The Lash

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Seligmann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Naval Officers

Although the flogging of adult sailors had been suspended in the Royal Navy in 1881, at the outset of the twentieth century boy sailors could still be caned or birched for infractions of naval discipline. Many naval officers regarded such physical chastisement as the only appropriate and effective punishment for the youths in their charge, but there were many important opinion formers and campaigners outside the Navy who regarded corporal punishment as a relic from a more barbaric age and sought its total abolition in the senior service. Pressure was particularly strong in Parliament on this point. Sensitive to this pressure, Winston Churchill set up a committee to examine the whole system of naval discipline and, under cover of its report, sought to limit the regime of corporal punishment in the Navy.

Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, and the Lash Revisited

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Seligmann
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Reform Initiatives ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Social Agenda ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Naval Officers

There is an old story about Winston Churchill, which relates that, during his time as First Lord of the Admiralty, he made a proposal for reform that was strenuously opposed by the naval officers around him. The reason given was that Churchill’s measure was not in accord with naval tradition. Hearing this objection, Churchill immediately retorted, ‘Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers and the lash.’ The quotation is frequently dismissed as apocryphal or a jest, but, interestingly, all four areas of naval life singled out were subject to major reform initiatives while Churchill was in charge of the Royal Navy between October 1911 and May 1915. During this period, not only were there major improvements in pay and conditions for sailors, but detailed consideration was given to the future of the spirit ration; to the punishing and eradicating of homosexual practices; to the spiritual concerns of the fleet; and also to the regime of corporal punishment that underpinned naval discipline for boy sailors. In short, under Churchill, the Royal Navy introduced a social reform programme perfectly encapsulated in this elegant quip. And, yet, not only has no one studied it; many people do not even know that such a programme even existed. This book rectifies that. It shows that Churchill was not just a major architect of welfare reform as President of the Board of Trade and as Home Secretary, but that he continued to push a radical social agenda while running the Navy.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Seligmann
Keyword(s):  
Royal Navy ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Naval Officers

There is an old story about Winston Churchill and the Royal Navy that runs thus: during his time as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915, Churchill made a proposal for reform that was strenuously opposed by the naval officers on the Board of Admiralty, whose role it was to advise politicians on the administration of the service. The reason given for their objection was that Churchill’s measure was not in accord with what they referred to as ‘naval tradition’. Upon encountering such opposition, Churchill immediately and thunderously retorted, ‘Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers and the lash.’...

‘Grey Dawn’ in the British Pacific: Race, Security and Colonial Sovereignty on the Eve of World War I

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Tumblin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
World War ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Cooperative Security ◽  
Strategic Defense ◽  
Racial Discourses ◽  
The Way

This article examines the way a group of colonies on the far reaches of British power – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and India, dealt with the imperatives of their own security in the early twentieth century. Each of these evolved into Dominion status and then to sovereign statehood (India lastly and most thoroughly) over the first half of the twentieth century, and their sovereignties evolved amidst a number of related and often countervailing problems of self-defence and cooperative security strategy within the British Empire. The article examines how security – the abstracted political goods of military force – worked alongside race in the greater Pacific to build colonial sovereignties before the First World War. Its first section examines the internal-domestic dimension of sovereignty and its need to secure territory through the issue of imperial naval subsidies. A number of colonies paid subsidies to Britain to support the Royal Navy and thus to contribute in financial terms to their strategic defense. These subsidies provoked increasing opposition after the turn of the twentieth century, and the article exlpores why colonial actors of various types thought financial subsidies threatened their sovereignties in important ways. The second section of the article examines the external-diplomatic dimension of sovereignty by looking at the way colonial actors responded to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. I argue that colonial actors deployed security as a logic that allowed them to pursue their own bids for sovereignty and autonomy, leverage racial discourses that shaped state-building projects, and ultimately to attempt to nudge the focus of the British Empire's grand strategy away from Europe and into Asia.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Seligmann
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Alcohol Intake ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Push Forward ◽  
The Common

As this book has shown the common conception that ‘Churchill’s “radical phase” was cast to the winds’ when he was put in charge of the Navy in October 1911, although well established in the literature, is not, in fact, accurate.1 The radical President of the Board of Trade, eager to improve the lives of the poor, became the radical Home Secretary, no less enthusiastic for social reform, who then became the radical First Lord of the Admiralty, imbued with both a desire and, perhaps more importantly, a will to intervene in order to better conditions for those who served in the Royal Navy. Accordingly, he embarked upon a major programme of improvement across a wide range of different areas all of which affected the everyday life of sailors. Alcohol intake, sexual behaviour, religious practice, corporal punishment, as well as pay and equality of progression, all came under the spotlight while Churchill was First Lord. Of course, not all of the new measures were successful and not all were progressive in the modern understanding of the term, but all of them represented significant attempts to push forward a radical agenda for change....

Pay, Promotion, and Democratization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Seligmann
Keyword(s):  
Officer Corps ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Naval Officers ◽  
Lower Deck

As soon as he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Winston Churchill sought to buttress his credentials as a social reformer by improving conditions for sailors in the Navy and widening the social composition of the officer corps. This chapter examines his efforts towards both of these ends. It shows how he fought against the Treasury and his Cabinet colleagues to offer sailors their first meaningful pay rise in decades. It similarly catalogues the many schemes he introduced to entice people from a wider range of backgrounds, including sailors from the lower deck, to become naval officers. As with enhanced naval pay, this required him to persevere against entrenched interests, but as this chapter will show, his achievements in this area were considerable.

Semiotics East and West: an aesthetic-semiotic approach to translating the iconicity of classical Chinese poetry

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangxu Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Chinese Poetry ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Classical Chinese Poetry ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Sacrifice

Abstract For some Western translators before the twentieth century, domestication was their strategy to translate the classical Chinese poetry into English. But the consequence of this strategy was the sacrifice of the ideogrammic nature of these poems. The translators in the twentieth century, especially the Imagist poets and translators in the 1930s, overcame the problems of their predecessors and their translation theory and practice was close to that of the contemporary semiotic translators. But both Imagist translators and contemporary semiotic translators have the problem of indifference to the feeling of the original in their translations. For the problem of translating the classical Chinese poetry by the Westerners before the twentieth century and the Imagist poets and translators of the twentieth century, see Zhao and Flotow 2018. This paper attempts to set up an aesthetic-semiotic approach to the translation of the iconicity of classical Chinese poetry on the basis of the examination of both Eastern and Western translation studies.

scholarly journals A CRITICAL REVIEW OF GOVERNANCE IN THE DIGITAL ERA: A DEVELOPING NATION’S PERSPECTIVE

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Ankit Kashyap ◽  
Mehak Jonjua
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Previous Election ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Come ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
Best Argument

‗The best argument against democracy is a five- minute conversation with the average voter‘ is a famous quote by Winston Churchill. The statement also indicates the success or failure in any form of government depends primarily on voters and not on parties or politicians. The sustenance of a government in a democratic set up and in the age of anti-incumbency is viable only if it has the mandate. The current government in the territory of India is thriving despite a strong effort by the opposition to come together and stand against the government. The last two Lok Sabha elections held in 2014 and 2019 in India has been exemplary from the perspective that it has largely been Bhartiya Janata Party versus all other political parties, unlike the previous election where there has been contest between ruling and opposition parties. This paper aims to review the functioning of the incumbent government in last five years from manifesto till its implementation. The paper also aims to review the different policies launched by the government and their outcome. The paper will also examine how the government took some landmark decisions that witnessed mass protest and may prove fatal in times to come.

The Qing Empire's Last Flowering: The expansion of China's Post Office at the turn of the twentieth century

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-930
Author(s):  
WEIPIN TSAI
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
General Public ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Railway Network ◽  
Opium War ◽  
Great Rivers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up

AbstractThe Great Qing Imperial Post Office was set up in 1896, soon after the First Sino-Japanese War. It provided the first national postal service for the general public in the whole of Chinese history, and was a symbol of China's increasing engagement with the rest of the globe. Much of the preparation for the launch was carried out by the high-ranking foreign staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, an influential institution established after the first Opium War.With a mission to promote modernization and project Qing power, the Imperial Post Office was established with a centrally controlled set of unified methods and procedures, and its success was rooted in integration with the new railway network, a strategy at the heart of its ambitious plans for expansion. This article explores the history of this postal expansion through railways, the use of which allowed its creators to plan networks in an integrated way—from urban centres on the coasts and great rivers through to China's interior.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 191-202
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Naval Officers

The final chapter assesses the cultural and political significance of the West Africa squadron and the work of the naval officers involved in its operation, looking at the wider implications of the question of ‘success’ in discussions about the impact of the squadron both at the time of its operation and since. It examines the shifts and changes that took place during the sixty years of the squadron’s operation, including: perceptions of the slave trade and the best methods of suppressing it; the position of the Royal Navy in Britain’s imperial ambitions; and racial and cultural attitudes of Britons towards Africans and ‘others’. This chapter discusses the ways in which notions of duty and professionalism had changed, and how what it meant to be a Royal Navy officer in 1870 had altered as compared to 1807. It asserts the individuality and independence of naval officers, and their engagement with themes of anti-slavery, empire and identity.

Officers’ contributions to Britain’s anti-slavery culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Naval Officers

This chapter examines officers’ contributions to the metropolitan discourses about slavery and abolition taking place in Britain in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Furthering the theme of naval officers playing an important part in the social and cultural history of the West African campaign, it uncovers connections between the Royal Navy and domestic anti-slavery networks, and the extent to which abolitionist societies and interest groups operating in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century forged relationships with naval officers in the field. Officers contributed to this ever-evolving anti-slavery culture: through support of societies and by providing key testimonies and evidence about the unrelenting transatlantic slave trade. Their representations of the slave trade were used to champion the abolitionist cause, as well as the role of the Royal Navy, in parliament, the press and other public arenas.

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