Christmas Every Day

1868 The Meiji Restoration

For centuries the Japanese emperors had been puppet rulers, subject to the oversight of a series of warlords. Since the 1630s these shoguns had been drawn from the Tokugawa dynasty which had followed a policy of isolating Japan from the rest of the world. With the exception of a few Dutch ships allowed to trade at Nagasaki, it was the death penalty for attempting to enter, or leave, the country.

In 1854 an American fleet under Commodore Perry forced Japan to open up to trade with the West. The realization that Europeans and Americans had a vast military and technological advantage over Japan, and the chaotic experience that China was undergoing at the hands of westerners, led elements inside the government to press for an end to the shogunate and a program of modernization.

On this date in 1868 the Meiji Emperor announced that he was resuming power:

The Emperor of Japan announces to the sovereigns of all foreign countries and to their subjects that permission has been granted to the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu to return the governing power in accordance with his own request. We shall henceforward exercise supreme authority in all the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently the title of Emperor must be substituted for that of Taikun, in which the treaties have been made. Officers are being appointed by us to the conduct of foreign affairs. It is desirable that the representatives of the treaty powers recognize this announcement.

A brief civil war against traditionalists was necessary to achieve the emperor’s victory but Japan was soon on the way to modernization and world power status.

1809

The curious case of a cask of wine

A case was tried at the end of December 1809, between the crown and Mr. Constable, lord of the manor of Holdernesse, in Yorkshire. It was a struggle who should obtain a cask of wine, thrown ashore on the coast of that particular manor. The lord’s bailiff, and some custom-house officers, hearing of the circumstance, hastened to the spot, striving which should get there first. The officers laid hold of one end of the cask, saying: ‘This belongs to the king.’ The bailiff laid hold of the other end, and claimed it for the lord of the manor. An argumentative dispute arose. The officers declared that it was smuggled, ‘not having paid the port duty.’ The bailiff retorted that he believed the wine to be Madeira, not port. The officers, smiling, said that they meant port of entry, not port wine—a fact that possibly the bailiff knew already, but chose to ignore. The bailiff replied: ‘It has been in no port, it has come by itself on the beach.’ The officers resolved to go for further instructions to the custom-house. But here arose a dilemma: what to do with the cask of wine in the interim  As the bailiff could not very well drink the wine while they were gone, they proposed to place it in a small hut hard by. They did so; but during their absence, the bailiff removed it to the cellar of the lord of the manor. The officers, when they returned, said: ‘ Oh, ho! now we have you; the wine is the king’s now, under any supposition; for it has been removed without a permit.’ To which the bailiff responded: ‘If I had not removed the wine without a permit, the sea would have done so the next tide.’ The attorney-general afterwards filed an information against the lord of the manor; and the case came on at York—on the question whether the bailiff was right in removing the wine without a custom-house “permit”.

The arguments pro and con were very lengthy and very learned; for although the cask of wine could not possibly be worth so much as the costs of the case, each party attached importance to the decision as a precedent. The decision of the court at York was a special verdict, which transferred the case to the court of Exchequer. The judgment finally announced was in favour of the lord of the manor — on the grounds that no permit is required for the removal of wine unless it has paid duty; that wine to be liable to duty, must be imported; that wine cannot be imported by ‘itself, but requires the agency of some one else to do so; and that therefore wine wrecked, having come on shore by itself, or without human volition or intention, was not ‘imported,’ and was not subject to duty, and did not require a permit for its removal.

The trial virtually admitted the right of the lord of the manor to the wine, as having been thrown ashore on his estate; the only question was whether he had forfeited it by the act of his servant in removing it from the spot without a permit from the custom-house officers; and the decision of the court was in his favour on this point. But it proved to be by far the most costly cask of wine he ever possessed; for by a strange arrangement in these Exchequer matters, even though the verdict be with the defendant, he does not get his costs.

1066 Granada Massacre

The occupation of Spain by Muslims during the Middle Ages is said to have produced a brilliant civilization marked by religious tolerance. Though we rightly celebrate the art, architecture and literature of Moorish Andalusia, the story of toleration has definitely been overplayed. The fact is that Jews and Christians under Islamic rule were always considered inferiors and subject to humiliating social and legal disabilities. They were protected, in the public mind, by a pact that reflected this enforced inferiority and when an individual “dhimmi”, or a community of Jews or Christians, seemed to have too much influence there could often be a backlash.

On this date in 1066 mobs of Muslims in Granada, in southern Spain, rose up against their ruler’s Jewish adviser Joseph ibn Naghrela whom they accused of controlling and plotting against their king. They stormed the palace, crucified Joseph on the city’s main gate, and massacred much of the city’s Jewish population. This poem is believed to have inspired the violence and makes clear the resentment felt when one of the inferior races achieves prominence:

Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them,

the breach of faith would be to let them carry on.

They have violated our covenant with them,

so how can you be held guilty against the violators?

How can they have any pact when we are obscure and they are prominent?

Now we are humble, beside them, as if we were wrong and they were right.

1834

The death of Thomas Malthus

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English clergyman and political scientist whose theories still generate controversy today. The following is a 19th-century reflection on his life:

This celebrated writer, whose theory on population has been the subject of so much unmerited abuse, was the son of a gentleman of independent fortune, who possessed a small estate in the county of Surrey. Young Malthus received his early education mainly from a private tutor, and subsequently entered Jesus’ College, Cambridge, where he studied for the church, and obtained a fellow-ship in 1797. For a time, he held the incumbency of a small parish in Surrey near his native place.

It was not in the church, however, that Mr. Malthus was to become famous. Through life, the bent of his genius seems to have led him in the direction of political economy and statistics; and in pursuit of information on this subject, he made extensive journeys and inquiries through various countries of Europe. The first edition of the work, which has conferred on him such notoriety, appeared in 1798, under the title of An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers. In subsequent issues, the title of the work was changed to its present form: An Essay on the Principle of Population; or a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness, with an Inquiry into our Prospects respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it occasions.

The leading principle in this work is, that population, when unchecked, doubles itself at the end of every period of twenty-five years, and thus increases, in a geometrical progression, or the ratio of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32; whilst the means of subsistence increases only, in an arithmetical progression, or the ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The author discusses the question of the various restrictions, physical and moral, which tend to keep population from increasing, and thus prevent it outstripping the means of subsistence in the race of life. A misapprehension of the writer’s views, combined with his apparent tendency to pessimism in the regarding of misery and suffering as the normal condition of humanity, has contributed, notwithstanding the philosophical soundness of many of his theories, to invest the name of Malthus with much opprobrium.

When the common or vulgar impression regarding Mr. Malthus’s celebrated essay is considered, it is surprising to find that the man was one of the most humane and amiable of mortals. His biographer tells us, it would be difficult to overestimate the beauty of his private life and character. His life was:

‘a perpetual flow of enlightened benevolence, contentment, and peace;’ ‘his temper mild and placid, his allowances for others large and considerate, his desires moderate, and his command over his own passions complete.’ ‘No unkind or uncharitable expression respecting any one, either present or absent, ever fell from his lips All the members of his family loved and honoured him; his servants lived with him till their marriage or settlement in life; and the humble and poor within his influence always found him disposed, not only to assist and improve them, but to treat them with kindness and respect’ ‘To his intimate friends, his loss can rarely, if ever, be supplied; there was in him a union of truth, judgment, and warmth of heart, which at once invited confidence, and set at nought all fear of being ridiculed or betrayed. You were always sure of his sympathy; and wherever the case allowed it, his assistance was as prompt and effective as his advice was sound and good.’

Shortly after his marriage in 1805 to Miss Eckersall, Mr. Malthus was appointed professor of modern history and political economy at the East India College at Haileybury, and held this office till his death. He expired on 29^th December 1834, at Bath, at the age of sixty-eight, leaving behind him a son and daughter.

1166 The birth of a very bad king

King John was not a good man / —He had his little ways. / And sometimes no one spoke to him / For days and days and days. So wrote A.A. Milne about a monarch so universally despised that not a single English ruler in the 800 years since his rule has been named John.

John was the youngest son of King Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, rulers of England, Ireland and most of France: what is today called the Angevin Empire. His was a notoriously quarrelsome family with the sons and mother frequently combining to make war against the father or against each other. John was Henry’s favourite and stayed loyal to him longest but, in the end, he too turned on his aging father, siding with his brother Richard who would shortly inherit the throne.

Richard “Lionheart” became king in 1189 and immediately left on the Third Crusade. John had been bribed to keep him loyal in his brother’s absence but, predictably, he began conspiring with Philip of France who had treacherously returned early from the crusade intending to reduce Richard’s holdings in France. When Richard returned in 1194 he forgave his little brother but died in 1199 without clearly naming him as heir. John had to battle the forces of his nephew Arthur of Brittany before securing the English crown and his possessions in France. Unfortunately John was an incompetent and uninspiring leader who soon lost almost all of his continental holdings, earning the nickname “Softsword”.

Back in England John fared no better, quarrelling with the church and his nobility. He imposed his own candidate as the Archbishop of Canterbury, earning an excommunication from the pope, and alienated his political class with arrogance and greed. He was forced to accept the pope’s candidate for archbishop, turn England over as a papal fief, and sign the Magna Carta with his barons, promising in this founding constitutional document, to rule fairly or face a justified rebellion.

John died of dysentery in 1216, unwept, unhonoured and, mostly, unsung. With the exception of the 16th century when John was treated as a Protestant hero for having defied the pope, John’s historical reputation remained abysmally low.