The Edwardians: Age of Elegance Exhibit

The Edwardian era was always my favourite to read and write about. Health care services improved, mortality declined, literacy spread widely, women’s rights were debated, New Zealand & Australia women were enfran-chised, trade unionism increased and the arts and sports were now widely available. Canada federated progressively, while Australian & South African states unified.

Royal portraits and coronation cloaks

Visit London

So I was keen to see what The Edwardians: Age of Elegance Exhibition in 2025 in King’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace focused on. The exhibition went back into late Victorian era to examine the patronage of Albert Prince of Wales/King Edward VII & wife Alexandra of Denmark. The couple married in 1863, soon after Queen Victoria was widowed and withdrew from public life. Thus the young royals were leading taste-makers in society, well before 1901.

Winterhalter portraits of Edward and Alexandra, 1864

the year after their wedding.

jennifereremeeva

Queen Victoria’s son reigned on her death but unlike his very elderly mother, he died too soon 1910. Edward’s son King George V & wife Mary of Teck reigned from 1910-36, but the Edwardian Era will be labelled thus until the Golden Age ended with WW1 carnage. Thank you to Visit London & jennifereremeeva.

Court pageantry was seen in fine art eg Danish Laurits Tuxen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace 1897-9 and Family of Queen Victoria at her 1887 golden jubilee. The theme then focussed on the lavish court world. Note the opulent coronation robes of George & Mary and jewels.

Edward and Alexandra were patrons of leading artists: HE owned works by popular Victorian artist Frederic Leighton, while SHE collected art by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne Jones. Alexandra also supported Minton’s Pottery Studio in 1870s, patronising women artists. And Alexandra, like many upper-class Victorian women, was a keen photographer.

Laurits Tuxen, Family of Queen Victoria, 

1887, Historian About Town

Global royal patronage was regular. Alexandra’s Danish heritage was seen in Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Co. art, including a huge porcelain cabinet with an ornamental roof. And objects were also collected on visits and in diplomatic exchange with the colonies: India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Africa. In the late C19th, better travel networks made the world closer, so the royal family travelled further and more often. These visits played an important role in Britain’s imperial identity eg in 1875-6 Edward toured India, producing an array of diplomatic gifts.

In 1871 Waverley Ball commemorated the 100th anniversary of Romantic author Sir Walter Scott and raised funds for the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh. Guests were dressed in costumes inspired by Scott’s Waverley literature. Edward went as Lord of Isles, titular character of an old poem, while Alexandra went as Mary Queen of Scots in the novel The Abbot. Emperor Pedro II of Brazil also attended

Edward and Alexandra hosted a Fancy Ball at Marlborough House in 1874. Actors, artists, aristocrats, musicians, politicians and bankers, called The Marlborough House Set, were invited. Named after their Pall Mall home, they were arbiters of fashion and taste, embracing new movements eg Art Nouveau & Arts and Crafts. Artist Godefroy Durand made a watercolour of the event, which showed Edward in fancy dress as Charles I, with Alexandra in Venetian costume.

A great party was the Devonshire House ball to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee 1897. 700+ invitations went out and James Lafayette photographed the guests. Edward was dressed as a Knight of Malta and Alexandra went as the C16th French queen Marguerite de Valois. Daughters Victoria and Maud, together with Maud’s husband, Prince Charles of Denmark, wore the costumes of her courtiers. And an early royal garden parties was at Buckingham Palace in 1897, marking Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, quickly becoming part of the royal calendar. While keeping strict dress codes, the Prince & Princess of Wales surrounded themselves with fashionable society figures.

A group of artists were portraying members of the set. Philip de László was renowned for his glamorous and natural portraits. In one painting of Princess Andrew of Greece-Denmark/Alice of Battenberg, George V’s cousin, he depicted the Princess in an elegant pose. A highlight of C20th royal portraiture was a striking painting of Queen Alexandra by François Flameng in 1908. In her mid-60s, she was presented as a fashion leader, promoting Cartier choker-necklaces. The best-known society portraitist of the era was by John Singer Sargent who painted Edward’s brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught & wife Duchess Louise 1908. And depicted folds of the Duchess’ dark silk and chiffon sleeves.

The social season also included sporting events eg horse racing during Royal Ascot week in June. The royal stables produced some important racehorses in the 1890s, including the famed Persimmon who won the Epsom Derby and the Ascot Gold Cup. And note the yacht racing at Cowes Isle of Wight. A small seal, enamelled in royal racing colours, marked 1896 when Britannia won 14 yacht races! And the exhibition revealed the royals’ loved dogs!

Fans and jewels

King's Gallery

Visit London

Edward and Alexandra watched theatre goers, actors and musicians in their social set. A bronze inkwell self-portrait by actress Sarah Bernhardt was in Edward’s Marlborough House study. Alexandra was a skilled pianist and Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West of 1910 was dedicated to her.

For the royal family, and everyone, the age of glamour abruptly ended in WW1. By then Edward’s son, King George V, was on the throne. Both George and his wife Queen Mary visited the battlefields of Northern Europe to meet troops and boost morale, the first time a monarch had visited a warzone in over a century. The art collected by the royal family in this wartime period reflected a solemn purpose. George V collected military relics and images of the Western Front, including the bleak landscapes by photographer Olive Edis, Britain’s first female war photographer. She recorded the devastation caused by bombing and artillery to the buildings of France and Belgium

The monarchy which emerged after WW1 ended in late 1918 displayed a strong sense of duty. See Frank Salisbury's image of the first ceremony at the Whitehall Cenotaph Nov 1920, where King George V led the nation in collective mourning.

international gifts to the royals

todaytix

Tang treasures from Silk Road capital, Xi'an

Buddhist statues, gilded bronze, 700s, 

Changwu County Museum. 

In my first post on the Silk Route in China, I concentrated on the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (c1260-1368). This was when Mongolian leader Kublai Khan gained the title Great Khan, by embracing Ch­inese culture and rebuild­ing Peking as his winter capital. The Silk Road Saga was the exhibition held at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2013.  The Art Gallery of NSW had already had two exhib­itions from the Shaanxi Province: The Terracotta Warriors and Horses in 1983 and The First Emperor: China’s Entombed Warriors in 2010-11”.

Hidden treasures from Beijing’s Palace Museum in the Forbidden City didn’t come to Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria until 2015. The exhib­ition called A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor 1736–1795  told the story of China’s most succ­ess­ful, long living ruler and fore­most art collector, 4th emp­eror of the Qing Dyn­asty (1644–1911). This exhibition provided works from the Palace Mus­eum’s art collection, built on the imperial collection of the Ming dynasty.

Then in 2016 the Art Gallery of New South Wales focused on an earlier Chinese empire that needed closer analysis. While much of Europe was still in the Dark Ages and London was just a market town of a few thousand people, the Tang Empire (618-907) was the most powerful realm in the world. The empire stretched from today’s Korea in the north, Vietnam in the south and far into Central Asia.

At the heart of Tang was its ancient capital, Chang’an/now Xi’an. Lo­cated at one end of the famous Silk Trade Route, this teeming cosmopolitan metropolis was noted for its great wealth, sophistication and cultural diversity; an advanced and outward-looking society that showed great tolerance of outsiders. It was home to 1 million people inside its intact and impressive walls, which tourists can still walk.

 Earthenware camel & rider, 742. 

Excavated from Li Xian's tomb. Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology 

Gilded basket, silver, c850, from Famen Monastery, 

Famen Temple Museum. 

“Tang: Treasures from the Silk Road Capital”  was a NSW exhibition that explored life in Chang’an during the Tang Empire. Each artefact carried a story from this extraordinary city; from the freedom and power of women to inn­ov­ations in fashion and music, from the elevation of tea culture to an art form, to religious tolerance and the rise and fall of Buddhism. The booming artisanship in gold, silver and ceramics; to great innov­ations in Chinese fashion and music.

The works on display in the Tang Treasures demonstrated exceptional crafts­manship and storytelling power, including a C9th tea grinder that bel­onged to Emp­eror Xizong; an early C8th mural from the walls inside Prince Jiemin’s tomb; and a Hayagriva statue from the site of the Anguo Monastery, an important late Tang dynasty Buddhist centre.

Archaeological findings of sculptures and murals were unearthed from a Tang-era tomb in Xi’an. This exhibition showcased 135 spect­acular objects from the Chinese province of Shaanxi, which demonstrated the high artistic achievements of the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Part of the 12 zodiac animals. earthenware. 

Tang era tomb Xi'an. 

The best Tang epic "Xi You Ji, Journey to the West" traced the pil­grimage of the C7th monk Xuanzang along the Silk Road’s many arms from China to India, in search of Buddhist script­ures. Xuanzang lived at the peak of the Tang Dynasty, setting off on his epic advent­ures from Chang’an. He dodged bandits while crossing the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan and Pak­istan, survived the deserts of Central Asia and sailed down the Ganges into India.

Xuanzang was passionate for learning, ret­urning home only after 17 years of adventure, to be feted by scholars, kings and emperors. And he brought 1335 volumes of sutras to Chang’an's royal courts. Xuan­­zang was des­cribed as the soul of Chinese nationality - a towering bronze statue of the monk was placed on the city’s main ancient road. With his traveller’s staff in hand, the tiers of the Great Wild Goose Pagoda rose up behind the statue. Here the monk conducted his translations, which were then stored in the same pagoda, a building that remains from the Tang dynasty.

Dragon, 700s gilded bronze & iron, Caochangpo Xian, Shaanxi History Mus 

All photos from Alaintruong Archives

Back then, Chang’an was China’s only cosmopolitan met­rop­olis, having nearly a million people and being ruled by emperors who were the sons of heaven. The city’s layout was dominated by the Palace City and the Imperial City, a skyline of palaces, pagodas, temples, mar­kets and monasteries, encircled by city walls and great city gates.

Chang’an’s wealth came from its strategic location on the great medieval trade route, Silk Road. Not only did the roads bring silk and other exotica, but it was also traversed by ideas, cultures and religions, including Bud­dhism. The legacy included gilded bronze dragons, mirrors inlaid with mother-of-pearl and turquoise, earthen-ware sets of China's zodiac (12 animals), ornate baskets wrought from silver and the faces of the Buddha, rendered in marble and stone.

But while many buildings were destroyed and the caves declined into fragility, precious objects of gold, silver, ceramic, glass and elaborate mural paintings were carefully preserved and guarded. These objects of great cultural significance were displayed at the NSW Exhibit­ion which showed how the Golden Age continued; the legend of the scholar and his celestial companions lived on. 

Famen Temple, famous for storing the veritable Finger Bone of the Sakyamuni Buddha, is in Shaanxi Province, east of Xi'an. The gilded basket above (c850) was brought to Australia from the Famen Temple Museum. As was a basin with mandarin ducks and floral medallion design (800).

Australia's national hat, the akubra.

Australian Army hat, wool felt 

Rising sun badge and puggaree 

Everything Australian

The origin of the slouch hat began with the Victorian Mounted Rifles in 1885. The Victorian hat was an ordinary bush felt hat turned up on the right side so it would not be caught during the drill movement of shoulder arms. By 1890, State military commandants had agreed that all Australian forces should wear a looped-up hat of uniform pattern turned up on the right side in Victoria and Tasmania, and on the left in other States, depending on drill movements. The slouch hat became standardised headdress in 1903, a famous symbol of Australian soldiers in WW1 and WW2. Now, as we will see, it is a national symbol.

Soldiers parade on Anzac Day

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Slouch hats worn by Armoured Corps men were adorned with emu plumes. This tradition originated with the Queensland Mounted Infantry during the great shearers’ strike in 1891 when the Infantry came to aid the civil power. The soldier rode his horse alongside emus, plucked a breast feather, and placed it on the hats. The Gympie Squadron was the first to wear feathers and the rest of the regiment soon followed. The Queensland government permitted the Regiment to adopt the plume as part of its uniform, in thanks for service. In 1915, Minister for Defence granted all Australian Light Horse units permission to wear the plume.

When killed at Gallipoli, Commander General of Australia’s Imperial Force was found wearing his slouch hat reversed. From then, when the hat was worn at Royal Military College Duntroon, it became usual to wear the chinstrap buckle on the right side and the brim down. Plus wearing the brim down provided additional protection from the sun.

The puggaree originated from the Hindu pagri i.e a thin scarf of muslin. Intended for insulation, the puggaree was a traditional Indian head-wrap, adapted by the British and worn in hot regions. In WW1, a plain khaki cloth band was added and this practice continued until in 1930, new puggarees were issued to Commonwealth Military Force with different coloured folds, denoting Arm or Service. The puggaree has 8 pleats, with 7 representing each state and 1 for the Australian Territories. Made from light khaki cotton it is worn on the slouch hat with a unit colour patch on the right side. Troops who were on active service in the Middle East wore a folded puggaree as a mark of active service.

The word Akubra was ?derived from an Aboriginal word for head covering. Wide-brimmed, fur-felt Akubra hats are a traditional part of outdoor clothing in the Australian bush, protecting wearers from sun and rain. They are still worn by stockmen, hunters, graziers, farmers and horsemen, the rural community accounting for 70% of sales. It was closely associated with Australian identity.

Australian cattle men on horses

Austockphoto

Akubra has been producing high-quality hats since 1874. Founded by Benjamin Dunkerley the company started in Hobart where they created new pieces of machinery for hat making. Workers on the factory floor use traditional felting methods that were available then. But in 1904 they were joined by Stephen Keir who brought his great experience. After Dunkerley died in 1918, ownership of the company shifted to Keir I. Since then the Akubra brand passed down the generations of his family in Kempsey (North Coast NSW).

Hat sales declined in the Depression so the 200+ staff took a 10% pay cut to avoid redundancies. The business re-grew with staff numbers peaking in the 1940s, thanks to ongoing military contracts. When Stephen Keir retired in 1952, production was at a record high. He was succeeded as Managing Director by eldest son, Herbert. 2nd son, Stephen Keir II, became Managing Director 20 years later.

Olympics and films

Australian team, 1988

Opening ceremony Seoul Olympics

In 1956, Akubra supplied the Panama straw hats worn by the Australian team at the Melbourne Olympics. By the 1960s consumer production was made of 60% city hats, but when the price of wool rose, the company focused on fur felt hats instead. The purpose-built factory in Kempsey was built in 1972, establishing Akubra as the region’s major employer. In 1982 The Man From Snowy River released and the hat inspired by the film became a staple in the range. It was estimated that 21+ mill hats were made by then. Stephen Keir III became Managing Director in 1980. Son Graham joined in 1972, later as National Sales Manager.

  

Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee 1986 made the Akubra even more sexy.  

The film remains the top-earning Australian film at the box office. 

Everything Australian

In 1988, Kempsey became The Akubra Home but variations were introduced. The Aussie Gold hat was made for the Australians at LA Games 1984. Greg Norman signed on with Akubra in 1987 and the Great White Shark hat went into production. The Aussie team wore Akubra hats at the Seoul Olympics and another Olympic version for Barcelona Olympics. The Spirit of Australia style arrived for 2000 Sydney Olympics. Another great example of the quality workmanship was found in the Banjo Paterson Akubra, named for the famous Australian poet.

Stephen Keir III retired as Managing Director in Dec 2007, allowing the 4th generation, Stephen Keir IV, to become Managing Director. In 2010, after working with the company for 56+ years, Stephen Keir III stepped down as Chairman of the Board and Stephen Keir IV became Chairman of the Board of Directors. In May 2012 Stephen Keir III died, survived by his wife and former Director Wendy, daughters Stacey and Nikki (both directors of Akubra Hats), son and Chairman of the Board of Directors Stephen Maitland Keir IV.

Jan 26th is Australia Day, the day the nation celebrates the founding of the first British colony in Sydney in 1788. By 2015 Akubra has produced 2 mill hats, still proudly made in Kempsey NSW, and still worn in Australian parades. Thank you to Akubra Story for dates and family names.

Helen in an akubra and spouse

introductory photo in Art and Architecture, mainly

Jaipur, India's pink World Heritage City

Construction on India’s mag­nificent Amber Fort began in 1592 by Mahar­aja Man Singh, a commander in the army of the Mughal emperor Akbar. It was built so the Mughal ruler could spread his power to cover the king­doms of Udaipur and Jodh­pur. So when Mah­ar­aja Bishan Singh (1672-99) later took the throne, he was the first ruler of Amer to take over with­out any status in the Mughal nobility. Bishan didn’t care since his lineage was traced back to the Rajput clan who came to power in the C12th. In any case, the Jaipur kings had always preferred diplomacy over arms in dealing with the Mughals, since their kingdom was located too close to the Mughal power cen­tres of Delhi and Agra.

Furthermore Bishan knew that his son Jai Singh would reach great­ness if the lad was well educat­ed, trained by the best Indian sch­ol­ars in art, science, phil­osophy and mil­it­ary aff­airs. Note that Maharaja Jai Singh II (1688-1744) was a young lad when he came to power, after his very young father Bishan died in 1699.

Jaigarh Fort 

In time Jai Singh became a great leader and Jaipur city got its name from the new Maharaja. When Jai Singh was 15, Jaipur City st­arted to acquire architectural wonders. Jaigarh Fort was designed and per­fectly created in 1726, its huge structure being a true reflect­ion of a glorious royal era. Naturally the fort was adorned in royal beauty, adding to the city’s rich culture. The red sand­stone was already start­ing to be a predominant material used in Rajput and Mughal forts. 

The might of the Mughal Empire was then at its peak. So Jai Singh II formed a tough front against the Mughals by al­igning with other Raj­put states. Peace reigned, the kingdom prosp­ered and its borders expanded. It housed some of the country's most ornate royal palac­es, structures designed in early C18th that still impress today.

However city expansion tested the limited water sources, and credit for Jaipur’s growth success went to the chief arch­itect from Ben­g­al. With Jai Singh’s ap­proval, they grew the city on strong scient­ific princ­ip­les, laid out according to the Shastra-ancient archit­ectural manual. Con­ceiv­ed as a com­mercial centre of Rajasthan State, it was ground-breaking due its care­ful city planning.

After Jai Singh’s death in 1744, his sons struggled for power. Without a monarch, the kingdom was open to invasion; neigh­bouring Rajput states and the Marathas tried to grab large areas of the kingdom. So Jaipur remained sur­rounded by a city wall and def­ensive forts. The city's influential sites continued in a Rajasthani arch­it­ect­ural style, combining the com­plex con­struct­ion of Hindu Rajput building techniques with the visible symm­etry of Mughal design.   

Hawa Mahal

Later one red sandstone palace became very popular: historic Hawa Ma­hal in 1799 as an extension of City Pal­ace by the then King of Jaipur, Mahar­a­ja Sawai Singh; see the building’s straight facade and hund­reds of win­dows.

 

City Palace

Like the Mughals, Jai­pur maintained good relations with the Bri­t­ish and in the 1857 War of Independence, remained loyal to the Raj. Yet the British gradual­ly undermined the independ­ence of the state and exercised great­er control over its admin­is­tration. So when Prince Albert was soon to make his first visit to India in 1875, the Mah­araja thought it was a great oppor­t­­unity to decorate Jai­pur as a wel­­coming gesture to im­pr­ess Queen Vic­tor­ia's husband Prince Albert in India. The maharaja really want­ed the Pr­ince to visit Jaipur, to build strong rel­at­­ions with the U.K. The Mahar­aja Sawai Ram Singh II’s favourite wife loved the old pink co­lour sch­eme and convinced her husband to pass a law making it il­le­gal for buildings to be painted any other colour than Jai­p­ur Pink. This 1877 law helped transform the dirty city into a totally lovely city. And still so remains today.

Colonial rule helped this Maharaja of Jaipur (reigned 1835-80) who was one of the richest and most pow­er­ful men in India, an Indian man who im­pressed the British court like no other. This Maharaja had the whole city painted pink ter­r­acotta, the colour of hosp­it­al­ity. And he also had the lav­ish Albert Concert Hall built in 1876, designed by Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob after London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and named in Prince Albert’s honour. It stood in the lovely Ram Niwas Pub­lic gardens. During Prince Albert’s long 17 weeks visit in 1876, they conducted royal duties across the Indian sub-continent, plenty of Indian rulers gave Albert expensive gifts to show their hos­pit­ality. Only when Albert visit­ed Jaipur and saw its gorg­eous pink sites, he called it Pink City and the nickname remained.

 Albert Hall

Jaipur City grew rapidly! Maharaja Ram Singh (ruled 1835-1880) built Ramgarh lake to further supply water to the big city, when the city’s population was spreading beyond its walls. In 1922 Jaipur’s Maharaja Man Singh II (reigned 1922-47) ascended the throne and built civic buildings like schools, secretariat, hospitals etc. After ind­ependence, Jaipur merged with the states of Jodhpur and Jaisalmer to become the greater Rajasthan union. Man Singh II was given charge of the new province but in 1956, Jaipur became the capital of the state of Rajasthan.

Jaipur became a World Heritage site when UNESCO Director General Aud­rey Azoulay, in Albert Hall Jaipur in 2020, presented the do­c­umentation to Min­ister of Urban Development. From forts to pal­aces, streets to festiv­als, Jaip­ur’s charm in all its shades of pink still provide mesm­erising heritage and architecture. Its population is now over 3 million people.   

Mahal Water Palace

Map of Jaipur in India

ontheworldmap

ethnic exile & genocide of European Roma

Alexander Watson wrote that in 1418, Zurich’s wealthy burghers were startled by the sudden appearance of foreigners camping outside the city's walls. The new arrivals were, according to a later chronicler, strange and never before seen there. Although their clothes were ragged, they paid for their own food and wore much gold jewell­ery. People be­liev­ed them to be exiles from Egypt. Over the decades, tales of these exotic travellers came from cities as far apart as Barcelona (1447) and Vil­nius (1501). These accounts recorded the arrival of the Roma people, and the beginnings of their troubled 600-year history in Europe. 

Gypsy Family 1930s

living in a mobile van

Credit: Historical Association.

 

The Bogdal* volume was about Eur­opean prejudice against Roma. This ap­p­roach was necessary bec­ause the Roma, largely as a nomadic people with an oral culture, left few traces for historians. From very ear­ly on, myth and prejudice saturated these accounts. The Roma's image was defamed first by med­ieval chroniclers and rul­ers' decrees, and later by C18th anth­rop­ologists, C19th ethnographers and early C20th criminologists and ruthless racial pseudo-scientists.

The newcomers were swathed in mystery. Nobody, not even the Roma, knew from whence they came. Their dark skin led some to assume that they were Tatars, or Afr­ican. The derog­atory English term gypsies derived from the early rum­our that they were Egyptians, condemned by God to wander.

By 1800, anthropologists found the Roma language was related to San­s­krit, making In­d­ia the likely origin. Roma mis­fortune was to reach Europe as it embarked upon a tumult­uous path to­ward mod­ern­ity. Their way of life was seen as back­ward and paras­it­ic, again­st the standard with which real Europeans measured their own progress and civil­isation.

Bogdal drew on literature from across Europe, to trace how exclusion and prejudice were perpetuated across six centuries. Even when port­rayed positively by early C19th Romant­ics Roma, in sharp contrast to Europe's other long persecuted minor­ity, were always regarded as pr­imitive. Bohemian artists' celebrat­ed Roma as nob­le savages, merely reinforcing deep-rooted, hostile trop­es of gypsies as wild, lazy, de­ceitful and sex­ually wicked. Once rac­ial pseudo-science appeared, Roma were seen as degener­­ate, infer­ior and congenitally criminal, especially half breeds. 

Roma after Bergen Belsen's liberation

credit: German Federal Archives.

This important book vividly exposed intellectual and soc­ietal trends in Europe that over centuries led to exclusion, deh­um­an­isation and ultimately genocide by the Nazis. It warned power­fully that how we portray people matters: the alien, threat­ening Gypsy figure was im­posed on a marginalised community with few oppor­tunit­ies to shape its own image. These malign stories persist against Romas today.

Many Romani families left Hungary and Romania in 1880s-90s, relocating to Germany because of the country’s prosperity. Unfort­un­ately among the German states, Bavaria proved the most zealous in its anti-Roma measures.

The Holocaust Museum reported Roma were among the groups that the Nazi regime (1933–45) and its allies singled out for pers­ec­ution be­fore and during WW2, because they believed Roma were rac­ially inferior. With German victory over Poland assured in 1939, Reinhard Hey­drich planned to deport 30,000 German and Aust­r­ian Roma. In fact German authorities DID deport Roma from the Gr­ea­t­er German Reich to occupied Poland. In May 1940, the SS and pol­ice deported c2,500 Roma from the Rhineland, western and NW Ger­m­any to the Lublin Dis­trict in the General Government. SS and pol­ice au­th­orities locked them into forced-labour camps, work­ing in often lethal conditions.

In 1941, German police authorities deported 5,007 Roma from Austria to Lodz Jewish ghetto Poland, housing them in a seg­reg­­at­ed bl­ock. Many Roma died from typhus in the first mon­ths after ar­r­iv­ing, and Nazi SS and police sent th­ose who survived these dread­ful cond­it­ions to Poland’s Chelmno Extermination Camp in 1942, in gas vans.

Local Germans hated the camps, demanding the expulsion of the Roma to safeguard real Germans’ pub­lic morals, public health and sec­ur­ity. Local pol­ice used these com­­pl­ain­ts to appeal to SS chief Hein­rich Himmler for the re­sumption of dep­ortations of Roma to the east. In Dec 1942, Him­m­ler ordered the deportation of all Roma from the Greater Reich.

c23,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz. SS medical res­earchers as­signed to the Auschwitz complex eg SS Dr Josef Mengele was auth­or­ised to select subjects for scientific medical ex­­­perim­ents from among the prisoners. Mengele chose twins and dwar­ves as sub­j­ects of his experiments. 90% of the Roma sent to Auschwitz died there.

The SS also shot c30,000 Roma in the Baltic States and elsewhere in the German-occupied Soviet Union, where Einsatzgruppen and mob­ile killing units killed Roma, whenever the SS killed Jews and Russ­ians. The same in Ser­bia. Five other nations joined the Axis during WW2: Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia. Rom­ania, an Axis partner, did not syst­ematically ann­ihilate the Roma popul­at­ion living on Romanian terr­itory. Instead the Rom­an­ian military depor­t­ed them to S.W Ukraine, under Romanian administrat­ion. The author­it­­ies of Croatia, another Axis partner of Germ­any and run by the mil­­itant separatist and terrorist Ustasa, an­n­ih­ilated virtually the entire Roma population there: c25,000 people.

The Romas’ fate closely paralleled that of the Jews, although Roma pre-WW2 populations were not precisely known; perhaps 1.25 mill­ion. Note also that many Europ­ean Roma communities were totally destroy­ed, survivors suff­er­ing from psychological and physical tr­aumas of deprivation, abuse and dest­ruction of family. Thus it was almost impossible to recon­st­ruct Roma cultural networks post-war.

In 1982 Chancellor Helmut Schmidt formally acknowledged that German Roma had been victims of genocide. However Romanis, one of the largest ethnic minorities in the EU, still face limited access to quality education and to the labour market, leading to further poverty and social exclusion, poor healthcare and hate-motivated harassment.     

 Ceremonial inauguration of the Roma Memorial

in Berlin opposite the Reichstag, 2012

Credit: Central Council 

Bulldozers destroy makeshift Roma camp near Lyon, 2013.

Credit: Daily Sabah

Read Klaus-Michael Bogdal*, Europe and the Roma: A History of Fascination and Fear, 2023 

Mourning for Nepal's university students, massacred near Gaza

After the end of Year 12 in high school, I was too young to enter un­iversity so I looked for a Gap Year programme that my parents would be happy with. The best was a youth leadership course in Is­rael, with six months of lectures and six months working on kib­butz. 

Agricultural university students from Nepal at Tel Aviv airport 2023.

Welcomed by the Israeli ambassador to Nepal

Global Voices

So what is the connection to Nepal? There are currently 4,500 Nepali nationals working as caregivers in Israel, and a total of 265 Nepali students studying in Israel under the 11-month Learn and Earn Programme funded by the Israeli government. Of them, 119 are from Agriculture and Forestry University, 97 from Trib­huvan Univ­er­sity and 49 from Sudur Paschim University in Western Nepal, all of them bachelor-level students of agriculture.

I’d not heard of a gap year programme for agricultural univ­ersity stud­ents in Israel, but it made perfect sense. Israel has been a world lead­er in agricultural research and practice since WW1 ended. So it will not surprise us that 17 students from Sudur Pas­chim Un­iversity were working in Kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel, enthus­iastically gaining training they may not have had available at home.

But then Hamas let loose thousands of killing machines in Southern Israel on Saturday, and sent dozens of killers into settlements near the Gaza Strip. Hamas killed citizens and visitors by rockets, chopping off heads, taking young people as hostages into Gaza, and shooting others in the back.

Out of the 17 Nepali teens and early 20s in the kibbutz, 10 were massac­red by Hamas, four were injured and sadly one is still missing. Only two, who are still under police protection, were left uninjured. Nepal's ambas­s­ador in Jerusalem had to inform the devastated parents of the massacre and report it to the Government.

The embassy had to try to identify the students’ body parts located af­ter the massacre. The bodies will taken back to Nepal soon after ident­ification is completed and returned to their parents for funerals and memorials. A coordination meeting formed under the lead­ership of Foreign Minister N.P Saud is operating at his Ministry to identify all Nepalese nationals in Israel and to make efforts for rescue these nat­ion­als if they choose to. Foreign Minster Saud reported it was collab­or­ating with the Israeli government and the emb­assy in Tel Aviv to find planes go fly home, the Kathmandu Post newspaper reported.   

Nepal sends plane to evacuate citizens from war-hit Israel

Kathmandu Post

The minister said Foreign Affairs has directed the Nepali Embassy in Israel to locate all Nepalis, inform them of the situation and urge them to follow safety instructions and rules issued by the Israeli govern­ment. In the meantime, the Is­raeli government is providing all medical and surgical care required by the injured Nepalese citizens at a local hospital. This is espec­ially urgent since death and injured tolls in Israel WILL rise as a large number of people have been badly wounded. The Nepalese embassy is coordinating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on how the dead bodies can be repatriated after examination, Nepal’s amb­as­s­ador in Israel told the Post. Meantime the parents in Nepal, 5000 ks away, are mourning their young sons and daughters in silence. I am a mother but I cannot even imagine their pain.

The Nepalese are rightly devastated. Various political parties in Nepal have asked the government to take diplomatic initiatives to rescue and repatriate Nepalis. Issuing a s­t­ate­ment, Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba urged the govern­ment to ascertain the exact number of Nepalis in Israel and ensure their safety. The Opposition Party urged friendly nations, international human rights organisations, Internat­ion­al Organisation for Migration and International Committee of the Red Cross, to support repat­riat­ing Nepalis working in Israel and still in danger of Hamas murders.

One day after the massacre, all Nepali university students in Israel were shifted to secured and secret locations. 

United Nations planning, success, failure

The League of Nations was an international organisation that st­arted in 1920 (until 1946), out of the WW1 crisis. Based in Geneva, the League vowed to promote inter-national cooperation and preserve glo­bal peace. The League won some success eg in 1926 Germany join­ed as a perm­anent of the League of Nations, a politically important move that recognised Germany’s power. However as the League lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the (reluctant) Great Powers to enforce its re­s­olutions, it failed totally to pre­v­ent WW2.

  

(from R-L) Stalin, Roosevelt and Church­ill 
met in the Teheran Conference, Dec 1943, 

Quora

In the meantime, the idea for creating a new international organis­at­ion ded­icated to maintaining peace emerged in 1941, but it took years of planning.

Much of Eur­ope had fallen to the Axis powers and the British capital had already suffered from 22 months of bombing. Yet in June 1941 the rep­resentatives of a] Great Britain, Canada, Aust­ral­ia, New Zealand and South Africa, and of b] the 9 exiled gov­ernments from Belgium, Czech­oslovakia, Greece, Norway, Neth­­er­lands and the Free French etc, met in London to sign the De­clar­ation of St James Palace. They pledged their solidarity in winning victory against the Axis powers!! But 1941, when the Axis pow­ers were winning, was a difficult time to achieve world peace surely!

In Aug Roosevelt and Churchill met at sea, issuing the joint Atlantic Charter (Aug 1941). They declared that after the final dest­ruction of Nazi tyranny, they hoped for a peace that would give all nations the means of dwelling in safety with their own boundaries, liv­ing in freedom from fear. Another clause required nations to abandon the use of force. And peoples had the right to choose their own government. The Atlantic Charter created a pro­found impression on the Allies and the occupied countries, even though the Charter had little legal val­idity. It was signed in Sept by the USSR and the 9 exiled govern­ments of occupied Europe.

Roosevelt, Churchill, Litvinov (USSR) and Soong (China) created a short document called the Declaration by United Nations (Jan 1942). Govern­ments that signed this de­claration pledged to accept the Charter and agreed not to negotiate a separate peace with Axis powers.

First working session
Judicial meeting in San Francisco, April 1945.
U.N Office of Legal Affairs

Great Britain, U.S, China and Soviet Union met in Moscow and signed the Moscow Declarat­ion in Oct 1943. The Declaration pledged joint internat­ional action in dealing with the enemies’ surrend­er. Two months later, Roosevelt, Stalin and Church­ill met in the Tehran Conference in Dec 1943, where they worked out the Allies final strategy for winning the war. It is hard to believe they thought that their discussions would win the war in 1943! 

Note the princ­iples underlying an inter­nat­ional organisation had already been specified in declarations since 1941. Now a blueprint had to be prepared, then accepted by the nat­ions. So repres­entatives of China, Great Brit­ain, USSR and U.S met at Dumb­arton Oaks in 1944 in Washington DC. By Oct 1944, a proposal for the new structure was sub­mitted to all the U.N govern­ments for discussion, including the 5 principal bodies that would make up the U.N organisation.

Member states gave armed forces to the Se­c­urity Coun­cil, if needed, to suppress agg­ress­ion. The ab­sence of such forces had been a fatal weak­ness in the old League of Nat­ions!

The voting procedure in the Security Council was urgently addressed at Yal­ta in the Crimea in 1944 where Chur­chill, Roosevelt and Stalin, to­gether with their foreign ministers, again met in 1945.

44 nations were invited to the San Francisco Conference in 1945: nations that had declared war on Ger­many & Japan and had signed the UN Declaration. Then 6 more countries were invited. Thus delegates from 50 nations gath­ered, representing 80+% of the world's population. Writing the charter took two months (Ap-Jun 1945) then every part of it had to be voted on, and accepted by a 2/3 maj­ority.

Delegates met in San Francisco Opera House for the last session in Jun 1945 where the Chairman announced the Charter had been passed unanimously. Cheering dele­g­ates filed to a huge round table on which lay the two historic vol­umes, the Char­t­er and the Statute of the International Court of Justice, alongside the 50 nations’ flags.

In many countries the Charter had to be approved by their parliaments. Thus the Charter would come into force ONLY when the Governments of China, France, Great Britain, Soviet Union and U.S, AND a majority of the other signatory states, had ratified it.

In Oct 1945, this condition was fulfilled and the U.N came into ex­is­t­ence after 4 years of planning. The U.N was given six main bodies: General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council (estab­lished 1946), Trust­eeship Council and Secretariat are based at UN Head­quart­ers in New York. The 6th, International Court of Justice, is loc­at­ed at The Hague. The U.N does not have an army and imposes no taxes. It depends on the pol­itical will of its Members to have its decis­ions activated.

When the U.N was founded in 1945, c750 million people, a third of the world's population, lived in terr­it­ories that were dependent on colonial powers. Today under 2 million people live under colonial rule in the 17 remaining non-self-governing terr­it­ories. The wave of decolonisation was born with the UN and repres­ented the world body’s first great success. As a result, many countries became independent and joined the UN. And others still will. Sofar there are 193 UN member states. 

Delighted dele­g­ates filed to a huge, round table to sign for the final time
San Francisco, June 1945,

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Success was never guaranteed by the U.N. One example will do. The rebellion by several Muslims groups in India-administered Kashmir, who wanted either a merger with Pakistan or independence, gained urgency after 1989. Even when UN peace keepers were placed there, c70,000 were still killed by security forces.

Thank you to Model United Nations for the dates, locations and participants of each conference.

The aristocratic daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India

George 1st Earl Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) lived at his great ancestral home Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. In 1886 he was elected MP for Southport, and later Under Secretary for India (1891-2) and Foreign Affairs (1895-8). Then he became Lord Curzon, Vice­roy of India (1898-1905), one of the grandest and most self-confident imperial servants Britain ever had. Meanwhile, in all his travels, Curzon collected artefacts which are now displayed in Kedleston’s Eastern Museum.

 

Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire

Daughters Irene (1896-1966), Cynthia (1898-1933) and Alexandra (1905-95) were all born before the sad death of his fabulously rich American wife Mary Leiter in 1906. Lord Curzon then embarked on a long love affair with novelist El­inor Glyn, before dropping her to marry his rich, beautiful second wife in 1917. 

Anne de Courcy provided insight into girls’ public and private liv­es, based on their private letters and diaries. For ex­ample on­ce their mother died, the girls grew up in the shad­ow of their lov­ing father who nevertheless left them to a child­hood of neglect and nannies. De Courcy’s book, The Viceroy's Daughters (2002), told the story of the Curzon girls who grew up into the last flow­ering of the privileged world of the British haute monde. Irene's deb party in 1914 included sup­per for hundreds, tons of exotic flowers and illustrious aristocracy.

As his daughters reached adulthood, Curzon proved autocratic and unreasonable, particularly on the subject of the money their mother had left her daughters in her will, which dad wanted to use to finance his urgent need for house renovation.

This led each of the girls into revolt against their father. In­tensely musical and a pass­ionate foxhunter, Irene set up a house­hold of her own at Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, which by the 1920s had become the hub of a glamorous hunting set whose second sport was late-night bed-hopping. So she was a keen hunter, bridge player, partygoer and drinker, and took a series of lovers that included pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Despite a series of proposals from ambitious suitors, including Nevile Hen­derson later the British ambassador to Hitler's Berlin, she remained single.

Cynthia married the ambitious Oswald Mosley in 1920, joining him in the Lab­our Party where she became a popular MP her­self. Cynthia was just 21 at marriage and she re­mained submissively loyal to him despite a] his constant woman­is­ing. And b] his alarming political opportun­ism, veering from young Conservative MP to Labour MP to founder of the British Union of Fascists. In the 1929 general election, Mrs Mosley won an amazing victory as a Lab­our candidate!! By 1932 Cynthia was enthusiastically ex­tolling the merits of Fascism. How bizarre! Was she so pathetically depend­ent on Mosley that she would have followed him anywhere? We’ll never know because she died in 1933, at 34, after appendicitis.

 

Cynthia Curzon married Oswald Mosley in 1920

Alexandra, the beautiful sister, married the Prince of Wales' friend Edward Fruity Metcalfe in 1925. By the time of Lord Curzon’s death in 1925, he had rebuffed his daughters, the most painful case being with Irene who was refused access to his deathbed. Yet in the 1920s and early 30s, the sisters remained at the centre of Brit­ain’s gli­tter­ing upper class.

In 1933 youngest sister Alexandra jumped into a long pas­s­ionate affair with her widower brother-law Mosley and a liais­on with Muss­ol­ini's amb­assador to London, Count Dino Grandi, while simultan­eously enjoying a romance with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax.

The sisters saw British Fascism from behind the scenes, so they had an intimate view the arrival of Wallis Simpson and the early mar­r­ied life of the Wind­sors. The war found them based at the Dor­ch­es­t­er Hotel, spending their days nursing wounded soldiers, work­ing in canteens, lecturing and doing other war work.

Both sisters became increasingly enmeshed in Mosley's world, Alex­andra as his mistress, Irene as the child minder; and they became enthus­iastic supporters of his politics. Irene organised a Fascist ball and went to the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg in 1936! And for a while, “Baba Blackshirt” worked as a go-between for Mosley and her other lover, Mussolini's amb­assador Dino Grandi.

Readers of this blog will know my harsh feelings about Oswald Mos­ley, Wallis Simpson, Edward Duke of Windsor, Nancy Astor and Lord Halifax. Anyone who doubts the awful links between them should read the story of the Duke of Windsor's 1937 trip to Germany.

As war threatened, the sisters retreated from the group. Alexandra's wartime admirers included Av­erill Harriman and Walter Monckton, the Bri­tish foreign sec­ret­ary Lord Halifax, with whom she began a pass­ion­ate relationship. Ir­ene, anxious about her alcoholism and her spinsterhood, began to be very annoyed with her younger sister, and vice versa. Gossipy yes, but irrit­ating during the real tragedies of WW2.

At the end of their fortunate and unfortunate lives, Irene and Alexandra somehow emerged as pillars of society. Irene made one of the first life peers in 1958 for her work with youth clubs, while Alexandra was recog­nised for her good work for the Save the Children Fund. 

Anne de Courcy's book, 2002.

De Courcy was a keen and experienced writer of upper-class Britain, and The Viceroy's Daughters was indeed a wond­er­fully revealing portrait of British upper-class life in the early C20th. And although I thought I knew everything about ar­istocratic Brit­ish Fascism, the Viceroy's Daughters provided new information about Os­wald Mosley, the Clived­en set, Lord Halifax, the Duke and Duch­ess of Windsor etc - new accounts of the bully­ing Cur­zon's career; of the actively nasty but mesmer­ising Mosley; and of the abdication of the unpleasant Edward VIII. The stories of these men frequently ov­ershadowed the slighter histories of the rich Curzon women.

Gin history, from medicine to community chaos to grand palaces

 The first reference to a spirit flavoured with jenever-juniper was in C13th Flemish manusc­ripts. Bols family distillery op­ened in Amst­erdam in 1575 and by the early 1600s, the Dutch were seriously pro­ducing gin in hundreds of distilleries in Amster­dam alone.

Gin Lane 1751,  by William Hogarth
Tate Britain

Like so many products, gin was originally produced as a medic­ine, distributed by Dutch chemists for the treatment of gout and dys­pep­sia. Consumed in large enough quantit­ies, it pro­b­ab­ly did help ame­l­­iorate the symptoms, albeit temporar­ily. Dutch physicians in the ear­ly 1600s created the drink, mix­ing jun­ip­er berry oil with a sp­ir­it to make medicine more pleasant for pat­ients. And with added botan­icals. In fact it was so palatable that “ill­ness­es” soared as the masses wanted the gin that was only available in pharm­acies.

The invention of the distillation column led to a significant shift in quality and the emergence of the new gin, London Dry style. The smoother taste of the distilled spirit allowed for the botan­ic­als’ aromas to dominate, so many companies developed a wider range of flavourings.

The Thirty Years’ War 1618-48 was significant. When British sol­d­iers were fighting alongside the Dutch, they saw that the Dut­ch­ sol­diers were extremely courageous. This bravery was attrib­uted to the calming effects of the jenever that they sip­ped from small bot­tles hanging from their belts/aka Dutch courage. English sold­iers­ returning home from the war spread the news and the Dutch soon be­gan to export it in their vast shipping fleet.

Distillation of gin in Britain start­ed when King Charles I formed the Worshipful Co. of Distillers in 1638. But traditional gin con­t­in­ued to travel across the Eng­lish Channel to Britain, partic­ularly with Prince William of Orange and his Dutch troops, as noted. When they took the British throne, William & Mary allowed the British to make and sell spir­its, providing they came from home-grown Eng­lish corn. King William eliminated taxation and licencing on local gin, whilst raising taxes on im­ported foreign spirits. Spirit pric­es dr­opped and heavier beer taxes increased the demand for gin; this helped raise the money needed for King William’s exhausting wars.

With water-borne diseas­es preval­ent in large Brit­ish cities, gin be­came the safe drink for the poor in the late C17th-early C18th. 7,000+ spirit shops sprung up around London and gin became the op­ium of common peop­le, and historians thought that by 1720 a quarter of London’s house­holds bottled their own gin! The Gin Craze era was so rem­ark­able that Parl­ia­ment had to pass 5 major legis­lative acts in 22 years, try­ing to limit the gin drinking.

Gin Lane 1751 by William Hogarth depicted soc­ial breakdown suppos­edly caused by gin. He showed the drinking craze of the mid-1700s led to ne­g­­lectful, drunk moth­ers who couldn’t even protect their own chil­­d­ren. Thus gin came to be called Mother’s Ruin! The brew­ing ind­ust­ry had asked Hogarth to illustrate that beer consumption was far healthier than drinking gin.

Largely successful, the Dutch Gin Act 1751 passed and the pas­s­ion for gin finally slowed down in the Netherlands. However in Bri­t­ain lots of fun was still to be had at the Frost Fairs on the fr­ozen River Thames; crowds would gather to find the stalls sell­ing hot gin and ginger­bread! Enterprising Londoners looked to make a quick profit from fairs.

As consumption rose, the British government tried to curb the gr­owing gin-passion by introducing a distil­ler’s licence for an unthinkable price: £50. Pieces of legisl­at­ion were introd­uced in the mid C18th, to legalise licensed retailers and out­law un­lic­en­sed gin shops. Amazingly it happened. Consumption drop­ped and more respectable firms took up distill­at­ion, producing better qu­ality products and joining high society. Yet the Gin Act of 1769 led to days of riots across London in protest; it had gone too far.

The Gin Palace, Dublin
built in the Victorian era, renovated since
designmynight

The Brit­ish Em­p­ire expanded into hot climates; mosquitos carried mal­aria, but the sol­diers and colon­is­ts had lit­tle immunity. As they took over the governance of India, British immigrants faced the rav­ages of malaria. But the British could only pro­t­ect them­sel­ves ag­ainst malaria once quinine was discovered in 1820, even if it tas­ted bitter. A local cure came from the bark of the fever tree which con­t­ained the bitter quinine. To make it more palatable, sugar, lime, ice and gin were added; the G&T was born, the dis­t­inct­ively British col­onial drink. Need­less to say when the troops arrived back in Brit­ain the practice came with them.

Another medical demand on gin occurred in the British Navy. It was believed that Angostura bitters relieved seasickness and as with tonic, the sailors agreed that bitters were a great accompan­iment to the gin. Luckily the navy looked after its officers who were paid a portion of their wage.. in gin. Plus it was found that bitters produc­ed a widely enjoyed pink gin.

In the late 1820s the first Gin Palaces were established for Brit­ain’s gentle­men. They had to be licensed and sell wine, but mostly their lavish bars were selling gin. They were based on the new fas­hionable shops being built then, expensively fitted out with long counters, luxurious furnishings, ornate mirrors, etched glass and gas lights.

After campaigns led by the Prohib­ition Party and the Women’s Chris­tian Temperance Union in U.S, the Volst­ead Act was pass­ed in 1919 banning alcohol consumption. Most cit­iz­ens were unhappy during the 13 years of Proh­ib­ition, so illegal bars mult­ip­l­ied. And gin cock­tails were developed, to disguise the taste of cheap gin. Smuggled al­cohol was insufficient to satisfy dem­and, so many got their own alcohol via moonshine and boot-legging. Bathtub Gin emerged in 1920 when desperate dist­il­lers went underground, using household tools to make cheap spirits.

Bols Distillery, Amsterdam

Artistic gin cocktails
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