Rhodes and Lee

[steepholm]

Last year I spent some time on Facebook arguing with people who thought that the "Rhodes must fall" campaign was wrongheaded because it was erasing history.

I suggested that putting a statue up to someone was generally (and in this case undoubtedly) not intended as a dispassionate recording of the fact that such-and-such had occurred, but rather a celebration of that person's life and deeds. In this case, the statue of Rhodes marks the approbation of the Oxford college he had endowed with some of his very ill-gotten African spoils.

True, came the reply, but that approbation is itself a historical artefact, and to take down the statue is to erase it. Well then, why not put it in a museum, along with the other historical artefacts, and stick a label on it detailing exactly how Rhodes came by the money to endow colleges and scholarships? Why keep it in a place of honour, thus perpetuating the honour done to Rhodes?

Of course, taking down a statue can never be more than a symbolic act, any more than raising it, or indeed keeping it. Symbolism is the currency of statues. To try and pretend that they are naturally evolve into some kind of historical resource is profoundly disingenuous. (In the case of Rhodes, I don't think anyone tried to argue that the statue was a thing of beauty, but aesthetic arguments fall into much the same category.) Museums and art galleries are themselves far from politics-free zones, obviously, but at least they make some overt attempt to defuse and reframe such things as historical and/or aesthetic objects rather than direct political statements.

In the end, Rhodes stayed of course, because Rhodes's successors (the college's current donors) threatened to withdraw funding if it was removed. ("Now I see, I see, / In Fulvia's death, how mine received shall be," as they put it.) As ever, money shouts.

Anyway, I was just wondering to myself how the people I was arguing with on FB last year (nice liberal types, every one) feel about Trump making exactly the same arguments this week? Were they nodding along? If not, why not?

As a tangential postscript, I gave my friend Haruka a lift to Brighton yesterday (I was helping my daughter move some of her things back to Bristol), and we stopped in at my mother's for a cup of tea en route. Haruka took this picture of my mother. It was only after five minutes that I noticed that it also includes her care assistant, Haawa. Talk about hidden black history!



Can you spot her, readers?

Comments

[cmcmck]

As a historian I am very uncomfortable with the erasure of history and a certain liberal intellectual pretence that certain things didn't happen. Would the college return the money, I wonder and who would they return it to?

The post Soviet world got very busy taking down statues.

I lived for years with a huge equestrian one of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, whom I utterly loathe as a historic figure, but that statue is part of me and part of the town where he sits on 'is 'orse wiv 'is 'at on 'is 'ead, looking totally morally superior.

[steepholm]

Obviously I too am uncomfortable with the erasure of history, and pretending things didn't happen. I don't think that taking down a statue need be either of those things. As I said, put it in a museum, write about it in books, teach it in schools, make TV documentaries, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. We shouldn't have to rely on statues as teaching aids. More importantly, though, keeping Rhodes in a place of honour means continuing to honour him. (Kitchener maybe deserves his statue though, because he did invent a very useful knitting stitch.)

As for the money, I didn't call for that to be repatriated in my post, but in fact I don't think it would be very difficult to find ways to spend money to benefit people in the parts of Africa that Rhodes plundered, and who are living with his (other) legacy.

The clever men at Oxford
Know all there is to be knowed
But they don't know how the compensate
The victims of Cecil Rhodes.

If that's the only reason they're not doing it, I'd be happy to pass on the names of several excellent charities. (But it's not.)

[cmcmck]

Yeah, Kitchener as keen knitter (as he was) is not quite what you expect of the man, is it?

[ethelmay]

Did he actually knit himself? I thought he just promoted that particular sock pattern (with the Kitchener stitch finishing) because it was less irritating to the soldiers' toes.

[calimac]

Although I was aware, from far away, of a controversy over Cecil's image, the simple statement "Rhodes must fall" out of context made me think of something from Classical history, like "Carthage must be destroyed."

What the US equivalent has taught me is that the iconicity of statutes is way overrated. Still, we still have those famous scholarships named for Rhodes, and is anyone planning on doing anything about that?

[steepholm]

Yes, "Rhodes must fall" does have that ring to it, doesn't it? I don't know where the phrase came from, though. Nor do I know about the scholarships - though at least they are open to people from southern Africa, which is something (not much).

[lamentables]

I'n very much with you and Alex von Tunzelmann on the statues issue.

Looking at your mother's face, I can really see the family resemblance. And I would not have spotted Haawa in the picture, had you not mentioned her.

[steepholm]

Thank you for the link!

[redbird]

My alma mater just renamed one of its residential colleges, to honor Admiral Grace Hopper instead of the pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun. People who were affiliated with it pre-2016 have the option of identifying with the college by either name. Hopper stands out obviously as the only woman they've named one after, and not quite as obviously as the most recent by several decades, which makes sense because the other names were chosen in the 1930s. There was of course quite a bit of argument, but I noticed that it was all "tradition" and "we shouldn't deny history," but they didn't exactly try to teach us who Calhoun: what I had at the time was the factoid "first man to resign as vice president," and I didn't get that from Yale, I got it from coming to political awareness around the time Spiro Agnew became the second.

Thinking about the list of namesakes for Yale colleges, it's mostly people and places few people outside the university has heard of: Timothy Dwight and Ezra Stiles were presidents of Yale, and Saybrook and Branford are towns in Connecticut. The famous end is Samuel Morse, Jonathan Edwards, and Bishop Berkeley. From a historical angle, it's not so much "these people deserve honor" or "were important to the university" as, maybe, "here are bits of the university's history." From that angle, the nonexistent plaque ought to say "on this spot, Yale University chose to honor the legacy of slavery from the 1930s until 2016." Others might say things like "this college is named in honor of a classical scholar who was president of Yale" and "a Christian preacher who was part of the Great Awakening." (If you still have no idea what I'm referring to, that's pre-Revolution American cultural/religious history.)

[steepholm]

Well, I have to admit I hadn't heard of most of those. I'm interested to learn of Berkeley's Yale connection, though! My mother, a native of Wrexham, always told me that Yale was founded by someone from that town - but I have no idea whether she was right, and somehow I don't want to clip an angel's wings by googling it.

[redbird]

I don't think there was a direct connection, but that he had talked about founding schools in the Americas. IIRC, there is or was one in Bermuda, and a connection to UC Berkeley.

What I remember about the founding of Yale is that it was started (I think in Saybrook, Conn.) as the Collegiate School, then named for Elihu Yale after he gave them a small library's worth of books. (There may have been a cash donation as well.)

[thistleingrey]

Yes, UC Berkeley's campus tours (led by undergrads) still say that the blue in Cal blue/gold is deliberately a few shades off from Yale blue. Haven't overheard any of the tour guides give both pronunciations of the name, though; I learned of it from a professor who's a linguist, though the class I took from her there, years ago, was not formally in linguistics.

[steepholm]

Okay, I succumbed and googled anyway. The connection seems to be Elihu Yale, who lived out his days in the town. Naturally, he was another slave trader...

The inscription on his tomb in Wrexham is interestingly equivocal:

Born in America, in Europe bred
In Africa travell'd and in Asia wed
Where long he liv'd and thriv'd; In London dead
Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all's even
And that his soul thro' mercy's gone to Heaven

[colorwheel]

people here wanting to keep the confederate statues are being patently and eye-rollingly disingenuous when they claim the reason is "history." there could be statues of enslaved people / anti-slavery freedom fighters just as easily, from the same time period of history. if the latter would be considered slanted history -- having a point of view -- so must the former. why not have a statue whose point of view is not morally reprehensible?

(that was rhetorical. we know why. it's all active white supremacy happening here.)

[steepholm]

Exactly so.

[cmcmck]

There's a lovely irony in the fact that 'Stonewall' Jackson's descendants are of mixed race and they'd like the statues of their ancestor to stay, please. :o)

[tree_and_leaf]

Some of his descendants evidently disagree (as do descendants of Lee and Davis).

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/us/robert-e-lees-grandson-comments-on-statue-removal/index.html

[cmcmck]

Interesting- and Lee was by no means one of the worst- it's easily forgotten that Lincoln wanted him at the head of Union forces, but he went with his own state.

Just shows the divisive nature or civil war I guess.

We had ours two hundred years earlier and it still divides opinion.

When they put up the statue to Cromwell outside parliament all hell broke loose and it created some very strange bedfellows indeed!

[tree_and_leaf]

I am aware that Lincoln tried to hire him, but I don't think that tells you much other than that Lincoln was keen to have a good general on his team (and no-one is disputing Lee's military prowess).

He certainly seems to have been less egregiously awful than Davies or the repellent Stephens, but there is good evidence that the idea that he was a particularly considerate slave-owner is a myth (though it does seem to have been true of Jackson, who does seem to have been sincerely concerned about the welfare of his slaves and of the free blacks in Lexington, even if his views on the permissibility of slavery are regrettable, and this might play into the attitudes of some of his descendants).

[rushthatspeaks]

Yeah, if it has any actual historical or aesthetic merit put it in a museum, and if not just get rid of it, because a statue is an honor and an honor should be warranted. If they want to put up a sign saying 'this college founded by Cecil Rhodes who did the following list of terrible things and this short list of things we still kind of like, and here is what we are doing to fight his hideous legacy', sure, I can see an argument for that. But a statue says that we do not just remember, we respect and admire, so no.

In news that pleases me, a plaque in Arizona commemorating Confederate President Jefferson Davis was literally tarred and feathered the other day. Now that's public art!

[steepholm]

That is rather pleasing!

[cyphomandra]

I'll just leave this here.

[steepholm]

Thank you! That's brilliant.

[gillo]

Goodness, such a family resemblance!

[steepholm]

I would know her again if we met on a tram. :)

[ethelmay]

Now I'm trying to remember where I first heard the expression "I'd have known you down a coal mine," or something to that effect.