Christmas Every Day

1781 The Zong Massacre

On August 18th 1781, the sailing ship Zong sailed from Accra on the Gold Coast of Africa with a crew of 17 and a hold full of slaves — 441 of them, more than twice as many as could have been transported safely. By late November the ship had reached the Caribbean but was still some way from its Jamaican destination and running low on water. Several sailors and dozens of slaves had already died, and the captain was ill, leaving a drunkard in charge of the vessel.  The crew decided that they had to dispose of some of their cargo in order to save the rest so on November 29, they began to toss their African captives overboard.

This mass murder was deemed to be a prudent financial decision, for if the slaves died after reaching land, the Liverpool ship-owners would not be able to collect insurance on their property (valued at £30 a head). If the slaves died a natural death at sea, insurance claims could not be made either. However, if some slaves were killed in order to save the rest of the merchandise or the ship, then a claim could be made on the principle that a captain who jettisons part of his cargo in order to save the rest can claim for the loss from his insurers. In the end, 133 Africans were tossed into the sea.

The insurance company, however, refused to pay and the case went to court in England where it caused a huge wave of hostility to the slave trade. The shipowners had precedent on their side, claimed that the deaths were necessary and that payment should be made as if it were any cargo, not human life, that was being jettisoned. Their opponents argued that the taking of innocent life, even in self-defence, was unjustified. Moreover, it had rained heavily on the voyage providing ample water for the ship, but the killings had continued. The courts eventually ruled in favour of the insurers. No one was ever prosecuted for the mass murder but the case inspired the anti-slavery movement and led, first to laws hindering the abuses of the trade, and then eventually abolishing it all together.

1887 Birthday of a loyal Nazi

Ernst Julius Günther Röhm was born in Bavaria in 1887. During Word War I he fought on the western front, took part in the battle for Verdun, was wounded on a number of occasions and won the Iron Cross. He ended the war as a captain and remained with the army during the first few years of peace. He participated in the suppression of a Communist rising in Münich in 1919 as a member of the voluntary paramilitary  Freikorps. That same year he joined the German Workers’ Party which, under Adolf Hitler, another army veteran, became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or Nazis). When Röhm took part in the attempted Nazi coup in Münich in 1923, he was imprisoned briefly and resigned from the army. Nonetheless he was elected to the Reichstag as a member for a right-wing group and was instrumental in building up a militia to replace the banned Nazi paramilitary. After a quarrel with Hitler he migrated to Bolivia where he served as an army officer until 1930 when Hitler summoned him back to Germany.

Röhm became head of the Sturmabteilung (the SA), the Nazi party’s massive private army of Brownshirts, a force that would grow to 3,000,000 men. In the run-up to the elections of 1933 that brought Hitler to power, the SA fought street wars against the Social Democrats, Communists and those who were deemed opponents of Nazi ambitions. They broke up political meetings, attacked Jews and opposition newspapers, and aided workers in their strikes against big business.

When Hitler became Chancellor, the SA expected to reap the benefits in terms of power and personal rewards but they were to be disappointed. Röhm and many of his followers were genuine socialists and opponents of capitalism; they were dismayed to find Hitler cozying up to industrialists, officers of the regular army, and members of the ruling class that the Nazi revolution was supposed to be rid of. Hitler feared the army of street-fighters that he no longer needed and whose brutishness was embarrassing. Other Nazi leaders had pointed to Röhm’s open homosexuality as a public relations liability and fed the Führer false stories of a coup that was being planned by the Brownshirts. In 1934 Hitler met secretly, on the battleship Deutschland, with army and navy leaders who dreaded being submerged into the SA (Röhm had demanded being made Minister of Defence); in return for their pledge of loyalty they persuaded Hitler to reduce the power of the SA and dismiss Röhm.

The dismissal was a brutal one. On June 30, 1934, in the “Night of the Long Knives”, Hitler’s personal security force, the black-clad SS, rounded up Röhm and other SA leaders, as well as a gaggle of politicians Hitler wanted to eliminate. They were executed without trial, dumbfounded by this turn of events which they thought the Chancellor knew nothing about, many of them dying with “Heil Hitler” on their lips. Röhm, in his cell, was given the option of suicide but he refused, saying, “If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.” He was shot to death by an SS officer.

2009 The Nevsky Express is bombed

Twenty-seven people died and another 130 people were hurt in a blast which hit the last three carriages of the high-speed Moscow-to-St Petersburg Nevsky Express. At first, the incident was blamed an an electrical fault but various terrorist groups began to claim credit for the outrage. Finally, blame was credibly settled on the forces of Dokka Umarov (aka Dokka Usman), the head of the so-called Caucasus Emirate, a pan-Islamic jihadist movement.

Since the sixteenth century, the Russian empire had been expanding eastward on to the vast steppes populated largely by Muslim peoples. In the 1700s they penetrated the Caucasus, meeting resistance from the fierce mountain tribes and the Persians who also controlled the area. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the Russian hold on these territories became relatively secure. That did not mean that opposition ceased. There were a number of risings by Chechens, Dagestanis and Ingushetians culminating in the proclamation of an independent Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus in the dying days of the Romanov dynasty. Independence was crushed by the nascent Soviet Union which absorbed these peoples in backward federal republics. When the Soviet Union collapsed, separatist movements started up again, engaging in attacks (often vile and terroristic) on Russian forces and their collaborators. Some of the rebels wanted only independence, but a significant wing, led by Dokka Umarov, wanted a unified Islamic state and were prepared to spread violence into Russia proper to gain their ends.

In 2012 a Russian court convicted ten suspects from  the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia for the bombing; nine of them were from the same family of separatist activists. Umarov seems to have been poisoned, probably by opponents inside his movement.

1963 A Trio of Deaths

November 22, 1963 is best known for the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy as he drove in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. Though he was unquestionably murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist sympathizer who had lived in the Soviet Union and supported Castro’s Cuba, a plethora of conspiracy theories has blamed everyone from mobsters, to the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and most unfairly, Lyndon Johnson. A vile piece of 1967 agit-prop called Macbird! likened LBJ to Macbeth who slew his king and who would in turn be slain by a Bobby-Kennedy figure. The worst blot on the assassination’s historical landscape was the 1991 Oliver Stone atrocity JFK.

Also dying on that day in 1963 were literary scholar and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis and dystopian author Aldous Huxley whose Brave New World presciently spoke of a future world of pleasure drugs and genetic manipulation.

In 1968 another disaster took place on this date: the Beatles issued “the White Album”.

1970

The death of Newsy Lalonde

Édouard Cyrille “Newsy” Lalonde was born in 1887 and became one of the great “Flying Frenchmen” of the Montreal Canadiens hockey club was well as an outstanding lacrosse player. He began play in the era just before the formation of the National Hockey League when now-long-forgotten teams from across the continent could bid for first-rate talent. This article is, therefore, a salute to the Saskatoon Sheiks, the Renfrew Creamery Kings, the Vancouver Millionaires, the Victoria Aristocrats, the New York (later Brooklyn) Americans, the Portland Buckaroos, and the Seattle Totems.

The nickname “Newsy” was derived from Lalonde’s work in a printing plant. Hockey players, like their baseball counterparts, used to have splendid nicknames. Herewith a tip of the Chippendale Biltmore to

Georges Vezina, “the Chicoutimi Cucumber”; Dave “the Hammer” Schultz; Garnet “Ace” Bailey; “Bashin’ Bill” Barilko; Bobby Hull, “the Golden Jet”; Eddie “the Eagle” Belfour; Reggie Leach, “the Riverton Rifle”; Frank Nighbor, the “Pemberton Peach”; André “Moose” Dupont; “Sweet Lou from the Soo” Nanne; Alf “The Embalmer” Pike (he was a mortician); Maurice “the Rocket” Richard and his little brother Henri “the Pocket Rocket”; Matts “the Norwegian Hobbit” Zuccarello.

And surely the greatest of all sports monikers: Max Bentley, “the Dipsy Doodle Dandy from Delisle”.

1497 

Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope

The disintegration of the Mongol Empire and the conquest of Constantinople and the Middle East by the Turks meant that European trade with Asia was in the hands of Muslim and Italian middle-men, making commerce both more expensive and less reliable. A number of states, particularly on the Atlantic coast, sought a direct sea-borne route to Asia; the Spanish, taking the advice of Christopher Columbus, tried sailing west, while the Portuguese sought a long-rumoured passage around Africa. Columbus, of course, bumped into the Americas (which he mistook for Asia) but expedition after expedition from Lisbon kept pushing farther and father down Africa’s inhospitable shoreline.

In 1486 Bartolomeu Diaz reached the southern tip of Africa and in 1497 a three-ship flotilla led by Vasco da Gama finally rounded the Cape to begin the long voyage north and on to India. His trip shocked the Arab world which had long had the monopoly of trade and intruded European sea-power into Asia. Soon the technologically-advanced ships of other western countries ventured into those waters and joined the Portuguese and Spanish in establishing trading empires that persisted until the 20th century.

1863 Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address

The second-greatest short speech in history.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

1885

Death of a Canadian rebel

Louis David Riel (1844-1885) was born into a family of Métis businessmen in the Red River colony of Rupert’s Land, what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. Showing early promise he was given a French-language education in hopes that he might be the first Catholic priest from his community but, though intelligent, he dropped out of his studies and worked in the United States before returning to his home in 1868.

Rupert’s Land was at that moment under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company but it was soon to be transferred to the new nation of Canada. A flood of Ontario Protestant settlers had created tensions with the native, Métis and French-Canadian population and a nationalist sentiment arose. This was put to the test when a party from Canada attempted to make a survey of Red River land, threatening the locals who had no written title and whose traditional seigneurial river-lot land division would not easily fit the Canadian model. Riel led an armed group to oppose the Canadian interlopers and to assert that Métis concerns would have to be taken into account. When a pro-Canadian party armed in resistance the Métis imprisoned them and set up a Provisional Government to negotiate with Ottawa. While negotiations were going on in 1871 Riel foolishly ordered the execution of an obstinate Canadian, Thomas Scott, a deed that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Negotiations resulted in the creation of a new province of Manitoba, and settlement of land claims but a military expedition from Ontario forced Riel to flee to the United States to avoid arrest. Though elected to the Canadian Parliament in subsequent years he was never able to take his seat. He obtained a pardon for his actions but at the price of a 5-year exile. During his time in the United States Riel’s mental condition weakened; today he might be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia characterized by a religious mania and delusions of grandeur. He was institutionalized for two years; on his release he headed to the American West, settling in Montana and becoming an American citizen.

When Métis and native grievances in Saskatchewan grew intolerable in the 1880s, a delegation was sent to Riel to ask him to return to Canada and resume a leadership role. He did so but much of the white support he had initially won dissolved when his religious obsessions turned into megalomania and he began favouring armed resistance to the Canadian government. Open warfare broke out in 1885 with a number of native tribes and a faction of the Métis took up arms, seized hostages and clashed with local troops. Though the rebels achieved some fleeting victories a Canadian force under General Middleton crushed the rising at the Battle of Batoche in May.

Riel was put on trial for treason in Regina and was found guilty with a jury recommending mercy, given Riel’s shaky mental state. John A. Macdonald ordered the execution to go through. “Riel shall hang,” he proclaimed, “though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.” He was dispatched on  this date in 1885.

1908

Death of the Dragon Lady

Cixi (1835-1908) was the Dowager Empress of China during that empire’s last dynasty, the Qing (or Manchu). She effectively ruled that country for 47 years attempting to hold back the tides of change and to limit the power of foreigners.

A concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor, she gave birth to the royal heir and upon the death of her husband in 1861 she ruled as a regent for her son. When he died in 1875, she placed her nephew on the throne and ruled through him. This was all contrary to dynastic tradition but she was a ruthless infighter and shrewd politician who outmaneuvered ministers and royal family members to keep her grip on power.

In the 19th century China was a shaky and tottering empire, forced by European and American governments to accept the opium trade and foreign domination of much of the Chinese economy. Cixi at first approved of, and then undermined, attempts to modernize China. By the 1890s the growing threat from a modernized Japan compelled many officials and the emperor to press for drastic reform, the Hundred Days’ Movement, to which Cixi responded by launching a coup, ending the reforms and exiling the emperor.

In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion broke out, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising, that saw the massacre of thousands of foreigners, especially missionaries, and Chinese converts. The rebel armies moved on to Beijing where they laid siege to the diplomatic compound, drawing the world’s attention to the matter. Cixi, at first, secretly, and then openly, sided with the Boxers, which proved a mistake as foreign military forces invaded China and crushed the rebellion, levying heavy penalties on her government. She lived long enough to see her choice, Prince Puyi, ascend the throne but shortly after her death, a revolution overthrew the Qing and set up a Chinese Republic.

1989

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Erected in 1961 as a way of keeping citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from fleeing Communist rule by entering West Berlin, the “anti-fascist protective rampart” was a symbol of the repression needed to maintain Marxist-Leninist societies. Though originally billed as a barrier to Western aggression, it was obvious to all that it had been built to keep young, educated East Germans in. As a government document explained:

Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity.

Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a “guaranteed future” one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favours a new war and destruction?

Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labour in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness? …

[W]orkers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists.

Punishment was deadly at times. Though 5,000 East Germans managed to escape, perhaps as many as 200 were killed in the attempt with thousands more caught and arrested.

In 1987 Ronald Reagan challenged the legitimacy of such a barrier in his famous speech on the 750th anniversary of Berlin:

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!

The disintegration of the Eastern bloc was becoming clear in 1989. Hungary opened its borders, allowing East Germans to defect through that country. The will of the GDR government to use deadly force evaporated and guards began to allow thousands through. This event led directly to the collapse of the GDR and German reunification.