Book Review: Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924

By Philip Mansel


Publication Date: 2006
ISBN: 0719568803
Price: £9.99
Buy this book


Constantinople was founded by the Roman emperor Constantine I on the site of the already-existing city of Byzantium which had been settled in the early days of Greek colonial expansion, probably around 671-662 BC.
Since then it went on to become the imperial capital city of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire (the feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire) and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city, if ever there were a place more worthy of attention it is gigantic metropolis.

I'd like to think it was a hidden romantic in me that has always preferred the name Constantinople to Istanbul, and even in the title of this book there is something of a promise of indiscretion ever hanging in the air. Which is probably what made it stand out for me. For the reader this book will clear up, once and for all, why all the great European powers throughout history wanted to control Constantinople and its hinterland. Their motives were, as ever, not only military or political but economic and religious as well.
The book is sizable in both scope and weight, there's a wealth of vivid detail and an array of attractive illustrations. Mansel primarily addresses the development of Constantinople into an Islamic city, covering the five-century dynasty of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire in 1453, converting the city from the capital of Eastern Orthodox Christianity to the home of sultans, eunuchs, and Janissaries. Mansel's attention falls particularly on the palaces and the political history of the capital, as well as the great architectural works which still constitute the city's skyline. By giving numerous quotes from contemporary diplomatic correspondences, accounts of travel writers and historic works; he shines much needed light upon the apparent power struggle within the city amongst its ruling families. This leads to a dramatic and often depraved narrative of an extraordinary dynasty unfolding in endless amounts of, almost cliched, palace intrigue.

The book also gives a good example of the modernization and democratization efforts in the Ottoman empire, these efforts to try to catch up with Europe and the forces opposing it was, for the most part, what I found most interesting whilst reading this book, but (and taking the book as a whole this is a small 'but') it left me wanting a wider picture. The author hints at having extensive knowledge of other European powers and contemporary rulers but there is no comparison whatsoever, which I feel would put Constantinople's story in a greater position to be appreciated somehow. 

 

Thought provoking, imaginative, -makes you want to go to Istanbul, this book is recommended bedtime reading and definitely get some Hob Nobs to accompany.

Treaty of the Month: what historic international treaty has amused me this month?

This Month: The Treat of Nanking 1842

Signing of the Treaty aboard HMS Cornwallis 1842

Who:
The Treaty of Nanking (or Nanjing) was signed on 29 August 1842 to mark the end of the First Opium War (1839–42) between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Qing Dynasty of China. It was the first of what the Chinese called the unequal treaties because Britain had no obligations in return.


 

HMS Cornwallis in 1815

When and Where:
In the wake of China's military defeat, and with British warships poised to attack the city, representatives from the British and Qing Empires negotiated aboard HMS Cornwallis anchored off Nanking. On 29 August 1842, British representative Sir Henry Pottinger and Qing representatives, Qiying, Elepoo, and Niujian, signed the treaty. It consisted of thirteen articles and was ratified by Queen Victoria and the Daoguang Emperor nine months later.

 

Last page with signatures

Effects:
The fundamental purpose of the treaty was to change the framework of foreign trade which had been in force since 1760 (Canton System). The treaty abolished the monopoly of the Thirteen Factories on foreign trade (Article V) in Canton and instead five ports were opened for trade, Canton (Shameen Island until 1943), Amoy (Xiamen until 1930), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo) and Shanghai (until 1943), where Britons were to be allowed to trade with anyone they wished. Britain also gained the right to send consuls to the treaty ports, which were given the right to communicate directly with local Chinese officials (Article II). The treaty stipulated that trade in the treaty ports should be subject to fixed tariffs, which were to be agreed upon between the British and the Qing governments (Article X).
The Qing government was obliged to pay the British government six million silver dollars for the opium that had been confiscated by Lin Zexu in 1839 (Article IV), 3 million dollars in compensation for debts that the Hong merchants in Canton owed British merchants (Article V), and a further 12 million dollars in war reparations for the cost of the war (VI). The total sum of 21 million dollars was to be paid in instalments over three years and the Qing government would be charged an annual interest rate of 5 percent for the money that was not paid in a timely manner (Article VII).
The Qing government undertook to release all British prisoners of war (Article VIII) and to give a general amnesty to all Chinese subjects who had cooperated with the British during the war (Article IX).
The British on their part, undertook to withdraw all of their troops from Nanking and the Grand Canal after the emperor had given his assent to the treaty and the first instalment of money had been received (Article XII). British troops would remain in Gulangyu and Zhoushan until the Qing government had paid reparations in full (Article XII).
The Qing government agreed to make Hong Kong Island a crown colony, ceding it to the British Queen "in perpetuity" to provide British traders with a harbour where they could unload their goods (Article III).

Why has it amused me: 
In 1841, a draft copy of the treaty was sent ashore to Plenipotentiary Charles Elliot for ratification. It had a blank after the words "the cession of the islands of _____" to be filled in during the plenary debates. Pottinger sent this old draft treaty on shore, with the letter s struck out of islands and the words Hong Kong placed after it. Robert Montgomery Martin, treasurer of Hong Kong, commented in his official report:
 
The terms of peace having been read, Elepoo the senior Chinese commissioner paused, expecting something more, and at length said "is that all?" Mr. Morrison enquired of Lieutenant-colonel Malcolm if there was anything else, and being answered in the negative, Elepoo immediately and with great tact closed the negotiation by saying, "all shall be granted—it is settled—it is finished".

Since the Treaty of Nanking was brief and with only general stipulations, the British and Chinese representatives agreed that a supplementary treaty be concluded in order to work out more detailed regulations for relations. On 3 October 1843, the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue was concluded at Bocca Tigris outside Canton.
Nevertheless, the treaties of 1842–43 left several unsettled issues. In particular it did not resolve the status of the opium trade. Although the American treaty of 1844 explicitly banned Americans from selling opium, the trade continued as both the British and American merchants were only subject to the legal control of their consuls. The opium trade was later legalised in the Treaties of Tianjin, which China concluded after the Second Opium War.
The Nanking Treaty ended the old Canton System and created a new framework for China's foreign relations and overseas trade which would last for almost a hundred years. Most injurious were the fixed tariff, extraterritoriality, and the most favoured nation provisions. These were conceded partly out of expediency and partly because the Qing officials did not yet know of international law or understand the long term consequences. The tariff fixed at 5% was higher than the existing tariff, the concept of extraterritoriality seemed to put the burden on foreigners to police themselves, and most favoured nation treatment seemed to set the foreigners one against the others. Although China regained tariff autonomy in the 1920s, extraterritoriality was not formally abolished until 1943.


Further Reading:

• Hoe, Susanna; Roebuck, Derek. The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in China Waters (Routledge 1999)

• John Darwin. After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2007)

• Fairbank, John King. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854. 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953).

• Têng Ssu-yü. Chang Hsi and the Treaty of Nanking, 1842. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).

• R. Derek Wood, The Treaty of Nanking: Form and the Foreign Office, 1842-1843, (Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (London) 24 (May 1996), 181-196). Available Here: http://www.midley.co.uk/Nanking/NANKING_JICH.htm

Could you be a successful film director in Stalin’s Russia?

Using an examination of the life and work of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein to explore the fundamental aspects of this question.

The Industrialisation drive of the late 1920s and 30s, the core of Stalin’s revolution from above, coupled with Bolshevik ideology demanded a fundamental recasting of Russian society into a new socialist model. The requisites of the Five-Year Plans and the ideology of the nation’s leadership meant that the state intruded into virtually all areas of life. Whilst this occasionally may have had some positive effects, such as in education, overall it resulted in a suffocating cloud of repression Soviet Russia’s cultural, scientific and spiritual life for a generation.
The art of Filmmaking was just another soldier conscripted to build socialism. It marched under the numbing banner of ‘socialist realism’, film directors were not to depict things as they were, but as the state wanted them to be. Film makers as ‘engineers of the human soul’ were expected to produce film propaganda which served the ends of the state, not art that expressed their untrustworthy inner feelings. Suffocated from any attempts at genuine artistic expression would you have tried to conform to the states demands on your artistic feelings, or would you have, as I suppose most of us would, risked all to try to find a middle ground in the name of artistic expression - attempting to support Stalin’s requirement’s on your soul whilst at the same time finding a deviant means of keeping your work your own and your conscious preserved. If we can ascertain that Stalin’s most famous filmmaker of the 1930’s and 40s attempted to do this, would it have worked for us?

As far as his film making method is concerned, Eisenstein in early writing and indeed his early films, Eisenstein seems taken with the idea that the images projected on the screen would actually become the thoughts in the spectator’s brain; he called this his ‘montage of attractions’. His opportunity to test these theories came in 1924 when Goskino (the state cinema production unit) accepted his proposal for a cycle of films on political events leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Thus, in 1924, Eisenstein made his first film, Strike. In this film, the director's theory of montage fits well with the desires of Soviet film authorities to depart from traditional narratives and the idealization of individual heroes. Rather than focus upon individual characters, Eisenstein emphasized types such as the organizer, worker, spy, foreman, and manager as he told the story of a strike which was eventually crushed, but through which the consciousness of the proletariat had been enhanced. Eisenstein directed the mood of his audience with metaphors such as the overweight capitalist, the athletic workers, and by cross-cutting between the violent suppression of the strike and the butchering of animals in a slaughter house. Critics lavished praise on Strike, Eisenstein's colleague Grigori Kozintsev told directors: ‘anything we've been doing up till now is mere childish nonsense.’

The Odessa Steps sequence

Because of the favour in which Strike was held by the Soviet film industry, the Jubilee Committee, formed to commemorate the 1905 Revolution, selected Eisenstein to produce a film on the events leading to the Revolution. While the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin was only one brief episode in the original script, Eisenstein, after visiting Odessa (the site of the revolt), decided to focus on the battleship which would provide a metaphor for the larger historical events. Tsarist troops who marched down the Odessa steps, indiscriminately killing people, has become one of the most powerful scenes in world cinema. While there was some manipulation of the actual historical account, there is little doubt that Eisenstein used his ‘montage of attractions’ to create in Battleship Potemkin support for the 1917 Revolution as well as one of the classic works of cinema. The film was well received in Paris, Berlin, and Hollywood, where Charlie Chaplin pronounced it ‘the best film in the world.’ Following the critical acclaim, Eisenstein was the toast of Soviet cinema and was called upon in 1926 to make a film called The General Line, which was to celebrate the Soviet policy of collectivization of agriculture. However, the filming of this project was temporarily suspended so that Eisenstein could make a film honouring the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Although not a member of the Communist Party, Eisenstein was seemingly very supportive of and comfortable with the Soviet leadership. This relationship began to change during the filming of October or Ten Days That Shook the World (as it is often called in its Western release). The film had the official support of the Soviet authorities who diverted electricity for the project and blocked off the city streets in Leningrad for the crowd scenes such as the storming of the Winter Palace. Nevertheless, with this cooperation also came interference. With the changing political situation in the Soviet Union, references to the role of Leon Trotsky in the Revolution had to be downplayed. Despite these problems, Eisenstein was able to complete his film and experiment with a new technique and theory which he termed ‘intellectual montage.’ According to Eisenstein, the intellect of film viewers could be engaged through metaphoric formulae which would rise above the pathos of Potemkin. For example, shots of the polished boots of Alexander Kerensky, an ornamental peacock, and religious artefacts create the image of a Tsarist figure who must be overthrown by the creative forces of the people led by the Bolsheviks. However, critics as well as audiences, who found the film difficult to follow, were less than satisfied with the ‘intellectual montage’ of October. His experience with the reception of October led him for the firt time to express some reservations regarding the direction of the Bolshevik Revolution and artistic life within the Soviet Union.
In a letter to French film critic Leon Moussinac, Eisenstein confirmed, ‘We aren't rebels any more. We're becoming lazy priests. I have the impression that the enormous breath of 1917 which gave birth to our cinema is blowing itself out.’ The Soviet director lamented that the avant-garde free expression of the early revolutionary period was being replaced by an official doctrine limiting individual creativity. Regardless of these misgivings, Eisenstein did complete The General Line, which would be renamed Old and New, justifying in artistic terms the violent, forced collectivization which Stalin was visiting upon the Soviet countryside. Using the central symbols of a tractor, a bull, and a cream-separator, Eisenstein summed up this film as ‘an attempt to depict in an interesting way the daily round of peasant husbandry.’ Old and New, which is the least known of Eisenstein's films in the West today, was only a moderate success.
Having made four major films between 1924 and 1929, a tired and somewhat disillusioned Eisenstein petitioned the Soviet government for permission to travel abroad. Eisenstein was lured to the United States by a film contract with Paramount Studios (the agreement was approved by Soviet film authorities with Sovkino). While finding most Hollywood celebrities ‘stupid and mediocre’, the Soviet film maker did form friendships and at the urging of his friend Chaplin sought funding from the prominent American Socialist and novelist Upton Sinclair to make Que Viva Mexico, which would provide the Soviet director with an opportunity to pursue his fascination with the creative possibilities of Mexico. With the financial backing of Sinclair and his wife secured, Eisenstein journeyed into Mexico and attempted to produce a film which would cover the entire scope of Mexican history. Eisenstein ran considerably over budget and in January, 1932, Sinclair discontinued his support of the project. Eisenstein's despair over being unable to complete filming was compounded when, in violation of his promise, Sinclair later decided not to send Eisenstein the negatives and raw footage of Que Viva Mexico for editing in the Soviet Union. Devastated by Sinclair's withdrawal of support, Eisenstein had returned to the Soviet Union, where he suffered a breakdown and was despatched to the Kislovodsk Sanatorium.
The artistic scene in the Soviet Union had also shifted during the director's absence. Gone was the avant-garde progressive experimentation of the early Revolution as artistic life in the Soviet Union became increasingly under the control of the State and Party which extolled ‘socialist realism’ as the prescribed art form for Soviet writers, artists, and film makers. Thus, the cinematic work of Eisenstein was under attack by critics led by Boris Shumyatsky, who in 1930 had been appointed chairman of Soyuzkino, the newly centralized Soviet film organization. Shumyatsky termed Eisenstein's theories of montage inaccessible to the masses and, thus, elitist, while the director's years outside of the Soviet Union had produced in him a taste for the exotic (Que Viva Mexico) and left him out of touch with the Soviet people. This official evaluation of Eisenstein's cinema made it difficult for the director to work following recovery from his nervous condition. Numerous projects, such as a proposed film on the slave revolt in Haiti featuring African-American singer and actor Paul Robeson, were rejected by Shumyatsky.
In 1935, Eisenstein was given an opportunity to work again if he could learn to follow the proper ideological dictates. Working for the first time with sound, Eisenstein commenced production on Berzhin Meadow, which relates the story of Stepok, a member of the Komsomol who sought to preserve the harvest of a collective farm from saboteurs. In consequence of his efforts, the vigilant Stepok is killed by his Kulak father who sought to destroy the crop and is enraged by his son's behaviour. The film, which extolled the virtues of collectivization and ‘de-kulakisation’, appeared to follow the party line on the agrarian question and provided a companion piece to Eisenstein's Old and New. Nevertheless, in March, 1937, when filming on the project was almost complete, Shumyatsky ordered production to cease, and almost all prints of this film have been lost. Eisenstein was accused of being too subjective with his art and not meeting the dictates of socialist realism. The villainous father in the film was portrayed in too mythological a fashion, while Stepok was filmed with the face of a holy child, and in some of the shots the lighting placed behind this blond child appeared to radiate a halo. Thus, although Eisenstein had placed his art in the service of the Revolution with films such as Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, the forces who now controlled the Soviet Union found fault with Que Viva Mexico and Berzhin Meadow and made it clear that for the director to continue working it would be necessary for him to submit his artistic eye to official orthodoxy.
In the end it took another man’s tragic downfall to bring Eisenstein back in to the clear: at the end of 1937 Shumyatsky, was removed as head of the GUK and arrested; early the following year he would be convicted of ‘wrecking’ and shot. Since one of the objects Shumyatsky was considered to have ‘wrecked’ was Eisenstein’s career, and the ‘negative of a negative’, Eisenstein now became, for a time, something of a positive as a device for the authorities to create charges against Shumyatsky and therefore become somewhat vindicated in the process.
At an early screening and discussion of Alexander Nevsky, late in 1938, the comments made reflected Eisenstein’s new identity as ‘victim of Shumyatsky’. The director Annenskii hailed Eisenstein’s return to the limelight:
‘The picture is exceptionally meaningful because one of the greatest masters of cinematography has returned again and has demonstrated all his strength and power – a master of whom the former sabotaging administration oppressed in every way and to whom that administration did not give a chance to develop all his brilliance’
So the question we are all asking to find out  if we ourselves would have survived or not, is why was Eisenstein not simply consumed by the Stalinist terror before this, as were so many others, such as Grigori Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolay Bukharin, and Trotsky? How can we account for the fact that this artist who was officially in disrepute did not end up in the Soviet gulag or with a bullet in the back of his head. Coupled with the circumstances of Shumyatsky’s convenient departure, Eisenstein remained a committed Marxist and was willing to engage in the Bolshevik practice of self-criticism to save his life as well as to provide the opportunity to work once again as a director. In addition, one should never discount the arbitrary and personalized nature of Stalin’s regime. The Soviet ruler's passion for cinema, played out in late evening private screenings for the man and his entourage, resulted in film being the only cultural area in which major figures were not liquidated, and although it failed to save many of his close associates, Stalin seems to have maintained a good personal relationship with Eisenstein. Therefore, even while his film projects were grounded, Eisenstein was allowed to maintain in his position as a teacher and lecturer at the Technical School of Cinematography. In 1937 the expanding threat of Nazi Germany provided the scenario for Eisenstein to once again be of service to the Soviet state and practice his art, to rally support for Stalin's opposition to Hitler and European fascism. This culminated in his portrayal of the Popular Front strategy of temporarily forming alliances with bourgeoisie and nationalist elements against a common threat, when Eisenstein was commissioned to make a film of the thirteenth century saga of Russian Prince Alexander Nevsky, who unified the armies of Russia and repelled the invasion of the marauding Teutonic nights. The iconography of this film is easy to read. The Teutonic knights were to represent the evil forces of Hitler's Nazi Germany, while the saintly Nevsky was to personify Stalin and the stand he was taking to protect Russia from German barbarism. It was apparent that when the film was made the message would not be lost upon the masses in an abstract intellectual montage, for Eisenstein maintained that Alexander Nevsky would revolve around a single simple idea, ‘the enemy and the need to defeat him.’
The film was an immediate success with critics and audiences both abroad and in the Soviet Union, and a pleased Stalin awarded Eisenstein the Order of Lenin. However, the changing political climate, which induced Stalin to entering into the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, and to the abandonment of the Popular Front strategy, resulted in Alexander Nevsky being withdrawn from theatre’s in 1939. Once again, Eisenstein's art would succumb to the greater needs of Stalin and the Soviet state. However, Eisenstein was rehabilitated when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Alexander Nevsky was once again placed in release, and Eisenstein was able to pursue his projected film biography of Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein released Ivan in January 1945 as part one of a planned trilogy on the life of the Tsar. Again Eisenstein seemed to have regained his standing with the authorities because the film earned critical acclaim as well as the praise of Stalin, who bestowed the Stalin Prize on the director. It is easy to ascertain why this film appealed so much to the Soviet leader. Eisenstein's Ivan is not terrible, only a Russian patriot beset by enemies both foreign and domestic. Resemblance between Eisenstein's Ivan and Stalin were obvious as the film’s director sought to rehabilitate the much-maligned Tsar, whose infamous acts of cruelty were usually portrayed in such lurid terms that they obscured his worthy goal of a great and unified Russia. It is not difficult to transcend the basic plot outline of Ivan and see the life of Joseph Stalin beset with the tragic suicide of his wife, foreign threats from Hitler, and the treachery of his own people such as the alleged betrayal by Trotsky, who in the official Stalinist line became an agent for foreign powers, sabotaging factories and influencing other traitors such as Bukharin.
Basking in the affection of Stalin, Eisenstein immediately began production of Ivan, Part II. By 1946, the second film was complete, on first examination; a viewer might surmise that the second part of the trilogy would also meet the approval of Stalin. In this sequel, Ivan and his loyal Oprichnik return to Moscow, taking vengeance upon the treacherous Boyars. The film may easily be read as a justification for the Stalinist purges, and the Oprichnik may be equated with the NKVD. However, the arbitrary nature of the Stalin regime once again asserted itself as the Soviet strong man discovered a very different interpretation of this work. Eisenstein, recovering from a heart attack following the completion of Ivan, Part II, once more found his work under critical official scrutiny and the film was banned. Stalin informed Nikolai Cherkasov, who portrayed Ivan, that the executed Boyars, in Eisenstein's depiction, aroused too much sympathy in the audience, while Ivan expressed too much doubt about his course of action. According to Stalin, the only problem with the historical Ivan was that he had put to death too few Boyars.

Permission was granted to commence Ivan, Part III as long as Eisenstein's film remained in step with Soviet ideology and the party line under Stalin. However, the gifted director was unable to complete much work on this project as he continued to be plagued by ill health, suffering a fatal heart attack on February 11th 1948. Although Ivan, Part II was finally released in 1958 following Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin's crimes during the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, the footage for the final segment of Ivan had been ordered destroyed.

Eisenstein's Ivan

With his death at age fifty, Eisenstein had completed only seven major films, a small body of work on which to evaluate an artist. Yet, scholars of cinema continue to study the film theories of Sergei Eisenstein, and many critics judge his films to be some of the most outstanding contributions to the history of world cinema.
Were we passionate hot-blooded young artists the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 would have freed us, allowing usto pursue an artistic career in the exhilarating and experimental atmosphere of the early Revolution, but in the end it would have also compelled us to toe the party line, regardless of our individual convictions. Eisenstein’s continued devotion to the party line during the Stalinist rule of the 1930s and 1940s resulted in limitations being placed upon the director's artistic integrity, while episodes such as the official Soviet censorship of Que Viva Mexico, Berzhin Meadow, and Ivan the Terrible, Part II contributed to the decline of Eisenstein's health and his fatal heart attack, and while the Revolution may have unleashed Eisenstein as an artists, in the final analysis it also devoured him, leaving Eisenstein with poor health and only seven completed films to his credit.

Further Reading:

• Taylor, Richard. Film Propaganda, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 1998.

• Christie, Ian., and Taylor, Richard. Eisenstein Rediscovered. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

• Hariharan, Krishnan. “Eisenstein and the Potemkin Revolution” Social Scientist 7, No. 6 (1979): 54-61.

• Nesbet, Anne. Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking. London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 2007.

Book Review: The Balkans 1804-1999: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers

By Misha Glenny

In this one volume Misha Glenny has courageously attempted the near impossible, conveying a broad account, with its inherent complexities, of two centuries of turbulent Balkan history.
The scope is as grandiose and ambitious as the Great Powers expansionist designs on the Balkans themselves, every major theme can be found here as well as every peripheral one I could care to think of as I read, with useful and consistent attempts to provide explanations, not only of the significance of the major themes in their internal Balkan context, but also of their relationships to the greater European powers as well.

Price: £12

Publication Date: 2000 (Granta Books, London)

ISBN: 1-86207-073-3




The books opening chapter 'A confederacy of Peasants'  does a good job at putting all the peoples of the Balkans in the context of their existence within the Ottoman Empire. As the 'sick man of Europe' limps to its nursing home from page 70 to 307 we see how the Balkan peoples were gradually exposed to crucial reforms, decay and great power politics - in two chapters split geographically between the north (an 'empire of illusions') and southern Balkans (a 'maze of conspiracy') for a greater understanding of why this is an important distinction. Personally I enjoyed the authors treatment of the Treaty of San-Stefano/Congress of Berlin and why the occupation (and later annexation) of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary was significant in the roots of Balkan nationalist movements and the author clearly traces and justifies their place amongst the origins of the First World War. Subsequent chapters take us through the experience and legacy of the Great War, the royal dictatorships of the interwar period, the occupation and genocides of World War Two, liberation and communism culminating in the new nationalism of the late eighties, civil war and the involvement of NATO.

While there was no point in the book (in the middle or towards the end etc) where my interest waned or it felt like a chapter/period in history was just something I wanted to get through to get somewhere else, I do now find myself having some difficulty in deciding what I'm going to do with this book now I have read it for the basic experience of the book and its author themselves.
The author is obviously required to amass a vast amount of material for a project of this scope presenting them to the reader in chronological order, and I personally love this style of what is essentially a narrative permeated with analysis - when the two are done well they achieve a symbiosis which is sumptuous to read and can transcend the requirements of the reader. However I did not feel Glenny had quite achieved this here, the depth of analysis varies greatly and the author gives the impression of  often rushing to express moral judgements (where there should be analysis) on as yet unsettled historic debates. While this may be understandable as the author is a journalist not a historian, it may very well result in the general reader - who presumably is not as interested in the details of every uprising or ethnic group - never quite gaining an impression of the big picture and someone like myself, who might want to refer to Glenny's findings or his conclusions on an event or aspect of  Balkan history, having no real analysis of note to draw upon.

So what has this book become, and what do I use it for now other than displaying it neatly on my bookshelf? Well the book is still very recommendable to any casual reader seeking to obtain an understanding of all the essential dynamics that have shaped the region's past and present. For those already acquainted with Balkan history, Misha Glenny's book may still serve as a very useful chronological reference guide or to get a broad understanding before attempting to move on to works dealing with more specific issues in Balkan history.

Given my somewhat ambiguous conclusion as to whether this book can be classed as a 'noodle scratcher' or one to 'accompany Hob Nobs' all I can say is consult the above conclusion to see where your own needs fit in -otherwise get some Hob Nobs.

Origins of the Ashes: The First English Cricket Team to visit Australia

The team board the Great Britain in Liverpool 1861

Given our recent performance in the Ashes I was inspired to find out where it all began with the  first England cricket team to  tour Australia in 1861–62. This was the first-ever tour of Australia by any overseas team and the second tour abroad by an English team, following the one to North America in 1859.

The idea for the tour came from the English proprietors of a Melbourne company called Spiers and Pond, which ran the Café de Paris in the city. Spiers was Felix William Spiers and Pond was Christopher Pond. Their representative in England, a Mr Mallam, had tried to interest Charles Dickens in a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand but without success. Instead, having noted the success of the 1859 English Cricket teams tour of America and the growing popularity of cricket in Australia, Spiers and Pond decided to attract a team of leading English cricketers. Mr Mallam therefore journeyed to Birmingham in September 1861 to watch the North v. South game at Aston Park. During the game, Mallam met the cricketers at the nearby Hen and Chicken Hotel to make the business proposal and twelve players agreed to tour Australia next winter on terms of £150 per man plus expenses.

The team was captained by HH Stephenson (from Surrey) who was joined by William Caffyn, William Mortlock, George Griffith, William Mudie, Tom Sewell junior (all from Surrey); Roger Iddison, Ned Stephenson (both from Yorkshire); Tom Hearne, Charles Lawrence (both from Middlesex); George Wells (from Sussex); and George Bennett (from Kent). Stephenson and Caffyn had also toured America in 1859.

The team sailed to Australia in the SS Great Britain - Isambard Kingdom Brunel's famous advanced steam passenger ship which put out from Liverpool on 21 October 1861, carrying the English cricket team  along with a crew of 143, 544 passengers, a cow, 36 sheep, 140 pigs, 96 goats and a total of 1114 chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. The treacherous journey from Liverpool to Melbourne via the Cape of Good Hope (her ninth) occupied 64 days, during which the best day's run was 354 miles and the worst 108. With favourable winds the ship travelled under sail alone, the screw propeller being withdrawn from the water (her propeller could be hauled up onto deck by means of chains in order to reduce drag when the vessel was operating under sail power alone). Three passengers died en route - quite normal for this type of journey.

As a team, they played 12 matches that were not first-class, winning 6 and losing 2 with 4 drawn. All but one of these games were against odds of at least 18 to 11. The exception was a one-day single innings match.
In January 1862, they played a match on the Sydney Domain; the Secretary for Lands, John Robertson controversially allowed the promoters to charge admission to the public while arranging a free stand for parliamentarians.

The team divided for a match in March 1862 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground that has been called The World v Surrey XI and is rated first-class. The six Surrey players were joined by five locals, who reportedly had Surrey affiliations, to form the Surrey XI; the World XI was formed of the six non-Surrey tourists and another five locals. The World XI won by 6 wickets thanks to an outstanding all-round performance by George Bennett who scored 72 and then took 7-30 and 7-85. This game drew a good attendance of about 8,000. One of the World XI locals was John Conway of Victoria who later managed the first Australian team to tour England. The team arrived safely back in England on 12 May 1862.

The tour was certainly successful and left an important long-term legacy in that it inspired later English teams to visit Australia and vice versa . Its success was certainly crucial in establishing a played-biennially test cricket series between England and Australia, though the Ashes legend started later, after the ninth Test played in 1882, there would certainly have been no Ashes if this pioneering and courageous group of men had not braved the most dangerous journey in the world (short of trying to find the North West Passage -but fortunately the Inuit don't play cricket) in 1861.

Further Reading:
H S Altham, A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914) (George Allen & Unwin, 1926)
Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket (Aurum, 1999)
Rowland Bowen, Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970)