Category Archives: International Relations

The Rubicon Is Crossed

Posted on by
2
Earl_of_Portsmouth_Vanity_Fair_21_August_1907

“The Demon”, Newton Wallop, 6th Earl of Portsmouth, caricature by Spy, Vanity Fair Magazine 21 August 1907

The Right Honourable Newton Wallop, 6th Earl of Portsmouth JP, DL (19 January 1856 – 4 December 1917), was a  Liberal politician, who had served as Under-Secretary of State for War under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman from 1905 to 1908.

Though he still visited London on occasion, these days he spent most of his time on his estate at Farleigh Wallop. And they would be celebrating ‘the Glorious Twelfth‘ with  a big shoot and house party. (Or at least, that had been the plan).

lh_hampshire_hurstbournepark_ii_fs

Hurstbourne Park II (burned down in 1965)

The new Hurstbourne Park  was a comfortable place to live. Its predecessor, which Jane Austen had often visited,  breathed Georgian elegance but was a cold and draughty place and he had shed few tears when it burned down on New Year’s Day 1891,  the year he succeeded to the earldom.

The capital and income which funded both the Earl’s building and his largesse came from his ownership of land. In 1873, his father owned 16,401 acres in Hampshire alone, with an income of £14,732. 1 And he was glad to say that he had managed to extend that further (and, in his opinion, manage it better) in his own lifetime.

1785 Portsmouth Estate Map of SMB lands - Copy - Copy

1785 Portsmouth Estate Map of SMB lands (Earl’s property thought to be preceded by ‘A’) Hampshire Record Office: 15M84/MP23/2

The Earl pulled himself out of his explanatory reverie. He felt an enormous weight of ‘noblesse oblige‘ on his shoulders. As one of the first people to hear the news of war (by telephone), he now felt responsible for all those who lived on his land, some of whom depended on its produce for their livelihood.

Why There is War

The following statement was issued from the Foreign Office last night: Owing to the summary rejection by the German Government of the request made by His Majesty’s Government for assurances that the neutrality of Belgium would be respected, His Majesty’s Ambassador in Berlin has received his passport, and His Majesty’s Government has declared to the German Government that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany as from 11pm on August 4.

And then he remembered: he did have someone with whom to share the burden: the vicar. Lord Portsmouth was grateful that he had always made it a practice, when feasible, of sending his carriage (and now his motor car) for the priest to lunch with him on the first Friday of the month. Unfortunately the vicar did not yet have a telephone (he must see to that), but could be expected to be somewhere in the parish on a Tuesday. The Reverend William Tovani would know what should be done. He was a St Andrew’s man (whereas, as a Balliol graduate, Lord Portsmouth was quietly conscious of his own ‘effortless superiority’) but none the worse for that. A good man to have on your side in a crisis.

The Earl suddenly realised that the vicar had two sons of an age to be called up – his friend was about to be plunged into a deeply worrying time for his own family, without all that he would have to bear as being responsible for ‘the cure of souls’ in Hurstbourne Priors and St Mary Bourne.

First of all, they should toll the church bells, that would be the right thing to do. That is what they had done on the outbreak of the Boer War, and again on the death of Queen Victoria. Would it really be all over by Christmas, as some were saying?

DSCF0013

St Peter’s Church, St Mary Bourne. MC.

St Andrews Parish Church, Hurstbourne Priors, Hampshire, UK.jpg"St Andrews Parish Church, Hurstbourne Priors, Hampshire, UK"
by Mike Cattell - Flickr:Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The church of St Andrew the Apostle is the oldest existing church 
in the Diocese of Winchester.

 

1. Return of Owners of Land 1873 for England and Wales. source: Archive CD Books Project. Lists every person in the county who owned 1 acre of land or more in Hampshire, with name, place, extent of land and its value. Ref 0213-30

2. The fact that Hurstbourne Park burned down on 1 January 1891 comes from Dr Joseph Stevens’ history of the village.

‘The Month That Changed The World: Monday 3 August 1914’ by Gordon Martel

Posted on by
Reply

9780199665389_450

Monday 3 August 1914 by Gordon Martel

At 7 a.m. Monday morning the reply of the Belgian government was handed to the German minister in Brussels. The German note had made ‘a deep and painful impression’ on the government. France had given them a formal declaration that it would not violate Belgian neutrality, and, if it were to do so, ‘the Belgian army would offer the most vigorous resistance to the invader’. Belgium had always been faithful to its international obligations and had left nothing undone ‘to maintain and enforce respect’ for its neutrality. The attack on Belgian independence which Germany was now threatening ‘constitutes a flagrant violation of international law’. No strategic interest could justify this. ‘The Belgian Government, if they were to accept the proposals submitted to them, would sacrifice the honour of the nation and betray at the same time their duties towards Europe.’

M_37_4_Charles_de_Brocqueville_9_VIII_14

Belgian Prime Minister Charles de Brocqueville. By Garitan CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

When the British cabinet reconvened later that morning at 11 a.m. there were now four ministers prepared to resign over the issue of British intervention. Their discussion lasted for three hours, at the end of which they agreed on the line to be taken by Sir Edward Grey when he addressed the House of Commons at 3 p.m. ‘The Cabinet was very moving. Most of us could hardly speak at all for emotion.’

Grey began his address to the House by explaining that the present crisis differed from that of Morocco in 1912. That had been a dispute which involved France primarily, to whom Britain had promised diplomatic support, and had done so publicly. The situation they faced now had originated as a dispute between Austria and Serbia – one in which France had become engaged because it was obligated by honour to do so as a result of its alliance with Russia. But this obligation did not apply to Britain. ‘We are not parties to the Franco-Russian Alliance. We do not even know the terms of that Alliance.’

…………………….

There was another, more immediate consideration: what should Britain do in the event of a violation of Belgian neutrality? He warned the House that if Belgium’s independence were to go, that of Holland would follow. And what…

‘If France is beaten in a struggle of life and death, beaten to her knees, loses her position as a great Power, becomes subordinate to the will and power of one greater than herself’? If Britain chose to stand aside and ‘run away from those obligations of honour and interest as regards the Belgian Treaty, I doubt whether, whatever material force we might have at the end, it would be of very much value…’

‘I do not believe for a moment, that at the end of this war, even if we stood aside and remained aside, we should be in a position, a material position, to use our force decisively to undo what had happened in the course of the war, to prevent the whole of the West of Europe opposite to us—if that had been the result of the war—falling under the domination of a single Power, and I am quite sure that our moral position would be such as to have lost us all respect.’

While Grey was speaking in the House the king and queen were driving along the Mall to Buckingham Palace in an open carriage, cheered by large crowds. In Berlin the Russian ambassador was being attacked by a mob wielding sticks, while the German chancellor was sending instructions to the ambassador in Paris to inform the French government that Germany considered itself to now be ‘in a state of war’ with France. At 6 p.m. the declaration was handed in at Paris:

‘The German administrative and military authorities have established a certain number of flagrantly hostile acts committed on German territory by French military aviators. Several of these have openly violated the neutrality of Belgium by flying over the territory of that country; one has attempted to destroy buildings near Wesel; others have been seen in the district of the Eifel, one has thrown bombs on the railway near Karlsruhe and Nuremberg.’

The French president welcomed the declaration. It came as a relief, Poincaré said, given that war was by this time inevitable.

‘It is a hundred times better that we were not led to declare war ourselves, even on account of repeated violations of our frontier…. If we had been forced to declare war ourselves, the Russian alliance would have become a subject of controversy in France, national [élan?] would have been broken, and Italy may have been forced by the provisions of the Triple Alliance to take sides against us.’

When the British cabinet met again briefly in the evening they had before them the text of the German ultimatum to Belgium and the Belgian reply to it. They agreed to insist that the German government withdraw the ultimatum. After the meeting Grey told the French ambassador that if Germany refused ‘it will be war’.

This piece is reblogged from the Oxford University Press history blog.

 

 

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series. His new book is The Month That Changed The World: July 1914.

– See more from OUP here:

From today, this bucolic blog of life in the English Edwardian countryside will inevitably be interspersed with accounts of international events and their effects on 1200 people in a small part of Southern England.

Tonight and tomorrow, in 2014, we are keeping vigil in our church and at our cenotaph to mark the outbreak of the war ‘tomorrow’. Sir Edward Grey said that the lights were going out all over Europe and would not be lit again in our lifetime; at the end of our vigil we shall be relighting our candles as a symbol of hope and renewal.

 

Distant Thunder in Sarajevo: Sunday 28 June 1914

Posted on by
4
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWI-Causes.jpg

‘Causes of WW1’ by Harris Morgan: Wikimedia

When beggars die there are no comets seen:
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Julius Caesar, Act II Scene ii.

On Sunday 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, a Serbian nationalist called Gavrilo Princip shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The clearest account is by Dan Snow here:

 

In the Brazilian rainforest, a butterfly stretched its wings and flew to its next perch.

ntv_hap_13_624x544

Harvest in Hampshire, by Henry H Parker

In a remote part of north-west Hampshire, the sun had barely set on one of the shortest nights of the year. The church clock had chimed the hours through the night as usual, but Bourne Farm‘s resident rooster ensured that no one at the north end of the village either was able to sleep in that morning, even though it was a Sunday. Eli Goodyear, fifty-seven years old, recalled with some satisfaction that his two sons and daughter now had the duty of  feeding the animals and it was no longer his responsibility to get up at dawn to milk the cows. The first task of his day would be to lead the family on their weekly walk to the service of Mattins at St Peter’s, led by the Revd William Tovani. Eli was the sixth generation of his family to work in farming in St Mary Bourne: he could trace back his lineage to William Goodyear who had been born in the village in 1690. And he hoped that his eldest son, George, would continue after him in his turn. It had been a busy week, with the first cut of hay to feed the animals over the winter. All nine of his surviving children had been called in to help, in addition to his usual farm hands, but there was still much to do. He would ask the vicar to pray for continuing fine weather next week to help him and his fellow farmers. But before that he needed to write to his older brother William who had moved into Andover some years earlier – he would just have time to catch the 10.45 Sunday postal collection.

IWM podcast: The Shot That Led To War

 

Austria-Hungary was to blame the Serbian government for the attack in the hope of using the incident as justification for settling the question of Slav nationalism once and for all. As Russia supported Serbia, Franz Josef would delay declaring war on Serbia until Austria-Hungary received assurances from Kaiser Wilhelm that Germany would support their cause should the Russians intervene, with the probable involvement of  Russia’s ally, France, and possibly Britain as well. On July 28, Austria-Hungary would declare war on Serbia, precipitating the collapse of  the tenuous peace amongst the great European powers. Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia were to line up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the war to end all wars, the first truly global war, would begin.

If this post feels like a series of unconnected events, that is probably how it felt to those living at the time as well. One of the effects of this global series of earth tremors is that it became increasingly difficult to live in a solipsistic bubble of one’s own immediate surroundings.

Although, with the benefit of hindsight, would-be international mediators and theorists have a tendency to feel that the war could have been averted, this is not the practical conclusion reached by those who have ever played the game ‘Diplomacy’ in which, no matter who the participants are or how they play, war usually ensues.

Further Discussion:

The debate on the origins of World War One

Beginning with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Dr Annika Mombauer explores the opposing debates about the origins of World War One. Is it possible for historians to arrive at a consensus?

The hundred-year debate

How could the death of one man, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated on 28 June 1914, lead to the deaths of millions in a war of unprecedented scale and ferocity? This is the question at the heart of the debate on the origins of the First World War. How did Europe get from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife to the situation at the beginning of August when Germany and Austria-Hungary were at war with Serbia, Russia, France, Belgium, and Britain? Finding the answer to this question has exercised historians for 100 years, and arriving at a convincing consensus has proved impossible.

Satirical drawing by R. Ferro [Cupidity – Greed]

Cupidity

Copyright: © Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico

‘Cupidity’, a satirical drawing showing the hands of men from countries involved in World War One, arguing for control of the world.

The need to fight a defensive war…

(read the rest of this article here)

A note on sources:

The 1911 census and Kelly’s Post Office Directory provide the inhabitants of Bourne Farm (Eli Goodyear was still there in the 1920 directory), as well as details of the Goodyear family. You can see Bourne Farm marked on the 1875 Ordnance Survey map. The St Mary Bourne history group maintain a Bourne Valley ‘family’ tree on ancestry.co.uk, which chronicles the relationships in these villages, including Eli’s ancestors.

The mundane details of Eli’s reconstructed morning are of course fictional, but based on reality, that is these Goodyears were ‘church’, not ‘chapel’, the three eldest children give their occupation as working on the farm in the 1911 census, Eli’s elder brother had indeed moved into central Andover and there was a 10.45 postal collection on a Sunday.

Tovani

 

 

 

 

Entry in Crockford’s Clerical Directory