Categories
Analysis of Impact / Covid-19

The shadow of the 1918 pandemic in the 1920s

Dr Niamh Cullen
Lecturer in Modern History
16/06/2020

Over the last few months, for obvious reasons, I’ve been thinking about the 1918 flu pandemic. Although I’ve written a book about the 1920s and I teach the history of inter-war Europe, the 1918 flu pandemic is not an event that I had thought or read too much about, up to now. I picked up Laura Spinney’s excellent book, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and how it changed the World to try and find out more about what she calls the ‘elephant in the room’ of the history of the early twentieth century. 

My first book was on the Italian intellectual, journalist and editor Piero Gobetti, one of the earliest and most vocal opponents to Mussolini. He died in 1926 and lived his entire public life in the early 1920s, beginning his career as an editor in November 1918 when he began to publish his first political magazine Energie Nove. It’s been a number of years since I left the 1920s behind and I’ve been working since then on the 1950s and 1960s, but in light of the current pandemic and with the benefit of some distance from the 1920s, I’ve been thinking again about why I never came across any mention of the 1918 pandemic (or just didn’t notice the signs of it?) during my time researching Gobetti and the 1920s. 

Gobetti was beginning his career as an editor, intellectual and journalist at a very turbulent time. The war was just over in November 1918, when Gobetti brought out the first issue of his political magazine. Italy was on the side of the victors although the Italian military performance had been pretty disastrous. In the northern city of Turin where Gobetti lived, there was also a lot of social unrest. Turin’s factories had kept the war effort going through the production of armaments although the urban working classes were suffering severe food shortages by the end of the war. Bread riots coupled with the return of resentful, unemployed veterans made for an autumn and winter of social tension, and the widespread feeling that something had to change. Gobetti did not fight in the war himself as he was only barely eighteen when the armistice was signed. He nevertheless had the feeling, like so many his age and a little older, that the impact of the war was so huge that some kind of renewal, or change for the better, had to come out of it. 

Although there are no mentions of the Spanish ‘flu in any of Gobetti’s magazines, his published writings nor his correspondence, we know that while he and those of his generation were reeling at the impact of the war and clamouring for some kind of change, there was another killer in their midst. The peak of the pandemic was in autumn 1918, with the particularly lethal second wave raging through the world between October and December of that year. The somewhat milder third wave was in January 1919 while the virus had largely petered out by that spring. It is now estimated that between 50 and 100 million died in the 1918 pandemic, and in Italy the death toll is thought to be somewhere around 300,000. This is close to the figures we have for those Italians who died in combat during the Great War, but the post-war years are filled with endless discussion of the war and barely any mention of the ‘flu pandemic. Why was this? 

The reasons may lie partly in the kind of world that people inhabited in 1918. It was one where illness and disease were commonplace enough. People were used to epidemics of cholera, typhoid and flu, while TB and in rural, marshy areas of Italy, malaria, were endemic. The discovery of antibiotics was still several decades away and for many of these illness, there was nothing much that conventional medicine had to offer. Mortality from diseases such as these, especially in childhood, was much more common. For those who survived, long periods of illness and convalescence were to be expected, while many were also left with the long-term effects of their disease. All of this was part of the harsh, everyday brutality of life for so many; Gobetti himself suffered from ill health and died in 1926 from a combination of ill health and injury, after a series of fascist beatings. Antonio Gramsci, the first leader of the Italian Communist Party and a contemporary of Gobetti’s in Turin, also suffered ill health and a long term disability, possibly due to TB. Although the 1918 pandemic was unique in its ferocity, it may have taken some time for this to be understood at a time when death from disease was more sadly ordinary than it is in the twenty-first century. 

Death from flu, as Spinney reminds us, was also a private, family affair, with most dying in the home rather than in hospitals. Although it was happening all around them, since each death was individual, it may be that the full collective impact was only appreciated afterwards. The war in contrast was entirely new and different; the use of mechanised warfare, and the sheer scale of the conflict, made it clear to everyone at the time that this was an event like no other.  It came with entirely new whole sights and sounds, from mass mobilization and trenches to the sound of rapid machine gun fire. Flu was a more quiet and apparently ordinary killer. I am beginning to wonder though the ‘flu pandemic did play some part, even indirectly, in Gobetti’s thinking. In late 1918 he wrote to another journalist that he wanted his magazine to be a ‘sign of renewal’ in ‘this dead Turin’. Could the lethal virus that was flaring through his city really have no part in this vision of tiredness, disillusion and death? Elizabeth Outka, in her work on the impact of the 1918 ‘flu on literature, found that the imprint of the pandemic ran right through the literature of the 1920s, once you knew where and how to look. 

In the final chapter on the memory of the 1918 pandemic, Laura Spinney suggests that while the impact of war is felt and recognised immediately afterwards, it takes much longer for the full shape of a pandemic to emerge from the messy immediacy of history and for its true scale and impact to be appreciated. While the enormity of the Black Death is now well known, it may not have been fully understood at the time or immediately afterwards. However she argues that while the intensity of war fades in collective memory, a pandemic may come more sharply into view with time. Will we in time remember the 1918 pandemic much more vividly than we do now, while the First World War fades somewhat into just one of an endless list of human conflicts? It’s an intriguing prospect for historians of the European twentieth century. One might wonder too how the current Coronavirus pandemic will be remembered by future historians. I think, given the virtually worldwide experience of lockdown, coupled with the fact that we are not quite as used to living with disease as were the men and women of 1918, that we are already appreciating this pandemic as an event of global significance. At the same time it is very likely that the ways in which we apprehend and understand it, will change over time. 

Categories
Analysis of Impact / Covid-19

A pandemic and a data dashboard… and everything lies in between

Dr. Prashant Khattri
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Allahabad
Charles Wallace India Fellow in Social Anthropology at Queen’s, 2020-2021
15/06/2020

It was June 8th, 2020, 2.30 in the afternoon, I got a call from my mother who lives in Lucknow around 130 miles from my place. She was a bit worried and directly asked me a question- is it safe for Nitin (my brother) and his family to stay back in Gurugram (Gurgaon that is around 20 miles from Delhi) as Delhi recorded a seismic activity of 2.1 on Richter scale? It was the eleventh shock that Delhi recorded. Some were felt by the residents of the adjoining areas and others were reported in the media. She told me that she has read that an earthquake of a bigger magnitude is inevitable and can happen anytime soon. Delhi falls in a zone that is seismically very active and a massive earthquake is long overdue in the Himalayan region. She wanted his family to come over to Lucknow for some times. But how will they travel? Is it safe for them to travel in the pandemic? They can travel by their own car? For how long they can stay? These were her concerns. She also knew that there is no forecast for earthquakes and there were also counter narratives in the media that say that such tectonic activities are common but still they all warn that an earthquake is bound to come. How to make sense of all this? It was December 20th, 2019 (Corona pandemic still a couple of months away to jolt India) that an earthquake with its epicenter in Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan shook Delhi and adjoining areas, my parents were with my brother at that time and it was quite a panic that was created as they live on the 10th floor of a high-rise building.

Our conversation then shifted to the dangers of living in a high-rise building and the construction norms that we all thought were not followed by the builders in general. In case of a disaster the building may come down like a pack of cards. We realized that we generated such risks for ourselves. I was reminded of Ulrich Beck who talked about the risk society and how we are manufacturing risk to our own peril. Soon my father cracked some old common family joke on which my mother took great objection as she said how you guys could laugh away such a serious issue. But actually we all knew that we know nothing how to resolve the issue. I could realize however, that our experience is similar to what Immanuel Kant writes in his ‘Analytic of the sublime’, where he suggests that sublime is a pleasure produced by the mind as soon as it reaches its own limits. The humiliation of the mind through the thoughts of destruction and loss is overcome soon by the mind itself that restores its power by reckoning its own superiority to the nature. How many times it happens that when we cough in these times we look at each other in the family and give a smile-nothing to worry, as we cannot do much about anything that is happening around us. 

Nightmares are coming true. It’s like living a disaster movie with all its dimensions (Ds). Pandemic was not enough. A super cyclone Amphane wrecked havoc in India, Bangladesh and Srilanka in May, 2020. The Chief Minister of Bengal where the cyclone made a landfall described the effects of the cyclone as worse than the pandemic.

Disasters are not defined only in terms of scientific and administrative norms. People tend to have their own explanations based on absorbing principles of Karma or appealing principles based on folk models. Consequences of one’s Karma are inevitable and owing to large scale destruction to the environment we cannot protect ourselves from the wrath of the Mother Nature. Alternatively, it is also believed that appeasement of the deity ensures safety and any shortcoming in this may lead to destruction. With such theories doing the round, people making sense of the crisis through themand science not coming to the rescue of people, thought of another disaster striking in the midst of the pandemic does not seem to be very far away or unbelievable. 

On June 9th, I woke-up reading a headline in a Hindi newspaper that read- ‘The city (Prayagraj, where I stay) is coming back to its flow (translated from Hindi).’ With Malls, restaurants, places of worship and other public places opening-up there is a sense of getting back to the normal. On June 10th, in an English daily I saw a photograph of a hoarding stuck high and bold on a street of Lucknow that read- ‘Lucknow please smile as the life has started again (translated from Hindi).’ This photograph of the hoarding was placed under the headline-“Ambedkarnagar hospital chief dies: record jump in single-day fatalities.” People were still fighting out the infection within the projections of normalcy through such advertisements. The newspaper is sensitive enough to have brought this to our conscious thinking.   

How can this paradox be explained? Behind the statistical data, we are actually missing out the pain and sufferings of the people. Their hardships are unfathomable through statistical models.We can only imagine a four year old child kept in isolation for 14 days and asking her mother, “can I come to your lap now mom?” Only very selected stories of mental agony and suffering are seeing the light of the day and are getting reported in the media.News reports of people not getting proper care, not being admitted to any hospital in some places, or not being tested even after reporting symptoms are common now. People are dying without their loved ones getting the opportunity to see their faces for the one last time. Much more needs to be known, not only about people’s suffering but about the meaning they are giving to their sufferings. How do people make their sufferings sufferable? A narrative of ‘normalcy’ might be on the agenda of the state, however the ‘lived reality’ lies between the pandemic and the data dashboard.

Categories
Analysis of Impact / Covid-19

COVID-19 & Human Rights: Business as usual?

Jeannie McCann
QUB Alumni 2007 – BA in modern HIStory & POLitics, Trócaire Campaigns Officer
10/06/2020

On June 10, Trócaire hosted a webinar in which we discussed how lockdown restrictions are impacting the work of brave human rights activists who were already facing grave danger in defending indigenous communities.  As we recover from the pandemic, it is more important than ever, that we call for regulation to hold corporations to account for human rights violations. The discussion included a political analysis of introducing human rights and environmental due diligence legislation in the UK and Ireland. 

You can watch back here:

Categories
Learning and Researching at QuB

A History of Pandemics

As Covid-19 affects us all in unexpected ways, academics at Queen’s have looked back at pandemics from the past. Dr John Curran looks at pandemics in the Ancient World; Dr James Davis examines the horrific scale of the Black Death in the fourteenth century; and Dr Marilina Cesario highlights how people thought comets were a portent of disease and death. How did society cope and what was the broader impact of disease? You can access the podcasts by clicking the image below:

Categories
Life in Lockdown

Do statues of discrimination and hatred belong in the twenty-first century? And, if so, where?

Emma-Jayne Smethurst
BA (S) Student in History
12/06/2020

Robert Peel, Christopher Columbus, Oliver Cromwell, Cecil Rhodes… just a few names selected from a lengthy list created by activists who demand the removal of racist statues which glorify Britain’s uncomfortable but all-too evident history of systemic racism. Inspired by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis as a result of police brutality, the removal of controversial statues and monuments has once again entered our news cycle and gained significant media traction as Black Lives Matter protestors firmly fix their attention towards the public commemoration of figures who encapsulate the centuries-old narrative of white supremacy. Whether such statues belong on our public landscape is not a new conversation; in fact, it has been, for many decades, a hot topic amongst academics, government officials and activists who question the extent to which historical individuals, marred by their micro-or-macro-aggressions, deserve a prime place on our national landscape.

As a 21-year-old due to graduate from QUB this summer, I recall teachers and tutors posing the question: ‘should statues be removed?’ to me many times throughout my educational career. During my third year of secondary school, I discussed whether the statue of the much contested Field Marshal Douglas Haig outside of Edinburgh castle should be removed given his unfavourable reputation as the man responsible for sending thousands of people to their deaths during the Battle of Somme and Arras. Then, whilst completing the first year of my BA Hons. History degree, I investigated the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement which argued the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a notable British Imperialist, outside of Oriel College at Oxford University should be removed as it contradicted the university’s commitment to racial justice and equality. Now, the question arises again but on a much larger scale with over seventy statues facing the possibility of being torn from their location throughout the UK and my question is: should these statues be removed and, more importantly, if they are removed what will become of them?

Firstly, I would like to clarify that although the current debate concerning public statues is inextricably linked with the issue of racism, the focus of this think-piece is not on this social injustice, as I wholeheartedly admit I am not as educated as I want- or need- to be. As with most people, I am making a conscious effort to do better and do be better but, as of yet, I cannot confidently say I have achieved this. Instead, this piece will adopt a more generalised approach to shed light on whether the statues of individuals who represent the archaic narrative of monoculturalism belong in an age where equality is the supposed goal. Many options present as possible solutions with the two extremities which bookend these options consisting of: the complete removal of these statues in their entirety and also the option of doing nothing and allowing these symbols of oppression (which are often in prime city locations) to continue unchecked and unchanged.

Undoubtedly, the most damaging response to this issue would be to do nothing. In order to make real change, we must acknowledge our uncomfortable past with slavery and racism in general and ensure our commitment to anti-racism and inclusiveness extends beyond the realm of theory and reaches each and every one of us in our daily lives. For the glorification of these individuals to go unchecked and continue is an affront to black people for whom racism is not just an historical issue but a current life experience. As a white individual, I cannot understand how it must feel for a black person living in Bristol to walk down the harbour past the statue of Edward Colston, who made his fortune exploiting black people through the slave trade as a member of the Royal African Company. Moreover, I cannot relate to how it must feel for any student of Oxford University who is not white to walk under the statue of a white supremacist into Oriel College for their classes.

What I can do, however, is listen and it is evident that public opinion does not sit on the fence with this issue- people want these difficult statues removed, as they represent a ‘part of history that should not be glorified’.[1] At the time of writing, a Change.org petition entitled ‘Petition to take down all statues of slave traders in the UK’ had amassed an impressive 151,914 signatories out of a desired 200,000.[2] My mum is one of these individuals and whilst talking to her about the matter recently I remarked that statues contribute to our public memory to which she replied: ‘Germany do not have statues of Hitler but yet we all still remember World War Two and the Holocaust’ and she is right. Do statues really contribute to our historical awareness and memory and, even if they do, it is usually just the positive aspects as opposed to also including the bad and the ugly. Therefore, do we really need statues in public locations when people usually just ignore them anyway whilst going about their daily lives?

But the phrase ‘removing’ statue confuses me- where will these statues go? Are they destroyed? Hidden in a dark governmental storage unit to eventually rust and become a forgotten problem? Preserved so as to keep the legacy of the artist? Given the clear wishes of the public it is likely many statues will be removed from their plinths but my concern is with the aftermath. As we know, the statue of Robert Baden-Powell will be temporarily removed from its current location at Poole Quay for its own protection but given the current public sentiment, will it ever be safe to return it and is it right to do so? Therefore, should these statues find a permanent home elsewhere, away from public gaze? I would argue yes. As historian Ansley Heller writes: 

‘Symbols, like statues and important buildings, signal social values to the public. Statues encourage individuals to look at those being immortalised in stone to understand their deeds as strong, important, and worthy of admiration’.[3]

As such, by removing these symbols of oppression from the public domain, ‘the struggle over who gets to control the narrative of the public space is heightened’, ultimately lessening the extent to which towns, cities and countries condone white supremacy. But the mere stone, concrete and metal which make these statues are themselves apart of history, as such, I feel they should be placed where they truly belong, museums- an institution dedicated towards historical learning, inclusive of the bad and the ugly in addition to the good. No longer glorifying the individuals they represent, these statues would become an asset to museums by adding an additional visual aid to an exhibition. Moreover, in a museum setting these statues become purposeful as opposed to ornamental, as they help tell a historical narrative about the individual in question to museum visitors- much like a portrait or painting does. Moreover, by displaying these statues in an intellectual setting, museums can tell the story of why these individuals were once glorified by contemporaries through public monuments and how the reputation of these figures are undergoing constant re-evaluation as we continue to realise the actions of our shared past in the UK and slowly adapt our attitude towards social injustices to become a nation which can become proud of its current society.

[1]Osob Elmi, ‘Edward Colston: ‘why the statue had to fall’’, BBC News (8th June 2020),  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-52965803

[2]BLM- Statues Down, ‘Petition to take down all statues of slave traders in the UK’,  https://www.change.org/p/uk-government-petition-to-takr-down-all-statues-of-slave-traders-in-the-uk?use_react=false

[3] Ansley Heller, ‘Breaking Down the Symbols: Reading the Events at Charlottesville Through A Postcolonial Lens’, Southeastern Geographer, vol. 58, no. 1, 2018, p. 35

Categories
Poems & Creative Writing

Scream

Devina A. Millenia
Ba(S) Student in international politics and conflict studies
11/06/2020

he wants to scream, more than

anything

he wishes the strangle will loosen up

a bit

just a little bit

it will be enough

it will allow him, at least to speak

to beg for help

instead of loosen up, it gets stronger

he feels it

the air inside his lungs is vanishing

he no longer feels his bloodstream

it suffocated him

it hurts

it just inevitable for him to think that

this is it

the moment that sooner or later,

his heart will stop in a blink of his

eyes

at this time

he realises,

there is no point of screaming

they will never listen

just why?

“what did I do wrong”

was the last time they hear him along

with his last breath

Categories
Learning and Researching at QuB Politics

Ending of the hybrid House of Commons breached fundamental democratic principles

Professor Meg Russell, Director, Constitution Unit, UCL
Dr Ruth Fox, Director, Hansard Society
Professor Michael Keating FBA and Professor Nicola McEwen, Co-Directors, Centre on Constitutional Change, Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen
Professor John Garry, Director, Democracy Unit, Queen’s University Belfast
Professor Graham Smith, Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Co-Director, Centre for Democratic Engagement, University of Leeds
Tim Hughes, Director, The Involve Foundation (Involve)
Anthony Zacharzewski, President, The Democratic Society 

This blog piece was originally posted on The Constitution Unit website at UCL: https://constitution-unit.com/2020/06/08/ending-of-the-hybrid-house-of-commons-breached-fundamental-democratic-principles/#more-9570

Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg has demanded the end of ‘hybrid’ arrangements allowing MPs to participate and vote remotely during the COVID-19 crisis. In this open letter, a group of senior democracy specialists – including Professor John Garry, Director of the Democracy Unit in HAPP – point out this breached the fundamental democratic principle of equality in decision-making, because the MPs most benefiting from remote participation (e.g. due to ‘shielding’) were excluded from the vote. They urge the Leader of the House to reinstate procedures allowing all MPs to participate fully in all Commons business.

Dear Mr Rees-Mogg

We write to express our very grave concerns about the way in which the ‘hybrid’ House of Commons was suspended. As specialists in the principles and practice of democracy it is clear to us that these actions breached fundamental democratic principles.

The ‘hybrid’ arrangements, allowing for a mix of virtual and in-person participation in parliamentary proceedings were brought about by necessity, to enable the House of Commons to continue to fulfil its essential functions of scrutiny and representation during the coronavirus crisis. Parliamentary accountability is crucial at any time, but more crucial than ever when ministers have taken unprecedented emergency powers, and the broadest possible public consent for health measures, and restrictions on citizens’ usual freedoms, is needed.

At the initial stages of the crisis there were troubling suggestions that parliament might close down completely for up to five months (as reported in The Times on 5 March). Thankfully, attention soon moved on from this drastic (and fundamentally anti-democratic) suggestion, to exploring how parliament could keep working through the crisis.

Parliamentary staff have worked tirelessly to devise innovative technological solutions to allow MPs to contribute virtually, and online select committee meetings began during the Easter recess. The Speaker, and the House of Commons Commission, offered admirable leadership, with essential additional input from the Procedure Committee. At the early stages there was a clear commitment to working on a cross-party basis to ensure that the Commons could continue to function in a way which maintained essential representation and accountability, while protecting public health. The motions on 21 and 22 April to enable members to participate and vote remotely were warmly supported by opposition parties and unanimously agreed. This consultative, cross-party approach was exactly what was needed when bringing about such far-reaching changes to the functioning of our democratic process. It showed inclusivity and maximised the chances of maintaining public trust and support.

The attempt to dismantle the hybrid arrangements has, unfortunately, followed the reverse approach. Through a lack of consultation and cross-party decision-making it has sown unnecessary division. Furthermore, it has breached the fundamental democratic and parliamentary principle of equality in decision-making, excluding many MPs from the choice about how to run their own institution. It has done so to the detriment of some of those who are most vulnerable in this crisis.

Your refusal prior to the Whitsun recess to renew the temporary orders facilitating the hybrid parliament was met with widespread criticism across the House, including from the Labour Shadow Leader of the House, and her counterpart from the SNP. At this point it was clear that the cross-party approach facilitated through the House of Commons Commission had broken down. Despite appeals that the hybrid arrangements should continue in order to protect the health of both members and the wider public, the government used its power over the House of Commons agenda to prevent the renewal of the temporary orders being discussed and decided upon. As a consequence, members’ ability to vote remotely – including those members who are ‘shielding’ due to age or serious health conditions, or who are living with others in this position – lapsed.

On the return of the House on 2 June, you proposed a motion that confirmed the ending of the hybrid arrangements. This was opposed by all opposition parties, and also by the Conservative chair of the Procedure Committee, Karen Bradley, who laid amendments which were signed by 15 other select committee chairs. Due to the government’s timing, it was clear that those members most affected by the crisis, and therefore those most dependent on the facility to participate remotely, had been excluded from the debate and from the vote. This was demonstrated by the fact that only 427 members participated in the division on Karen Bradley’s amendment to restore remote voting. Although 31 Conservative members – along with all opposition party members – supported the amendment, it was defeated. But there were over 200 MPs absent from Westminster, including 90 Conservatives, many of whom were prevented from attending for age or health-related reasons. Many of them had publicly stated that they opposed the ending of the hybrid parliament. Had the absent voters divided in the same proportion as those present, the Bradley amendment would have been only very narrowly defeated. However, it is far more likely that those absent would have supported the amendment, as it promised to restore their participation rights. 

In other words, the government only brought about the ending of the hybrid parliament through disenfranchising the very MPs that it was there to support.

You have indicated that you wished to end virtual participation in order to return to the necessary scrutiny of government legislation particularly in public bill committees. However, there has been no barrier to bill committees meeting in socially distant form at Westminster since 21 April. Had the government wished to do so, the Commons could also have run hybrid or virtual bill committees, as is now happening in the House of Lords.

Given that many MPs are unable to attend under medical advice, while others – particularly those representing areas furthest from London – are reluctant for fear of spreading the virus through travelling between Westminster and their constituencies, it remains unclear why the government has been so determined to end the hybrid arrangements. It certainly does not ‘set an example’ for employers, who would likely be subject to legal proceedings if they treated staff with serious health conditions in this way. In fact, the ending of online participation is even problematic for those members who attend: the time-consuming nature of the new voting arrangements (about which some also have health concerns) cuts into much-needed time for debate and scrutiny. Images of these arrangements have been widely shared in the UK and international media, causing much derision, and risking reputational damage to government and parliament alike.

During the debate on your proposals, and subsequently in Prime Minister’s Questions, you and the PM announced several adjustments to your original plans. These adjustments, approved by the House on 4 June, mean that MPs who are unable to travel to Westminster may continue to participate in questions and statements virtually and MPs classed as clinically vulnerable will be eligible to apply for a proxy vote. However, they will still be excluded from participation in legislative proceedings and those who are unable to travel to Westminster due to lockdown restrictions, shielding or caring responsibilities will be ineligible to vote by proxy. You have suggested pairing as a solution, but this requires MPs to be recorded as absent, and assumes that they would have followed the party line. In short, these compromise measures are far from acceptable solutions.

As you yourself repeatedly emphasised in winding up the second reading debate on the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill on Tuesday evening, democracy rests on the principle of equality. Our parliamentary democracy requires that all voters and all parts of the country be equally represented in the House of Commons by their MP. The hybrid arrangements were introduced in order to maintain that principle in exceptional times. Ending those arrangements now, when many MPs’ movements remain restricted, clearly violates the principle. We urge you to think again and reintroduce arrangements that allow all members to participate in the full range of Commons business.

Categories
History Learning and Researching at QuB

“How to explore history? 5 good reasons to do it at QUB.”

Aglaia De Angeli
Lecturer in Modern History
09/06/2020

You may have wondered how historians can research and write about the past, explain it to a wide public, spread the knowledge to academia or to the general public, and thought I want to do that. But, where should I start? If you think that one day you will become an historian, I can tell you five good reasons how you can realize your aspiration at Queen’s University Belfast.

First: at Queen’s we teach from undergraduate to  doctoral level the whole way through to becoming an historian. We teach you how to read, research, write, and publish about American, Asian, African, European, Irish and British history, from antiquity to the present, through the lenses of social, gender, race, urban, religious and political points of view. And, you can do it with the support of our dedicated staff at HAPP.

Second: we have two MA options for students interested in history: MA in History and MA in Public History. The MA in History will teach to build your own expertise across a range of modules that offer important methodological, theoretical and source-based training opportunities. You can develop your specialism in the area of your interest or try a thematic approach, or combine both with an interdisciplinary approach. We will teach you how to become an independent researcher and prepare for your PhD.

The MA in Public History offers you the opportunity to participate in class seminars, field trips, practitioner workshops, and it teaches you the ways in which history is represented to a range of public audiences. It also provides you with a guaranteed work placement. You will be trained in historical theory and research methods to work in museums, specialising in oral and digital history, contested or difficult histories and visual representations of the past.

Third: we have a Centre for Public History that provides a lively hub for people engaged in researching, teaching, and practicing public history. It nurtures excellent research, provides a forum for debate, and develops working dialogue between academics, practitioners, and the public around issues relating to the practice of history in the public sphere. The Centre hosts monthly seminars with invited speakers both global and local in scope, such as the new Histories in the Making series, the  Keith Jeffery Annual Public History Lecture, and the Wiles Lectures.

Four: at The McClay Library we are proud to host a treasure in rare, early printed books and manuscripts of unpublished collections. Special Collections & Archives includes the printed collections of important figures such as the Scottish economist Adam Smith, John Foster, the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons; books and pamphlets collected by Dr. Stanley Fowler Wright, Commissioner of Customs and Personal Secretary to the Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Sir Robert Hart and the extensive historical medical collection of Dr Samuel Simms to name but a few, three maps collections relating to Ireland dating back to the mid-16th century and more than fifty individual collections of manuscripts including the personal papers of Edith Somerville; correspondence of the English Composer and Feminist, Dame Ethel Smyth; the personal papers and correspondence of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector General of the Imperial Customs, Peking, 1863-1908 as well as papers relating to communism in Ireland, and the history of science in the Thomas Andrews and James Thomson collections.

Fifth: at HAPP, in collaboration with the Centre for Public History and Special Collections, we work on many engaging international research projects, in particular  the Sir Robert Hart project. Hart, a graduate of Queen’s and later Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs from 1863 to 1908, was the most senior Westerner in China’s metropolitan bureaucracy in the later nineteenth century. During his tenure Hart built the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs (CIMC) into the first Western-style administrative institution in China, helped to establish the postal service, lighthouses and other key elements of China’s infrastructure. He played a crucial role in China’s imperial politics, significantly influencing its internal reform and diplomatic policy.
The Sir Robert Hart Project includes the transcription of Hart’s diaries in 77 volumes and other elements of the Hart collection. The Hart Project has established collaborations with the Institute of Modern History in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing and with the China Customs Museum, Beijing.

I gave you five good reasons why you should come to QUB to study, research and explore history with us at undergraduate, Masters or PhD level. Do you want to know more? Contact us!

Categories
Analysis of Impact / Covid-19

Covid-19 in China: From ‘Chernobyl Moment’ to Impetus for Nationalism

Chenchen Zhang
Lecturer in Politics and International Relations
08/05/2020

Note: this piece first appeared as an op-ed in the Made in China journal.

When Dr Li Wenliang died from Covid-19 on 7 February, the Chinese Internet saw an unprecedented outpouring of grief and anger. The universal mourning for the reprimanded doctor, who had warned his colleagues about a potentially infectious coronavirus in late December and had been silenced by authorities, was also an expression of the public anxiety and dissatisfaction with government responses that had accumulated over the few weeks since the outbreak began. The missteps and failures that had triggered widespread outrage ranged from the official downplaying of the risk of human-to-human transmission in the earliest days, to the shortage of PPE for medical workers; from the scandal of the Wuhan Red Cross in mismanaging the distribution of donated medical supplies, to the skyrocketing numbers of new cases and victims.

The situation was so grim and criticism from ordinary citizens so prevalent that some observers dubbed the crisis China’s ‘Chernobyl moment’. However, as the epidemic has—at least for now—been brought under control, critical voices also seem to be fading away, even though anger lingers in Wuhan, where some dissidents are still fighting to resist the official victorious narrative. To be sure, it is difficult to know if and how the pandemic has influenced regime support in a country that regularly censors criticism, but discontent with epidemic responses has been largely subdued and nationalist sentiments have become more prominent. This holds true especially in those parts of China that have been much less impacted by the coronavirus—97 percent of all Covid-19 deaths in China occurred in Hubei province, where the epidemic started, while the rest of the country, with a population of over 1.3 billion, has recorded 121 deaths as of 30 April.

The relatively successful and prompt flattening of the curve, however, is not the only factor that contributed to the transformation of public sentiment. As in past crises that also evoked mounting criticism by exposing structural problems in the political system, the Chinese Party-state employs a set of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ tools to suppress dissent and overcome the trust crisis. These include censorship, crackdowns on dissidents, bureaucratic and technocratic adjustment, and a tried-and-tested propaganda formula that I would call ‘disaster nationalism’. Yet unlike past disasters, such as the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, the global development of the pandemic and international power dynamics have also played a significant role in how Covid-19 has become an impetus for nationalism.

Authoritarian Resilience and Disaster Nationalism

Political scientists use the concepts of authoritarian resilience or responsive authoritarianism to describe the ways in which the Chinese regime allows a certain degree of participation and responsiveness without democratisation. In times of crisis, this responsiveness could mean rapid personnel changes to shift blame from the political system itself to individual local officials, technocratic improvement such as the reform of the epidemic control system following SARS, and strategies of political communication that respond to and incorporate public sentiments.

The Party-state, for example, wasted no time in joining the public to pay tribute to Dr Li Wenliang, going as far as to officially recognise him as a ‘martyr’ (烈士). Right after his death, a technology company based in Beijing submitted a public sentiment analysis report to the government and offered recommendations on how to respond to the online outrage. The National Supervisory Committee sent a special team to Wuhan to investigate the matters related to Dr Li, and they unsurprisingly made the decision to revoke the reprimand and hold the relevant police officers accountable. The pattern of punishing individual and local actors to ease anger and distract attention from structural problems within the system itself persists. Top Hubei and Wuhan officials were replaced in mid-February. After a prison in Shandong province was found to have covered up an outbreak, several figures—from the prison warden to responsible officials in the provincial government—were removed from office.

In terms of technocratic adjustment, there has been an ongoing debate on improving the epidemic response system and the management of public health crises, which has mostly focussed on legislation. The National Expert Panel on Covid-19 at the National Health Commission recruited two legal scholars in February. In addition to calls for amending the existing Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, 17 other legal instruments in the field of public health will be amended or adopted.

The particular mode of messaging and emotional mobilisation that the propaganda machine deploys in times of crises is one of disaster nationalism. It is epitomised by a phrase former premier Wen Jiabao famously wrote on a school blackboard in Beichuan, the epicentre of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake: ‘Disasters regenerate a nation’ (多难兴邦). Narratives of disaster nationalism focus on heroic sacrifices of individuals as well as the cohesion of the national community. State media also celebrates the contribution of ordinary citizens more than usual, indicating a more human-centred and participatory approach that scholars have termed ‘authoritarian participatory persuasion’. People’s Daily, for example, launched a series called ‘Thank You, Every Ordinary Chinese Citizen’ (谢谢每一个平凡的中国人) on its social media channel, which quickly became a trending hashtag on Weibo, with over 570 million views at the end of April.

The idea of ‘being together in this’—shared feelings of pain, sadness, love, and inspiration—can be channelled towards reinforcing the sense of belonging to the imagined community (Anderson 2006). In his study of the responses to the Sichuan earthquake, Bin Xu notes how the event became a ‘televised spectacle of distant suffering’. With Covid-19 being the first pandemic in the age of social media, the spectacle of suffering, compassion, solidarity, and even boredom is mass produced in a much more personal, decentralised, and spontaneous way. While some videos get censored, there are many others that can serve the purpose of promoting national solidarity, which are quickly picked up by the propaganda apparatus—from moving love stories of dispatched medical workers to the beautiful moment where an elderly patient and a young doctor watch the sunset together. By curating social media content it is possible to add a humane touch to the grand narrative of the ‘war’ against the epidemic. Through the daily (re)telling of heroic and compassionate stories, and the constant chanting of the slogan ‘China, add oil!’ (中国加油!), dissatisfaction with the government can become subordinate to pride for the nation, of which the Party monopolises the representation.

The staging of a national mourning day on 4 April was a crystallisation of disaster nationalism. Having momentarily witnessed the power of mourning after the death of Dr Li Wenliang, what better way to tame this power than by turning it into an official ritual with members of the Politburo joining the rest of the country in mourning together at a designated time of a designated day? At that moment, mourning was no longer destabilising, but patriotic. Meanwhile, other subversive forms of remembering, such as the creation of digital archives of censored articles, continue to be suppressed.

The Perils of Binary Thinking

The relative success of the Chinese authorities in containing the outbreak in China and the mishandling of the pandemic in other countries, especially in Western democracies, has created an opportunity for the Chinese Party-state to change the narrative both domestically and globally—achieving more success with the former than the latter. In fact, when the Chinese government’s efforts to sell its preferred story on the international stage backfired, suspicion and hostility from the West further enhanced nationalism at home.

It comes as no surprise that a hostile international environment boosts nationalism. The Chinese public often assumes that accusations from Western governments are in bad faith, especially when such international actors were silent while many in China were themselves furiously criticising the government for cover-ups and incompetence in late January and early February. The online backlash against the scheduled publication of Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary in English and German is a perfect example of how the debate quickly became distorted by binary thinking, i.e. the assumption of a binary opposition between a homogeneous China and a homogeneous ‘West’. Netizens who attack her ruthlessly claim that even though some part of the diary might be true and fair, the translation of her work for a Western audience means betrayal and cozying up to ‘foreign hostile forces’ (境外敌对势力)—a term frequently used by both state media and the general public in China to delegitimise local social movements and grassroots activism as stemming from foreign influence.

My previous research on right-wing populist discourse on Chinese social media also highlights this strategy of ‘externalising the domestic and internalising the international’ in official and popular communications. When binary thinking dominates the discussion, any criticisms of the government can be dismissed as intentionally or unintentionally ‘helping the enemy’.

The nationalist right in Western societies are informed by the same binary thinking that views the pandemic as a power game of winners and losers. Some resort to xenophobia and racism, which not only hurt Asian communities in those societies, but also helps the Chinese government and ‘wolf warrior’ nationalists to perpetuate the narrative of foreign hostile forces. While hawks on both sides feed into each other by scapegoating the foreign other for domestic failures, progressive politics everywhere must resist subjecting democratic struggles against inequality, injustice, and state violence to the logics of right-wing nationalism and geopolitical competition.

Lastly, although nationalistic sentiments now appear to be prevalent in discussions about Covid-19 in China, the diversity of opinions and the creative expression of criticism despite strict censorship should never be underestimated. Representing the country as a monolithic whole and disregarding the agency of its citizens is a key component of the binary thinking critiqued above.

About the author: Chenchen Zhang is a lecturer in politics and international relations at HAPP. Her work on the politics and international relations of China is focused on identity and discourse. She has also published on the politics of citizenship, migration, and borders. Find more about her research here.

Categories
Life in Lockdown

Greetings from Berkeley to lovely Belfast

John Connelly
Professor in History at University of California, Berkeley, and Fulbright Fellow at QUB, HAPP from January till June, 2020
02/06/2020

Greetings from Berkeley to lovely Belfast,

Maruška [Svasek] encouraged me to write some reflections on lock-down and until a few hours ago, I thought I had nothing to write. Then came news of something that had never happened in our vicinity: a curfew! Protests have broken out all over the Bay Area in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and authorities here, fearing violence, want to clear the streets after sunset.If I was going to have a bike ride, it had to be before 8pm after which no one can be on the streets.

It’s a fabulous day, 60s (F) with sun, but also a very bizarre day, as most people one encounters wear masks.  I should be used to it, but somehow, all those hidden faces still produce an uncanny feeling, as if we were part of a reality that until recently existed only in the minds of science fiction authors. People without faces actually qualifies as Sci-Fi kitsch.

I decided to bike from our outpost in the hills to downtown for the first time since return from Belfast on March 29. What would a city look like that was not just locked down but now converted by decree into a ghost town?  The effect, again, is uncanny.  Downtown streets resemble a Hollywood set with streetlights installed for effect but not to regulate actual traffic. So I did the un-Californian thing of crossing at red lights.  Maybe officers will show up later to enforce the curfew, but no one seemed to mind.  The shops of course are shuttered, but now some of them also sport the rough exterior design of cheap plywood. For example, Wells Fargo Bank and Starbucks. Our previous experience with plywood comes from newsreels of Floridians preparing for hurricanes. 

I recalled words of a prophet, the taxi driver who took my daughter and me back from the airport on the evening of that March 29 return. He had been waiting all day for passengers, and had not been able to get out of line (of only 12 cars at San Francisco International Airport!) to get anything to eat (after we boarded he got off the freeway briefly to buy what you would call crisps).

Among other startling things, he told us that department stores in San Francisco had begun covering their windows with plywood, a sure sign of coming unrest.Why a pandemic would drive impoverished masses onto the streets was not clear.  Yet two months later, the unemployment rate hovers over one quarter and last week we got a spark from a supposedly progressive Midwestern city igniting massive protest.

Then came the uncanniest event of all. As I continued uphill onto the mostly deserted Berkeley campus, I was drawn to the undergraduate library and its eye-catching display of that day’s news.  Around the start of the millennium, a bright architect had the idea of placing massive cases featuring newspaper front pages in a row before the library entrance. Patrons could thus examine the headlines each day from the Washington Post, Guardian, Manila Times, Globe and Mail, Haaretz, or Irish Examiner.

My cell phone told me it was June 1, 2020, but the news was dated March 16, 2020.  It was as though the university employees who dutifully put up the larger-than-life newspapers that morning had wanted to leave some last sign, a dying gasp of a world about to disappear. The headlines and front-page images evoked mystery-tinged hysteria: 8 million patients expected by NHS, socially-distanced faithful separated by yellow police tape at Manila cathedral, ominous hints that pubs were about to close across Ireland… Before biking over to those petrified news reports, I had just been thinking that the campus too resembled the set of a sci-fi world.  Now, reality and fiction were indistinguishable.

As it happens, I remember March 16, 2020 very well. My daughter and I had a breakfast of pastries and coffee in still frigid Glasgow before boarding coach and ferry back to Belfast.  As luck would have it, we encountered a young couple whom I had harassed on our trip out from Belfast for watching a grim detective show on their phone … without earbuds. Do we all have to listen to that? I had asked. Now I offered them a spare pair of earbuds and they declined with a smile: they had bought some during their stay. Then we got the ferry, good crowd, but still plenty of space up front to “witness” the crossing from gloom into gloom. No social distancing, lots of nice Heineken on draft.

After docking, I recall standing in the drizzle (when did it not drizzle during our stay?), waiting for the bus to Belfast Great Victoria Street station. From there, my daughter prevailed upon me to take a taxi (rather than do the short walk to Camden St.), and then we concluded the day at the lovely Italian restaurant on Botanic, already emptier than normal.  I thought I would buy a nice lamp for our apartment the following day. Our stay in Belfast was scheduled to last into June.  Yes, history was staring us in the face, but I at least was clueless that this chapter of our lives was suddenly about to close.