Category Archives: economics

by | 24 March 2024 · 4:43 am

Weimar’s 1921 Communist Uprising

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 194-196:

In the midst of this bitter diplomatic crisis [over reparations], the German government was faced with a fresh wave of violent clashes between the Prussian Security Police (Schutzpolizei), and communist revolutionaries allied to the United Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD), and the KPD between 17 March and 1 April. The province of Saxony in central Germany was at the centre of these clashes, which were at their worst in Halle, Leuna, Hamburg, Merseburg, and Mansfeld. They became known as the March Action (März Aktion).

The Communists had been buoyed up by performing exceptionally well in elections to the Prussian State Parliament on 20 February 1920, in which the VKPD [Vereinigte Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands] had performed particularly well in central Germany which led party activists to lead a wave of strikes and street clashes with the police. This prompted Otto Hörsing, the Social Democratic Minister-President of Saxony, and Carl Severing, the Social Democratic Prussian Minister of the Interior, to send in a strong contingent of armed Prussian security police to restore order.

The Communists were led by Max Hölz of the VKPD, who had no coordinated plan for what the left-wing rebels were seeking to achieve. He put together a force of 2,500 armed men, mostly aged between 18 and 45. Hölz was something of a communist folk hero, who had been a leader of a ‘Red Army’ in Vogtland, near the Czech border, during the aftermath of the Kapp Putsch in the previous year. In his memoirs, Hölz claimed the workers were far from in a revolutionary mood when he arrived. It was the brutality of the police that had forced the workers to take up arms and adopt guerrilla tactics, he added.

On 18 March, the communist daily newspaper Die Rote Fahne called on the workers to arm themselves. The Communists were able to equip the rebels with guns and ammunition. The rebels engaged in a wave of arson, looting, bank robberies and bomb attacks on public buildings and factories, during which the VKPD leadership increasingly lost control of the armed workers. The SPD and the USPD both issued a joint appeal to the workers of the industrial region of central Germany. This offered some criticism of the high-handed police action, but claimed the so-called revolutionaries had then behaved like criminals and thugs. They called on workers not to support calls for an insurrection or a general strike.

On 24 March, President Ebert declared a non-military state of emergency for Saxony and Hamburg, using his emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. Outdoor meetings, demonstrations and Communist newspapers were banned. In an act of desperation, the Communist leadership called for a general strike, but this failed to materialise. By 1 April, the police had successfully put down the revolt without needing to call on the Reichswehr for help. The police confiscated 1,346 rifles, 34 machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition from the rebels. According to the Prussian official figures, 34 police officers were killed and 67 wounded, with 145 rebels and civilians killed, and a further 51 wounded. Some brutal atrocities occured towards the end of the conflict. On 29 March, in Gröbers, near Halle, 11 police officers were brutally tortured, killed and mutilated, while at the Leuna Works, the police maltreated prisoners, and forced rebels to sing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles’.

The ‘March Action’ did not remotely threaten even the local Prussian government. It proved to be the final rising of the radical left-wing during the Weimar years. Neither a general strike nor a mass revolt by the working class happened. The immediate consequences for the VKPD and KPD were disastrous. The violent clashes seemed to confirm the ‘dictatorial’ leadership of the party was out of touch with ordinary working class people. Within weeks, 200,000 members had left the KPD.

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by | 22 March 2024 · 5:43 am

Aftermath of the 1920 Kapp Putsch

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 168-170:

The Kapp Putsch may have been a bungled fiasco, but it made possible a victory of immense importance for right-wing counterrevolutionary elements in Bavaria. On the night of 13–14 March, General Alfred von Möhl, the commander of the armed forces in the Munich area, after hearing news of Kapp’s coup in Berlin, decided to launch one of his own, supported by a local paramilitary self-defence militia, known as the Home Guard (Einwohnerwehr). Möhl informed Johannes Hoffmann (SPD), the Prime Minister of Bavaria, that he could not guarantee the safety of his government unless it transferred power to the Army. Hoffmann hurriedly assembled his cabinet in the early hours of 14 March, urging the rejection of the general’s ultimatum. Most of his ministers shrank from such a course of action. Instead, they supported a proposal by Ernst Müller-Meiningen, the DDP leader, who suggested the right-wing nationalist Dr Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the government president of Upper Bavaria and a member of the pro-monarchist BVP, should take over.

Deprived of political or military support, Hoffmann was unceremoniously driven from office. On 16 March, Kahr was elected as the Prime Minister of Bavaria in a vote in the Bavarian Assembly. The Social Democrats refused to participate in Kahr’s right-wing conservative government, and would never again hold power in Bavaria during the Weimar years. Under Kahr, Bavaria became a conspiratorial, anti-Republican ‘cell of order’ (Ordnungszelle). Kahr immediately issued a decree to curtail the immigration of ‘Eastern Jews’ to Bavaria, and he actively encouraged antisemitism. Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, whose naval brigade had played a key role in the Kapp Putsch, immediately found a safe haven in Munich, where he established a new secret society called Organisation Consul (OC), whose main purpose was to murder leading supporters and politicians in the Weimar Republic.

Adolf Hitler was now in the perfect place to establish a new anti-democratic, nationalistic, antisemitic party. On 20 February, the German Workers’ Party (DAP), led by Anton Drexler, changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP). Members of the party, contrary to widespread belief, did not initially call themselves Nazis but rather National Socialists (Nationalsozialisten), but their opponents used the term, and the name stuck.

On 24 February, the first large meeting of the newly named NSDAP took place in the first-floor hall of the Hofbräuhaus, before a crowd of 2,000 people. This day was commemorated by the party as Founding Day, and became the location of an annual speech by Adolf Hitler. At the meeting, Hitler was given the task by Drexler of reading out the 25 points of the NSDAP party programme, which he declared ‘unalterable’. The main authors of the programme were Hitler and Drexler, with some economic ideas from Gottfried Feder added. They were remarkably like those being advanced by many other nationalist right-wing parties at the time. The party’s most notable gimmick was to combine nationalist and antisemitic ideas with anti-capitalist and so-called ‘socialist’ measures. This novel combination allowed the NSDAP a banner under which workers could shelter along with conservative middle- and upper-class groups, thereby acting as a bulwark against communist revolution at home and offering the possibility of restoring German military power abroad.

The ‘national’ elements of the party programme included promises to revise the Treaty of Versailles, to unite German-speakers into an expanded Greater German Reich, which would exclude Jews from German citizenship rights, treat them as foreigners and halt future Jewish immigration. The ‘socialist’ parts of the party platform included pledges to nationalise trusts, abolish land rents, restrict interest on loans, introduce profit-sharing in industry, promised the nationalisation of big business, to open large department stores to small traders, confiscate profits made by industry during the war, and create a People’s Army. The anti-capitalist elements of the party programme appeared to spell the end of interest-bearing loans and clearly threatened the existence of banks.

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by | 19 March 2024 · 6:52 am

Weimar Republic’s Versailles Millstone

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 126-127, 147-149:

On 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, exactly five years after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that led to the outbreak of the First World War. It was signed in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles where 48 years before the German Empire had been proclaimed. The treaty was ratified by a vote in the German National Assembly by 209 to 116 on 9 July. The politicians who signed the treaty on behalf of Germany were the Social Democrat Hermann Müller, and Johannes Bell of Zentrum.

The Treaty of Versailles was a staggering blow to the Weimar Republic. Instead of using their power to assist the embryonic democracy in Germany, the Allies treated its leaders as no different from Kaiser Wilhelm. Hatred towards those who had signed the treaty spread widely in the population, especially on the nationalist Right. The myth of the ‘stab in the back’ now made rapid headway. The leaders of German democracy were depicted by the Right as cowards and traitors under the umbrella term the ‘November Criminals’ and were blamed by the public for all the misfortunes that followed.

There was a huge contrast between the political and economic distress of the Weimar years and the vibrant culture of the period. Yet what is now routinely called ‘Weimar culture’ is by no means the posthumous glorification of a world destroyed. Many aspects of Weimar culture really were years ahead of their time. That culture not only encompassed film, literature, modern art, architecture, design, literature, drama, poetry, and cabaret, but also displayed path-breaking attitudes towards sexuality.

…

On 12 December, the leading British economist John Maynard Keynes launched a blistering attack on the Treaty of Versailles in his best-selling book The Economic Consequences of The Peace. Keynes, who became the most influential economist of the twentieth century, had attended the Paris Peace Conference, as a senior delegate of the British Treasury, but he was so appalled by the injustice the Germans had suffered in the Treaty of Versailles that he had resigned in despair, on 7 June 1919. His book was full of flashing insights and indignation, which laid out clearly the economic crisis facing Europe by explaining what the Treaty had failed to do, and what the consequences would be. Keynes pulled no punches and upset many people. He famously described the Versailles Treaty as a ‘Carthaginian Peace’ – a peace that has the intention of crushing the defeated enemy.

Keynes further argued that the Allies, blinded by self-interest, were determined to punish rather than to rehabilitate Germany. The Versailles Treaty offered nothing to make Germany a ‘good neighbour’, and had conceded far too much to the vengeful spirit of the French government, which wanted to keep Germany weak. It imposed impossible terms on Germany which would soon plunge Europe into economic chaos. The demand for reparations was way beyond what Germany could afford to pay. Keynes also warned the territorial provisions of Versailles would lead to future foreign policy disputes. He blamed the ‘idealist’ US President, Woodrow Wilson, whom he described as a ‘blind and deaf Don Quixote’, for being unable to produce a peace settlement based on his Fourteen Points, which it had been promised during the Armistice negotiations would give Germany a ‘just peace’ with no ‘punitive damages’.

Keynes predicted the economic demands on Germany would cause high inflation and economic stagnation, which would spread throughout Europe. The Treaty of Versailles had to be modified, not just for the sake of Germany, but for the benefit of the world economy. It would damage the conditions for economic recovery and sow the seeds for another world war. In his persuasively argued and deeply influential book, Keynes laid the foundation for the failure of the American Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and he also helped to create a climate of public opinion in which Germany’s demands for a revision of the terms of the treaty met with a sympathetic response, especially in Britain. Here was sowed the seeds of the policy of appeasement.

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by | 18 March 2024 · 5:20 am

Germany’s Territorial Losses at Versailles

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 118-120:

It is, of course, an established tradition of war that the loser pays the costs of defeat, but the terms of the proposed Versailles Treaty were severe, to say the least. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, something which had been a French aim during the war. German territory west of the Rhine was to be occupied by Allied troops for at least 15 years to ensure German compliance to the treaty – if Germany did comply, the occupation of Cologne would end after five years, Koblenz after ten years and Mainz after 15 years. The left bank of the Rhine and the right bank to a depth of 31 miles were to be permanently demilitarised. In this region no German arms or soldiers could be stationed. The aim of these clauses was to stop another unprovoked German invasion of Belgium and France.

The Saar, a rich coal mining region, would be governed for 15 years by a commission of the League of Nations. In that time, the Saar coal mines would be given to France, as compensation for the German destruction of French coal mines during the war. At the end of the 15-year period, the people of the Saar would decide, in a referendum, whether they wished to remain under League control, to unite with France or return to Germany. If the people chose the latter option, Germany would be allowed to buy back the mines from France. Belgium received Moresnet, Eupen and Malmédy, but the local populations there would be allowed a referendum to confirm or reject this change. A referendum was also offered to determine the fate of North Schleswig, which voted in favour of being transferred to Denmark.

Germany suffered even greater territorial losses in Eastern Europe. The newly constituted state of Poland included the industrially rich area of Upper Silesia, along with Posen and West Prussia – the latter including the so-called Polish Corridor, which controversially separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Poland was also given extensive trading rights in Danzig (Gdansk), which was now designated a Free City under League of Nations authority. Danzig was Poland’s natural seaport, but ethnically it was a German city and would remain a source of unrest between Germany and Poland during the inter-war years. In addition, the German port of Memel was detached from the Reich, but was not formally awarded to Lithuania until 1923.

German territorial losses under the Treaty as a whole amounted to 13 per cent of its European lands, together with six million of its people. If Germany had been allowed to unite with Austria, it would have lessened the blow of these European territorial losses. Both countries were favourable to the union, but no referendum was offered. The Allies decided instead to prohibit the union with Austria (Anschluss).

Germany’s European losses were paralleled by the sacrifices it was forced to make elsewhere. All overseas colonies under German control were redistributed under mandates issued by the League of Nations, but it was stipulated these mandates must not simply serve the interests of their guardians. When the German delegation protested the loss of its colonies, the Allies pointed out the native inhabitants of the German colonies were strongly opposed to being returned to German control.

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by | 13 March 2024 · 2:45 am

Germany’s Eastern Victory in WW1

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 21-22, 25-26:

Germany’s confident hopes of a swift victory were halted in September 1914 by British, Belgian, and French troops on the Marne River in France. From this point onwards, the war on the Western Front became a stalemate, with 8 million troops stretched along a 450-mile front from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Numerous attempts to break the deadlock turned into dogged struggles for mere yards of territory, with millions of lives lost and little ground gained. Barbed wire entanglements impeded the advance of competing armies and machine guns mowed down advancing troops. It was a struggle in which an average of 6,000 troops were killed every day.

The stalemate in the west contrasted sharply with the stunning victories of the German Army on the Eastern Front in 1914 and 1915, masterminded by General Paul von Hindenburg, the chief of the Supreme Army Command (Oberste Heeresleitung, OHL), and his brilliant Chief of Staff, the Quartermaster General, Erich Ludendorff. By the end of 1915, the Germans had driven the Russian armies back remorselessly over 250 miles. These stunning victories turned Hindenburg and Ludendorff into national heroes. As the war progressed, Kaiser Wilhelm proved incapable of effective leadership, which resulted in a power vacuum, filled by the military high command. In late August 1916, Germany became a de facto military dictatorship led by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who were able, until the later stages of the war, to ignore the wishes of the parliamentary parties.

…

On 19 July 1917, Erzberger introduced a resolution in the Reichstag for a ‘peace without annexations’, which was passed by 212 to 126 votes. It was the first major intervention by the Reichstag to oppose the war, but Kaiser Wilhelm refused to be bound by the Reichstag. Hindenburg and Ludendorff considered the resolution a ‘scrap of paper’ and ignored it. The blame for the political crisis was placed on Bethmann Hollweg, who had rightly been sceptical about unrestricted submarine warfare. He was forced to resign as Chancellor.

His replacement, Georg Michaelis, who took office on 13 July 1917, was the first German Chancellor who was not of noble birth. His background was in business, but his only previous minor political posts were as an undersecretary of state in the Prussian Treasury, and as the head of the Reich Grain Agency (Reichsgetreidestelle), the office responsible for the distribution of corn and wheat. The prime movers in the unexpected elevation of this inexperienced bureaucrat to the role of Chancellor were Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who felt he would do their bidding. True to form, Michaelis kept the Reichstag completely in the dark on matters of war and foreign relations. He was forced to resign on 1 November 1917 after his refusal to give support to Erzberger’s peace resolution led to the loss of a vote of confidence in the Reichstag.

In Eastern Europe, relentless German military pressure contributed to the abdication of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917, which eventually led to the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin coming to power in November of that year. Lenin’s return to Russia was assisted by his sealed train being given permission to cross German territory – an incident in which Ludendorff played a key role.

After seizing power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks opened negotiations for a peace settlement with Germany. This resulted in the signing of the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, under which Russia lost possession of 34 per cent of its population, 54 per cent of its industry, including 89 per cent of its coalfields, and 26 per cent of its railways, and was also obliged to pay 6 billion marks in compensation for German losses. The Treaty completely contradicted the Peace Resolution of the Reichstag, which had pledged ‘peace without annexations’, yet the Reichstag deputies ratified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk without suggesting any amendments.

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by | 12 March 2024 · 9:22 am

Bypassing the Reichstag in World War I

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 18-23:

At the start of the First World War, Imperial Germany was not a parliamentary democracy, but nor was it an autocracy. It had a constitution, a national parliament, and independent states which controlled the local budgets of each region. The national parliament consisted of the Reichstag directly elected by the German people and an upper unelected chamber known as the Federal Council (Bundesrat), with representatives from the 26 individual princely states. Voting in elections for the Reichstag was confined to all males aged 25 and over and based on a constituency-based, first-past-the-post system. Neither the Bundesrat nor the Reichstag had the power to draft legislation but were expected to approve it. Even so, more people were entitled to vote in German parliamentary elections in 1914 than was the case in Britain.

Despite the Reichstag’s lack of political power, German national elections were hotly contested….

The power and influence of the military was stronger than that of any of the political parties. It was often described as a ‘state within a state’. The Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria, had been in power since 1888. He had the final say on policy, controlled the armed forces, appointed the German Chancellor and the cabinet ministers and was able to veto decisions taken by the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. The German Empire’s governing system, dominated by the Kaiser, was called an ‘autocratic state’ (Obrigkeitsstaat). On the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914, the German Emperor told the assembled members of the Reichstag: ‘I no longer recognise parties. I know only Germans.’ He then asked the Reichstag members to endorse an Enabling Act which suspended elections and Reichstag meetings and afforded him unlimited powers. Under Article 68 of the then German constitution, the Army seized wide-ranging executive powers, which included a strict censorship of the press.

Kaiser Wilhelm decided to finance the war not by raising taxation, but by creating Loan Banknotes (Darlehenskassenscheine), issuing three-month Treasury Bills and printing money. The idea was for these loans to be paid back in the event of Germany winning the war, capturing territory, and imposing reparations on the defeated powers. It was only in 1916 that new taxes were belatedly introduced on business, but not on incomes. Only 13.9 per cent of Germany’s war costs came from direct taxation, compared to 18.2 per cent for Britain. During the war, the amount of money in circulation rose from 7.4 million to 44.4 million marks, which inevitably led to high inflation.

The Germans prided themselves on the superiority of their armed forces and the strength of their economy. In 1914, Germany possessed the most powerful and dynamic economy on the European continent, which had experienced 50 years of uninterrupted growth. Germany produced two-thirds of Europe’s output of steel, half its coal production, and 20 per cent more electrical energy than Britain, France and Italy put together. It had a population of 67 million, which had grown from 25 million in 1800. It was also Europe’s leader in modern industries such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In agriculture, it produced a third of the world’s output of potatoes.

…

Germany in the period from 1916 to 1918 has been correctly described as a ‘Silent Dictatorship’. Censorship over newspapers was tightened; at the same time, Hindenburg ordered the systematic economic exploitation of German-occupied areas in France, Belgium and in East Central Europe, under the Hindenburg Programme of August 1916, which aimed to double industrial production by increasing the output of munitions, explosives, weapons, artillery, and ammunition. On 1 November 1916 Hindenburg and Ludendorff founded the Supreme War Office (Kriegsamt), under General Wilhelm Groener, to create a command economy ruled by the army. Compulsory military service was introduced for everyone aged 16 to 60, and businesses not related to the war economy were closed down. More alarmingly, compulsory hard labour was imposed on prisoners of war in labour camps, often under appalling conditions. Under the ‘Silent Dictatorship’, Germany pursued its war aims in a ruthless manner. At the beginning of 1917, the Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) adopted unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic to disrupt British and French supplies arriving from the USA. This proved counterproductive and provoked the Americans, led by President Woodrow Wilson, to enter the war on the Allied side in April 1917.

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by | 1 March 2024 · 5:30 pm

Australia’s Currency Lads and Lasses

From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 443-445:

The younger Rope family members were typical of the new generation of free colonialists, commonly known as the ‘currency lads and lasses’. This was the expression used in the colony to describe those who were Australian born with emancipist or convict parentage. This generation grew up in an adult society in which free immigrants often made slights and barbs about their origins – they were ‘the offspring of thieves’ and ‘good for nothings’. But the spirit and energy of this new breed had its admirers. Surgeon Peter Miller Cunningham was optimistic about the ‘currency youth’.

Our colonial-born brethren are best known here by the name of Currency, in contradistinction to Sterling, or those born in the mother-country. … Our Currency lads and lasses are a fine interesting race, and do honour to the country whence they originated. … The Currency youths are warmly attached to their country, which they deem unsurpassable, and few ever visit England without hailing the day of their return as the most delightful in their lives….

The currency lads and lasses were also referred to as Corn Stalks because they were taller than their British counterparts the Sterlings, and they had a distinct way of talking. The children of exclusives saw themselves as the pure bloods of the colony and, if they came from large estates, as the Pure Merinos. Among the colony’s youth, the currency lads stood together and if one was attacked the ‘whole hive sally to his aid’. Interestingly, drunkenness was much less common among the currency youth than their parents or the adult population as a whole.

Most had at least one convict or ex-convict parent but, to the surprise of their elite contemporaries, they were generally law-abiding. Work was plentiful in the colony, and many had respectable well-paid jobs. In fact, there were far fewer temptations for youth to commit crime in the colony than in the overcrowded and underemployed British cities. Australia had shown itself to be a land of promise for the parents of the currency youth, and so it would be for them. Toby Ryan, as the son of a convict father, reflected on this in his book Reminiscences.

Many of the early Australians sprang from the well-behaved emancipists and military men, who settled down at once, uncontaminated by drink, disease, or other enervating diseases; the result was fine men and women. Of course, hard work and wholesome food were partly the means of raising so fine a race…. Their red cheeks showed the bloom of health and beauty, and they required no artificial means to make them representable. They moved with agility, and were straight and well-formed, showing that their ancestors came from a good stock.

For most emancipists and their children Australia was their home, and they had no intention of returning to the Mother Country. They formed a strong political block that sought to ensure lawful access to all levels in Australian society. In 1821 the emancipists sent a petition to King George IV requesting the removal of any impediments to legal representation and rights. Some members of the community, and particularly the exclusives, government officials, and even governors, consistently discriminated against them. Their work opportunities were improving, but they now feared that the rapid increase in new free immigrants arriving would slow their acceptance into Australian society.

Equal opportunity remained a hot issue in the colony.

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by | 25 February 2024 · 5:28 am

NSW Economy Expands, c. 1800

From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 328-329:

Under [Governor] King’s astute administration, the colony’s agricultural production and building construction – activities that had so impressed the French three years earlier – flourished. Sheep had been imported from Bengal in 1793 and the Cape in 1796, and these had been crossbred to produce fine wool. Coal mining, as well as whaling and sealing had become profitable enterprises. In 1805 the King George, a locally built whaling vessel owned by Simeon Lord, Henry Kable and James Underwood, was launched in Sydney. By the end of 1805 the wealth of the colony had grown to an extent that the per capita income was at least as high as in Britain. The New South Wales settlement population was now 6980 people; every third was a convict and every fourth a child. With better food more pregnancies carried to full term, and, with a lower incidence of childhood diseases, children reached adulthood in greater proportions than in England. However, the gender imbalance remained at one female to three males.

The year 1806 started badly for settlers. In March, after a week of heavy rain, the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers rose 50 ft (15 m) inundating the low-lying lands and flooding many farms, including the Ropes. Farmers, and especially Andrew Thompson and Thomas Biggers, used their boats to rescue almost 300 people from roofs, trees and straw rafts. The drowning of five people was attributed to a mistaken belief that the huge floods of 1801 could not happen again.

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by | 23 February 2024 · 5:23 am

Misrule of the NSW “Rum Corps”

From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 261-264:

Within a month of Governor Arthur Phillip’s departure the colonial administration regretted the absence of his steading hand. The new Lt. Governor, the 35-year-old affable and indolent Major Francis Grose of the NSW Corps, was in the colony ten months before taking up the reigns in December 1792. He quickly bowed to the demands of the NSW Corps for radical changes to the civil administration. It was not long before he gave the Corps absolute legal authority over all civil and military matters.

Between 1790 and 1791, Francis Grose had been responsible for recruiting the NSW Corps regiment in Britain and had profited from the selling officers’ commissions. The Corps was not an attractive career choice for ambitious soldiers, and the men he signed on had invariably been rejected by established regiments, or were too old for active military duty, or were past criminals, deserters or mutineers. Since the primary role of the regiment would be to police a small remote colony, it was of little or no interest to professional soldiers looking for active service. These men preferred the famous army regiments based in exotic India, where there were opportunities to become wealthy in the employ of the East India Company. In short, the NSW Corps was not considered distinguished enough for serious soldiers. However, not all Corps recruits were interested in becoming soldiers. Some realised that the NSW Corps offered an ambitious man real opportunities for rapid advancement and wealth, and indeed, this turned out to be the case.

Judge Advocate David Collins thought the way the NSW Corps had been recruited was ‘disgusting’ because the sorts of men attracted did not have the best interests of the settlement at heart. In order to provide a ‘counterpoise to the vices and crimes’ Collins expected them to be chosen from the ‘best characters’, rather than men exhibiting a ‘catalogue of our most imported vices’.

…

The day Grose took over the governorship of the colony, he abolished the civilian courts and transferred their magistrates to the authority of Captain Joseph Foveaux, the senior Corps officer at Parramatta. In effect this gave Corps officers legal authority over all civil and military matters. There is no evidence that Judge Advocate Collins vocally opposed these changes, but his diary entries show that he was definitely against them.

Next, Grose abolished the equal-rations-for-all policy of Phillip and replaced it with two rations. Free people, watchmen and overseers would receive a larger ration than convicts. But emancipists, who were now officially free citizens, would get the same ration as convicts. Grose had in a few days reimposed the privileges of the English class system on the young colony. He did this on the grounds that it would restore a better sense of order and rank in the settlement, and that the previous government had been overly generous to the convicts.

With his next action Grose did not attempt to hide behind the guise of good governance. In the same week Phillip departed he permitted the sale of alcohol to convicts – this had been prohibited to avoid drunkenness and disorder in the small fragile colony. Grose’s decision went further than making alcohol available, it allowed the Corps to pay for produce or convict labour in rum. The consequences of this were immediate and tragic. Collins observed that ‘the peaceful retreats of industry were for a time the seats of inebriety and consequent disorder’.

Worse was to come. Grose appointed the most opportunistic officer in the Corps, Lt. John Macarthur, as Inspector of Public Works in charge of superintendents, storekeepers, overseers and convicts at Parramatta and Toongabbie. He and other Corps officers aggressively sought to acquire the farm animals given to the emancipist settlers by Phillip. Grose thought emancipists incapable of farming and claimed their only ambition was to save enough money to return to England. The false rumour was circulated that the gifted animals were being killed and sold as meat – Grose decided that they needed to be “rescued” by the Corps. In reality, the Corps officers saw this as a way of acquiring the livestock at a low price and paying for it with rum. It is uncertain just how many sheep were purchased for two gallons of rum per head, though Registrar Atkins records that Corps Captain Foveaux in Parramatta acquired most of the livestock in the district.

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by | 22 February 2024 · 3:23 am

“Civilly Dead” Convicts Win Lawsuit

From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 186-187:

In July, the convicts Henry and Susannah Kable launched the first civil action in the settlement. They sued the Master of the Alexander, Duncan Sinclair, for the loss of personal items in his charge during the voyage. These articles had been purchased in England from donations sent to them following the newspaper articles about baby Henry not being allowed to board the Dunkirk, and Sinclair had held these during the First Fleet voyage. When Henry and Susannah disembarked in Sydney Cove, most of these personal items had disappeared. The court ruled that the Kables be compensated £15.13

The importance of this trial is that Judge Advocate Collins’ ruling set the legal precedent of ignoring English common law which maintained that felons were ‘civilly dead’ if they had ever been sentenced to death. A ‘civilly dead’ person was not allowed to hold property, give evidence, make contracts or sue in court. Although [Governor] Arthur Phillip and David Collins were well aware of the English law, they had no official sentence documents to check Kable’s convict status. A large number of the convicts in the colony had been given death sentences that were later commuted to transportation, and, had the English legal interpretation been applied, they would be barred from the commercial and legal affairs of the colony. Collins’ decision to proceed with the case, and to find in favour of the Kables, cleared many legal obstacles for convicts to participate in the commercial development of New South Wales.

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