Month: November 2024

15. Devine, Scotland (21 July 2024)

by kurto

1707’s Act of Union catalyzed Scotland’s transformation from one of Europe’s poorest, most backward regions to the workshop of the world, before the postwar decline of the heavy industry undermined paternalism and consequently British sentiment. Allowing the Presbyterian church (the kirk) to continue its predominant role, in contradistinction to threat of economic sanctions and alien status in England, cleared the path for Highlander Jacobitism to be absorbed into national mythology, as the elite of American and French revolutionary wars. Post-union Scotland, a center of the Enlightenment and gateway for the world’s newly integrated primary producers to Europe, never extended into consumer products – indeed, shipping supplanted textiles: the Clyde’s deterioration could not be ameliorated. Labour lost out to resurgent nationalism, and Thatcher’s policies catalyzed abandonment (which incongruously implies England broke the statist compact).

Poor harvests over 1695-99 had induced as much as 15 percent of the population to leave for Ulster or North America, as well as producing unrest which threatened the Glorious Revolution, the island’s regimes no longer unified by monarchy. Accommodating the kirk vitally eliminated religion as a source of resistance, leaving only personal loyalty to Jacobitism – never a solid basis in a country characterized by clans. Notwithstanding uprisings in 1725 and 1746, most residents would have had more to do with the Presbyterian church than London’s House of Parliament, so education and poor relief in Presbyterian hands, as well as continuity of law, enshrined a high degree of autonomy and continuity. For the aristocratic class, there was further the prospect of free trade with the colonies as well as exemption from debt. Landowners (mainly in the Lowlands) were coming to see their holdings as assets for revenue and wealth, rather than sources of military power and authority. Union-era Calvinism was stern but stimulated interest into morality, philosophy, and science. The end of 17th century had been misleading.

Rural social structure circa 1760 was more like Europe than commercializing England. From then, however, socioeconomic change proceeded faster than the continent: by 1850, one-third lived in towns greater than 5,000, the migrants including Ulstermen, though only 5 percent of Glaswegians were Highlander. Newcomers were lured by textiles (i.e., mechanized spinning) of cotton, linen, and woold. Living standards rose over 1780-1800, but thereafter stagnated. In two generations, Gaeldom went from tribal to market-oriented society. Single-tenant farming increased, meaning shared holdings declined, as produce was more for sale at market than community sustenance. Cottars had long since declined in England, the structure of landowner, less-farmer, and landless laborers effectively in place by 1700, driven by the gentry. By 1800, rising Scottish grain yields catalyzed Scotland’s transition, bringing in year-round demand for labor and aristocratic landowners using the right to eject lessees at end of term, the rise of sheep farms also promoting displacement. However, rural landowners were forced to offer high wages to compete with urban opportunities. Highland elites, often educated in southern schools and by travel, were absorbing extra-Gael culture before Culloden. The effects of Smith and the Enlightenment were to undermine the currency of the ‘social economy’, in which wages were to be sufficient to the cost of living. Measures to pacify Scotland (e.g., military roads, confiscation of lands) played their role were complemented by changing views of indigenous lifestyles.

Indebted Highlander landowners were then replaced by well-to-do gentry. By the 1840s Scotland’s per capita income passed Ireland. Scotland’s central advantage in early 19th century was engineering on the Clyde, especially in steam engines, allied to railroad integration of Ayr, Lanarkshire, and West Lothian counties. Highland labor seasonally migrated to the south, which helped (along with subsidized emigration) to check crop failures late in the decade. Presbyterian leader Thomas Chalmers was arguably the most influential Scotsman of the century, but the church broke in 1843, ending its hold on civic matters (but also prompting internal evangelization and charity). Literacy neared 90 percent even before compulsory education and local boards arrived in 1871 (which innovation was easily adopted, there being no class connotations as with English public schools). Liberalism reigned: Conservatives won but 7 seats over 1832-68. Nationalism was subsumed though culture persisted. The fetish of Highlandism was promoted by Romanticism, taking in identity without threatening the state. Home Rule, which split liberalism, the party being too far to the left for landed interests, threatening to commercial interests, and disquieting for Ulster migrants in the west. The Crofters war of 1880 (rent strikes, ‘raiding’ aka squatting) was notable less for agrarian violence than its purchase among urban southerners as well as similarities with Ireland. Following Gladstone’s Irish Land Act of 1881, Scotland too prohibited eviction at the end of rental tenure (blocking clearance), established boards for setting rents and payment for rental improvements, and otherwise set up the state as the primary force in the Highlands and the islands. (Public policy in the west Highlands and west Ireland were often similar.) In 1897 ‘congested districts’ boards came in to promote improved agricultural practices, financing of infrastructure, land redistribution, education, and assistance for fishing and weaving. The trend culminated in 1919’s Land Settlement Act (eminent domain for returned WWI soldiers, funds to convert squatters to landowners). Such measures were effective for the symptoms but not depopulation in the face of declining fishing and stock prices.

By 1901 2 of 4.5 million lived in towns, where lifestyles were segregating into bourgeois vs working class. Council boards were tasked with fitness and welfare following revelations of poor health of Boer War soldiers. Nascent Labour was reformist not revolutionary, prior to the Red Clyde’s World War I emergence. Lloyd George’s Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919 (and follow-on acts for ‘slum clearance’, etc.) shaped Scotland’s 20th-century cities: the free market was replaced by subsidized building and activist council management, which bodies received £9 per capita per annum for maintenance. Reformed universities started down the path to Hegelian curricula, social exclusion (e.g., sons of pastors), and Oxford-trained administrators. In the rural Lowlands, 1/5 of all lands to changed hands, aristocratic landowners too selling to tenants (though Scotland in the 1970s was still highly concentrated, 1/3 of holdings being greater than 20,000 acres, land taxation having declined since 1945). Lowlands laborers often ‘flitted’ around the region, encouraged by one-year employment contracts which came with (spartan) housing for the married; in the interwar era, men commonly went out Friday nights so women could share a hot bath. Voting rights for women were seen to favor out-of-power Conservatives (!).

The Beveridge report raised postwar social expectations. The Marshall Plan and Labour’s policy of export promotion sustained Glasgow: 15 percent of the world’s tonnage was made on the Clyde over 1948-51. WWII’s Secretary of State for Scotland, Tom Johnston, a former Red Clyde man, was charged to head off wartime unrest and became the century’s best Scottish leader. The Scottish TUC dropped Home Rule during the 1950s. Decolonization never really made an impression on Scotland inasmuch as decoupling had already taken place with devolution to the dominions. The Scottish National Party won its first seat in 1967 in Glasgow. Heath’s Industrial Relations Act triggered growing unrest. The first Home Rule vote in 1979 narrowly missed: though only 1/3 had voted, the populace was divided. Thatcher paradoxically increased working-class dependency on the state while alienating popular sentiment: she is midwife to 1997’s successful referendum, which granted authority over all but foreign and (macro) economic policy, social security, and television broadcasting.

Later chapters read less like history than sociology. Devine never offers a solution to the question of Scottish selfishness, why the country which benefit so greatly from English ascendancy should have so readily abandoned its neighbor. Perfidious Albion indeed.

21. Sinclair, History of New Zealand (4 Nov 2024)

by kurto

The main themes of 19th- and 20th-century history are the themes of encouraging an egalitarian society dependent on foreign trade (and primary products at that) and reconciliation among Maori and pakeha.

As much as three-fourths of NZ’s flora is unique, so long had the islands been separated. The first Europeans were traders and settlers from Australia, exporting timber from Kororakea (Bay of Islands). The Colonial Office did not wish to assume responsibility for governance; the Maori were to treated fairly – contra contemporary theories of imperialism.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield led those who saw NZ as a proto ‘dominion’, that is a tabula rasa colony, later joined by South Island pastoralists; Gordon Coates personified the philanthropic / missionary types, intending to help Maori cultural progress. Politics was pluralist, the government mainly confronting lawlessness and semi-open settler-Maori warfare. Wakefield’s New Zealand company didn’t force the Colonial Office’s hand but to the contrary, established beachheads knowing of London’s intent. The first governor-general was instructed to moderate Australian settlers and protect Maori largely by guaranteeing land rights: all European title was to come via crown grants, since the crown assigned itself a monopoly on buying from Maori. This view that the land belonged to the locals was different from commerce with the American Indian, Australian aborigine, or South African bantu, the author notes. The Maori tribes began a loose amalgamation.

1840’s Treaty of Waitangi sought to codify bicultural relations. Thereafter governor George Grey established order among competing interests, shaping the balance of the 19th century. The constitution of 1852 was highly democratic; lands were purchased for settlers; and Maori subdued along the road from Auckland to Hamilton and in the Waitara. Thus the country’s socioeconomic character was formed in its infancy: paternalist government, concern for Maori, and focus on primary production. Of the six provinces given in the constitution, five were NZC (Wakefieldian) settlements; most settlers were from London or the Home counties not Australia, though the 1861 gold rush in Otago brought in 65,000, mostly Aussie. (In the 1960s, it was still possible to hear the Kiwi accent in Essex.) Most were working class concerned to surmount poverty or some social predicament. A New Zealand-born mentality was already forming, the North Island characterized race relations and commerce with the UK, the south, more exclusively pakeha, concerned with sheep grazing as well as outgrowths of the gold rush. There was predictable struggle between the central government (as a proxy for the poorer provinces) and the well-to-do (South) provinces. Wellington was made capital in 1865, after it seemed Maori warfare had peaked.

The decisive moment had been the fall of ‘King country’ strongholds in 1863. Though Maori tribes controlled large sections of the North Island all the way to Napier, they never opted for a broad guerrilla was but only tradition defensive fortification (pa), and of course weaponry was no match; however, the British regulars thought the Maori their toughest colonial foe. After the final battle in Orakau, just south of Hamilton, some 3 million acres was confiscated in Waikato, the East coast, and Taranaki – prime lands rather than punitive confiscation – unfairly and the worst example of colonial mismanagement, the author suggests. But if the conflict was actually a civil war (as now characterized), then would not the losing side expect to suffer losses? Among the Maori, the Hau Hau religion sprang up.

In the 1870s-80s, Julius Vogel promoted growth via borrowing from London investors. The population doubled, railways and telegraphs were built, and pakeha landownership quadrupled. Government spending per capita was 13 times the rate of Canada, surpassing Victoria and New South Wales on a gross basis. In something like the American election of 1828, the Liberals came to power in 1890, marking the decline of southern pastoralists, the colonial gentry. The party taxed land rents, and toyed with the idea of owning all the land. Dick Seddon ruled over 1893 to 1906, which era brought in the women’s vote, mandatory arbitration for labor unions, and easy loans to buy land amid continuing dispute over freehold versus leasehold. The radicality of 1890 settled into paternalism. Labor came to be dissatisfied with arbitration, and the country grew weary of Seddon’s rule, leading conservatives to establish the Reform Party while the leftists became Labour (the ‘Red Feds’). As in Britain, the centrists eventually died off.

At the turn of the century, NZ decided not to join federal Australia as being too far awas and for lack of a common sensibility, though the Kiwis sought to retain an option to later join. Reform came to power in 1912, simultaneous with the political ascendancy of Northern small farming and diary interests (the ‘cow cockies’). As in Australia, Gallipoli and World War I marked the turning point of British colonists into Pacific islanders. Postwar soldiers were encouraged to buy farms: veterans and speculators roamed the countryside, resulting in nearly half the land changing hands. The three-party balance was unstable, Reform first among relative equals. Exports led by meat, wool, butter, and cheese (which in 1980 still comprised 50 percent of trade) were the highest per capita in the world. Foreign debt grew: in 1933, nearly 40 percent of government expenditure was on interest. New Zealanders understood themselves to have a high standard of living.

In the downturn, labor radicalism was easier to effect than in the US or Australia – which is seen as influencing Labour’s 1935 electoral win. The left wished to ‘insulate’ the country from the world economy, questionable for a trading nation. World War II again propelled centralization. By 1949 social services reached one-third of spending, up from 20 percent in 1928, growth mainly coming from eliminating means testing of family benefits, which increasing the welfare roster to 230,000 from 45,000. Government policies sought for equality of outcomes.

The postwar economic grew apace with the west; communist-inspired labor strife dominated the cities; the countryside and South Island remains pastoral and agricultural. The government sought to implement autarchic industrial growth in steel and liquid natural gas, with limited success. In the late 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands emigrated: the population actually fell in 1978. From 1984, the country like Australia veered from excessive statism, Rogernomics lowered income rates and introduced a value-added tax.

Though the government took radical steps in the slumps of 1891-98 and 1936-38 and otherwise centralized, the people are temperamentally conservative. Wealth carries no prerogative of leadership, and politics mostly centers on economic development to pay for education, health, and pensions, such beneficence stemming from missionary humanitarianism as well as 19th-century utilitarianism. Sinclair writes redistribution is the more possible because of the country’s small size. The matters of biracial society are important but subsumed under equality of outcomes, achieved through government mandate.

New Zealand belongs to a ‘pacific triangle’ formed by Auckland, Sydney, and San Francisco: Kiwis are not a ‘better British’ but a bicultural, Pacific Ocean people – albeit more British than the Aussies (against whom they define themselves) or Americans (never quite forgotten as colonial brethren). Questions of identify are more pronounced in the South Island, the northerners having the stronger Maori influence and balance of population.

22. Laidlaw, Somebody Stole My Game (5 Nov 2024)

by kurto

A jeremiad lamenting professionalism’s impacts on rugby circa 1995-2010, focusing on New Zealand’s game but also emphasizing on tensions borne of globalization (i.e., homogenization) and commercial management. Oscar Wilde’s mot that America went from barbarism to decadence with no intervening period of civilization is well cited. Professionalism polarizes public opinion because of its inherent conflict with amateur competition: the more top-end success, the greater the contrast. The observation might well extend to administrators. Universities brought the game to the English-speaking colonies, so their diminished role is emblematic of homogenized full-timers and likely to result in the game’s declining appeal to middle classes.

Laidlaw struggles, however, in identifying the one thing needful of reform, sometimes pointing to the European club-driven escalation of player salaries, which distances the game from amateurism (p. 27), and other times the judicial system, which indicates rugby’s doubts of its ability to govern itself (p. 44). In the end, revenue has become overly dependent on TV and other commercial interests, administrators have forgotten their loyalties to amateurs and the fan base, and the sport’s credibility tarnished by unrealistic aspirations.

Eventually the work resolves into short essays on such questions as the decrease of schoolboy playing numbers, whether arts deserve the same subsidization as sport, the role of 7s, why union hasn’t reconciled with league, and so on. The author is sometimes astute, as in foreseeing Ireland’s advance, and sometimes naïve, such as the impact of IRB ‘investment’, centralized planning sitting uneasily alongside distrust of professionalism.

Pro players should work in the off-season as development officers – but what rugby is on? This clever suggestion might easily resolve itself as officers in foreign countries. His understanding of America is shallow, such as in the assertion the pro game has hurt amateur basketball, baseball, or football.