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Sunday 25 August 2019

Comics Explained: Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan)


At D23 this year Disney announced a wide range of upcoming movies and TV shows, and, in regards to comics, I am most excited for seeing the TV debut of Kamala Khan, the most recent Ms. Marvel. Kamala was introduced formally in 2014 as part of Marvel's attempts to diversify its comics line, and she has been well received by both critics and fans. Out of the newly introduced characters, Kamala is my personal favourite, and it is unsurprising that she is getting her own TV series.

Comic Origins
Kamala's first appearance alongside Captain Marvel
Kamala was created by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona, but Marvel editor Sana Amanat played a great role in the character's creation. As the daughter of Pakistani immigrants to the United States the idea of Ms. Marvel came to the Marvel team when she and fellow editor Stephen Wacker were discussing her childhood. Consequently, and possibly contributing why she is such a good character, Kamala Khan reflects a lot of Sana's teenage years. Her design aimed to blend Carol Ann Danvers's present costume, the original Ms. Marvel and current Captain Marvel, her classic costume, and a shalwar kameez. Further connecting her to Carol Ann Danvers she debuted in Captain Marvel #14 in an unnamed cameo watching Captain Marvel fight, but she made her proper debut in All-New Marvel NOW! Point One #1. Kamala was born to Pakistani parents in Jersey City, and grew up close to two friends who were also children of immigrants - Nakia Bahadir and Bruno Carrelli. Due to her 'nerdy' interests and strict parents, made worse by being the daughter of immigrants thanks to xenophobia, she regularly faced ostracism. However, her love for superheroes gave her hope, but her favourite was Carol Ann Danvers who had recently adopted the moniker of Captain Marvel.

In Ms. Marvel Vol. 3 #1 Kamala gained her powers and became a superhero. Tired of being left out she decided to sneak out and attend a popular party, but her 'friends' used it as an excuse to mock her. Upset she set off home just as a world changing event took place. Showing how the movements of gods, aliens, and heroes have such an impact on ordinary people Kamala gained her powers thanks to Thanos and the Inhumans in the Infinity story. Thanos attacked the Inhuman base on the Moon with the intention of reclaiming, and most likely murdering, his son, but he was opposed by the Inhumans and Earth's heroes. A bit of backstory about the Inhumans is needed here. The Inhumans are a species closely related to humans, thousands and thousands of years ago the Kree experimented on humans giving some of them superpowers - the experimented on humans became the Inhumans. The Inhumans also had access to the Terrigen Mists, mists which can give individuals superpowers, and as a right of passage young Inhumans enter the mists to undergo 'Terrigenesis' giving them powers. During Thanos's invasion the leader of the Inhumans, Black Bolt, deployed the Terrigen Bomb to destroy Thanos. Instead it destroyed his city and the mists spread across Earth causing humans with latent Inhuman genes to undergo Terrigenesis. This is what happened to Kamala. A Terrigen Cocoon formed around her, and she saw visions of her three favourite heroes: Captain America, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel. Talking with the visions she stated that wanted to be like the 'beautiful and awesome and butt-kicking and less complicated' Captain Marvel. When the mists cleared she found she was wearing a version of Marvel's costume. When trying to come to terms with what happened her bullying friends fell into a river and drowned, and Kamala went to rescue them realising that she had powers. She could drastically enlarge, shrink, or stretch her body, so she used it to save her friends becoming a hero.

Becoming Ms. Marvel
Kamala and the Inventor
In issue three, while visiting Bruno at her local convenience store, robots attacked and she was shot, but found out that she had healing powers. This started Kamala's surreal and insane stories after Bruno revealed the attack was done by his younger brother working for a mysterious person called 'the Inventor'. Making a costume inspired by her favourite hero she set out to use her powers to stop the Inventor who turned out to be a human-cockatiel hybrid straight out of The Island of Dr. Moreau. The Inventor had been creating robots and animal experiments, including his monstrous alligators called 'megagators', to wreck havoc on New York. Kamala managed to learn the backstory of the Inventor. A scientist called Gregory Knox wanted to clone Thomas Edison, because reasons, but his pet cockatiel got in the way so a bird-human hybrid was created. Naturally it became an evil genius. In her challenges against the Inventor she encountered Wolverine who was searching for a missing school girl, and he decided to help her fight the Inventor. The Inhumans on Earth also sent their giant dog Lockjaw to keep an eye on the young hero, and the two quickly warmed to one another. Using Lockjaw's ability to teleport to find out how a bird-man could generate enough energy to power his many robots: he was kidnapping teenagers and using their bodies to power them, including her friend Nakia. Her final battle with the Inventor saw her shrinking into the scientist's giant robot, almost being killed by the robot's electro-magnetic wave (which destabilises her body), and the grateful teenagers helping her defeat the robot and freeing a captured Lockjaw. 

I don't want to go over too many stories that Ms. Marvel has appeared in, because I don't want to spoil any too much. They are all fun and well-written so I would recommend reading them in person. Among them include stopping Loki during a Valentine's Day party at her school; fighting against an Inhuman coup who wanted the Inhumans to rule over humanity; helping fight during the 'Incursion' when different universes started smashing against one another; and eventually joining the Avengers. In her journeys she encountered many of the other new and young heroes, such as the new Nova and Miles Morales, the new Spider-Man, at a school science competition. Then the Second Superhuman Civil War broke out. A mutant called Ulysses had the ability to see into the near future, specifically when crimes or disasters were going to happen. The superheroes became divided about Ulysses's power: some, like Captain Marvel and She-Hulk, wanted to use his power to stop crimes before they happened a la Minority Reporty, whereas others, like Iron Man and Captain America, still subscribed to 'innocent until proven guilty' and that people were only guilty when they commit a crime. Things could possibly change between the vision and the event. The Civil War challenged Kamala's views and her loyalty to Captain Marvel. When Ulysses predicted that Bruce Banner would turn into the Hulk and destroy significant parts of Times Square a team was sent to calm him, but Hawkeye unexpectedly, and accidentally, killed a calm Banner. Kamala doubted herself, and had to be comforted by Miles and Nova, but the war began escalating. As Bruno lost his hand thanks to the war, and decided to go to Wakanda possibly never seeing Kamala again, she left Captain Marvel's side. Cutting a long story short, thanks to the breaking of Tony Stark's back by Carol Ann Danvers it caused Ms. Marvel to become fully distanced from the Avengers.

Forming the Champions
The Champions: Cyclops, Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, Nova, and Viv
Following the aftermath of the Civil War Kamala had come into contact with many of the other new young superheroes. Leaving the Avengers she, Nova, and Miles formed their own group: the Champions. They were soon joined by Amadeous Cho, the new Hulk, the Vision's daughter Viv, and a time-displaced young Cyclops (the reason for this is stupidly confusing). One of my favourite panels is when the old Nova meets the Champions after being away for years, and is confused about the new heroes. He got confused that Kamala is now Ms. Marvel, and that Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel, and states 'I hate every word that you've just said' when Cyclops told him that he is a past version of the adult Cyclops taken from an alternate past by a time-travelling Beast. The Champions continued many of the weird and wacky adventures which makes it a really good read, as a result I won't go into too much detail as I don't want to spoil anything. Among them include fighting the Atlantean Navy, fought a sheriff causing hate crimes in his town, and helped fight Hydra during their takeover of the US in the Secret Empire event. Kamala is still a member of the team, and when Cyclops decided to leave when the team expanded he felt comfortable to tell Kamala in person - the only person he told in person.

Thank you for reading. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Sunday 18 August 2019

Left-Wing and the 'Other' History: The Peterloo Massacre


As of writing, it has just been two-hundred years since one of the most important events in radical British history: the Peterloo Massacre. Four years after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo a crowd of 60,000 met at a political meeting in St. Peter's Field in Manchester to campaign for political suffrage - what happened was that the crowd was stormed by the British military. Later called 'Peterloo' it became an integral sticking point in British working-class history, and two-hundred years later it remains an important part of British history. 

Before Peterloo
Jacobin imagery
Britain was going through great change before the mass meeting in St. Peter's Field. Since the eighteenth-century there had been protests and debates about reforming parliament. As late as 1831 the voting population was restricted to wealthy, property owning men which amounted to around 200,000 people. Constituencies varied in size, and resulted in overtly corrupt systems where Yorkshire, with a population of 20,000, had the same representation in parliament as Rutland with a population of 1,000. Most famously, there were the 'rotten boroughs' where insanely small constituencies had greater representation than some of the larger cities, including Manchester - Gatton had a population of just 6 but had two MPs. These debates became popular during the American Revolution, but exploded after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. When Britain declared war on Revolutionary France in 1793 there were fears that revolutionary fervour would spread to Britain. Habeas corpus was suspended, and the Treasonable Practices Act and Seditious Meetings Act were passed restricting organisational attempts for both reformist and radical groups. Many were forced underground and a thriving radical culture emerged - symbols of the French Revolution were used to signify allegiance, most notable a Jacobin red cap on a 'liberty tree'. The ideas of Thomas Paine, especially The Rights of Man (1791), were heavily censored for advocating republicanism and individual liberty - Paine was trialled in absentia for 'seditious libel' against Edmund Burke. Even after republicanism gave way to empire under Napoleon, and the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo these restrictions continued.

From 1800 to 1815 plots and protests occurred which made the established classes fearful. In 1799 Irish rebels rose up, alongside a failed French invasion, to bring about an independent Ireland, and in 1802 Colonel Edward Despard was executed for supposedly being involved with a plot to assassinate the king. In 1812 it became hysterical when prime minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated; despite the assassin, John Bellingham, assassinated Perceval for having his compensation being rejected it made politicians fearful of a Jacobin plot. Beginning during the Napoleonic Wars, and especially after Napoleon's defeat, economic issues fed into political issues. The rise of industrialisation, which you can read about here, meant that machines began replacing people in the emerging factory system. During the war this was less of an issue, war needed increased textile production and men were needed for the military so jobs were plentiful, but this changed after. The end of the war caused an economic crash, wages dropped from 15 shillings in 1803 to just 4 in 1817, and mechanisation meant that there were fewer jobs creating mass unemployment. Food prices rose for two reasons: the first, in 1815 Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted causing a 'Year without Summer' wiping out crops in Europe, and second, the controversial Corn Laws prevented the importation of food from continental Europe and the Americas to protect British grain. When people were impoverished and hungry they also begin to see how they are politically oppressed. The 'Luddites' began smashing mills in northern England, and in 1817 5,000 weavers aimed to march from Manchester to London to petition the Prince Regent to repeal the repressive laws and to help impoverished textile workers. Particularly violent protests, such as the Luddites, encouraged fearful politicians to send the military to 'restore order'; thousands were sent to Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. 

Politics and Activism
Henry Hunt
Politics took many forms in the immediate few years after Waterloo. The most common were the secret societies, like the Hampden Club, and the mass printing of radical papers, such as the Political Register. These groups and papers intended to organise masses of working-class people in order to co-ordinate peaceful campaigns. The shadow of the French Revolution loomed large over the heads of those campaigning for change, and although there were violent protests and societies, the oppressive state laws meant that the hint of violence would encourage state repression. The Blanketeers were the ones organising the march from Manchester, and their leaders were arrested for apparent sedition after accusations that they would enforce democracy 'sword in hand'. More than often the government encouraged agents provocateurs to provoke sedition and violence to give an excuse to arrest protest leaders - this happened with the Blanketeers. A common form of protest was the mass meeting with famous orators giving speeches. These mass protests were meant to attract huge crowds to awe authorities, and the papers were integral to attracting people to these protests. Papers were read by more people who bought it as people shared papers or read it out loud. One of the most noted orators was Henry Hunt, literally nicknamed the 'Orator', whose fiery speeches enchanted crowds.

What were people campaigning for? There were two main points: the Corn Laws and universal male suffrage. These issues were not viewed by radicals as being two separate issues, they were instead viewed as intertwined. The working-classes were oppressed economically, thanks to the Corn Laws, and politically, for the lack of representation. Across the country there were Patriotic Union Societies, of which the Manchester Patriotic Union Societies was one of the largest, aimed to generate support for universal male suffrage. Women were integral to this movement. Mary File helped form the Manchester Female Patriotic Union which became a driving force in Manchester's campaign for universal male suffrage. It has been questioned why figures like Mary File did not campaign for women's suffrage as well. Jacqueline Riding has argued that thanks to gender ideas in the early-1800s politics were seen, even among radical women, as a male domain, but universal male suffrage was seen as representing the family. If the husband had the vote it was seen as giving the entire family the vote.

The Peterloo Massacre

A large meeting was planned in Manchester to take place in August to encourage support for universal male suffrage. Among some of the speakers planned to talk were Henry Hunt and, showing the more radical nature of the meeting, Mary File. Quoting R.J. White the mass meeting intended at St. Peter's Field 'was the culmination of many years of political education...the point at which Parliamentary Reform came of age as a popular programme'. Through advertisements through papers including The Manchester Observer attracted over 60,000 people making it the largest political gathering in Britain to that time. Local businesses were worried about 60,000 radicals gathering to Manchester considering the city's population was around double that normally. However, as argued by White 'They were peaceable, they were orderly, and they knew what they wanted'. Hunt himself was well-known for refusing to appear at meetings where violence had the slimmest of chances of breaking out. The large presence of women and children at the meeting shows both their political engagement, and how violence was not viewed to be possible; it was seen as an acceptable meeting place for families. Even reporters from the conservative Times newspaper attended. However, trouble was in the air thanks to the presence of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry supported by the Hussars. Clive Emsley has argued that the presence of the Yeomanry was tantamount to class warfare with them being millowners, or the sons of millowners, only being trained for a month. Naturally, these wealthy and middle-class members of the Yeomanry were opposed to the demands of the radicals. That is if the radicals could actually speak. As soon as Hunt got on stage to speak the crowd erupted into cheers making the armed forces fearful.

The Yeomanry attempted to arrest Hunt and the other speakers, but the crowd linked arms to prevent the mounted militia from seizing the speakers. They panicked and the Peterloo Massacre began. A myth originated that it was just the Yeomanry which attacked the crowd, but in reality the Hussars also attacked the protesters. Lieutenant Jolliffe of the Hussars later wrote 'nine out of ten of the sabre wounds were caused by the Hussars...however, the far greater amount of injuries were from the pressure of the routed multitude'. Wanting to get quickly to the speakers the Yeomanry and Hussars used their sabres against the crowd, or alternatively rode over protesters; as the speakers were dressed in white they stood out against the crowd. Between sabre slashes, horses, and panicking crowds hundreds were injured. Quoting Samuel Banford, one of those later imprisoned for his involvement in organising the mass meeting:
The cavalry were in confusion: they evidently could not, with all the weight of man and horse, penetrate that compact mass of human beings and their sabres were plied to hew a way through naked held-up hands and defenceless heads; and then chopped limbs and wound-gaping skulls were seen; and groans and cries were mingled with the din of that horrid confusion.
Many females appeared as the crowd opened; and striplings or mere youths also were found. Their cries were piteous and heart-rending, and would, one might have supposed, have disarmed any human resentment: but here their appeals were in vain.
In ten minutes from the commencement of the havoc the field was an open and almost deserted space. The sun looked down through sultry and motionless air. The curtains and blinds of the windows within view were all closed.
We do not exactly know how many casualties the cavalry charge caused because those injured were often too scared to seek medical care in case that would show that they attended the meeting. Those officially recorded as being injured are at 654 persons, of which 168 were women. There were 18 confirmed deaths, although, as mentioned earlier, there may be much more as people feared to say they were part of the meeting. Among the deaths were four women - Mary Heys was a mother, disabled, and heavily pregnant, and she died thanks to the premature birth of her child caused by the attack. The youngest death, and also the first, was two-year old William Fildes who was killed when his mother was struck by a trooper. The most famous death was that of John Lees, a veteran of Waterloo who was sabred by a trooper.

Aftermath

The events at St. Peter's Field shook British society. The leading radicals in Manchester were arrested, but this did not limit radical demands. Henry Hunt read out Thomas Paine at his trial for seditious libel as court cases were published in verbatim, so now people could widely access a censored radical work. An embarrassed establishment tried to limit a potential backlash for the trooper attack, such as passing the 'Six Acts' which tried to prevent future uprisings, or limit the spread of radical ideas by gagging the press and their authors. This did not prevent the press naming the events of the day as the 'Peterloo Massacre' - just four years after Waterloo people argued that it was a 'domestic battle'. Quoting White, 'the Radical cause was to make grateful use of cheap engravings which depicted ferociously-whiskered cavalrymen prancing with flashing swords above heaps of prostrate men and women'. The images of Peterloo were spread around Britain, and typical in British political campaigning commemorative items, like badges, were produced to spread the word. Famous poet, and husband of Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem to honour those killed:
I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh—
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
Making matters worse for the ruling Tory establishment Peterloo was criticised by even conservative forces in the country, including Lieutenant Jolliffe and The Times, which emboldened the opposing liberal Whigs to also start campaigning. Meanwhile, anger over Peterloo became a lesson for the armed rebellions which would take over the next year. In 1820 uprisings were planned, or defeated, in Yorkshire and Glasgow, and the 'Cato Street Plot' was discovered - a plot to kill the prime minister and cabinet. Radical demands continued regardless. To honour Peterloo the Manchester Guardian was founded to offer a radical or liberal voice, since then it has evolved into the centre-left Guardian. Debates and riots over suffrage continued until the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832, although it would take until 1918 for universal suffrage to fully be implemented. Manchester quickly elected radical and Anti-Corn Law politicians to parliament, Peterloo remained a key part of Manchester's memory.

Legacy

As argued by R.L. White, 'It marked the point of final conversion of provincial England to the doctrine of "First Things First"...the people were to stand with ever greater fortitude behind the great movement'. When social change was needed great movements inspired by Peterloo continued throughout British history. The Chartist movement, which also campaigned for universal male suffrage, was directly inspired by the actions of the Manchester Patriotic Union, and Henry Hunt was an influential early Chartist. Manchester has remained one of the key areas of working-class radicalism even up to this day - Friedrich Engels lived in Manchester for most of his life partially for this reason. From the Radical War to the Anti-Iraq War protests, how Britain protests and how the state reacts can be traced to Peterloo.

The sources I have used are as follows:
-R.J. White, Waterloo to Peterloo, (London: 1963)
-M.L. Bush, The Casualties of Peterloo, (Lancaster: 2005)
-Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt, (eds.), Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-making during the Romantic Era, (Edinburgh: 2019)
-'The Peterloo Massacre', In Our Time, BBC, (15/12/2005)
-Robert Poole, '"By the Law or the Sword": Peterloo Revisited', History, 91:302, 254-276
-'E15: The Peterloo Massacre with Mike Leigh', Working-Class History, (16/01/2019)

Thank you for reading, and for other Left-Wing History posts please see our list here. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Sunday 11 August 2019

World History: Science and Racism

Phrenology from Types of Mankind (1854) by Josiah Nott and George Gliddon
Discrimination and prejudice have unfortunately been a constant throughout human history. However, a new form of racism emerged in the nineteenth century - scientific racism. Scientific racism emerged partially from the discrimination that characterised older forms of racism, and from new ideas; it is also important to note that older forms of racism did not disappear with the advent of scientific racism. For example, the Nazi paper Der Stürmer in the early-1930s recycled centuries old stories of the 'blood libel' to rile up hatred against Jews. Today we will look at the emergence of scientific racism, how racism pervaded society, eugenics, and how it still shapes today. I should add some caveats to this - I will largely discussing racism in the past, contemporary racism deserves its own blog post. As a white person I cannot experience racism, so I cannot adequately discuss modern racism, but I would recommend reading up on it - a personal recommendation is Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Rene Eddo-Lodge. This post will only look briefly at structural racism - readers must bear in mind that structural racism is too great a topic to be discussed in such a small blog post. I am also referencing the Wordpress of a friend of mine who is a fantastic researcher and writer - her website will be linked at the end and I highly recommend reading it.

Racism before the 1800s - A Very Concise Overview
Historically, racism and discrimination has been tied up with representations of the 'Other' - differing identities were regularly viewed with suspicion and, at times, outright contempt. The Ancient Greeks referred to anyone who was not Greek as 'barbarian', and until the late-nineteenth century China and Japan did as well. In the sixteenth-century the Luochong Lu (Record of Naked Creatures) was published in China which depicted non-Chinese peoples in pejorative terms - due to strained relations with Japan the Japanese were referred to as 'dwarf bandits'. The entry on 'the Huns' could have come straight from a nineteenth-century anthropological text: 
This breed comprises five types. One, with yellow hair, from a mountain ghost and a cow. One, short-necked, stout and fat, was born of the juejia-ape and a wild hog. [. . .] Since Shemo killed the chief of the A’nuo tribe with his own hands, to this day they perform human sacrifice to their banner. Their customs set in archery and killing. They worship the Zoroastrian god, and do not maintain ancestral temples. They carve felt into icons, and put these onto fur bags. Whenever they take actions, they smear the icons with butter.
When the book was published in Japan, as Ikoko monogatari, the section on Japan was heavily edited to remove the discriminatory descriptions of Japan. Nicholas Dirks has further argued that one of the possible reasons why Dalits, the so-called 'untouchables', emerged outside the caste system in India was due to their ancestors being stateless peoples who migrated to India. Meanwhile, in the Christian and Islamic worlds the religious Other became subject to demonisation - calling for the First Crusade in 1095 Pope Urban II declared that 'an alien people, a race completely foreign to God...has invaded Christian territory'. Another spark of anti-Judaism broke out thanks to the Crusades. As Jews were excluded from Christian hegemonic structures they were seen as subversive elements working against Christianity. Jews were massacred by crusading armies, and until the 1700s Jewish communities faced regular pogroms and expulsions (such as from England in 1290 and Spain in 1492). Myths that Jews were poisoning wells and the 'blood libel', where Jews would use the blood of kidnapped children to make Passover matzah, were used to justify pogroms. 

Religious discrimination could, in theory, end thanks to conversion. However, European expansion helped influence a change in this. In 1514 in a letter Martin Luther wrote that Jews could never truly become Christians unless told to by God, and the Spanish Inquisition from 1492 heavily scrutinised conversios, converted Muslims and Jews, as their conversion was seen as not being complete. Thanks to European expansion physical attributes started to increasingly emerge as reasons for discrimination. Francis Drake described the people of Batjan in the Moluccas as 'comely in body and stature...The men go naked, saving their heads and privities' while Christopher Columbus in 1492 focused on the physical characteristics of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. 'Savage', 'barbarian', and 'cannibal' regularly appeared in texts, and, as expected, faith was used as a justification. Discrimination based on skin colour had emerged in the Arabic world thanks to slavery, and it did so with the European world. The enslavement of black Africans was justified by using the story of Ham, as Ham had look on Noah's nakedness he and his descendants were cursed to a life of slavery. Black Africans were described as the descendants of Ham, so their enslavement was not a sin. The Spanish Empire, and Spain itself, developed the theory of limpia sangria - cleanliness of blood. Entry into higher institutes of society - such as universities - in the 1700s were barred if their blood was deemed 'impure' - if you had Jewish or Muslim ancestors in Spain, or indigenous or African in the Americas this could mean that you were 'impure'. Meanwhile, what could be classed as positive were still steeped in racism thanks to the 'noble savage' trope - Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan about indigenous Americans, Jacques Cartier about the Iroquois, and Michel de Montaigne about the Tupinamba are good examples of this. Colonised peoples could be 'noble' but they still were viewed as 'savage' or 'uncivilised'. 

The Emergence of Scientific Racism
An example of racial classification used by pseudo-scientists
Thanks to the European Enlightenments what we can call 'scientific racism' emerged. There were continuities between older forms of racism and the new scientific racism - white, Christian Northern Europeans put themselves as being 'superior' to other peoples, but this was based on biological factors over faith. As argued by Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown, 'Ideas of savagery, barbarism and civilisation predetermined the space that the idea of "race" occupied, but were themselves reconstituted by it'. Several of the early racial scientists did not view their work as contradicting Biblical teaching, but rather reaffirming it. A noted example of this was French naturalist Georges Cuvier who argued that there were three races, (Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian), which could be classified by beauty and 'quality of civilisation'. He argued that Adam and Eve were Caucasian so the other 'races' were therefore deviations and inferior. What made scientific racism different from earlier forms of racism was a focus on physical characteristics, as well as culture and behaviour, to distinguish between 'races'. In late eighteenth-century Germany, Peter Camper claimed that facial angle could distinguish 'races'. Phrenology, the measuring of skulls and skull shape, became a central part of new forms of racism and a justification for empire. Scottish lawyer George Combe in A System of Phrenology (1830) emphasised the shape of the skull to justify British rule in India. He wrote that 'the Hindoo head is small, and the European large...The Hindoo brain indicates a manifest deficiency in the organs of Combativeness and Destructiveness; while in the European, these parts are developed.' Meanwhile, Samuel Morton filled skulls with seeds to determine brain capacity which he argued could classify five 'races' (Caucasian, Mongolian, Malay, American, and Ethiopian) which were divided further into 'families'. The classification of animal life by Swedish naturalist Carl Linneaus, who himself tried to classify human 'races', was very influential to phrenology.

One of the most influential use of phrenology was Italian anthropologist Cesare Lombroso. Often considered the 'Father of Criminal Anthropology' Lombroso argued that skull shape and size could characterise criminal tendencies in people. Instead of focusing on actual causes of crime, namely environmental and economic factors, Lombroso argued it was purely genetics. Thicker foreheads, curled hair, larger noses, and broad jaws were seen as characteristics of criminality - of course these fed into racist and antisemitic discourses. In a 1895 lecture in Turin Lombroso discussed so-called 'savage' children he had studied and stated that 'they have extraordinary anomalies of the face and of the skull, asymmetry, macrocephaly, exaggeration of the length or breadth, strabismus, ears badly placed or too large, enormous jaws, bad conformation of the teeth...'. Lombroso's theories were soon combined with eugenics and influenced Nazi racial policies. Believing that chronic unemployment, criminality, prostitution, and mental illness were inherited the Nazis would sterilise, and later outright murder, those deemed Untermensch

Darwin and Social Darwinism
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution would prove greatly influential in forming scientific racism. In The Origins of Species (1859) Darwin discussed his theory, although he would not be the first to argue this. Using evidence from his travels on the HMS. Beagle to the Galapagos Islands Darwin argued that animal species, or 'races', adapted to environments over generations; those with genes best suited to an environment survived to reproduce and evolved into new species. He never actually argued for 'Survival of the Fittest', instead Darwin argued that 'It is not the strongest of the species that survive, but the one most responsive to change'. In The Origins of Species Darwin never discussed the evolution of humanity, but he did so in The Descent of Man (1871). Naturally, Darwin's theory was immediately controversial as it contradicted the Book of Genesis, and religious figures scoffed at the idea that humanity could be descended from a similar ancestor to apes. However, racial scientists adopted Darwin's idea and changed it, most notably Herbert Spencer. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the term 'Survival of the Fittest'. Spencer asserted that 'races' were in a struggle for survival where the 'lesser' would naturally disappear thanks to an inability to compete. There are debates about whether Darwin himself was a social Darwinist. In line with social Darwinists he argued that there were lesser and higher 'races', but he argued these 'races' constituted one species and that 'disappearance' of 'lesser races' was unnatural. This was partially thanks to the genocide and extinction of indigenous Tasmanians. British settlers waged a genocidal war against Tasmanians, quoting Darwin 'Death pursues the native in every place where the European sets foot', resulting in indigenous Tasmanians being murdered en masse. Social Darwinism would influence eugenics and governmental policies - especially in Latin America. Brazilian educators from the 1890s to the 1940s implemented school check-ups and meals not for altruistic reasons, but to seemingly 'uplift' the population. Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Brazil further encouraged Northern European migration hoping that it would 'save' their nations from 'racial backwardness'. Argentina went as far as to hide statistics on the population of Afro-Argentinians with the belief that by making it seem a 'white nation' compared to its neighbours it could encourage more migration. When the US barred entry to Chinese and Japanese communities Latin America welcomed them, again not for altruism, but rather, as they were deemed 'white' so could 'uplift' the country.

Social Darwinists at the end of the nineteenth century would directly inspire the Nazis, and would castigate earlier ones for not being racist enough. Two noted ones were Joseph Arthur, the Comte de Gobineau, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races Gobineau argued that 'races' were inseparable barriers and that 'racial mixing' would bring down European civilisation. He also applied the term 'Aryans' to Germans, and argued that they were superior to other 'races'. Meanwhile, Houston Stewart Chamberlain in The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1897) would combine German nationalism, virulent antisemitism, Aryan supremacy in a highly influential book that would greatly inspire the Nazis. Chamberlain himself would become a close associate with Hitler. Gobineau and Chamberlain argued that culture was a product of race, so 'superior races' had to dominate society. Social Darwinism shaped how race was understood. For example, anti-Judaism evolved into antisemitism as it was argued that Jews were not just a religion apart, but a race apart - part of a newly invented 'Semitic people'. The idea that apes like gorillas and orangutans are 'missing links' stemmed from white supremacy; it was believed that non-white peoples reproduced with apes influencing their evolution. Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Irish were also seen as being 'inferior' by white supremacists - they toed the line between acceptability and inferiority in their eyes. Modern beauty standards developed from this - emphasis on white skin, blond hair, straight hair, petite bodies in women, and small noses were based off of racial stereotypes. Darker skin, curly hair, and broad noses were associated with 'undesirable races', like Jews and Africans, so were seen as 'uglier'. In the 1940s the winner of Miss Africa had to dress according to European beauty standards in order to win. As a result, we see this continued today - lighter skinned people of colour are more likely to be rated attractive compared to those with darker skin, I would recommend watching this video here about it. 

Eugenics
Schloss Hartheim, a centre used by the Nazis to euthanise mentally ill patients as part of their eugenics programme
First coined by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, in the 1880s it was an idea that societies could be improved by carefully selecting who could, and could not, reproduce. Gobineau and Chamberlain believed that interracial relations were degenerating humanity, and American white supremacist Madison Grant in The Passing of the Great Race (1916) recommended segregating 'inferior races' to protect the racial hygiene of the 'Nordic race'. Unsurprisingly, Hitler was a great admirer of Grant. In Germany Alfred Ploetz coined the term Rassenhygiene (race hygiene) in order to explain his support for eugenics. The idea of Volk, people, developed in Germany as part of post-unification nationalism - if Germany was to survive its people had to be built-up. A big reason for this was the emancipation of German Jews - Jews were seen as alien subversives threatening to undermine Germany, so 'true' Germans had to be defended. This idea was not limited to Germany. Japan from the 1910s began adopting eugenicist ideas, such as confining the mentally ill, and by the 1930s, with fascism in full swing, a section of the Imperial Army emerged, called the Imperial Way, declaring that as Japan was so pure it did not need modern weaponry. The British working class were seen as being degenerate, backward, and inferior thanks to poor living conditions, and instead of being blamed on conditions created through industrial capitalism it was, in turn, blamed on genes. This is best seen in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895) - millennia in the future the upper classes have evolved into the beautiful work-shy Eloi living in a utopia, while the working classes have evolved into the troglodyte subterranean Morlocks. Eugenicists argued that certain types of people - namely disabled, mixed-race, mentally ill, unemployed, homosexuals etc. - could pass on their 'deficiencies' to future generations degenerating society. Ann Stoler has particularly emphasised the importance of eugenics in colonial empires during the early-twentieth century. Relations between colonisers and the colonised were seen as polluting society, and mixing concrete racial barriers. Mixed race children in French Indochina were referred to as 'the fruits of a regrettable weakness'. Dehumanisation involved in eugenics resulted in horrific abuses in the name of 'racial purity' - across the world those deemed 'inferior' could be subjected to sterilisation. Over 60,000 mentally ill people were sterilised in the US from 1907 to 1963, most were in California which influenced the Nazi policy of sterilisation. 

The Dreyfus Affair - A Case Study in Antisemitism
The degredation of Dreyfus
From the 1880s antisemitism saw a resurgence across Europe. The British press demonised Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe, Karl Luger became mayor of Vienna based on a campaign of anti-Jewish rhetoric, and in Germany's 'Culture Wars' antisemitism became a tool to identify German identity. As argued by Miles and Brown, as the Jews were perceived as stateless they were seen as wanting to betray their country - whether as a greedy capitalist pulling the strings, or a radical socialist wanting to overthrow the state. A case study of this is the Dreyfus Affair. In 1894 French Alsatian captain Alfred Dreyfus, a man of Jewish descent, was convicted on flimsy grounds of treason - someone had been selling secrets to Germany and he got the blame. He seemed the perfect scapegoat - he was Alsatian, which had been annexed by Germany in 1871, and as he was Jewish he was seen as a subversive. Dreyfus was sent to prison on Devil's Island in French Guyana where he would spend over five years alone. The Dreyfus Affair would drag on until Dreyfus was finally acquitted in 1904, but in doing so it split France in two and caused an outpouring of antisemitism. Dreyfus's family had kept up the campaign to exonerate their relative, and another court case in 1896 revealed found conclusive evidence that Major Ferdinand Esterhauzy was to blame, but the military command swept it under the rug. In 1898 famous French writer and thinker Emile Zola published J'accuse...! condemning the military and bringing the Affair to public attention. France was split between the pro-military, pro-Catholic, and conservative Anti-Dreyfusards and the secular, pro-republic Dreyfusards; antisemitism became commonplace in France as a result. Following Zola's publication antisemitic riots broke out in 20 cities, causing deaths in Algiers, and new papers emerged riling up hatred against Jews. One notable one was by noted anti-Dreyfusard Edouard Drumont and his paper La Libre Parole. Drumont's Jewish France (1886) sold 150,000 copies in its first year alone. In 1904 Dreyfus was finally freed but as he was so long in isolation he struggled to speak. The Dreyfus Affair had showed how quickly antisemitism could spread in society - for this reason one of Zionism's modern 'founders', Theordor Herzl, started arguing that Jews would never be welcome in Europe so had to have their own state. 

Sara Baartman - A Case Study in Race, Science, and Sex
Sara Baartman on display in the Museum of Man
I want to briefly focus on the case of Sara Baartman, sometimes you might see her referred to as Saartjie Baartman, and I would recommend reading my friend's post about her. Of Khoisan descent, born around 1789, Baartman was enslaved from her home in what is now South Africa and sold to British surgeon Alexander Dunlop. Baartman had a condition named steatopygia which caused her buttocks to become enlarged, for this reason Dunlop had her put on display in 'freak shows' and advertised her as the 'Hottentot Venus' (after the famous Venus statuettes). She was subjected to horrific and degrading public performances for jeering crowds in London before being sold to a Parisian animal showcaser in 1814. In Paris she was forced to pose, often semi-naked with animals including rhinos. Naturalist Georges Cuvier started 'studying' Baartman producing naked illustrations of her, and when she tragically died her body was put on display in the Museum of Man until 1973. It took until 2003, even then after seven years of demands, for Baartman's body to be returned to South Africa. Baartman's objectification shows the combination of race, science, and sex during the colonial era. The only parts of Baartman's body to be preserved was her skeleton, her brain, and her genitals. As argued by Edward Said, the Other became the Other because those with power could make it an Other, it could be objectified and commodified for European imagination. Her treatment in life was exemplary of this - forced into freak shows and human zoos Baartman, and other colonised peoples, were compared to animals to be studied. Khoisan were argued to be one of the most 'inferior races' and closest to animals according to racial scientists - gorillas were believed to reproduce Khoisan women. Obsession with phrenology meant that Baartman's brain was preserved; it could be used in pseudo-science to prove that Khoisan were closer to apes than humans, so their subjugation was justified. Unfortunately, Sara Baartman was not the only person to be subjected to this. Freak shows were common across Europe and America displaying so-called 'freaks' for a paying public, one of the most famous ones being the freak show in P.T. Barnum's circus, and human zoos regularly displayed colonised cultures in Britain, France, Germany, and even Japan. One of the last Tasmanians, Trugianini, asked to be cremated so her body could not be examined - instead in 1878 her skeleton was put on display.
An advert for Baartman in London
A key part in racism is the sexualisation of ethnic minorities. Edward Said has discussed how European art regularly depicted the Islamic world as being hedonistic where orgies took place in every harem. Colonial empires regularly saw sexualised racial violence against women - concubinage was encouraged in Dutch Indonesia until the early-twentieth century, and Japan extensively used Korean and Chinese women (as well as some Japanese women) as 'comfort women' during the Second World War. Baartman's sexualisation is part of this, as argued by Anne McClintock colonialism was tied with a 'long tradition of male travel as an erotics of ravishment'. Sexuality and sex were tied with race, the Khoisan were regularly subjected to demeaning searches and questions about their genitals, and Cuvier was determined to examine Baartman's labia. She refused, but he eagerly examined her genitals when she died, and a plaster cast of her half-naked body, with her buttocks exposed, was put on display in the Museum of Man. In a voyeuristic way Cuvier only decided that Khoisan were the same species as Europeans when he examined her labia.

Empire and Capitalism
An advert for 'Monkey Brand' soap
Racism was integral to empire, as we saw when we discussed colonialism. Empires throughout history have used racism as a way to structure society - the colonisers, whether they be Roman or French or Japanese, would impose their own identity and culture onto the colonised. In the European, American, and Japanese Empires an idea of superiority - in both culture and race - were used to justify colonialism. Japan's conquest of Korea, Taiwan, and northern China was justified in social Darwinistic terms; if Japan did not secure East Asia Europe or America would and that would endanger Asian civilisation. A perception that colonised peoples were inferior linked to empire, colonialism had to happen in order to 'protect' the colonised. This is shown in Rudyard Kipling's poem, The White Man's Burden (1899) about the US conquest of the Philippines containing the lines, 

'Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.'

Colonial empires regularly imposed racial hierarchies arguing that certain 'races' were naturally superior to others, this would lead to disaster when empire fell. German, and later Belgian, colonisers in Rwanda declared that the Tutsi and Hutu were separate races - some historians, like Martin Meredith, have argued that the Hutu-Tutsi distinction may have originally been a class one - and that the Tutsi were predisposed to rule. The stoking of animosity between Hutu and Tutsi would spill over into ethnic cleansing following independence and genocide in 1994. In the words of Gayatri Spivak, empire justified itself as 'white men saving brown women from brown men' - men of colour were regularly portrayed as sexual predators enslaving their women. This was often used to justify intervention in private lives of the colonised, and also to control the bodies of women. Diana Jeater has discussed how in Nigeria British authorities worked with local chiefs to limit the movement of single women. Interracial relations were viewed with suspicion. 'Black Perils' in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia broke out in the 1920s and 1930s based on an unfounded fear that black African men would rape white women. In New Guinea the White Women's Protection Ordinance of 1926 imposed the death penalty for rape or attempted rape of a white woman by a non-white man, however, the law did not apply to the rape of non-white women by white men or men of colour. Women were seen as the point of 'racial degeneration' showing the intersection of sexism and racism. Racial depictions of colonised peoples were regularly imported to Europe. For example, black Africans were often depicted as being ape-like which were often applied to the Irish in the 1890s, and the British working-class were compared to apes in a similar light.

This brings us to the commodification of racism. Anne McClintock has written an interesting book, Imperial Leather, about how soap was used to sell imperial racism. A good example is Pears' Soap which depicted their soap as bringing cleanliness and civilisation to Africa. McClintock identified four main fetishes appearing in soap adverts: the soap itself, white clothing, mirrors, and monkeys. In the 1880s 'Monkey Brand' soap depicted working-class children - coded to create a link with Africa - being half-child, half-monkey using the soap and becoming a white child. The depiction of Africa of dirty and undomesticated was used to legitimise violent enforcement of European culture and commodity capitalism. In 1899 McClure's Magazine during the Anglo-Boer War ran an advert stating that 'The first step towards lightening THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness. PEARS' SOAP is a potent factor in brightening the dark corners of the earth as civilisation advances'. Timothy Burke has further discussed how Lux soap and Lifebuoy in what is now Zimbabwe advertised itself as being modern and hygienic to Africans, directly implying that European hygienic practices were superior to that of Africa. In 1873 Florence Kate Upton created the golliwog, a racist caricature of a black man featuring exaggerated hair, smiles and in minstrel attire, was adopted in advertisements to sell racism. Golliwogs appeared on a wide range of products ranging from children's dolls to jam to sell a non-threatening racial stereotype to a white consumer. Of course, white supremacy was explicitly sold. D.W. Griffiths's The Birth of a Nation (1915) glamorised the Ku Klux Klan (and led to the rise of the second KKK); postcards were sold of lynched African-Americans in the 1920s; and as late as the 1960s British pubs tried to attract patrons by displaying signs reading 'No dogs, no blacks, no Irish'. During the aforementioned Dreyfus Affair papers used antisemitism to appeal to the anti-Dreyfusard crowd. Today racism sells - white beauty standards sells plastic surgery and skin-lightening products reinforcing centuries old racism.

Conclusion
The impact of scientific racism touches society today. The legacies of eugenics, racist advertising, and segregation continues to impact communities. It took the horrors of the Holocaust for racial science to be discredited, and even then it continues to impact communities. In 1994 Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve used pseudo-science and outright false information to try and argue that there were intellectual differences between 'races'. Nineteenth and early-twentieth century racism shapes how people of colour are perceived today: depictions of black men as aggressive continue as people argue that more communities experience more crime as they are more violent; beauty commercials feature light-skinned models; Brazilian clinics offer more money for white sperm donations compared to non-white donations; and in 2015 ninety percent of Roma in Britain reported facing racial abuse. Authorities have reported that antisemitic speech is on the rise worldwide based off of Twitter and Facebook posts; and we have seen several racially motivated mass shootings in 2019 alone, including the Christchurch mosque shooting, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and the recent El Paso shooting. We have only touched a small fraction of racism's impact today. As my focus is on Europe, Latin America, and Africa we have not looked at how racism manifests itself in Australasia and Asia which adds another layer of complexity. We have also not discussed institutional racism which pervades societies worldwide. It is a true tragedy that racism is so pervading in history that we have only scraped the surface today.

The sources I have used are as follows:
-Ann Stoler, 'Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures', American Ethnologist, 16:4, (1989), 634-660
-Timothy Burke, '"Sunlight Soap has Changed my Life": Hygiene, Commodification, and the Body in Colonial Zimbabwe', in Hildi Hendrickson, (ed.), Clothing and Difference, (Durham, NC: 2012), 189-212
-Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, (London: 1995)
-Diana Jeater, 'The British Empire and African Women in the Twentieth Century', in Philip Morgan and Sean Hawkins, (eds.), Black Experience and the Empire: The Oxford History of the British Empire, (Oxford: 2004)
-Justin Parkinson, 'The Significance of Sarah Baartman', BBC News Magazinehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35240987, (7 January 2016), [Accessed 08/08/2019]
-Sadiah, Qureshi, 'Displaying Sara Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus"', History of Science, 42:2 (2004), 233-257
-George Combe, A System of Phrenology, (London: 1830)
-Edward Said, Orientalism, (London: 1978)
-Neil MacMaster, Racism in Europe: 1870–2000, (London: 2001)
-Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown, Racism, Second Edition, (New York, NY: 2003)
-Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, (Baltimore, MD: 1996)
-Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, (Cambridge: 2008)
-Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, (eds.), The Origins of Racism in the West, (Cambridge: 2009)
-'Social Darwinism', In Our Time, BBC, (20/02/2014)
-'The Dreyfus Affair', In Our Time, BBC, (08/10/2009)
-Carissa Chew, 'Science, Race, and Empire: The Case of Sara Baartman (c.1789-1815)', Carissa Chewhttps://carissachew.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/sara-baartman/, [Accessed 05/08/2019]
-Carissa Chew, 'Science, Race, and Empire: The Search for the “Missing Link”', Carissa Chewhttps://carissachew.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/science-race-and-empire-the-search-for-the-missing-link/, [Accessed 05/08/2019]

Thank you for reading. I would highly recommend reading Carissa's website here, she is one of the best writers I know so check her work out. For other World History posts we have a list here here, and next time we will look at the origins of modern nationalism. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Sunday 4 August 2019

The Fall of Apartheid - A Brief Overview

Nelson and Winnie Mandela when Nelson was released from prison
Originally published in the Spring/Summer 2018 of Retrospect Journal, 'Justice and Persecution'. This version contains slight edits to expand on certain points.

By the late-1960s Apartheid seemed to be consolidated in South Africa. Following the Rivonia Trial from 1962 to 1964 leading anti-Apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada, had been sentenced to lifelong imprisonment; leading anti-Apartheid groups like the African National Congress (ANC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), and South African Communist Party (SACP) were made illegal; and the economy was seemingly booming. In 1970 the Apartheid regime felt so confident that they passed the Homelands Act granting ‘independence’ to larger tribes in order to allow the state to strip urban black Africans of their citizenship. Apartheid had become official state policy after the 1948 electoral victory of D.F. Malan’s National Party amplifying the segregationist and racist laws dating from the end of the nineteenth century. In 1994 formal Apartheid came to an end with Nelson Mandela’s electoral victory in South Africa’s first multiracial elections. After such a success in the 1960s and 1970s Apartheid came crashing down but the main question is why? Christopher Saunders has argued that economic decline, domestic grassroots opposition, and foreign hostility helped end Apartheid.
A SASO protest
     Writing in the 1970s an Afrikaner critic of Apartheid said ‘Opposing Apartheid is worse than murder to some Afrikaners…You endanger the nation by refusing to conform’ but this is when the seeds of Apartheid’s collapse began. Despite throttling the free press and banning anti-Apartheid organisations resistance to Apartheid remained. Banned groups continued underground and the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), continued its armed resistance. Meanwhile, new grassroots organisations rose to fill the vacuum left by the ANC and PAC, such as the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), under charismatic figures like Steve Biko and Winnie Mandela. Even the extrajudicial killing of Biko in 1977 did not stem the growing resistance. Guerrilla activity also increased in South West Africa, (modern Namibia), under the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) which wanted independence from South Africa. Terence Moll has also presented evidence showing that the economic growth of the 1960s was more mediocre than initially thought so the world recession of the 1970s dented the economy. Furthermore, technological change in factories started requiring semi-skilled permanent workers instead of menial labourers which threatened the segregated system set up by the Nationalists.
One of the few photos of Mandela on Robben Island
     Meanwhile, the international situation in the 1970s had started to turn against South Africa. The Apartheid regime was intensely anti-communist and used the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act to silence the PAC, ANC, and Freedom Charter – Mandela even reported that in prison he could not read Little Red Riding Hood due to ‘red’ being in the title. As a result South Africa had garnered much support from the US and UK. South Africa was also surrounded by the ‘White Dominoes’ – according to Martin Meredith – that were the Portuguese colonies and the white minority state of Rhodesia. All this started to change in the 1970s. As early as 1959 the Anti-Apartheid Movement had been active in the UK and after the Rivonia Trial the ANC under Oliver Tambo had been garnering support from both the West and East. From 1977 MK guerrillas began a sabotage campaign after exile in Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho while the UN put an arms embargo on South Africa. At the same time white rule in southern Africa was starting to collapse. Since the 1960s Portugal had been waging war against leftist guerrillas wanting independence for Angola and Mozambique, and after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 independence came the following year. While this was happening a guerrilla war against white rule in Rhodesia fired up in the 1970s led by black African nationalists including Robert Mugabe. Throughout this period South Africa had been sending military and economic aid, as well as soldiers, to white minority states, or anti-communist groups in post-colonial states, to ensure neighbours existed who would not aid anti-Apartheid activists.

     In 1978 P.W. Botha became prime minister; he was an ardent white supremacist but he was pragmatic. He said ‘We are moving in a changing world. We must adapt otherwise we shall die’. Botha planned to grant limited reform to undermine opposition; use the police to break opposition; and increase intervention in Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia. Botha viewed the 1979 OPEC oil embargo, the ANC, and the black guerrilla movements as being organised by the USSR in order to achieve global dominance. He was adamant to preserve white rule by any means necessary. His limited reforms and emphasis on the homelands were seen by anti-Apartheid activists as a clear attempt to preserve white rule; in 1983 his ‘trimeral constitution’ granting Indian and ‘coloured’ (mixed race) citizens their own chambers in parliament was boycotted. Opponents of Apartheid saw through the policy, it was fairly clear that by granting some form of emancipation to Indians and mixed-race communities it would stop them from trying to help tackle Apartheid. Meanwhile, the right-wing of the Nationalists was angered by Botha’s limited reforms and broke off in 1982 to form the Conservative Party.
Police using dogs on protesters who opposed an Apartheid politician being given 'freedom of the city' to Soweto, primarily a black African city, in 1980 
     South Africa’s economic situation began to collapse, affecting poor urban black Africans the most. Embargos on South African gold, diamonds, wine and other goods dented exports as imports of oil and arms dried up. Even when leaders supported South Africa, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the populace did not and took it on themselves to avoid buying any South African goods not affected by sanctions. Tambo had turned Mandela into a figure to focus foreign anti-Apartheid activism on: The Specials releasing ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ being a particularly notable example of this. Rigorous policing and military spending decimated money reserves. Botha recruited vigilantes called kitskonstabel to harass activists or even attack squatter camps like in Cape Town in the May and June of 1986. Nigel Worden has even argued that Botha supported the Inkatha Freedom Party – a right-wing Zulu nationalist group – due to their opposition to the ANC and support for the homelands. Meanwhile, millions had been spent propping up Rhodesia and funding more compliant African nationalists in Angola and Mozambique. By 1985 20 percent of the budget was spent on military expenditure. In 1988 the military faced a crushing defeat at the hands of an expeditionary force made of Cuban volunteers and a Marxist Angolan group at Cuito Cuanavale which helped bring an end to the Angolan Civil War.

     Domestically opposition to Apartheid rapidly grew at a grassroots level. The ANC saw a resurgence with the party’s flag being draped over the coffins of activists and Mandela – as well as other imprisoned activists – gaining an almost mythic status. With a new generation a new wave of activism grew to prominence including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) being two notable examples. Inspired by the Freedom Charter they wanted: an end to Apartheid; a multiracial democracy; and black advancement. A new wave of boycotts and protests against the Apartheid state attracting millions of supporters started seriously damaging the state economically and politically. While this was happening MK continued their armed campaign. Desperate, Botha in 1985 asked Mandela to renounce armed conflict in return for freedom – he refused in a speech read out by his daughter at a UDF rally. However, negotiations between Botha, Mandela, and other activists began in secret which brings us to the final chapter in Apartheid’s fall.
The AWB high command
     Following a stroke Botha resigned in 1989 and, to his surprise, his chosen successor, Barend du Plessis, lost to the far less hard-line F.W. de Klerk. De Klerk was eager to bring stability to South Africa so in February 1990 he lifted the ban on the ANC, PAC, and SACP to be followed a few weeks later by the release of political prisoners – including Mandela. Such was Mandela’s popularity that in his autobiography he stated that in the car from prison crowds of both white and black Africans crowded eagerly to see him. Mandela had a natural charisma to him and could, as argued by William Beinart, appear as a ‘communal patriarch, working-class hero, and liberal democrat’. He even started to put less emphasis on socialism and more on human rights to avoid frightening the white middle-class. However, Mandela’s release did not end Apartheid. For four years bitter struggles between de Klerk, Mandela and others began about the future. The 1989 election had allowed the Conservative Party to replace the moderate Democratic Party as the opposition and racist white opposition started to grow. The overtly fascist Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging (AWB) – a party which even adopted Nazi imagery – began attacks on government buildings and activists. Meanwhile, in Pietermaritsburg clashes between the ANC and Inkatha (with possible government support) killed 14,000 from 1991-1994. After the assassination of MK leader and SACP activist Chris Hani by two white supremacists – one a Polish anti-communist, the other an English-speaking Conservative MP – the country became horrified. With South Africa tired of violence the end was nigh.
Mandela voting in South Africa's first true democratic election
     Starting on 26 April 1994 South Africa’s first election based on universal suffrage took place; in some areas people queued for four days they were so eager to finally vote. Mandela swept the board with 62 percent of the vote becoming South Africa’s president. Legally, equality had come, but in reality equality was still far over the horizon, and in 2019 still seems to be. Mandela hoped to bring economic equality for black Africans, and to reconcile the formerly separated communities. He only succeeded in reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee under Desmond Tutu began addressing the abuses committed by both state and anti-state activists, and Mandela publicly embraced the South African rugby team to bring black and white South Africans together. The Apartheid government had created a veneer of wealth tricking the ANC into believing that they had a large treasury to implement their social reforms. Instead they faced an empty treasury so an irate Mandela could not fully implement his reforms. His successors made this worse through corruption or outright ineptitude - while Mandela was slow to tackle AIDS thanks to a lack of money, his successor Thabo Mbeki chose to ignore it. The Reconciliation Committee faced intense controversy. White South Africans saw it as an attack, while anti-Apartheid activists found it insulting that their abuses were being treated the same as that of the state. If you voluntarily came before the committee you were exempt from prosecution, so several key figures in the Apartheid state avoided prosecution due to this. Steve Biko's murderers managed to avoid jailtime to domestic outrage thanks to this. These issues continue to persist to this day - black South Africans remain subject to police brutality, poverty and segregation. The forty years of Apartheid are certainly felt to this day.

The sources I have used are as follows:
-William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa, Second Edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
-Saul Dubow, Apartheid: 1948-1994, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
-Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, (London: Abacus, 1994)
-Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence, (London: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)
-Terence Moll, ‘Did the Apartheid Economy “Fail”?’, Journal of South African Studies, 17, (1991), 271-291
-Christopher Saunders, ‘Perspective on the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa’, South African Historical Journal, 51:1, (2004), 159-166
-Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)  

Thank you for reading. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.