to be transformed.

To have a polity, it is necessary to have an ajaw who proclaims, fights and builds. Although
the importance of the word ajaw was always known to epigraphers, recent etymological
suggestions which connects its origin to ‘shout, proclaim’ shed new light on his ‘public’

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role27. To have a polity it is necessary to have ajawil or ajawlel, a descent of lines of ajaw into
which somebody can insert him/herself. Although it refers to the ‘kingdom’, it does not refer
to its territorial entity but to its descent line. According to Classic Period sources, every
ajawlel claimed to be a polity, nevertheless it is difficult to assess this assertion. Contrary to
the general opinion of epigraphers there is no evidence that ajawlel is conceptualised as a
territory or anything spatial28. In the inscriptions, there are only two verbs connected to
ajawil/ajawlel namely chum~`to sit’ and joy~`to appear’. These are verbs which never stand
with words referring to spatial entities or polity names. On the other hand, verbs connected to
these latter words, such as ‘huli’, ‘tali,’ ‘ochi’, e[h]meey, lok’ooy, t’ab’aay etc. do not stand
with ajawil/ajawlel. Therefore, while you can enter, leave, construct, return, destroy etc. a
spatial entity, ajawil/ajawlel is never such an entity according to the textual evidence.

Every ajawil/ajawlel was connected to an inhabited built place, but not necessarily to the
place where the actual descent line resided. This is one of the most important characteristics
of the conceptualisation of the Classic Period polity. The original che’n is the name of the
royal house, its origin place, which can be easily transported to other built places. Emblem
glyphs are ‘places of origin’ transported over the landscape with the movement of a royal line.
The most conspicuous example of this process can be found in cases of Mutu’ul, Xukalnaah
and B’akV(V)’l, however the example of the Kanu’ul dynasty is also significant.

Emblem main signs were originally toponyms, sometimes referring explicitly to one
particular building which was claimed by the descent line 29. Emblem glyphs did not refer
explicitly to dominion, or named the polity, only said explicitly that this particular person
originated from a place. Mutu’ul thus cannot be equated with a geographical concept such as
‘France’ and say that the seat of this geographical place was also called Mutu’ul.

This matrix of ch’en and ajawil/lel (and the derivations) combined one spatial and an
institutional concept for polity formation. It did not involve demarcation or territorialisation,
but building plazas, temples and palaces in a manner to transform the landscape. Where
buildings stood humans were formed into a polity but in turn construction meant a descent
line of elite persons who claimed dominance.

Collective Identity

How was identity formed in this matrix of ch’en and ajaw? To create a polity supposedly
involves some manner of identity connecting ruler and ruled. In the case of the Southern
Maya Lowlands, identity is a thorny issue because thus far nobody has been able to
convincingly prove the existence of an overarching identity, a term, which would embrace the
territory where the Classic Period sites are located. Nevertheless, the first and foremost
identity creating factor is a che’n, a built place, and most of the time this appears in cases of
ambiguity, that is where the origin of a person has to be spelled out. Frequently, the aj
agentive prefix and a toponym referring to a specific site are the usual way to form these
identifying constructions. Nevertheless, it is there where wider-than-site identities can be
detected, such as hux te tuun which at least embraced Calakmul and Oxpemul, and huklaju’n
tzuk and huxlaju’n tzuk which referred to the Eastern Peten (and the lakes region) and to the
area west of it, respectively 30. As Alexandre Tokovinine has pointed out regional identities
were always overshadowed by local connections 31. Another regional title was hux haab’ te’
which is connected to Rio Azul and Copan with different partition numbers (5 and 6). Indeed,

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one of the impressions of the regional identity referents is the evocation of completion by the
use of numbers referring to partition (figure 4; see the inscription of Altar de los Reyes with
k’uhul kab’ huxlaju’n [kab’?] and possibly 13 emblem glyphs).

However, the mention of these regional terms does not alter the general image about Classic
Period identity formation where emblem glyphs remained the cornerstone of belonging for
the elite. Non-royal elite participated in the identity of emblem glyphs by constantly
connecting themselves to the emblem glyphs of their rulers by accepting subordination. A
particular sajal can be hailed from El Cayo and thus could have been from yaxniil and was a
stable subordinate of the rulers in yokib’. Nevertheless, he was never designated a yokib’
sajal. It is exactly this record which is missing from the inscriptions and which indicates
strongly that emblem glyph main signs, though they referred to places (che’n or kab’) never
formed the base of polity and identity formation.

Another indication of the narrow reach of Classic Period identity formation is the infrequent
use of the suffix -naal which may have the connotation of ‘-born in/at’, a concept
superficially similar to etymology of ‘native’. In the known cases, this suffix is affixed to
emblem glyph main signs and never to regional toponyms. Ethnic denominations are equally
missing and the inscriptions omit any reference to the non-elite population.

How was this non-elite segment of the society integrated into polities? One probability is that
it was more a pragmatic than ethnic decision, that is the population of a given polity voted to
stay with the best time and place-structuring ruler who was able to defend. The number of
special studies which try to investigate this specific question is small and most of them
explicitly assume economic integration as the only factor in the relation between the elite and
the non-elite within Classic Period polities 32. The connection between the elite and non-elite
most probably was not based on ethnic or territorial fixity. There is nothing similar in the
inscriptions that can be conceptualised as such, and this lends support to a view, which posits
that the elite did not have to prove their managerial and common origin role to the
commoners because probably it was quite apparent. What the elite tried to achieve through its
public transcript was showing the non-evident, or the successful time and space structuring,
and emphasising the capacity to attack and defend. A helpful concept to describe this
particular polity is not ethnicity or territoriality but morality recently introduced into Maya
studies by various authors33.

The authority in this descriptive interpretative framework is moral and is connected to a

strategy more to induce and cajole than to force 34. The k’uhul ajaw (the sacred head of the
polity) plays a central role, a referential place to which all social actors are positioned, even
the deities who are clearly on a higher plane. These deities were constantly evoked and fused
pan-Classic Period elite characters and probably narratives with local expressions creating
what modern investigators call tutelary deities.

Migration

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The identity formation centred on emblem glyphs or origin places made it possible for
corporate groups to fission and move on the landscape and still retain their cohesion. The
inscriptions are constantly evoking by various ways the non-local origins of the ruling lines.
Indeed, archaeology attests to the phenomenon of population movement connected to the
appearance of inscriptions in a specific place as happened in the cases of Yaxchilan, Piedras
Negras, Palenque, Copan, Dos Pilas, just to mention the most well known examples.

To invoke non-local origin is a general phenomenon of the Classic Period texts which they
achieve by the concrete narration of arrivals, the use of titles, and other subtle ways of
representation such as the use of non-Classic Period Maya cultural elements 35. Migrations of
groups are never mentioned, only that of individuals, nevertheless sometimes the rare word
yita-huli is attested which refers to the entourage36.

The first arrival was recorded at the beginning of the 5 th century (in Tikal) while the last was
recorded in the middle of the 9th century (in Seibal; see figure 5). Sometimes the arrival is
considered a new foundation (Dos Pilas) and sometimes a refoundation (Seibal). Fission was
so pervasive that offshoots of one ajawlel residing in many places constituted whole regions
(such as the Lacandon area or the Mirador Basin). Similar configurations were created in the
case of Tikal and Dos Pilas, or between Palenque and Tortuguero, Tres Islas and Cancuen etc.
Indeed, the expansion of Classic Period elite culture and identity with all its trappings can be
reduced to the constant ‘entourage’ movement on the landscape. The cases of Dos Pilas,
Zapote Bobal37 and Seibal indicate that the process of migration was a constant phenomenon
of the Classic Period, where various factors (war, internal strife, or simply an opportunity to
move) resulted in the settlement of previously non-occupied or abandoned areas. The Classic
Period is an ever growing process of foundations of ch’e’n where rulers reside and gather
people around.

Interactions and elite

Maya politics for the elite consisted in the interactions of individuals. Texts are none other
than documentation of special roles in rituals, and most elite persons had a well-defined
position to each other according to participation and presence. The Maya scribes used at least
five morphemes and their derivations to express these joint actions. Three among them, kab’,
*ila and *ita, are derived transitive stems, almost unanimously in perfect status 38 while the
fourth and fifth (ichnal and e(b’)te) are possessed nouns39. All stems can stand with the
names of humans and supernatural beings which further confirms the mixing of ‘myth’ and
‘reality’ during the Classic Period.

My investigation suggests that kab’ is connected to the main actor in a given ritual, be it a
higher or lower ranked person, and an active participation. A translation congruent with the
Colonial Tzotzil chabi~/gobernar/ is appropriate in the sense ‘to govern, it makes to happen’.
Although the rank of the main actors are in most cases higher than that of the others, however
the kab’ stem does not indicate rank in itself.

*ita has the same connotations, although it is in a lesser scale. The person connected by the
*ita is present in the ritual, and even does the same action as the main actor. He/she joins the
ritual but the role is unequivocally less, which mostly indicates his/her lower rank in a given

95
ritual action. Furthermore, there is no reason to say that he/she was not in the presence of the
visual field of the acting person.

The meaning of *ila is more difficult to say but generally it conveys a more passive
participation and a mere presence of the given person in a ritual. When it is connected to
period ending ceremonies, perhaps it has a different meaning, like ‘divine or foresee’ as
suggested by Karen-Bassie Sweet40. The action of ‘witnessing’ by the ruler was enough to
make something legitimate and in this way, the ‘witnessing’ of the secondary elite does the
same with a ceremony conducted by the ruler himself.

The translation of ichnal is very plausibly ‘presence’ and it has the same role as *ila, it
legitimates an action, however there is no direct participation. Maybe it has a connotation of
‘place’ and I argued that it could have meant, depending on the context, ‘home or habitual
place’ similarly to William Hanks’41 analysis of iknal in Modern Yukatek.

The agency expression *e(b’)tej connected the actual person with direct action, emphasising
his active participation, probably more so than *kab’. It does not involve much hierarchical
associations, however, it is mostly constrained to indicate captive taking. Outside of captive
taking context, it is used in house dedications where a non-royal elite individual undertakes
the actual ritual event.

In a hypothetical narrative describing an event and connecting actors by the agency

expressions, the actors have the role according to participation and presence as the following:

1st Presence 2nd, 3rd etc. Presence

Active participation e(b’)tej/*kab’i *itaa

Passive participation *ichVn *ila

Classic Period politics was a constant struggle to be connected to these expressions, or better
said to be in a position where status is recognised by participating in rituals and events where
position in a text was formed around these five words. Rulers tried to amass events where
they have done something and this action is connected to their names by the verb kab’.
Subordinate persons mainly reached the narrative level as secondary participators, witnesses,
or companions, not the head of ceremonies but still somebody worthwhile to be noticed and
preserved in the collective memory. Classic Period politics is therefore a constant
interconnection of individuals within one segment of the society who always wanted to hold
more and more other elite individuals as their possession (the linguistic expression of this is
clear as attested by the yajaw, usajal, yajk’uhu’n etc. possessed titles).

Those who are left out

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A ‘time and space structuring ruler in a built space with an origin-indicating named corporate
group’, probably that is how I can sum up the specific conceptualisation of the Classic Period
polity. This was a minimum ideal, which was always necessary to form a political entity.
Nevertheless, some parts of the Maya Lowlands did not conform to this ideal, and it is not
known what their status was. Any map that presents solid lines as boundaries probably
misrepresents geopolitics where empty-zones, non-controlled but inhabited zones and
contested zones existed side by side.

One such unresolved problem on any map is the substantial area roughly among the sites of
Palenque, Tonina, Agua Escondida, Plan de Ayutla, La Mar, Piedras Negras and Chinikiha. It
is a zone with the highest-cost distance according to Armando Anaya Hernández 42 and there is
no report on any major site in this region. It is assumed that relation between Palenque and
Piedras Negras, or Palenque and La Mar, or indeed between Tonina and Chinikiha would
necessitate crossing this particular area, or the control of it. Nevertheless, it is not borne out
by any evidence, almost as if this particular zone was maintained as a huge buffer among the
competing polities. Another possible interpretation is that it was a refuge for those
populations that did not want to participate in the Classic Maya polity, and here successfully
managed to take a hold.

Summary

Thus, Classic Period polity was something quite different from a nation-state in formation
from the 19th century where homogenisation was reached by instrumental bureaucratic
strategies which emphasised a fixed territory with absolute boundaries, an ethnic community,
a historical consciousness generated from above and massively disseminated in public
institutions and recreated and remembered in various ways.

The Classic Period polity was basically a matrix around a specific institution (ajawlel) which
was implemented in the landscape by building a location to house the representative (ajaw or
k’uhul ajaw) of this given entity. By way of its time and place structuring activity, the ajaw
created a che’n ‘an inhabited and built place’ where deities (k’uh) could be conjured. As a
reference point, others collected around his/her personality and office, and received various
titles which were not well-defined ranks but rather summaries of specific tasks (an anab’, an
aj k’uhu’n and an aj uxul all left their ‘signature’ on monuments, so which is the sculptor?).
There were borders and polity maintenance by leaving refuge and buffer zones among main
centres and shorter or longer periods of supremacy over other communities (from 10 to 140
years).

Nevertheless, this was not a ‘theatre-state’ because obligations for living in the community
could be onerous. They had to repair and built, and dedicate, and produce. What was received
is more a common belief in order than enforcement. This system was quite stable and
enchanting enough to expand continually and result in the organisation of higher and a higher
number of persons. There is no indication, contrary to other assertions, that the Maya
Lowlands became overpopulated at the end of the 8 th century. Rather, the ‘side-effects’ of the
‘forest of kings’ resulted in a conflict upon conflict situation. With time it was not the
frequency of conflicts which increased, but the participants and thus there was less time to
recuperate with diminishing areas where one could escape, survive or migrate. A much
populated landscape did not leave as many opportunities for a strategy of hit-and-sack then

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recuperate, neither for nobles (who recorded this particular tactic in their inscriptions) nor to
the non-elite.

A reconceptualisation of the polity ideal on the line of a unified cosmopolis with one main
reference point could have helped in the aggravating situation but almost 600-hundred years
of identity formation was not easy to overcome.

Endnotes
1
Stephen D. Houston, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos and David Stuart, The Decipherment of Ancient Maya
Writing (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001)
2
Hans J. Prem, “Modelos de entidades políticas: una síntesis”. In Modelos de entidades políticas mayas, ed. Silvia
Trejo (México: INAH, 1998), 17-34.
3
Jocye Marcus, Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic Approach to Territorial
Organization, (Washington D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1976) and “Ancient Maya Political Organization”. In
Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century, eds Jeremy A. Sabloff and John S. Henderson, (Washington D.
C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993), 111-171. Richard Adams, “Rio Azul, National Geographic” 169 (1986):420-51. Diane
Chase and Arlen Chase, “More than Kin and King: Centralized Political Organization among the Late Classic
Maya”, Current Anthropology 37 (1996):803-810.
4
Peter Mathews “Classic Maya Emblem Glyphs”. In Classic Maya Political History: Epigraphic and
Archaeological Evidence, ed. Patrick T. Culbert, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 19-29. Stephen
D. Houston, “Classic Maya Politics”. In New Theories on the Ancient Maya, eds. Cecil E. Danien and Robert
Sharer, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1992), 65-69.
5
Arthur C. Demarest, “Ideology in Ancient Maya Cultural Evolution: The Dynamics of Galactic Polities”. In
Ideology and Precolumbian Civilizations, eds. Arthur C. Demarest and Geoffrey W. Conrad (Santa Fe, New
Mexico: School of American Research Press, 1992), 137-157. Stephen D. Houston, Hieroglyphs and History at
Dos Pilas: Dynastic Politics of the Classic Maya, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).
6
William Fash, Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copán and the Ancient Maya, New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1991. David Webster, “Warfare and Status Rivalry: Lowland Maya and Polynesian Comparisons”. In
Archaic States, eds. Gary M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1999),
311-351.
7
Adam Smith, The Political Landscape: The Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities, (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003). Norman Yoffee, Myth of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities,
States and Civilizations, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2003).
8
Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Evidence for Macro-Political Organization Amongst Classic Maya Lowland
States, (unpublished manuscript, 1994); Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering of the Ancient
Dynasties of the Ancient Maya, (London, Thames and Hudson 2000).
9
Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Evidence for Macro-Political Organization Amongst Classic Maya Lowland
States, 1994.
10
Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Maya Kings and Queens, 2000.
11
Damien B. Marken and Kirk D. Straight, “Conclusion: Reconceptualizing the Palenque Polity”. In Palenque:
Recent Investigations at the Classic Maya Centre, Damien B. Marken ed. (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2007), 279-
324.
12
Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie, (Paris: Minuit1986), 86-94.
13
James Scott , Domination and the Arts of Resistance, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990).
14
Adam Smith, The Political Landscape, 2003, 10.
15
Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen
[Hungarian edition: A kulturális emlékezet. Írás, emlékezés es politikai identitás a korai magaskulturákban, ,
Budapest: Atlantisz 1992 [2004])]
16
ibid.
17
ibid.:129-132
18
Adam Smith, The Political Landscape, 2003, 151.
19
Lars K. Pharo, Rituals of Time: An Analysisi of the Ritual Practivce of Time of the Long Count Calendar, the
260-Day Calendar, the 365-Day Calendar and the 52-Year Calendar in Mesoamerica, (PhD Thesis, Department of
Culture and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norwege, 2006).

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20
Michael, CarrascoThe Mask Flange Iconographic Complex: The Art, Ritual, and History of a Maya Sacred
Image, (PhD Thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 2005).
21
Bíró Péter, History, Politcs, and Polity: The Classic Period Western Maya Region, (PhD Dissertation, La Trobe
University, Australia, 2007)
22
Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, (New York: William
Morrow, 1990)
23
David Stuart, A Study of Maya Inscriptions, (PhD Thesis, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 1995).
24
Adam Smith, The Political Landscape, 2003, 160-162.
25
Lisa J. Lucero, Water and Ritual: the Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers, (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2004).
26
Sethra M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture, (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2000).
27
Stephen D. Houston and David Stuart, Of Gods, Glyphs, and Kings: Divinity and Rulership among the Classic
Maya, Antiquity 70 (1996):289-312, 295.
28
pace Alfonso Lacadena Garcia-Gallo and Andrés Ciudad Ruiz, “Reflexiones sobre estructura política maya
clásica”. In Anatomía de una civilización. Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la cultura maya, Andrés Ciudad
Ruiz et al., eds. (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas, 1998), 31-64.
29
Alexander Tokovinine, Classic Maya Place Name Database Project, Mesoamerica, FAMSI,
http://www.famsi.org/reports/06054/index.html, 2007.
30
Alexander Tokovinine, Classic Maya Place Names, 2007; Dimitri Beliaev, Wuk Tsuk and Oxlahun Tsuk: Tikal
and Naranjo in the Late Classic, (unpublished manuscript, 1998).
31
Alexandre Tokovinine Classic Maya Place Names, 2007, 9-10
32
Takeshi Inomata, “The spatial mobility of non-elite populations in Classic Maya society and its political
implications”. In Ancient Maya Commoners, Jon C. Lohse and Fred Valdez, Jr. eds., (Austin: University of Texas
Press 2004), 175-196.
33
Stephen Houston et al., “The Moral Community: Maya Settlement Transformation at Piedras Negras,
Guatemala”. In The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, Smith Monica ed., (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 2003), 212-253.
34
ibid.:231-239)
35
Andrea, Stone, “Disconnection, Foreign Insignia and Political Expansion: Teotihuacán and the Warrior Stelae of
Piedras Negras”. In Mesoamerica after the Decline of Teotihuacán, AD 700-900, Richard D. Diehl and Janet C.
Berlo eds., (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection 1989), 153-172. Davis Stuart,
“The Arrival of Strangers: Teotihuacan and Tollan in Classic Maya History”. In Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage,
David Carrasco et al. eds., (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000), 465-523. Erik Boot, Continuity and Change in Text
and Image at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico: A Study of the Inscriptions, Iconography, and Architecture at a Late
Classic to Early Postclassic Maya Site, (Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2005).
36
Barbara MacLeod, “A World in a Grain of Sand: Transitive Perfect Verbs in the Classic Maya Script”. In The
Linguistics of Maya Writing, Søren Wichmann ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2004), 291-326.
37
James Fitzsimmons, Kings of Jaguar Hill: Monuments and Caches at Zapote Bobal, FAMSI,
http://www.famsi.org/reports/05047/index.html, 2006.
38
Barbara MacLeod, A World in a Grain of Sand, 2004.
39
Stephen Houston and Karl Taube, “An Archaeology of the Senses: Perception and Cultural Expression in
Ancient Mesoamerica”, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10 (2000):261-294.
40
Karen Bassie-Sweet , Maya Creator Gods, Mesoweb, www.mesoweb.com/features/bassie/creatorgods.pdf, 2001.
41
William Hanks, Intertexts : Writings on Language, Utterance, and Context, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
2000).
42
Armando Anaya Hernández, Frail Alliances, Shifting Boundaries: The Growth and Wane of the Usumacinta
Region Kingdoms, paper presented at the XXXI Annual Maya Meetings at Texas, Austin, 2007.

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Hieroglyphs and History at Dos Pilas: Dynastic Politics of the Classic Maya, (Austin:
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Houston, Stephen D., Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos and David Stuart, The Decipherment
of Ancient Maya Writing (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001)
Houston, Stephen D. and David Stuart, Of Gods, Glyphs, and Kings: Divinity and Rulership
among the Classic Maya, Antiquity 70 (1996):289-312, 295.
Houston, Stephen D. and Karl Taube, “An Archaeology of the Senses: Perception and
Cultural Expression in Ancient Mesoamerica”, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10
(2000):261-294.
Houston, Stephen D. et al., “The Moral Community: Maya Settlement Transformation at
Piedras Negras, Guatemala”. In The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, Smith Monica ed.,
(Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003), 212-253.
Inomata, Takeshi, “The spatial mobility of non-elite populations in Classic Maya society and
its political implications”. In Ancient Maya Commoners, Jon C. Lohse and Fred Valdez, Jr.
eds., (Austin: University of Texas Press 2004), 175-196.
Lacadena Garcia-Gallo, Alfonso and Andrés Ciudad Ruiz, “Reflexiones sobre estructura
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of Texas Press, 2000).
Lucero, Lisa J., Water and Ritual: the Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers, (Austin:
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University Press, 1991) 19-29.
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políticas mayas, ed. Silvia Trejo (México: INAH, 1998), 17-34.
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Schele, Linda and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya,
(New York: William Morrow, 1990)
Smith, Adam, The Political Landscape: The Constellations of Authority in Early Complex
Polities, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Stone, Andrea, “Disconnection, Foreign Insignia and Political Expansion: Teotihuacán and
the Warrior Stelae of Piedras Negras”. In Mesoamerica after the Decline of Teotihuacán, AD
700-900, Richard D. Diehl and Janet C. Berlo eds., (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection 1989), 153-172
Stuart, David, A Study of Maya Inscriptions, (PhD Thesis, Vanderbilt University, Nashville,
1995).
“The Arrival of Strangers: Teotihuacan and Tollan in Classic Maya History”. In
Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage, David Carrasco et al. eds., (Boulder: Westview Press,
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101
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Webster, David, “Warfare and Status Rivalry: Lowland Maya and Polynesian Comparisons”.
In Archaic States, eds. Gary M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus (Santa Fe: School of American
Research Press, 1999), 311-351.
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102
Archaeologies of Utopia?
Geoff Hewitt

During 2006, the US-based Society for Historical Archaeology dedicated one entire issue (vol
40 number 1) of its journal Historical Archaeology to the archaeology of Utopian settlements.
In the keynote paper by Thad M. Van Bueren and Sarah A. Tarlow entitled ‘The interpretive
potential of utopian settlements’ (Van Bueren and Tarlow 2006), the authors discussed the
possible contribution of archaeology to, in many cases, an already substantial body of
understanding concerning the various utopian social experiments that challenged American
society from the 18th century.

Van Bueren and Tarlow identified four distinct strands within the possibilities for
archaeological interpretation of past utopian experiments. The most obvious of these is the
potential for archaeology to fill the lacunae within the historical record. Not all intentional
communities set out to construct a presence or image within the public consciousness; but
even with groups that dedicated substantial energy and resources towards that end, the
material record might allow inference concerning the mundane or embarrasing details omitted
or edited from their narrative: details that might illuminate the manner in which a utopian
ideal played out in the quotidian.

The second strand of potential for archaeology is, again through the material record, to detect
and investigate mismatches between rhetoric and performance. Also, to explore contradictions
between the internal ideologies of communities and the perceptions of the broader society
whose values and ‘common sense’ was challenged. That this is sticky ground, rife with
polemic and propaganda, where interpretation is subject to an archaeologist’s own orientation,
is acknowledged by Van Bueren and Tarlow (2006:3). Similarly, the danger of trivialising past
utopian endeavours within present public interpretation, in response to influence from the
dominant culture, is an important issue addressed in some detail by Alison Wylie (2002:154-
60) who expands upon the critique of Mark Leone. Sticky ground indeed, but of immense
interest.

The third strand, according to Van Bueren and Tarlow, arises from the conscious expression of
ideology upon the material world by utopian communities. Particular modes of living and the
systems of belief upon which lifeways are based, might be archaeologically visible through
structural organisation, architectural design, the use of symbolism and the modification of
landscape.

The potential for archaeology to provide a diachronic perspective is Van Bueren and Tarlow’s
fourth strand. They argue that an examination of processes of ideological adaptation through
time is an important counterweight to an historiographic tendency for ‘monolithic
interpretations that focus on the reasons groups “failed”’ (2006:4).

Echoing Wylie, the authors note the particular importance of critical self-reflection for
researchers who choose to investigate and interpret utopian communities, seeing this as an
opportunity for ethical and professional development. Van Bueren and Tarlow conclude by
noting that past idealisms and the lessons learned from attempts at engineering societal
change through visionary movements have much relevance in the present. Despite the loss of
faith in utopian vision during the 20 th century due to the devastating failures of those utopian
attempts at societal change represented by state Communism, Fascism and Nazism, the
authors argue for the continuing relevance of the utopian imagination in creating alternatives
to a future characterised by ‘war, terror, conflict and inequality’; to which one might
reasonably now add climate change.

103
The papers published in volume 40 (1) of Historical Archaeology range widely through time
and (North American) space. Preucel and Pendery (2006:6-19) explore the chronology of
Brook Farm (1841-1847) through changes in landscape and architecture which reflect the
transition from radical and egalitarian Transcendentalist ideology to the more rigidly
structured, secular and industrialised Fourierist Phalanx into which it consciously evolved.
Tomaso et al. (2006: 20-36) report progress with their long-running and on-going Feltville
Archaeological Project. Located in Central New Jersey, Feltville, between 1845 and 1860,
was an experiment in decentralised reformed industry conducted by David Felt, a capitalist
from New York City. Felt, a devout but tolerant Unitarian who had succeeded in the printing
industry, built his ideal village and factory on a greenfields site apparently influenced by older
Jeffersonian communal capitalist ideals and ethics, emphasising profitable but dispersed
agrarian and self-contained industrial community as a vision for American development in
place of full commitment to industrialisation (Tomaso et al. 2006:22-3). Felt abandoned his
project in 1860 and was bankrupt in 1867. After Felt’s departure, the village of Feltville was
sold several times. The village suffered periods of abandonment before becoming a resort in
the late nineteenth century, where Felt’s architectural efforts were adaptively reused. Although
abandoned again in 1916, much of the built features have survived into the present. Neither
Feltville, nor its backer, are well documented historically, while its archaeology appears to be
a palimpsest having marked stratigraphic complexity. Nonetheless, Tomaso et al. remain
optimistic that a hermeneutic between sketchy historical data and the evidence from
archaeology and historical geography will ultimately allow Felt’s vision to be understood.

The Oneida Perfectionist community founded in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes is the
subject of a paper by Heather Van Wormer (Van Wormer 2006). Following the retirement of
Noyes and the abandonment of the community’s controversial practice of complex marriage,
together with the eugenically-inspired ‘stirpiculture’ reproductive program, Oneida changed
from common ownership of the substantial assets into a joint stock company during 1881.
Much of the community’s built environment has survived together with a comprehensive
documentary record. Noyes himself published extensively about Oneida and other communal
ventures (eg. Noyes 1870) and the Oneida Community has generated much commentary,
contemporary (eg. Nordhoff 1875), and in more recent times from the scholarly (Foster 1984,
1991, 1997), to the sensational (Eskapa 1987). Dolores Hayden (Hayden 1976), Isaac and
Altman (1998) and architectural historian Janet White (White 1994, 1996, 2001) have all
investigated the articulation between ideology and architecture at Oneida. There has been no
archaeological investigation of Oneida, but Van Wormer, noting the existence of
comprehensive records of the annual inventories compiled at Oneida between 1861 and 1883,
foreshadows the possibility of excavation as a means of researching life at Oneida on a
personal scale. Van Wormer also points out that investigation focussed on Oneida’s daughter
community at Wallingford might permit archaeological observation of the dissent known to
have existed within the community. Fogarty’s (1994) edition of Victor Hawley’s diary is a
poignant example of Oneidan dissent.

Other papers discuss such diverse subjects as the burial practices of the Society of Friends
(Bromberg and Shephard 2006), the bizarre cosmology of Cyrus Teed and his Koreshan Unity
Settlement, which has been the subject of very limited archaeological investigation (Tarlow
2006) and the excavation of a looted rubbish dump at the Theosophical Society’s Point Loma
Institute (Van Wormer and Gross 2006). Stacy Kozakavich (2006) discusses the salvage
archaeology of a co-operative settlement established in Western Canada by an immigrant
group of Russian adherents of Peter Verigin’s New Doukhobor religious sect. Kozakavich’s
interesting paper, in sketching Doukhobor identity as a multilayered complex of belief and
behaviour, realises several of those strands of archaeological potential identified by Van
Bueren and Tarlow.

Against a comprehensive historical background, Van Bueren’s own paper (Van Bueren 2006)
describes a survey - and the beginnings of excavation - at the California site of the early
twentieth-century Llano del Rio Cooperative, an attempt at the practical implementation of an

104
egalitarian, socialist and feminist alternative to industrial capitalism. A highway construction
project prompted the work, to determine the significance of the surviving cultural landscape
and the extent of existing remains on the former Llano holdings, during which almost 400
surface features were recorded. Van Bueren remains pessimistic regarding the possibility of
locating archaeological evidence of the feminist agenda that saw women undertaking men’s
traditional work roles at Llano (2006:147-8). However, other aspects of the women’s social
reform project, together with evidence of changes both in ideology and the class structures
within the membership, are likely to be present within the temporal development of the
cooperative’s built environment, according to Van Bueren. Excavation of the archaeological
deposits at Llano is expected to permit the utopian vision and lived practice to be compared.

The final paper in volume 40(1) of Historical Archaeology is Suzanne Spencer-Wood’s

comprehensive review of gender ideology and practice, according to historical sources, within
utopian communities. An important issue concerning women’s roles within such communities
is the degree to which domestic tasks such as food preparation and laundering were
performed communally or co-operatively. For this question, Spencer-Wood suggests
somewhat obvious archaeological indicators, which include the size of cellar holes, the
distribution of footings and the size of chimney bases, while presenting the probably over-
optimistic possibilities of excavating cooking vessels to determine their size and the confident
identification of genderised spaces from material remains (Spencer Wood 2006:169-170).

Reflection upon this collection of papers is revealing: Although the research is confined to
North America, and the published collection attempts to cover a diverse range of ideological
expression, there are some surprising omissions. Except for an all-too-brief mention by
Spencer-Wood (2006:176), David Starbuck’s long-running program of work on the
Canterbury Shakers (eg. Starbuck 2004, 1999, 1998, 1990, 1986) is ignored, as is Stephen
Warfel’s numerous seasons of excavation at Conrad Beissel’s eighteenth-century Ephrata
Cloister (Warfel 1993-1999). The recentness of the work selected for publication was not
apparently an issue, as Bromberg and Shephard’s paper discusses a salvage project
undertaken in 1994 and Van Wormer and Gross’ paper on the Theosophical Society dump
relies on an even earlier excavation. That the papers published in the volume in question were
intended to form a ‘synopsis of the utopian movement in North America’ is explicitly stated
by Van Bueren and Tarlow (2006:1). Notwithstanding, one might be led to consider that
utopian vision and intent was confined to that continent alone, which was (and remains) very
far from the truth. For example, there were literally dozens of co-operative homestead
associations and village settlements within the Colony of Victoria alone, during the closing
decade of the nineteenth century (Blake 1966, Metcalf 1997:123). A further observation
regarding the papers published in volume 40 (1) of Historical Archaeology might note their
scarcely bridled optimism within interpretations derived from material remains. Examples of
this lie in the unquestioned face-value attribution of function as alcohol containers for glass
bottle remains at Llano (Van Bueren 2006:148) and at the Doukhobor village (Kozakavich
2006:124) in the inference of behaviours that deviated from the temperance agendas of these
communities. Martin Carney’s powerful critique of function-based analytical approaches to
archaeological glass assemblages (Carney 1998:87-9) has clearly had little impact in North
America. Nor has the argument that the traditional antiquarian attribution for the function of
dark olive green glass containers as ‘beer/wine’ is undermined by their use for diverse
contents including cordials, whisky, blacking, turpentine, methylated spirits, stove polish,
linseed oil and vinegar, together with unknowable histories of ad hoc use and re-use (Carney
1998:87; Hewitt 2003:78, 91; Brooks 2005:10).

With the exception perhaps of Heather Van Wormer (2006:37-8), none of the authors has
attempted to pursue a definition of utopianism beyond Van Bueren and Tarlow’s evidently
Marxist view that ‘all utopian ventures were acts of social resistance that explicitly criticised
dominant group values and practices’ (2006:2). Perhaps this is both wise and deliberate, as
there is little agreement to be found in the broader literature. Krishan Kumar’s approach
(1991:33-35), echoed by Roland Schaer (2000:3), is that the utopian tradition is strictly a

105
product of the secular and humanist west, which effectively privileges the utopian socialism
of Henri Comte de Saint-Simon, of Etienne Cabet, of Louis Blanc, of Herbert Spencer, of
Charles Fourier, of Robert Owen, of Nikolay Chernyshevsky, of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, of Joseph Stalin and of Mao Zedong, as the only way to Utopia. Of course, such a
definition would exclude all of the communities discussed in Historical Archaeology vol
40(1), except perhaps the latter Fourierist stage of Brook Farm and the overtly socialist Llano
del Rio. The noted scholar of utopianism, Barbara Goodwin, argued a finer line still: to
Goodwin (1978:7), any social theorist whose ideals are fragmentary or less than
comprehensive, is no utopian, which most decidedly rules out the Theosophical Society. Ruth
Levitas, on the other hand, allows that utopianism is simply an expressed “desire for a
different better way of being” (1990:181). Indeed, ‘Utopia is about how we would live and
what kind of a world we would live in if we could do just that’ (Levitas1990:1).

Interestingly, Heather Van Wormer has very sensibly adopted the descriptor ‘intentional
community’ (2006:37). Bill Metcalf and Betty Huf explain the use of this broadly inclusive
term as a means of working around the problem of utopian definition, with its overt
politicality: “’Utopian refers to the intention to achieve an ideal society, not to the outcome of
the attempt.’ (Metcalf and Huf 2002:2, emphasis added).

When I first approached the notion of conducting archaeological research at the site of Johan
Friedrich Krumnow’s Herrnhut Commune (1853-1889) near Penshurst in Western Victoria I
was filled with optimisms of the kind strongly evident in vol. 40(1) of Historical
Archaeology. Once I had identified Herrnhut as having been ‘successful’ according to
Rosabeth Kanter’s criteria for utopian communities cited and discussed in Bainbridge
(1997:134-141), Stark and Bainbridge (1996:159-161), also Brumann (2003:398-401), I
argued its importance in the search for sociological explanation of long-term human co-
operation and altruism – that often elusive social glue. Articulating my own perceptions of
what an archaeology of utopianism might reveal, I rehearsed those now familiar possibilities
of detecting inconsistencies between performance and rhetoric, of searching out symbolism
and ideology in landscape and structural organisation, of interrogating the material culture
within the remains of Herrnhut as a means of creating ‘an illuminating new view within the
debate where social position, economic status and class aspiration are equated with modes
and tastes of consumption’; at the same time recognising that a

major archaeological challenge at Herrnhut, once data is gathered from the landscape is,
through analysis of the physical and documentary evidence, the teasing out of those
various influences of practicality, ethnicity and ideology (Hewitt 2004a).

Disillusionment followed promptly.

Following a preliminary topographic survey that identified and located features that most
probably related to the first stage of the commune period, I began a program of
archaeogeophysical remote sensing, using gradiometry, magnetic susceptibility and ground
conductivity, hoping to observe the broad structural organisation of the earliest phase of
settlement and, of course, to detect those all-important trash deposits (Hewitt 2004b). The
program was a dismal failure as a result of gross interference from buckshot soil and igneous
geology.

At about that time, I had tracked down the original 1888 contract plans for construction of the
railway that traversed the commune site . According to Metcalf and Huf’s (2002) history, the
earliest Herrnhut settlement location had been abandoned following the fire that destroyed it
in 1860. In a mixed blessing, the railway plan which includes the only known and
consequently invaluable, depiction of the arrangement of the settlement at any time during its
existence, showed no fewer than three buildings in place where none should have been. My
hopeful pristine site was, in fact, a palimpsest.

106
Concurrent close reading of the historical sources brought a growing uneasiness that all was
not well within the documentary evidence. Krumnow’s only surviving autograph document
(Metcalf and Darragh 2001) gives a carefully contrived account of the commune that,
apparently sheltering beneath the umbrella of an assumed Moravianism, tells the Colonial
Legislature what it wants to hear. No other written record from the community seems to have
survived the litigation that proceeded from the leader’s intestate death in 1880. All of the
contemporary sources whose commentary on Krumnow and his community underpins the
received history, had axes to grind and long-standing scores to settle. The documentary
history unravelled into polemic. In tracing Krumnow to the primary (pre-1840) German
immigrations to South Australia and the beginnings of the Lutheran Church in Australia,
almost no reliable information could be found. Krumnow was undoubtedly a key player in the
dissention that wracked Australian Lutheranism almost from the outset, soon leading to
schisms that went unhealed for one hundred and twenty years. The facts have been lost within
partisan (and probably libellous) reconstructions of Lutheran history from all sides of the
conflict, while the deep enmities that followed Krumnow to Victoria found continued
expression in accusations of immoral behaviour and deprecatory references to his physical
deformity. Among the few apparently uncontaminated anecdotal references to Krumnow’s
character is bible colporteur Johann Schmidt’s welcoming encounter with him during a visit
to Herrnhut (Metcalf and Huf 2002:40; Graetz n.d.). Actions and words at Krumnow’s burial
indicate him to have been regarded as honest in business, a kind-hearted employer and a
sincere friend (Metcalf and Huf 2002:40, 92). However, the nature of Krumnow’s beliefs and
hence the spiritual underpinnings of the Herrnhut community remain enigmatic.

The possibility for archaeological investigation of contradiction and deviance from the
Herrnhut utopian vision, as proposed by Van Bueren and Tarlow, requires understanding of
the belief system that drove that vision. Similarly, in order to recognise ideological expression
in the structure of the Herrnhut community’s material world, it is helpful to have some
glimmer of the nature of those ideologies. In that sense, Herrnhut is no Oneida. Indeed, the
inaccessibility of Herrnhut’s theological framework echoes Janet White’s difficulties in
understanding the Jansonism of the Bishop Hill Colonists, whose vaguely articulated doctrine
emanated from a charismatic bible fundamentalist with a very narrow view of the worth of
other books (White 159-78).

Discovery, within the Victorian Railways Spotswood archives, of a series of aerial

photographs, which covered the then still-existing track through the Herrnhut lands, revealed
that given the right conditions, much evidence of past agricultural activity could still be seen
within the rail reserve and a narrow adjacent strip during the early 1950s. Although the area
identified with the older settlement of Herrnhut was not included, features such as ditches,
fencelines, later ruins and areas of cultivation characteristic of primitive single-mouldboard
ploughs (Twidale 1972; Twidale and Campbell 1993; Twidale and Bourne 1978; Twidale et
al. 1971) were clearly evident in the photographs. Using the 1888 railway plan, it was
possible to infer a useful part of the structural organisation of the settlement in its final form
from the aerial data. Evidence was also found during topographic recording of the site early in
the present project that given low angles of incident light, short pasture cover and differential
vegetative response to soil moisture gradients, much detail of the settlement layout had
survived into the present. This was cause for some optimism in the expectation that
archaeological remains of settlement structures and occupation might also be well preserved
beneath the ground surface.

Respecting the time and resource constraints of a PhD project, the scope was restricted to
investigation of a complex of structures that were thought to include the remains of the
earliest phase of settlement . Nevertheless, at approximately two hectares, the study area to be
sampled by excavation was rather large in the absence of the geophysical data that was looked
to as a means of guidance. Although the research design had stated that eighteen features
would be targeted with excavation trenches having a total area of at least 94 square metres, in
practice, only twelve features could be sampled within the four week field season. However,

107
the area of the trenches grew to slightly more than 300 square metres as we struggled to make
sense of what was being revealed. As is discussed in my account of the taphonomy of the
Herrnhut site (Hewitt 2005), rabbit infestation and the efforts to control and eradicate these
pests had severely damaged the archaeology. In eleven out of the twelve trenches, only small
regions of the area excavated had escaped destruction by burrowing. Although nine of the
trenches had been placed within what had almost certainly been buildings, only two of these
trenches were found to contain partial but unequivocal structural evidence. Some five
thousand artefacts were recovered and a small proportion of these appear to be within primary
contexts that relate to the destructive fire of 1860. Many artefacts related to the destruction by
fire were found in secondary contexts. Unfortunately, these have limited analytical value due
to the sampling biases that are consequent upon the processes of redeposition. Only a tiny
proportion of the artefacts recovered could be linked to the dominant German ethnicity of the
Herrnhut communards. Conjoin analysis of ceramic sherds has, however, revealed details of
the communards’ strategies for the apparently thorough clean-up of burned structures, which
was evidently followed by the reclamation and recycling of materials. Despite the taphonomic
chaos and the general absence of structural remains, some inference of building aspect, which
is crucial for the understanding of settlement spatial organisation, has been possible from the
presence, absence and distribution of fragmentary window glass. The nature of the
assemblages that were recovered from their original fire-destruction context will broadly
indicate the function of the buildings investigated. In the case of what was evidently the
original settlement’s primary communal building, the kitchen and bakehouse , excavations
have not only revealed the structural technology, but also allow insights into a temporal
sequence that includes partial destruction by fire, temporary reoccupation immediately
afterwards and subsequent radical changes in function when a new communal kitchen was
constructed elsewhere.

Although the excavation has produced useful results, the archaeology of Herrnhut, on a
microscale, was not as well-preserved as the survival of elements of the historical landscape
had suggested. In general, the data gathered so far, were not especially encouraging for the
production of a broadly satisfying outcome.

It was not until Rudy Frank suspended a 35 mm camera from a kite towards the end of the
excavation season, in order to record elevated and panoramic views of the trenches , did we
begin to appreciate the power of aerial photography at this site, given appropriate conditions.
We were fortunate perhaps in that heavy rain had fallen near the end of the field season
causing fresh germination in areas that had been cleared of dry grass in order that excavators
might avoid the wandering tiger snakes. Climatic vagaries - and the Pleistocene at Bend Road
(Hewitt and De Lang 2007) did not permit further attempts at flights over Herrnhut until
locally intense late-summer rains produced germination within almost entirely depleted
pasture early in the present year. This time, a digital camera was used to record thousands of
images, producing remarkable views of the earlier and later settlements. Previously unknown
features were revealed and much otherwise inaccessible detail became clear.

Aerial photography has proven to be invaluable at Herrnhut and filled many of the gaps left
by the failure of geophysical prospection. Although the images from Rudy’s kite, in
combination with the data derived from excavation and topographic surveys, will result in the
emergence of hopefully persuasive views of structural organisation, the absence of a reliable
documentary record will not allow the fine-grained perspectives and ideological inferences
suggested by Van Bueren and Tarlow. Nonetheless, in the manner of research conducted on
pre-literate societies, insights resulting from this present work will be helpful towards an
understanding of the beliefs and intentions of Krumnow and his followers at Herrnhut and
doubtless point out directions for subsequent rewarding investigation.

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