As noted earlier, my "consequential" book for this week:
The Victorians, A. N.
Wilson, c. 2003. The heft and feel of the book is awesome. I love the
feel of the paper, and love the pitch and font. This should be a fun
book; it is a continuation of my "China phase."
I've now read the first three chapters, and have skimmed through most of the rest of the book. It is not an easy read for me. It probably is not an easy read for the average American. It is extremely heavy on politics everywhere, and statistics in places. I don't care for politics in general, and I definitely don't care for British politics. But in defense, the author has it exactly correct -- one cannot discuss/analyze/report any "modern" human "activity" without understanding the politics. But the book is quite unreadable for the most part -- unless one is really, really concentrating.
But, wow, where it is readable, it is incredible. This is the kind of book I would like on my book shelf if I had book shelf room for any more books. This is an incredibly good reference book.
I am quite perplexed why the author completely avoided any mention of the opium wars. Hong Kong is mentioned once, p. 124, in passing.
An extraordinary expansion of British imperialism had marked the first decade of Victoria's reign. Hong Kong in the Far East -- 1843, Labuan in Indonesia -- 1846, Natal -- 1843, Orange River in South Africa -- 1848, Gambia on the West Coast of Africa -- 1843. In 1842 the British fought the first of their disastrous Afghan wars, temporarily annexing that unconquerable country. Even the Russians in the twentieth century, or the Americans in the twenty-first, did not experience quite so cruelly the brutal indomitability of the Afghan guerrilla.
Then this, page 197: two things to emerge from the Crimean War, completely unpredictable -- the importance of photography, and a change in the Western world's smoking habits.
Data points from the Crimean War and smoking as told by A. N. Wilson:
- Robert Peacock Gloag, a Scotsman, was in the Crimean during this period; Wilson does not know why
- while he was there, Gloag saw Turks and Russians smoking cigarettes; "in them he found an idea and an ideal. From the war a purposeful man emerged." --
- the first Gloag cigarettes on sale in London were cylinders of straw-coloured paper into which a cane tip was inserted and the tobacco filled in through a funnel
- the Russians called these little scorchers, papirosi (reminds me of paparazzi, also little scorchers)
- then a list of early cigarette-makers that followed
- "Moscows" -- had a piece of wool in the end to act as a filter
- "Tom Thumbs" -- penny lines to be smoked to the bitter end
- "Don Alfonso" -- bundles of 25 for 1 shilling
- "the Whiff" -- introduced in 1871; the profits paid for the church of St Stephen, Peckham
- Gloag had introduced a narcotic that was so addictive that social attitudes were forced to change in order to accommodate the cigarette compulsion
- previously, smoking was considered a "low" activity; greatly restricted where folks could smoke
- by 1860, smoking was allowed in railway carriages
- the real smoking revolution happened in the generation after Gloag's when the Bristol tobacco firm of W.D. and H.O. Wills pioneered the first Bonsack cigarette-making machine
- the Bonsack cigarette-making machine was bought from America in 1883, the invention of James A. Bonsack of Salem, VA
- the Bonsack: could manufacture 200 cigarettes per minute
- between 1860 and 1900, consumption of cigarettes grew about 5% per annum
- the firms that followed Willis:
- Lambert and Butler (London)
- John Player and Sons (Nottingham)
- Hignett Bros and Cope Bros (those are two firms, Liverpool)
- the Liverpool firms competed for the franchise to display and sell cheap cigarettes in the Railway Refreshment Rooms
- 1880s: a price war let to the "penny cigarettes
- Wild Woodbine, 1888, founded: became the most famous cheap smoke in the Western world, forever associated with the men fighting in the trenches 25 years later
- smoking soared
- the working classed were hooked; the true opium of the people
- Gloag's legacy of the cigarette habit could be said to be the most lasting and notable consequence of the Crimean War
- and then this, a typical A. N. Wilson observation:
- When the Turkish, Russian and British empires are now as obsolete as the Bonapartist dynasty, the British working class, 146 years after the treaty of Paris, are still addicts of what Gloag brought home -- though in other classes the custom, like its adherents, is dying.
Maybe later, time to talk about photography and the Crimean War.
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Notes to the Granddaughters
In 1988, or thereabouts, as the clinic commander of the RAF Mildenhall clinic, I was involved in caring for some Afghan guerillas, casualties of the Soviet-Afghan war. That war lasted nine years, from December, 1979, to February, 1989.
I have a great photograph of some of those injured guerillas. When I saw those "soldiers," I knew there was no way the Russians could win that war. I had the same "feeling" when the US Army and special forces entered Afghanistan.
[Later: I found the photo. Movement of these guerrillas was only to occur after dark but there was
an unexpected daylight landing this date en route to the US. Somehow the photos
got past the censors.]
Note: indomitability = untameable.
I will add this list to the word list for Arianna.
