Camarillas and democracy

Having finished Valentine Williams’ World of Action, I am now half way through Edmond Taylor’s The fall of the Dynasties, the collapse of the old order 1905-1922. Both deal with overlapping periods and common subjects, but are otherwise very different.

Published in 1938, Williams writes of the period in Europe before and after the First World War as a journalist who observed events. Published in 1968, Taylor’s book provides a sometimes gripping historical account of much of the same period. Between them, they have introduced me to a new word, camarilla, a group of courtiers or favourites which surround a king or ruler.

Mad, bad and sometimes just plain sordid, the camarillas played a critical role in the events leading up the destruction that was World War One. War was not inevitable, the camarillas helped make it so.

There is something quite frightening in watching events spin out of control. No one really wanted a major conflagration, not even the war parties in Germany, Austria-Hungary or Russia. They wanted a more limited conflict. Yet step led to step and finally armageddon.

I will write a little about this later. For the moment, I want to make just two points.

The first is that one of the strengths of democracy as compared to autocracy is that it provides a structured way of getting rid of those in power. The European democracies - whether constitutional monarchies or republics - had their weaknesses, but were spared some of the power plays that took place in the autocratic states.

The second is the importance of transparency and due process. Camarillas can exist in democracies, we have seen examples in Australia, but their activities and influence are limited where they can be seen or exposed.

A Monday meander - Cyclones, drought and water wars

It was raining quite heavily here in Sydney when I got up, so I checked the weather.

To this point, Queensland has been spared serious damage from Cyclone Hamish, a category four storm, as it moves south down the coast. The photo from the ABC shows Mackay on the edge of the storm.

So long as the storm stays out to sea Queensland will be drenched, but not seriously damaged.

The rain in Sydney is not connected with Hamish - Hamish is a long way from here - but comes from another system. Victoria remains generally dry. The low cloud over the south of the state is keeping temperatures down, but has little moisture in it.

In South Australia there are clouds over the west and north of the state, bringing sometimes heavy rain to the usually very dry area that includes Lake Eyre.

This, Australia's largest salt lake, fills rarely. The water that has been coming down the long channels all the way from Queensland has reached the lake. Now flood warnings have been issues because of the rain coming from the south.

The Channel Country, the name given to the area through which the generally dry rivers flow south to Lake Eyre, occupies a special place in Australian history and outback mythology. This is tough harsh country that suddenly blooms as the floods spread across the countryside. There is an explosion of life.

As the European pastoralists came to understand the country's variable climate, they established chains of properties - vast areas in total larger than many European countries - that allowed them to move stock across large areas as the weather changed. The Channel Country was a key link with stock fattened there after the floods.

Australia is a very dry country. Even now some people die of thirst each year, generally visitors to outback areas whose cars break down or who simply get lost.

One major problem is that there is limited natural surface water in many areas, even some of those areas with better rainfall such as the western slopes and plains adjacent to the New England Tablelands. There the Aborigines used to move widely across the countryside in wet periods, concentrating around rivers and natural water sources during the dry. Animals followed a similar pattern.

The big drought that has been gripping South Eastern Australia will break.

The heavy drought area has been contracting to the south and east as rainfall nibbles around the edges. South East Queensland and New England have been out of drought for some time, although some of the big New England storage dams built during the relatively wet post war period are still at low levels.

A final break in the drought may still be some time in the future. If this drought runs as long as the longest recorded drought, I think that this was the drought over the Second World War period, then it may not break until 2012.

While droughts sometimes break in flooding rains, more often it is a staged process.

Dry ground has first to absorb water. Once soil moisture levels build up, run-off increases. Creeks and rivers start to flow and then flood. This process takes time. 95% of the rainfall in the Murray Darling basin is lost through evaporation and transpiration.

For the benefit of climate nuts, each month the Australian Bureau of Meteorology releases three monthly climate projections. The latest projections released end February suggested the likelihood of above average rain in North Queensland, South Australia and South Western NSW. The South Australian and NSW projections imply some further contraction in drought areas.

I have a strong vested interest in all this.

South Australia's concerns about its Murray River Water have created a political need to find more water for the lower Murray. The amount of water that can be obtained from Victoria and Queensland is limited by existing arrangements. The only "free" water is in Northern New South Wales.

Following the purchase of the water rights of Toorale station and its withdrawal from agricultural production, a decision reportedly costing 100 direct and indirect jobs, the Federal Government has advertised for the purchase of more water rights in the Darling's northern catchment.

Irrigators will sell if the price is right. So we are likely to see further contraction of agricultural production with consequent job losses. I hate to think of the regional economic impact if the current drought over the lower basin were to last to 2012.

Sunday Essay - Julia Gillard's proposals for Australian higher education

During the week Jullia Gillard, Australia's Commonwealth Education Minister and Deputy PM, foreshadowed the Commonwealth Government's latest moves in implementing what PM Kevin Rudd has described as his education revolution.

Back in December in The real education revolution… Neil Whitfield expressed his reservations about the Rudd Government's approach. I responded with a companion post, Australia's confusions over education vs training, a post that drew some interesting comments. Neil has now returned to fray with Recession solving teacher shortage?.

As with so many of our discussions, Neil and I write from our different perspectives and experience but find ourselves on common ground. In this case, our shared concerns about obsession with measurement; about the confusions over the varying roles of education and training; about the failure to really discuss the purpose of education.

As in many other areas, there is something very mechanistic about the Rudd Government's approach - this is education for national efficiency. To quote Julia Gillard:

In an era when investment in knowledge and skills promises to be the ultimate determinant of national and individual prosperity, Australia is losing ground against our competitors.

The Government's new approach to university education was set out in a speech Ms Gillard made to the Universities Australia conference.

We begin with a target:

I announce today that our ambition is that by 2025, 40 percent of all 25-34 year olds will have a qualification at bachelor level or above. Not just to have enrolled in higher education, but to have completed an undergraduate degree. Today that figure stands at 32 percent.

We then move to a major structural change in the way universities are funded:

I therefore also announce today that all Australian universities will be funded on the basis of student demand from 2012.

This means that we will fund a Commonwealth supported place for all domestic students accepted into an eligible, accredited higher education course at a recognised public higher education provider. Universities will not receive funding for places they do not deliver.

The current funding floor for universities will be maintained for the calendar years 2009, 2010 and 2011. This will give under-enrolled providers certainty, in the form of a limit on how much funding they can lose for places that they do not provide. This will help them to re-position themselves for the new system.

And the current cap on over-enrolment will be raised from 5 to 10 percent from 2010 and then wholly removed in 2012.

The trifecta is completed with a new accreditation scheme:

I am therefore announcing today that the Government will establish a national regulatory and quality agency for higher education.

The regulator will accredit providers, carry out audits of standards and performance, protect and quality assure international education, streamline current regulatory arrangements to reduce duplication and provide for national consistency.

What does all this mean?

From an historical perspective, it marks the last stage in a fundamental shift in the relationships between universities and Government, the end of self-accreditation.

In the past, what universities taught, how they taught, what qualifications they awarded, were all matters for individual institutions. This changed fundamentally with mass university education. Increasingly, tied funding made the universities Government creatures. However, unlike other parts of the education system, they remained self-accrediting, finally responsible for setting their own standards. Now Government will effectively set standards.

Does this matter? After all, shouldn't Government set standards? And the universities themselves don't seem worried?

Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps it's too late anyway. However, I suspect that it does matter because of the way accreditation actually works in practice.

Ms Gillard was at pains to suggest that the Government was not talking about more prescriptive red tape. However, she also said:

We have to know where we are succeeding and where we are failing if our investments are to be effective.

A key task will also be to establish objective and comparative benchmarks of quality and performance.

This is the national efficiency approach. I wonder where knowledge for knowledge's sake, critical thought, even eccentricity fits in all this?

I accept, if with considerable sadness, that it is no longer possible unless you are very wealthy for my daughters and their generation to have access to the same type of university experience that I had. However, what do we mean by "objective and comparative benchmarks", by "quality", by "perfomance"? All this seems to have gone straight through to the keeper.

Note, here, that Ms Gillard refers in her speech to "an eligible, accredited higher education course at a recognised public higher education provider." So we are going to be accrediting courses, not just institutions.

Note, too, that once this type of accreditation scheme is in place it is likely to accrete barnacles, new requirements, as perceived needs change. This has been the Australian experience with other initiatives in education and training.

The decision to free up funding to give students more choices, universities somewhat greater freedoms is, I think, better than current arrangements. However, there are some competitive issues that we need to recognise.

The new arrangements are likely to favour bigger institutions in large catchment areas. They can now expand places, should they choose, within the economic limits set by Government funding of individual students and courses.

It is not clear to me how Ms Gilliards' stated aim of enhanced diversity is in fact to be achieved in the new arrangments.

Finally, I am not sure that I have a view one way or the other on the 40% aspiration.

To begin with, I am not sure of its implications in terms of simple maths.

To get from the current 32% to 40% implies an increase in student numbers combined with higher completion rates. We could achieve this by reducing standards, by dumbing down university courses. Clearly this is not in the Government's mind, but there has already been pressure within individual institutions (and some scandals) associated with the need to get pass rates up.

And what does it mean for VET (vocational education and training) numbers and composition?

On the surface, the 40% target would seem to imply some diversion of students from VET to university education. Is this a good thing? I am not sure.

I will look at the announced VET changes in a later post. For the moment, I simply note that, for both the university and VET sectors, the devil lies in the detail. This includes the unintended consequences that always seems to flow from changes of this type.

Saturday Morning Musings - the past is always present

It is 4am Saturday. Given the continuing computing problems I referred to in Continuing computer woes - and problems with Sydney life, I am taking the opportunity of the five hours or so before anybody else gets up to use my wife’s computer.

There is usually some connection between the things I write about and my daily life, although this may be indirect and even concealed. It is not always wise to write directly.

Just at present I am working in Parramatta. For the benefit of international readers, Parramatta is 23 kilometres (14 miles) west of the Sydney CBD. To get there I take a 7 kilometre bus trip to Central Station at the edge of the CBD, then a train trip to Parramatta. Depending on connections (last night two scheduled buses did not arrive), the trip takes between an hour fifteen and two hours. An hour and a half is about average.

In geographic terms, Parramatta lies at the centre of Sydney’s urban sprawl measured by population distribution. This is melting pot Sydney, the heart of Australia’s great multi-ethnic experiment.

In central Parramatta, the 2006 Australian census records that 57.6% of residents were born overseas, including 14.1% from India, 12.8% from China. Apart from English, the most common languages spoken at home were Mandarin (11%), Cantonese (6.5%), Arabic (5.5%), Hindi (5.1%) and Gujarati (3.2%).

Depending on the time I travel, the train starts to fill with school kids in the last few stops before Parramatta. These are all decanted at Parramatta station. The station adjoins the big Westfield Shopping Centre. These centres are heartland for the urban young, and the kids flow there to gather in large numbers.

I listen and observe.

Australia’s future depends on our capacity to meld very different groups, many with deep historical antipathies, into some form of unity. Common language and schooling is central to this.

Visually, the individual groups are distinct, if still with considerable mixing.

I had not realised the extent to which a hejab could be a fashion statement. Many of the young Muslim girls are remarkably good looking. Their hejabs are crisp white, carefully shaped to contour the head and face.

Boys appear to be boys regardless of ethnicity in the sense that they are all far more unkempt.

Shut your eyes and listen and this visual variety disappears in the common sound of Australian English. Most of these kids were born in Australia, or at least came here at a very early age. They are clearly and distinctly Australian.

The NSW Government agency where I am presently doing some contract work is a few minutes walk from the station. I now enter a very different world, the world of the first Australians.

Sixty one percent of the staff of this agency is Indigenous, mainly from regional NSW. The most senior positions are designated. That is, they can only be filled by people of Indigenous origin.

The work that I am doing is mainly number crunching and analysis connected with the Commonwealth Government’s new National Remote Indigenous Housing Partnership. Now here I am actually being paid to do the type of analysis that I used to do anyway!

The NSW Aboriginal Land Council is in the same building. We smokers gather outside the building. Again, I listen and observe.

I am very careful what I say in writing that might in any way be linked to work because of the sensitivities involved. I was reminded of the need for care here when a friend from Housing NSW sent me the Department’s daily media monitoring report, including a copy of one of my Express columns! Fortunately, this was quite innocuous.

I have not changed any of my core views on Indigenous issues, nor are my views un-representative of streams of thought within at least the NSW Indigenous community. However, I have acquired greater understanding of, and sensitivity to, particular aspects of NSW indigenous life and history, including the need for care and clarity in the way I express myself.

I said that there was a link between the things that I write about and my daily life. Now you can see where "Clean, Clad and Courteous" - Jim Fletcher's History of Aboriginal Education in New South Wales fits in.

Yes, I wanted to read the book as part of my historical reading connected with the history of New England and for family reasons. After all, my own grandfather was Minister for Education in NSW for an extended period. However, it also directly connected with work.

At the time I started reading the book, one of the things that I was doing was collecting material on what are now called discrete communities. These are the former NSW missions and reserves. They necessarily feature quite heavily in Jim Fletcher’s writing, so I was educating myself on the background to current work.

I was also comparing Jim Fletcher’s own perceptions at the time he wrote with past and current perceptions.

There are still many things that I do not understand. Still, I am certainly better informed that I was.

Jim Fletcher’s book was the second in what has become my train reading series.

My train reading began with Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society. After Jim Fletcher, I read Peter Thompson’s Pacific Fury, the story of the war in the Pacific during the Second World War. In Problems of perception and unseen bias I complained about what I saw as Peter Thompson’s little Australian, anti-British attitudes.

In turn, this led me to read J H Curle’s The Face of the Earth (1937), a book that triggered a series of posts:

• Train Reading - J H Curle’s The Face of the Earth
• Sunday Essay - Race, Eugenics and the views of J H Curle
• Tuesday Note - eugenics, prejudice and national efficiency

While Treadgold, Fletcher, Thompson and Curle are all very different, varying attitudes to race and ethnicity form a common thread.

After J H Curle, I decided to stay in the first half of the twentieth century and for a different view chose Valentine Williams’ autobiography, A World of Action (1937).

Because of computer and internet problems, I have still to write about this book. However, it re-introduced me to the sheer complexity of the world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This makes current problems and complexities look like a pussy cat.

To further flesh out my views here I then shifted to my current read, Edmond Taylor’s 1968 work The Fall of the Dynasties: the collapse of the old order 1905-1922. Again, I deliberately chose a book published some time ago because I was as much interested in the perceptions of the author and period.

The book focuses on four dynasties – Habsburg (Austria-Hungary), Hohenzollern (Germany), Osmanlis (Ottoman) and Romanov (Russian) – central to the First World War, dynasties whose collapse helped trigger the Second World War.

This is also the world of Treadgold and Williams.

Treadgold wrote about the Byzantine world of the past with references to the future, Williams wrote from the perspective of a journalist and writer about the old order, including the various wars and revolutions that dominated Austria-Hungary and the Balkans. Taylor looks at the same questions as an historian concerned with modern history.

I suppose the key point that comes through is the way that the moving present is inextricably locked into an iron past.

Mr Putin’s support of Serbia over Kosovo is not just a political response, but an action that would have made perfect sense to both Soviet and Tsarist Russia. In similar vein, the period prior to World War One bears a quite distressing resemblance to the present. Among other things, this is a world of terrorism and bombs.

I do not necessarily think that the past offers lessons to the present. However, when I look at some current developments and attitudes, I could wish that our leaders did have a greater sense of history.

Welcome visitor 50,000

Well, visitor 50,000 arrived at this blog overnight. 50,000. That's a big number to me. Lots of zeros.

Visitor 50,000 came from Chatham in Kent searching on Hugh Frewen. Welcome.

Continuing computer woes - and problems with Sydney life

To add to my various on-line worries, my computer crashed yesterday. My previous expansive world has now shrunk to a little time on my wife's machine or access at work, and that is necessarily limited.

I had coped to some degree without normal internet connections by writing some stuff in word and then loading it before starting work or in my lunch break. Now with the internet connection on but my computer down my position is, if anything, worse.

It's not just computer issues complicating my life. The house move has added up to 40 minutes travel time each way depending on connections. Yes, I can read while travelling, but with over three hours a day travel my actual writing time is further squeezed. I find that I get very tired trying to cope with all this.

I think that the thing that I am missing most is the stimulation that comes from on-line interaction. I had become dependent - addicted if you like - to reading and responding too the sites, especially the blogs, that I most liked. I have not been able to visit some blogs that I like in weeks.

I learn through interaction: interaction with the books or blogs I read as I read and then as I write; interaction with other people's responses to the things I write about; interaction with those around me talking about issues and ideas that have come to me through the process. Just at present this interaction is sadly diminished.

It is now ten past six. To be sure of getting to work before by 8.30 I need to catch the 7.03 bus. We are quite close to the bus stop. Still, to catch this bus I have to leave the house around 6.50. With the few minutes since I last mentioned the time, I have 30 minutes left to shower etc.

At the other end of the day, I left work at ten to five yesterday. I got home just after 6.30. I had to do a quick run to the shops to get things for tea. We ate about 7.45. Having been up at 4am to try to get a few things done, I basically ate, did a few things and went to bed.

From my viewpoint this is not a civilised life style.

It is now 6.20. I am not going to catch the 7.03. The next bus after that is 7.19. I may or may not catch it.

Enough of a moan. Now that I at least know all the timetables as well as the travelling times, I will have to sit down and chart the mix that gives me the best chance of at least maintaining some writing. And work out how to get the computer fixed.

It is now 6.30. I really must try to catch the 7.19!

The Lahore outrage - It's just not cricket

The phrase "it's not cricket" entered the English language to signify an unfair or unsporting act. The attack on the Shri Lankan cricket team in Lahore was just that.

I do not want to comment on the complicated politics of the sub-continent. My concern with Mumbai was the risk that those in Pakistan who planned the attack with the probable aim of triggering military conflict between India and Pakistan might be successful.

I have a far simpler view on Lahore. I think that those involved have made a fundamental error of judgment. They are, in fact, bleeding idiots.

Cricket is a passion in Pakistan. The attack on the Shri Lankans placed the attackers and those who backed them outside the pale. In combination with Mumbai, the attack has changed the long term dynamics that had dominated sub-continent politics.

It will take a little while for this to work itself through. There is plenty of scope for things to go wrong. Some certainly will. However, the thing that stands out to me writing from distance is that the extremists have turned themselves into a common enemy, a common threat, to India and Pakistan.

The present may be messy. Track forward five years and there is a real chance that some of the most intractable problems in the relationships between India and Pakistan dating back to partition and before may now be soluble.

Postscript 5 March 09

There are all sorts of conspiracy theories running around on this one. In a comment, Ramana drew my attention to this one. I think it best to wait and see.

Tuesday Note - eugenics, prejudice and national efficiency

I could swear I saw Neil Whitfield yesterday.

I came out of Central Station in the late afternoon rush to see this shortish bloke wearing a hat standing stock still in the middle of the footpath trying to take a photo. As I walked past him, he turned suddenly, giving an impression of great annoyance; perhaps he was just preoccupied. I started to call out, but by the time I had my wits about me he was gone up the laneway to the station.

I see that Neil has written a companion piece to the posts I have written on the views of J H Curle.

In my comments on Jim Fletcher's history of Aboriginal education in NSW I made the point that some of the worst things were done by people with the best motives. The same comment applies to eugenics. Here I found some of Mr Curle's comments quite chilling.

Leaving aside the insanity of Nazi Germany, the politicians and officials who introduced eugenics laws in countries that we think of as advanced, Sweden is an example, did so for what they saw as very modern public policy reasons. They had little time for what they saw as the foibles of the past.

There is a lesson here for the present. It's not just, as Neil noted, that eugenics is back in a new guise. The real lesson is the way in which Governments can do quite dreadful things for what they see as the national interest.

In writing of Mr Curle's views, I generally used the phrase "race, people and nations." I did so because his views applied to all three, and indeed he mixes all three together.

In the decades immediately before the First World War, as is true today, ideas of national competition and of national efficiency were paramount. At a purely local level, they drove changes to technical education in Australia, changes that drew (among other things) from German experience.

These ideas mixed with perceptions about nations and people - them and us.

The blind insular US parochialism and prejudice revealed in the opening of Japan were equally matched by Japanese concepts of their own cultural and racial superiority. The creation of modern Japan was a direct result, a Japanese response to what we now call the West. Exactly the same idea sets played out in the period leading up to the Second World War.

Globally, the end of the Cold War has seen the re-appearance of ethnic and race based politics in a way not seen since the period just before the First World War. This may be disguised under the guise of national competition, but it is there.

In saying this, I am not talking about the rise of far right parties in certain countries, although that is one element. It is far more pervasive.

I am out of time. I will continue later.

Death of Kilmeny Niland

I was distressed to learn from Helen Dale of the death of Kilmeny Niland. I did not know Kilmeny; I became aware of her through the promotion of her work by her partner Rafe Champion.

I first came in contact with Rafe because of our joint interest in the history of Australian thought. As happens in the blogosphere, Rafe and I have never met. However, we have corresponded by email, with Rafe sending me material via email and in hard copy that he thought was relevant to our joint interests.

Just at present I do not have access to my past emails, nor to my email addresses. I cannot email Rafe, nor check my facts.

I can say that from the beginning of our contact Rafe's pride in Kilmeny and her work was central. It is clear that Kilmeny was a gifted artist, as well as a direct familial connection (her mother was Ruth Park, her father Darcy Niland) to a past that I write about a fair bit.

Nick Gruen on Club Troop had a rather nice tribute, Kilmeny, to add to Helen's comments. My thoughts are with Rafe and the family.

Sunday Essay - Race, Eugenics and the views of J H Curle

My last post introduced J H Curle’s The Face of the Earth. In this post I want to look at some of Mr Curle’s views because I think that they provide very interesting insights into a world that was coming to an end. The First World War overthrew the old imperial order; the Second World War completed its destruction.

J H Curle was in his sixties when he wrote The Face of the Earth. By then, he had become a deeply pessimistic man. Things had not worked out in the way he had expected. He feared the worst. This, combined with his extensive travels, made him a quite acute if sometimes misguided observer.

The second half of the nineteenth century, the first half of the twentieth century, was a rapidly changing world marked by swift technological, social and economic change, imperial competition and the rise of nationalism and the nation state. It was also a world marked by an avid fascination with the concepts of race, ethnicity and nationality.

The publication and popularisation of the views of Charles Darwin on evolution and the origin of species threw an intellectual time bomb into this world extending well beyond science. If evolution through competition and natural selection applied in the natural world, then what did this mean for the human race and its institutions?

One outcome was what would come to be called Social Darwinism, sets of beliefs centred on the idea that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drove social and economic evolution in human societies.

The new views appealed especially to the secular modernists. Those from the old order with its emphasis on faith and hierarchy necessarily found Social Darwinism less attractive, even confronting.

In 1883 Sir Thomas Dalton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, expounded the concept of Eugenics, controlled breeding of humans in order to achieve desirable traits in future generations.

The Wikipedia article on eugenics notes that Galton built upon Darwin's ideas, suggesting that the mechanisms of natural selection were potentially thwarted by human civilization. He reasoned that, since many human societies sought to protect the underprivileged and weak, those societies were at odds with the natural selection responsible for extinction of the weakest; and only by changing these social policies could society be saved from a "reversion towards mediocrity," a phrase he first coined in statistics and which later changed to the now common "regression towards the mean."

In 1904 Dalton clarified his definition of eugenics as:

the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage

The concepts built into eugenics were not all new. The Greek philosopher Plato believed human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by the state to ensure best outcomes, while the Spartans (among others) practiced selective infanticide intended to maintain the strength of the Spartan people. However, Dalton’s statistical and scientific approach provided a formalised structure.

The ideas and concepts associated with eugenics appealed to many leading secular modernist writers and reformers; supporters included H G Wells, Bernard Shaw, Emile Zola, Sydney Webb and John Maynard Keynes, as well as J H Curle. Driven by the American Charles Davenport, eugenics became an international movement. From the early 1900s, a number of Governments adopted eugenics policies starting in the United States. These included things such as compulsory sterilisation of mental patients.

Reading J H Curle today, his constant comments on race and racial attributes seem simply racist. They are far more complex than that.

J H Curle was born in 1870. He was, I think, very much a modernist, absorbing the ideas of Social Darwinism including eugenics. He believed that there was a hierarchy of races or people, that different peoples had different attributes. In his travels and subsequent writings, Curle applied his sometimes acute powers of observation to delineate what he saw as the differences between peoples.

By the time of the publication of The Face of the Earth in 1937, the world had changed around J H Curle. In some ways he had become a very conservative man, out of sympathy with the times, railing against things such as the use of cosmetics, the excesses of the Labor movement and the excesses of democracy.

There is an air of desperation in this book.

At the time Mr Curle was born, the British Empire was at its peak. It seemed natural to assume that the white race was by process of natural selection destined to maintain a dominant position. However, Mr Curle’s Social Darwinist views did not allow him to believe that any nation, people or race had an automatic God-given superiority. All three could rise or fall.

I also think it worth noting that Mr Curle had no belief in the “purity” of any race or people. He was not opposed to racial mixing so long as the mix raised the “quality” of the race or people.

In this context, Mr Curle supported the Nazi eugenics policy as it related to things such as sterilisation. However, he did not believe that there was such a thing as a German or Nordic race. He thought the Nazi expulsion of German Jews was unwise because to his mind the admixture of Jewish and German blood had done much to strengthen the creativity and strength of the German people. He still hoped that Germany would learn this and re-admit the Jews.

The reason for the desperation in Mr Curle’s writing is simple. By 1937 he had come to believe that in the absence of fundamental change, both the Empire and the current pre-dominance of the white race were doomed.

In economic terms, the world trend towards protectionism had destroyed the free trade that had given Britain and the Empire its wealth. Great Britain was still wealthy because of its enormous overseas investments, but the mines, factories and railways throughout the world were threatened by rising nationalism and were likely to be lost.

In political terms, the rise of states that had made a state religion of nationalism – Japan, Russia, Italy and Germany – posed a potential threat to world peace. Further, the increasing spread of local nationalism and of self-government within the Empire and beyond created fragmentation and division. In India, for example, Mr Curle forecast that the grant of democratic self-government to Federated India must inevitably lead to the subdivision of British India on religious lines.

In military terms, Great Britain had failed to spend enough money on defence, so that its capacity to protect its Empire was reduced. Importantly, the rise of air power had destroyed the invincibility of the navy that had been the bulwark of Empire. Great Britain had yet to recognise this.

In racial terms, the British people had deteriorated. Mr Curle’s views here reflect his conservatism – he saw this deterioration linked to continuing assumptions about superiority, to increasing softness, to the rise of the Labor Movement.

Some of Mr Curle’s most scathing writing is addressed to what he sees as the unjustified racism of some of the working and middle class English throughout the Empire. He compares them very unfavourably with other peoples and races.

And who, in all this, are the races or peoples of the future?

It seems from The Face of the Earth that in terms of people at a purely personal level, Mr Curle is especially enamored of Chinese/Malay (this includes what is now Indonesia) or Chinese/European mixtures.

However, in the hierarchy of races or peoples driven by Mr Curle’s Social Darwinism, the future lies with the Chinese.

The problems of being off-line

It is now twelve days since we moved, five days since the internet connection was due to go on. Finally today the connection went through. It's still only on my wife's box; we have yet to fix up the connection through to mine.

The frustrations have been enormous. Posting has been almost impossible. To post, I have had to put the post onto a memory stick and then upload from work. Equally importantly, I have not been able to read what others have been writing.

Hopefully things will get a little easier now.

Train Reading - J H Curle’s The Face of the Earth

This moving lark has been more disruptive than even I expected. However, after almost a week I at least have the computer working. Tomorrow, touch-wood, the internet connection will be on.

It has also been more frustrating than I expected. The writing bug is now so deeply embedded in my system that I kept seeing things that I wanted to write about and then could not.

My train reading has switched to J H Curle’s The Face of the Earth, a book I finished yesterday. Mr Curle was a very popular English travel writer during the 1930s; Face of the Earth was published in 1937.

I will write about the book in more detail later. While well written, many today would find some of Mr Curle’s views quite offensive. I want to discuss this because I deliberately chose the book to get a snapshot of the world just prior to the armageddon described in Pacific Fury, Peter Thompson’s history of the war in the Pacific.

In some ways I got more than I bargained for.

The book is laced with comments about nationality, race and ethnicity expressed with a freedom that would not be tolerated today. I almost put the book aside after the first chapter with the thought do I have to read this stuff? I kept going because I had, after all, deliberately chosen the book as a window into a past world.

As I read I found that I could put aside my reactions.

The travel descriptions across the Pacific, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Europe are remarkably interesting. As I read about travels through the frontier provinces of what is now Pakistan including a visit to Kabul, I could not help but contrast Mr Curle’s descriptions with current realities.

As I read I also found that Mr Curle’s views on race and ethnicity were layered, nuanced, in a way that was not immediately apparent. They also lead him to make some remarkably interesting observations.

I do not recommend this book for all. I think that for many, the offence would simply be too great. Here I quote from Peter McCarthy:

JH Curle was a mining engineer and successful travel writer. His views on eugenics made him a pariah when the Nazis rose to power. His books are a mix of humorous personal and mining history, observant travel experience and racism. Of his degree at Cambridge he wrote: “The University authorities were approached as to a mining course, but it was soon evident they knew rather less of mining than I did; it was outside their ken. It ended in a scratch course in geology, chemistry, and hydrostatics; but of their practical bearing on mining I learned nothing, and left the University in complete ignorance of the profession I hoped to enter.” Curle, a friend of Hoover, traveled the world for years as a mining journalist for The Economist and wrote “The Gold Mines of the World” to much industry acclaim.

Despite this, I do plan to discuss some of Mr Curle’s views because of the insights they provide into past thoughts and perceptions.

In the meantime, my next train reading is Valentine Williams autobiography, The World of Action (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1938). While very different, I am reading it for similar reasons as to J H Curle.

Valentine Williams is one of three generations of journalists who worked for Rueter's almost from its foundation.