Mapping the Past: A Brief History of Cartography

We were walking through the New Forest when we came across a sign warning of unexploded ordnance.  “Is that why the Ordnance Survey is called the Ordnance Survey?” my friend asked.  “Is it something to do with the military?”  It seemed plausible, though I didn’t know for sure.  Despite being a keen walker with an ever-growing collection of Ordnance Survey maps, I knew very little about the origins of the organisation itself.  Nor was I particularly aware of the general history of cartography, despite being a life-long lover of maps (rolled up somewhere in my parents’ loft is a highly detailed chart of the stream running through the valley where I grew up).  “Now there’s an interesting topic for a blog,” I mused.

So here it is.  A blog on the history of mapmaking.  A full history would probably fill several volumes, so I have regrettably reduced it to a (very) swift journey through the highlights in the fascinating story of cartography.

Early History

The earliest known maps were of the stars, rather than the earth.  Dots on the walls of the Lascaux caves in southern France dating from 16,500 BC map out part of the night sky and the Cuevas de El Castillo in Spain contain a dot map of the Corona Borealis constellation dating from 12,000 BC.

The oldest known maps of the earth, however, are those preserved on Babylonian clay tablets, dating from around 2,300 BC.  Early maps covered small, local areas and were more artistic than accurate, since they were expensive and owning them a sign of status. Although the Babylonians produced the earliest known map of the 'world', it is far from accurate, deliberately excluding the Persians and the Egyptians, and depicting the world as a circular area of land surrounded by water.

Part of the Turin Papyrus Map

Other examples of early maps include silk maps from China and the Turin Papyrus Map, made by the Ancient Egyptians and believed to date from around 1160 BC.  Interestingly, it is thought to be the first map to show topographical detail, depicting the mountains east of the Nile where gold and silver were mined.  Trade routes are labelled in hieroglyphics and the map also contains accurate geological detail.

Ptolemy

The Greeks and Romans, masters of invention, continued to refine the art of mapmaking.  This all culminated with the work of the Greco-Egyptian scholar Claudius Ptolemaeus, known in English as Ptolemy.  Ptolemy published the important work Geographia (Geography) in about 150 AD, which contained thousands of references and maps of different parts of the world.  He also, significantly, included lines of longitude and latitude.  This system revolutionised European geographic thinking, by imposing mathematical rules on the composition of maps.  Ptolemy's work continued to influence Islamic and European map makers well into the Renaissance period.  It was Ptolemy’s calculations regarding the circumference of the globe that led Christopher Columbus to set off on his historic voyage, but Ptolemy wasn’t infallible and the figures were somewhat underestimated.  It’s possible that Columbus wouldn’t have set off if he had known the true figures, and that history would have taken a remarkably different course!

China

The Greeks and Romans were not the only ones producing maps.  Chinese mathematicians and cartographers were also developing mapping techniques.  Pei Xiu (224–271) has been called the 'Chinese Ptolemy' and is credited with influential work on the development of scale in maps, having noticed the inaccuracies in distance on early Chinese maps.  Pei also developed the work of earlier Chinese cartographers on using gridlines on maps.

The Middle Ages

Al-Idrisi's Map of the World

Few improvements were made in mapping during the Middle Ages in Europe.  Like all written material during this period, the majority of maps were made in monasteries and religious beliefs dominated their production, placing Jerusalem in the centre of world maps.  The maps also tended to include highly decorative religious imagery.

In contrast, Islamic cartography during this period was taking advantage of knowledge gained by explorers and merchants travelling across the Muslim world, from Spain to India, Africa, China and Russia.  Al-Idrisi, an Arab scholar in the court of King Roger II of Sicily, produced many brilliant ‘world’ maps and geographic works in the mid-12^th century, including the pleasingly titled ‘The Amusement of Him Who Desires to Traverse the Earth’.

Renaissance

The printing press brought maps to a far wider audience by the end of the 15^th century and they were no longer dominated by religious agendas.  The accompanying thirst for knowledge that characterised the Renaissance period drove the desire for the improvement in mapping, as well as further exploration of the wider world.  The first whole-world maps began to appear in the early 16th century, following voyages by Columbus and others to the New World, with the first world map generally accredited to the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.  Produced in 1507, Waldseemüller’s map drew on Ptolemy’s work and was the first map to use the name America for the New World

Modern Maps

From the 16^th century onwards, maps gradually became more detailed and more accurate.  Like many inventions, the greatest improvements were driven by military needs.  As wars increased in their numbers and scale, precise information was needed about territory.  Alongside this, the growth and development of transport, in particular the railways in the 19^th century, necessitated accurate maps of large areas as well. It was during World War I that the use of aerial photography, for the initial purpose of mapping the trenches and frontlines, made its first impact on improving standards of mapping.

Ordnance Survey

A Ramsden Theodolite

As predicted, the Ordnance Survey was developed for military needs.  Rebellion in Scotland and a war against France prompted George II to commission a military survey of the Scottish Highlands in 1746.  By 1790, Europe was in turmoil and there were fears that the French Revolution would spread across the Channel.  The Government therefore ordered the Defence Ministry (then the Board of Ordnance) to begin a survey of England’s southern coast.  To aid with this, the Board purchased a huge new Ramsden theodolite.  Jesse Ramsden’s innovative surveying instruments consisted of a mounted telescope which rotated to give the angle of view and were very accurate.  Only a few were ever built.

The first one-inch map of Kent was produced in 1801, followed by a similar map of Essex.  Within 20 years, about a third of England and Wales had been mapped in one-inch scale.  Major Thomas Colby (Director General of the Ordnance Survey) walked 586 miles in 22 days on a reconnaissance in 1819.  In 1824 Parliament asked Colby and his staff to produce a 6-inch to the mile survey of Ireland.  Colby was a very hands-on boss, travelling with his staff to set up camps and bringing them plum puddings on the top of mountains!  The first Irish maps appeared in the mid-1830s.

The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, alongside the demands of railway engineers, prompted calls for 6-inch surveys of England and Wales, which was agreed by the Treasury in 1840.  In 1841, following a fire at the Grand Storehouse of the Tower of London, the Survey moved their offices to Southampton.  During the 1860s, Major-General Sir Henry James used his directorship of the Survey to exploit the new science of photography to cheaply and quickly enlarge maps, and he designed an elaborate glass studio at Southampton for processing photographic plates.  By 1895, a twenty-five inch survey of Britain was complete.

Following the disruption of the First World War, it became apparent that the Ordnance Survey’s maps were woefully outdated.  In 1935 the Davidson Committee was established to review Ordnance Survey's future. That same year, the far-sighted new Director General, Major-General Malcolm MacLeod, launched the re-triangulation of Great Britain.  Surveyors began the mammoth task of building concrete triangulation points on remote hilltops across Britain.  The re-triangulation was finally completed after the Second World War, utilising new methods, such as improvements in aerial surveying and up-to-date drawing techniques.

The Davidson Committee's final report set Ordnance Survey on course to face the challenges of the 21st century. The National Grid reference system was introduced, using the metre as its measurement. An experimental new 1:25,000 scale map was launched.  The digitisation of maps began in 1973. By this point, the organisation itself was changing too.  In 1974 the position of Ordnance Survey Director General became a civilian post, and in 1983 it became a wholly civilian organisation.

Further change took place in 1999 when the agency became a government trading fund and as of 1 April 2015 it has operated as a Government owned limited company.  The Ordnance Survey digitised the last of some 230,000 maps in 1995, making Britain the first country in the world to complete a programme of large-scale electronic mapping.  It remains a world-leading mapmaking organisation, regularly surveying all 243,241 square kilometres of the British Isles and making thousands of updates on a daily basis.

Read more about the history of the Ordnance Survey here.

Maps of the Future

Satellite technology and GIS are improving the accuracy of maps all the time.  Mass publication has made them cheaper and street maps are now freely available on the internet.  This has had an impact on organisations such as the Ordnance Survey, which has sometimes struggled to stay up to speed with the changing face of cartography.

However, even today’s maps are not completely accurate representations of the real world.  As with anything man-made, all measurements are subject to human error.  Aerial photographs and satellite images show only certain portions of the light spectrum.  Maps portray features using symbolic styles defined by classification schemes.  All maps are made according to certain basic assumptions, such as sea level measurements, which are not always verifiable.

In spite of these weaknesses, maps remain an essential tool for social interaction.  Maps of all kinds – be they highly detailed maps of footpaths in the Lake District, a world map showing at a glance our position on the planet, a scribbled diagram on the back of an envelope showing a friend how to get to the train station, or a childish hand-drawn creation warning of the places where the river will definitely go over the top of your wellies – will always be a part of our human desire to understand and interpret the world around us.

Review: In the Land of Blood and Honey

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) is not the sort of film you would expect Angelina Jolie to make. As war films go it's bleaker, gorier and more shocking than most.  It tells the story of Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian Muslim living in Sarajevo at the outbreak of the war in 1992, and her relationship with her Bosnian Serb prison guard, Danijel (Goran Kostić), as the war progresses.

It’s a daring premise for a film about so recent a war.  When it premiered in Sarajevo, audiences were moved to tears by the memories that film brought to the surface; it is certainly jolting to see images of Sarajevo under siege again.  The treatment of women during the Bosnian war is a topic that is being explored more and more, in academia and literature, and although it is laudable what Jolie is trying to do with this film, unfortunately, it just doesn’t work.  Watching it, you feel you are being shown a clumsily polemic humanitarian lecture rather than a work of any true artistic value.

For starters, the film doesn't appear to know if it's a love story or a psychological exploration of the relationship between captor and prisoner.  Viewers are unsure if we are supposed to feel sympathy for Danijel, as a man overtaken by his circumstances, or to abhor him as a weak-willed misogynist.  If the former, then sadly Danijel is such a creepy and unlikeable character that it is impossible to feel sorry for him.  The chemistry between the two leads throughout is uncertain, as though they are equally unsure how to feel about their characters.

Aside from taking some locational liberties with Sarajevo, there are number of dubious directorial calls in the film.  Including gratuitous female nudity in a film about the objectification of women and juxtaposing quasi-romantic sex scenes with scenes of systematic rape seem nothing more than distasteful.  The war was awful.  It was messy and confusing and people did terrible things to one another, and any film about it will necessarily be harrowing.  In the Land of Blood and Honey, however, dwells on the violence with very little exploration of the motivations and feelings of the individuals involved.

The film caused outrage amongst Serbs on its release and it’s easy to see why.  The Bosnian Serbs are portrayed as cartoonish villains filled with Nazi-esque levels of vitriol towards their Muslim neighbours, whilst the Bosnian Muslims are exclusively shown to be helpless victims clinging idealistically to a vision of a multicultural Bosnia.  I am by no means an apologist for the actions of the Bosnian Serb Army, but the film does little to demonstrate the complexities of the wider war, other than a brief allusion to Srebrenica, and the Muslim-Croat war is never mentioned at all.

Of course, these complaints would have been obscured by a stronger story.  At heart, this is a weak story, poorly told.  The action jumps from scene to scene, seemingly too desperate to educate and shock in equal measure; there is no build-up of suspense and we are never given the opportunity to really get to know the characters.  The result is that the unsettling relationship between Danijel and Ajla is utterly incomprehensible.

The title itself is a controversial choice, evocative of Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts and the myth of ancient hatreds that influenced John Major's thinking during the war.  Presumably the honey is supposed to be the sweet antithesis to the blood soaking the land, but there is very little sweetness in this film.  Coffee might have been a more appropriate choice.

It is estimated that up to 60,000 women were raped in prison camps during the Bosnian War.  Their suffering, and that of women in all wars, is a commendable cause to highlight, but there have been better films made about the impact that this sexual violence had on Bosnia’s women (Esma’s Secret/Grbavica (2006), for one).  Since In the Land of Blood and Honey was released, when people find out that I have studied the Bosnian War they often ask if I have seen it.  Now I can say that I have – and that I wouldn’t recommend it.  If you’re looking for good films about the Bosnian War, Hollywood has done it far better in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), and Bosnians excelled at it in No Man’s Land (2001).  In both educational and artistic terms, this film has sadly little to offer.

The Curse of the Unshockable World

In the photograph, a man kneels on the floor of a brightly lit shopping centre, blood on his hand and running down the side of his face, congealed in his matted hair, whilst another man reaches down a hand to help.  Two people were killed and several more injured in the rocket attack on a Donetsk shopping centre in Ukraine last October.  In another picture, this time from Syria and taken earlier this month, a man carries an bloody-faced, injured and wailing child out of dusty ruins following a government airstrike on Aleppo.

Once upon a time we would have been shocked by images like these.  Now they tend to pass us by, as we flip through our papers, at best raising a sigh and a weary shake of the head as we bypass them to gorge on stories of the latest MP to fall from grace.  We read about another gruesome video posted by ISIS, despair at how it will all end and skip to the weekend football results.

Whilst I was researching the portrayal of violence in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, I trawled through reels and reels of newspaper footage from the early 1990s on the noisy old microfiche reader in the University library.  At least one person was killed virtually every day during the 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital, but the newspapers covered only the most dramatic events - the breadline massacre, killing 16, in May 1992, right at the beginning of the war; the February 1994 shell in the Markale marketplace, killing 68, the images of which I can never get out of my mind; and the second shell which landed there in August 1995, killing 37 and in part triggering the western response that would finally end the war.  But despite the best efforts of the journalists based in Sarajevo, surrounded by these horrors, the everyday deaths did not make the news outside of Bosnia.

The Bosnian War, and Sarajevo in particular, was an unprecedented situation for war reporting.  Since UN control of Sarajevo’s airport meant that journalists could fly in and out of the city with relative ease, correspondents were able to feed out a constant stream of images of the atrocities, using the most modern of satellite technology.  Other areas of the country did not receive such close attention, but certain horrifying images, such as those of the Omarska concentration camp, uncovered by ITN in August 1992, did reach the international news from time to time.

Despite heavy coverage of the war, it took three and a half years for any determined military intervention to arrive in Bosnia.  The Syrian conflict, which began in earnest in early 2011, is coming up on that dubious milestone.  The bad news for Ukraine is that their war has only been raging for just over a year.  The worse news is that it is increasingly difficult to find that one shocking image – that Markale Marketplace, or Napalmed child – that will prompt the world to declare enough is enough.  What could we be shown now that we have not seen before?

We have grown desensitised to images of war over the last few decades.  We are overexposed to them in video games and films, so that we forget what is real and what is fiction.  Events are captured on mobile phones and tweeted all over the world instantly.  We are overwhelmed with these images, so much so that we begin to feel that there are just too many wars and there is nothing to be done: the world is simply a terrible place.  It appears that war is the constant state of being in these far away countries of which we know little about.

And yet our war correspondents keep sending back these photographs and keep writing their articles; keep putting their lives in danger.  Some might argue that it’s exploitative to make a living recording the suffering of others, when journalists can fly in, take a few snaps, make an award-winning documentary, and fly back home to plaudits and safety.  Perhaps it is.  On the other hand, without these images, how would anyone ever know what was going on?  How would anyone ever be so sickened as to demand that it ends?

War correspondence as a craft grew alongside literacy rates in the 19^th century.  William Howard Russell, widely considered to be the founder of modern war correspondence, reported for the Times on the Crimean War of the 1850s.  His reports shocked Victorians reading it at home, as he exposed the British military’s blunders and the appalling conditions of the soldiers.  Although radio and early television were used, the reporting was often heavily censored, especially during the First World War, and the pen remained the most accurate source of information from frontlines around the world.  Bulky camera equipment meant that many of the cinema newsreels during the Second World War were stock footage narrated in the studio, often serving as little more than government propaganda films.

It was the Vietnam War that really changed the face of war reporting.  Dubbed the ‘television war’, the graphic, uncensored footage fed back to the American public on a nightly basis revealed the brutality of war in all its gory detail.  Roving reporters with portable camera equipment had unrestricted access to the war zone.  Iconic photographs, such as Eddie Adams’ of a Viet Cong being executed by a Southern Vietnamese General during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and later Nic Ut’s image of a young girl running from her Napalmed village in 1972, changed public perception of the war in the US.  Support for the war plummeted, a vocal and sizeable anti-war movement developed, and eventually the decade-long conflict ended in a messy and ignominious retreat for the US.

Bosnia was arguably the next big television war, but it was by no means the only conflict of the early 1990s.  The Rwandan civil war, which took place concurrently with the Bosnian war, received much less coverage.  This was undoubtedly in part due to the accessibility of Bosnia to journalists, but more importantly Rwanda was not a white, European country.  Bosnia’s familiarity to western eyes might have helped its cause a little; made those images just a little more shocking.  Then-Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, caused an uproar when he visited Sarajevo in December 1992 and told the besieged population: “You have a situation which is better than ten other places all over the world. I can give you a list of ten places where you have more problems than in Sarajevo.”  This, he explained, was why the UN was not going to intervene in Bosnia's fight.

The sentiment that are just too many wars to do anything about has endured.  However many images are fed to us, we will not be moved because we have relentless evidence that war is inevitable; because we have seen these photographs of suffering too many times before.  There is nothing we can do to help and we’ve got problems of our own.  The sad fact is that Putin and Assad, and all the others, know this too.

On a Street Like This

Another year is drawing to a close.  Among other things, 2014 has seen a historic Scottish referendum, Winter Olympics in Russia and a World Cup in Brazil.  And in February this year, Russell T. Davies’ taboo-busting series Queer as Folk turned fifteen years old.  Fifteen.  One whole Nathan Maloney.  Nathan would be thirty now - the same age Vince turned halfway through the first series.  Stuart’s son Alfred would be fifteen himself.  And Stuart and Vince would be in their mid-forties.

Queer as Folk depicted the drug-fuelled, sex-filled party life of promiscuous Stuart, his luckless best friend Vince, and the series of events following one damp Thursday when Stuart picks up 15-year-old Nathan who’s on his first night out on Manchester’s Canal Street.  Not only was Queer as Folk ground-breaking, it was also a fantastic piece of television.  From its pitch-perfect soundtrack - ranging from club classics, to cheese pop, to Murray Gold’s pulsating, electronic score - to Davies’ brilliantly crafted script, it was an unrivalled success.  The script, in parts witty, in others excruciatingly acerbic, is trademark Davies.  His distinctive dialogue, capturing the randomness and warmth of everyday speech patterns, so familiar now to viewers following his revival of Doctor Who in 2005, is flawless.  Queer as Folk was unashamed, delightfully quirky and, above all, bursting with life – characters don’t walk, they run; through schools and hospitals and right down the middle of the road.  It’s a show you wish there was more of whilst being simultaneously glad that there isn’t.

The two-part second series that aired in 2001 leaves you wondering what the characters might be up to now.  Vince, I like to think, is happy.  Doctor Who is back on the telly, and, one hopes, he did eventually get that shag.  I imagine Nathan all grown up, bored now of being king of his small world and ready to hand on the mantle to his own protégé.  But what would Stuart Alan Jones make of 2014?  Re-watching the show in 2014, although it’s as vivacious as ever, some aspects have clearly aged.  The chunky mobiles, dial-up internet and Vince’s video tape collection all seem a little retro.  And, some might argue, the gay scene of the 1990s has changed beyond recognition.

In terms of gay rights, 1999 was a very different place.  Back then, the age of consent for homosexual couples was 18, making Nathan’s age all the more shocking.  It was lowered to 16 in January 2001, and since then, gay rights have crept towards equality at a fairly steady pace – the Sexual Offences Act of 2004 finally removed all reference to gender, civil partnerships were legally recognised by the end of 2005, the same year in which same-sex adoption became legal, and finally, in March this year, same sex marriage was officially recognised in the UK.  Homophobia is now outlawed and discriminating against someone based on their sexuality, in any area of public life, is illegal.

In Queer as Folk, Stuart is out and proud and wants nothing whatsoever to do with the heterosexual lifestyle.  He accuses Vince of being “a straight man who f*cks men” and of “wanting a wife”, simply because Vince appears to want to settle down in a monogamous relationship.  For Stuart, being gay means promiscuity, drugs and clubs; it means embracing a whole alternate lifestyle – there are no grey areas.  As he tells Martin Brooks (he of the wife and dodgy roof) – “you either do it or you don’t, but don’t be a tourist.”

In part, the development of the gay culture that Stuart embraces was a reaction to the increasing homophobia and marginalisation of gays throughout the latter half of the 20^th century.  Homosexual acts may have been decriminalised in 1967, but by no means did this allow gay people to enjoy the same lifestyle as their heterosexual peers.  They had no hope of marriage or children, the things that many people aspired to.  They were ostracised in every area of society, from education to the military, and media and politics.

This reached a head in the 1980s, with the AIDS crisis heightening the stigma of promiscuity and recklessness, and with the introduction of Section 28 of the Local Government Act in 1988, which stated that a local authority should not intentionally promote homosexuality or present it as normal.  In the light of this, it is little wonder that a gay subculture developed.  If society deemed them to be abnormal, then they would reject everything that society said they should be, and places such as Canal Street developed to accommodate these separate communities.

Canal Street itself developed as Manchester’s gay village following the decline in the use of canals and the collapse of the cotton industry by the 1960s.  The unlit and unvisited Canal Street made a good place for clandestine meetings.  During the 1980s, Manchester’s Chief of Police, James Anderton, an evangelical Christian, encouraged police officers to “stalk its dank alleys and expose anyone caught in a clinch, while police motorboats with spotlights cruised for gay men around the canal's locks and bridges.”

Everything changed in 1990, with the opening of the glass-fronted club Manto - an antithesis to the notion that gay people should hide themselves away.  The club lost money initially, as people were afraid to be seen there, but other clubs and bars soon grew up around it, transforming Canal Street into a vibrant gay community.

Manto closed its doors last year.  The face of Canal Street, the Village and the gay scene as a whole is changing. People complain that Canal Street is now too ‘straight’, overrun with hen-dos and tourists, in part a result of the ‘Queer as Folk-effect’.  Gay bars elsewhere in the UK are losing money too, since there is a declining desire for segregated bars.  And now there is a division opening up between those in the gay community who want to retain their separate lifestyle and those who want to live the traditional heterosexual lifestyle, now that they can have it too.  There has been some tension over customers being turned away from clubs for ‘not looking gay enough’.

What would Stuart Jones make of all this?  Would he be a middle aged party boy still holding the same beliefs or a responsible father embracing the changes?  Could Stuart’s world still exist in 2014?  It’s true that homosexuality is becoming more accepted but it has not yet been normalised.  Although traditional gender roles are gradually becoming more blurred, homophobia certainly hasn’t been stamped out.  Fifteen years has gone by, and we’re all getting older.  Some things have changed, but others, sadly, haven’t: there is still a long way to go before a person’s sexuality doesn’t define them.  Stuart and Vince and Nathan may well still be out there partying away.  And if Russell T. Davies is so inclined, there’s certainly a few fans who would be interested in finding out what they're up to.

Teach a Child to Fear

Last Saturday, as the people of Ferguson waited for the grand jury verdict on the shooting of Michael Brown, 500 miles away, in Cleveland, Ohio, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and fatally wounded by two police officers who had been called after reports of a child playing with a gun in a playground.  The gun in question was in fact a replica ‘airsoft’ pistol.  Officers reportedly asked Tamir to put his hands up – he reached for the gun.  They fired.  He was twelve years old.

I work with 12-year-olds.  Most of them are idiots at least once a day.  Many of them are idiots for large portions of the day.  That’s ok.  They’re supposed to be idiots.  They’re kids – they’re not done yet.  I know 12-year-olds who like to break the rules and challenge authority.  I know 12-year-olds who’d think it was a bit of a laugh to wave a replica gun around and ignore a request from a police officer.  They don’t half wind me up sometimes.  But I am still happy to see them walk into the classroom every morning.  Because they sometimes ask for help with a maths problem; because sometimes they’ll reach out to help another student; because sometimes the only kind words they’ll ever hear are from teachers; and because they are so full of potential to grow out of being idiots.

Footage released today shows police officers pulling up right beside Tamir and shooting him within two seconds of arriving at the scene. It’s been reported that the officers shouted warnings as they drove into the empty park, but it appears that no attempt was made to negotiate with Tamir once they arrived.  His hand seems to go to the gun in his waistband as the police car pulls up.  I know 12-year-olds who, when in high stress situations (and one would imagine being faced by armed police officers is just a little more stressful than being asked to demonstrate something in front of the rest of the class) would not understand a simple instruction to put their hands up.  The police officers who shot Tamir Rice, we are told, however, had to make a ‘split second decision’.  What kind of world do we live in where split second decisions lead to shooting dead a child?

The unavoidable debate here is one about race.  Because Tamir Rice was black, and the officers who shot him were white.  Around 53% of Cleveland’s population is black, but blacks make up only 27% of its police force.  Over 50 years after Martin Luther King and his followers marched to Washington and with its first black President in office, the USA remains a racially divided nation, and in no area more so than the criminal justice system.  The statistics are quotable and undeniable.  Racial profiling is still rife, with blacks being twice as likely to be stopped by police in many cities in the US.  African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the USA’s 2.3 million prison population and are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.  If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.  There are almost as many black men in prison than in college.  In 2010, African Americans comprised 13% of the population but accounted for 55% of gun homicides.  Homicide is the leading cause of death amongst African-American males aged 15-24, who are 10 times more likely to die of murder than whites of the same age group.

Although disputes over racial imbalance in the justice system remain politically explosive, fuelled further by shootings such as those of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, the bigger issue here is a country where officers policing the streets shoot first and ask questions later.  Guns are glorified in the US - the right to own and use them is sanctified in the constitution and politicians and a powerful gun lobby fight passionately against laws to control them.  This is a country where over 8000 people a year are killed by guns. Its gun crime rate is comparable with some of the most corrupt and dangerous regimes in the world, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Columbia.  It’s a country where kids want to play with toy guns because they see grown-ups playing with real ones.  And it’s a country where a 12-year-old child playing in a snowy park is presumed to be a dangerous criminal, unable to be reasoned with.  How many more children have to be shot and denied the chance to ever be a wonderful idiot again before America changes the way it thinks about guns?

From Cuba with Love

When the Ebola outbreak first spiralled into an international crisis, the country that dispatched the largest contingent of medical personnel to help was not a major western power, but Cuba, a small island nation of 11 million with a GDP of $6,051 per capita[1].  There are hundreds of Cuban medical staff now in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea - more than from any other nation.  In contrast, many western countries have seemed “more focused on stopping the epidemic at their borders than actually stemming it in West Africa.”

For Cuba to be playing such a major role in the medical response to the crisis is not unprecedented.  Cuba currently has around 50,000 medical workers in 66 countries around the world and has more health workers deployed abroad than any of the G8 nations.  Fidel Castro’s newly formed government first dispatched medical aid abroad in 1960, following an earthquake in Chile.  Many more missions in numerous countries followed over the subsequent decades.  The country’s current dedication to what has been termed ‘medical internationalism’ originated in the aftermath of Hurricanes George and Mitch, which devastated the Caribbean in 1998.  The Cuban government vowed to train one doctor for every life lost in the storms.  To achieve this aim they established the Latin American Medical School: ELAM.  Initially it was free for all students to attend (Raoul Castro’s reforms since taking power from his brother Fidel in 2008 have included charging North American students to attend ELAM) and has subsequently trained over 33,000 students from 76 different countries, who return home to practice, usually amongst the world’s poorest people.

After the Haiti Earthquake in 2010, it was Cuba that provided the highest number of health workers, many of whom had been there since the 1998 storms.  Cuba also sent 2,250 doctors to treat survivors of the Kashmir Earthquake in 2005.  But Cuba does not limit its offers of assistance to poorer countires.  Within 3 days of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, Cuba had assembled 1,100 doctors and nurses and 24 tonnes of medicines, ready to fly to the US, but the Bush government did not even acknowledge the offer. 

Although the Cuban Henry Reeve Brigade (named after a US volunteer in Cuba’s war of independence against Spain of 1868-1878) is trained in disaster relief medicine, Cuba also commits to long-term projects.  They dislike the paternalistic term ‘medical aid’ and instead prefer ‘medical cooperation’ or ‘collaboration’.  When Cubans are sent to disaster areas, they are there for the long haul, usually working in the affected area for two years, and will be replaced by more Cubans should the need persist.

The importance of a robust healthcare system has been a key Cuban policy since Castro’s rebels overthrew Batista in the Revolution of 1959.  Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Fidel Castro’s right hand man and himself an outsider who came to the aid of a country in need, had qualified as a doctor back home in Argentina before turning to life as a revolutionary.  Both he and Castro believed that unrestricted access to medical care was a basic human right and it was therefore enshrined in the Cuban constitution.  Despite the fact that almost half of Cuba’s doctors had fled from the communist regime by 1961, Che’s ‘revolutionary medicine’ encouraged a new generation of poor Cubans to train as doctors and return to those poor areas to practice.

The emphasis placed on good quality medical care still persists.  In Cuba, doctors visit all their patients at least once a year, regardless of whether they are ill or not.  This model has been in place since the revolution – the cornerstone of Cuba’s medical system is that prevention is better than cure.  This, alongside a comprehensive programme of vaccinations, has led to a significant reduction in the infectious diseases that blight Cuba’s Caribbean neighbours.  The net result is a mortality rate similar to that enjoyed by developed nations: “as Cubans joke, they live like the poor but die like the rich.”  In addition, “Cuba produces some 80 per cent of its own medical products, which are sold at a fraction of the price they would cost elsewhere.”

However, alongside these admirable principles lie some uncomfortable truths.  The average Cuban doctor’s salary is only $25 a month and many doctors trained for free in Cuba defect once they are sent abroad.  The Bush Administration was particularly keen on promoting this and set up a special programme in 2006, specifically targeting Cuban doctors and encouraging them to defect to the US.  Until January this year, when the high price of exit visas for Cubans was dropped, the cost of leaving the country prevented the ‘brain drain’ suffered by other poorer nations.  Since January, there has been a marked increase in the number of Cubans exiting the country legally and it remains to be seen what impact this will have on Cuban medical care.  What is certain, however, is that medical internationalism has had an effect on Cuba’s national healthcare system, with waiting times for GPs increasing.  Yet although approximately 20% of Cuban doctors are working abroad, “the ratio of doctor to patients in Cuba is still probably the best in the world.”[2]

Prior to this year’s Ebola outbreak, Cuba had been a longstanding friend of many African nations.  In 1963, Cuban doctors and nurses accompanied Algerian soldiers fighting on the border with Morocco and the injured were brought back to Cuba for free treatment.  In 1965, Che himself went to fight alongside local insurgents in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and whilst there “helped launch one of Africa’s first mass immunisation campaigns." Many more operations took place over the following decade, but it was the medical support, rather than the military, which was more effective and ended up forging the stronger links.  In the 1970s, when many emerging nations were experimenting with socialism and aligning themselves with communist states who opposed their former colonial masters, ties deepened between Cuba and Africa.  When Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma welcomed the first Cuban delegation in the capital Freetown last month, he announced “this is a friendship that we have experienced since the 1970s and today you have demonstrated that you are a great friend of the country.”

Why is Cuba so committed to medical collaboration?  First and foremost, it is Cuba’s main export.  The largest cohort of Cuban medical personnel working abroad are in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, in exchange for around 100,000 barrels of oil a day at preferential prices.  The Cuban government is now specifically looking to expand their collaboration into wealthier countries.  Secondly, medical internationalism is unquestionably a form of soft power for Cuba, winning the country influence with potentially hostile governments and consolidating support from other smaller nations.  Just last month, 188 members of the United Nations voted for the 23^rd time to condemn the US embargo against Cuba, first imposed by President Kennedy in the 1960s.  There are signs that the US may be ready to take a more open approach to Cuba’s medical internationalism, and, much to the consternation of the Republicans, the Obama administration has sent officials to meet with the Cubans to discuss a joint approach to the Ebola crisis. It is hoped that this combined response to Ebola may pave the way for an ending of the embargo.

There are those who argue that Cuba’s medical internationalism does little to negate the serious human rights abuses taking place within its own borders.  There is widespread repression of civil liberties in Cuba, especially with regards to political dissidents and journalists, with all media being heavily censored.  Though capital punishment was officially ended in 2003, there remain complaints of unfair trials, unjust sentences and torture in Cuban prisons.  Even within the revered healthcare system there is no right to privacy, patients do not have the right to refuse treatment and doctors are expected to report on the political leanings of their patients.  The favourable international view of Cuban healthcare is doubtless coloured by suppression of dissenting views.  The fact that such a small nation has made such a disproportionate contribution to the wellbeing of some of the world’s poorest nations is commendable and there is no doubt that Cuban medical personnel working abroad have significantly improved the health of millions around the world; it is only a shame that it should come at such a high cost to the freedoms of the Cuban people.

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[1] To put that in context, the GDP of the USA is $53,143 per capita.

[2] There are 6.7 GPs per 1,000 people in Cuba – there are 2.4 per 1,000 people in the US and in Canada - http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/14/medical-internationalism-in-cuba/

Should the Falkland Islands stay British?

Originally published on 1 Sept 2014 at http://about.peepoc.com/should-the-falkland-islands-stay-british/

The strange political anachronism that is a cluster of rocky islands in the Southern Atlantic will, for the foreseeable future, be a thorn in the side of the British government; one of those small thorns which, for the most part, you are able to ignore but which occasionally flares up into a throbbing, angry, infected wound.  Whilst the average person living in the UK rarely gives the Falkland Islands a thought, for the Argentinians the question of Las Malvinas is central to their political life.  Regaining them for Argentina is one of the principal platforms on which many of their politicians stand for election.  When Britain went to war over the Falklands back in 1982, many people were surprised that Thatcher’s government would risk the lives of British servicemen over a distant outpost of a dismantled Empire.  But go to war we did, and the Islands were reclaimed.  Following the war, relations between the UK and Argentina reached a low point from which they have never recovered.

Just last week, the Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones was the latest politician to blunder inadvertently into the debate.  The Argentinian Ambassador, Alicia Castro, following a meeting with Jones, published a statement on the proceedings, in which she declared that she "refutes the propaganda from a sector of the Malvinas Islands' inhabitants portraying Argentina as hostile, in an attempt to justify the UK government's refusal to resolve the sovereignty dispute."  It is not known whether Jones knew Castro would make this statement, but there were calls immediately for Mr Jones to distance himself from such ‘distasteful’ comments.  As any British politician knows, the Falklands question is the Pandora’s Box of British politics – no good can come from trying to address it.  Britain will only come out appearing to be clinging to its colonial past whilst simultaneously hamstrung by the powerful Falklands lobby in Westminster.

Rather distressingly, then, for the British government, the United Nations has instructed the UK to address the question on numerous occasions since it passed Resolution 2065 in 1965, which called for both states to conduct bilateral negotiations to reach a peaceful settlement of the dispute.  In defiance of the cherished special relationship, the US has often backed Argentina in the debate, in a collaboration of New World against Old.  Even American actor Sean Penn decided to weigh-in with his opinion, back in 2012, proclaiming that “I think that the world today is not going to tolerate any kind of ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology."

In one of the least suspenseful elections ever held, just 3 people from a 92% turnout voted against remaining part of the UK in a referendum held in March 2013.  David Cameron suggested that this had settled the question once and for all and that the wishes of the Islanders should be respected.  Argentina labelled the referendum a political farce and has refused to drop its claims to Las Malvinas.

The Falklands are an archipelago of around 778 mountainous islands covering 4,700 square miles in the middle of the storm-battered South Atlantic. The population stands at about 2,932, primarily native Falkland Islanders (descended from 19^th century British settlers), with a smattering of recent immigrants from the UK, Gibraltar, France, Scandinavia, Saint Helena and Chile.  There are less than 30 Argentinians living on the Falkland Islands.  Recent oil exploration has so far proved fruitless and the main industries remain fishing and agriculture.  The climate is cold, wet and extremely windy.  So why is Argentina so keen to have them back?

History

The foundation of Argentina’s claim to ownership of Las Malvinas is that the Islands were originally a colony of Spain, taken by force by the British, and therefore should have been inherited by Argentina when it declared independence from Spain in 1816.  However, discovery and colonisation of the Falklands isn’t as simple as the Argentinians might have us believe.

Although there is evidence that there may have been prehistoric occupants, the Islands were uninhabited at the time of the first recorded landing, by an English Captain, John Strong, en route to Peru and Chile in 1690.  Strong sailed on, however, and the Islands remained uninhabited until the French established Port Louis on East Falkland in 1764.  Two years later, British settlers founded Port Egmont on Saunders Island, a little to the northwest of West Falkland, but it’s entirely possible that the two colonies were unaware of each other’s existence.  That same year, 1766, the French surrendered East Falkland to the Spanish, who renamed Port Louis ‘Puerto Soledad’.  When the Spanish stumbled across Port Egmont in 1770, they launched a war and took the settlement from the British, but lost it again in 1771.

The Spanish and British managed to coexist in the archipelago until 1774, when the British withdrew from the Islands for economic reasons, leaving behind a plaque claiming them in the name of King George III.  In the upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars, during which Spain was allied to France, and in the aftermath of British invasions of South America, the Spanish evacuated their colony on East Falkland.  By 1811, the only inhabitants were gauchos and fishermen, and the Islands became politically undisputed fishing grounds until 1823, when a German-born merchant by the name of Luis Vernet was granted permission by Buenos Aires to fish and rear cattle in the ruins of Puerto Soledad.  He grew his enterprise and eventually brought over more settlers, and in 1829, Buenos Aires named him Military and Civil Commander of the Islands.  A raid by the US warship USS Lexington in 1831, captained by US Navy Commander Silas Duncan, ended Vernet’s tenure as governor of the Islands.  Buenos Aires attempted to reassert control over the settlement by installing a garrison there, but a mutiny in 1832 was followed by the arrival of British forces, who established British rule.

The British troops departed soon after and the same year, Vernet’s deputy, Scotsman Matthew Brisbane, returned to pick up where Vernet had left off.  However, unrest followed, and gaucho Antonio Riviera led a group of dissenters in murdering Brisbane and attacking the settlers.  In the wake of this, the British returned to impose order once more.  The Falklands Islands became an official Crown Colony in 1840 and began to be populated by Scottish and Welsh emigrants, descendants of whom have lived on the Islands ever since.

Like many places in the world, the history of the Falkland Islands is complex and muddied by the colonial one-upmanship of the European powers during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  Much water has passed under the bridge and the world has changed dramatically since Buenos Aires last had control of Puerto Soledad.  But since the first official inhabitants were French, albeit briefly, if we are tracing back rightful ownership on historical grounds, should not the Falkland Islands technically belong to France?

Geography

Lying approximately 300 miles off the Argentinian coast in comparison to the nearly 8,000 miles from the UK is, admittedly, a rather significant geographical imbalance.  Argentina claims that this disparity strengthens their claims to ownership of the Islands, but this case doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny.  At its narrowest point, the English Channel is only 20.6 miles wide – does that give France the right to ownership of the UK as well?

…And a dash of politics

In the 1960s, against a backdrop of emerging nation states across the world declaring independence from their old colonial masters, the United Nations called for universal decolonisation.  Argentina seized upon this mentality as an opportunity to further its claim on Las Malvinas, egged on by the US.  But if we backtrack a little, what is it that makes Argentina (and by extension, the US) any less of a colonial nation?  Modern day Argentina is a product of the Spanish colonists who settled in South America in the 19^th century, persecuting and marginalising many of the indigenous people already living there.  Nowadays, studies have found that some 56% of the Argentinian population have traces of indigenous DNA in their genetic makeup.  They came, they conquered, and they entwined their cultures and produced a new nation.  Shouldn’t this be the antipathy to outdated claims to territorial entitlement?

The British government has been perfectly willing for the sake of political expediency to ignore the views of native populations in its past decolonisation efforts – see Hong Kong and Diego Garcia, for example.  But the opinion of the people who have made their homes on the Falkland Islands must be considered – the overwhelming majority of them want, as their cringe-worthy Union Flag referendum-day suits demonstrated, to remain British.  They are, as has often been said, more British than the British.

As much as I have a natural aversion to flag-waving Old Boy patriotism and conceited nostalgia for the good old days of the Empire, the Argentinian government has not made annexation with Argentina an attractive prospect for the Islanders.  If this changes, maybe the Falkland Islanders will begin to see the economic and trade benefits of a union with their closest neighbour.  But, until then, their views must be respected.  Sean Penn was right – colonialism is an antiquated notion, and just as Britain has no right to claim territories for itself against the wishes of the native population, neither does Argentina.