Category Archives: education

by Joel | 15 February 2026 · 12:18 am

Montagu vs. Montagu

From Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, 2010), Kindle pp. 84-87:

Montagu and Cholmondeley were blasé about the danger of being found out by an enemy agent in Britain, for the simple reason that they did not believe there were any. “There was almost complete security,” wrote Montagu. “We were able to put over what we liked to the enemy.” True, of the several hundred enemy spies dropped, floated, or smuggled into Britain, all but one was picked up and arrested: the exception was found dead in a bunker after committing suicide.

…

Montagu would cycle home every evening, his briefcase full of secrets, complacent that he was “the only deceptioneer in daily contact with the whole of special intelligence” and that his secrets were perfectly safe. Yet there were numerous spies living in London from supposedly neutral countries happy to furnish information to the Axis powers. Ewen Montagu never knew it, but there was one spy operating under his nose, a man with whom he shared a taste for exotic cheese, a love of table tennis, and both parents.

Ivor Montagu was addicted to founding, and joining, different clubs. From the Cheese Eaters League and the English Table Tennis Association, he had graduated to the Association of Cine Technicians, the Zoological Society, Marylebone Cricket Club, the editorial board of Labour Monthly, the World Council of Peace, the Friends of the Soviet Union, Southampton United Football Club, the Society for Cultural Relations with Soviet Russia, and chairmanship of the Woolwich-Plumstead branch of the Anti-war Congress.

He had also joined a less public and even more exclusive club, as an agent for Soviet military intelligence.

In part to antagonize his patrician parents, Ivor Montagu had from an early age displayed a keen “enthusiasm for all things Russian” and a penchant for radical politics. In 1927, the twenty-three-year-old Ivor was contacted by Bob Stewart, a founding member of the British Communist Party and a recruiter of Soviet agents in Britain. Stewart told Ivor, “We have had a request from the Communist International for you to go at once to Moscow. How soon can you leave?” In Moscow, Ivor was feted and flattered: he played table tennis in the Comintern building with “the keenest players in Moscow,” went to the Bolshoi, and watched the revolutionary parade from a VIP stand in Red Square. Someone in the upper reaches of the Soviet state was taking good care of Ivor Montagu.

Back in Europe, Ivor’s film career blossomed, as did his interests in table tennis, small rodents, and Soviet movies. At the same time, his commitment to communism deepened. In 1929, he began to correspond with Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik revolutionary expelled from the Communist Party and now living in exile on the Turkish island of Prinkipo.

…

The meeting with Trotsky marked a turning point. Ivor Montagu was attracted to this “fascinating and commanding personality” but “repelled by his self-admiration,” the raw ambition of the revolutionary in exile: “I felt I understood now why he was impossible in a party, that his personality swamped his judgement.” Ivor was not yet thirty, but he was already a party disciplinarian and a fully committed Stalinist. Trotsky knew that Ivor was a willing tool of the Soviet regime. In 1932, he wrote: “Ivor Montagu has, or had, some personal sympathy for me, but now he is even on that small scale paralysed by his adherence to the party.”

That adherence was now absolute and permanent: he gave speeches, wrote pamphlets, and made films in support of communism. The more covert, and more dangerous, manifestations of that party obedience remained secret for the rest of his life.

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Filed under Britain, education, Germany, military, philosophy, USSR, war

by Joel | 13 February 2026 · 7:07 pm

Bentley Purchase, Royal Coroner, 1943

From Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, 2010), Kindle pp. 44-47:

UNDER ENGLISH LAW, the coroner, a post dating back to the eleventh century, is the government official responsible for investigating deaths, particularly those that occur under unusual circumstances, and determining their causes. When a death is unexpected, violent, or unnatural, the coroner is responsible for deciding whether to hold a postmortem and, if necessary, an inquest. Bentley Purchase was a friend and colleague of Spilsbury in the death business, but Purchase was as cheery as Sir Bernard was grim. Indeed, for a man who spent his life with the dead, the coroner was the life and soul of every occasion. He found death not only fascinating but extremely funny, which, of course, it is. No form of violent or mysterious mortality surprised or upset him. “A depressing job?” he once said. “Far from it. I can’t imagine it getting me down.” He would offer slightly damp chocolates to guests in his private chambers and joke: “They were found in Auntie’s bag when she was fished out of the Round Pond at Hampstead last night.” A farmer by birth, Purchase was “rugged in appearance and character,” with “an impish sense of humour” and a finely calibrated sense of the ridiculous: he loved Gilbert and Sullivan operas, toy trains, boiled eggs, and his model piggery in Ipswich. He never wore a hat and laughed loudly and often.

Montagu knew Purchase as “an old friend from my barrister days” and dropped him a note asking if they might meet to discuss a confidential matter. Purchase replied with directions to the St. Pancras Coroner’s Court and a typically jovial postscript: “An alternative means of getting here is, of course, to get run over.”

Purchase had fought in the First World War as a doctor attached to the field artillery, winning the Military Cross for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty” and fighting on until 1918, when a shell splinter removed most of his left hand. By the time war broke out again, he was nearly fifty, too old to wear a uniform but “aching to get into the war.” Indeed, he had already demonstrated a willingness to help the intelligence services and, if necessary, “distort the truth in the service of security.” When an Abwehr spy named William Rolph killed himself by putting his head in a gas oven in 1940, Purchase obliged with a verdict of “heart attack.” In the same month that he received Montagu’s note, Purchase had been called in to deliberate on the case of Paul Manoel, an agent of the Free French Intelligence Service who had been found hanging in a London basement following interrogation as a suspected enemy agent. Purchase’s inquest was “cursory in the extreme.”

The coroner was initially dubious when Montagu explained that he needed to find a male corpse for “a warlike operation” but “did not wish to disclose why a body was needed.”

“You can’t get bodies just for the asking, you know,” Purchase told him, grinning. “I should think bodies are the only commodities not in short supply at the moment [but] even with bodies all over the place, each one has to be accounted for.”

Montagu would say only that the scheme required a fresh cadaver that might appear to have drowned or died in an air accident. The matter, he added gravely, was “of national importance.”

Still Purchase hesitated, pointing out that if word got out that the legal system for disposing of the dead was being circumvented, “public confidence in coroners of the country would be shaken.”

“At what level has this scheme been given approval?” the coroner asked.

Montagu paused before replying, not entirely truthfully: “The prime minister’s.”

That was enough for Bentley Purchase, whose “well developed sense of comedy” was now thoroughly aroused. Chortling, he explained that, as a coroner, he had “absolute discretion” over the paperwork and that in certain circumstances a death could be concealed, and a body obtained, without getting official permission from anyone. “A coroner,” he explained, “could, in fact, always get rid of a corpse by a certificate that it was going to be buried outside the country—it would then be assumed that a relative was taking it home (i.e. to Ireland) for burial and the coroner could then do what he liked with it without let, hindrance or trace.” Bodies were pouring into London morgues at an unprecedented rate: in the previous year Purchase had dealt with 1,855 cases and held inquests into 726 sudden deaths. Many of the bodies “remained unidentified and were in the end buried as unknowns.” One of these would surely fit the bill. The St. Pancras mortuary was attached to the coroner’s court, so Purchase offered to give Montagu a tour of the bodies currently in cold storage. “After one or two possible corpses had been inspected and for various reasons rejected,” the two men shook hands and parted, with Purchase promising to keep a lookout for a suitable candidate.

The St. Pancras mortuary was without doubt the most unpleasant place Montagu had ever been; but then, his had been a life almost entirely free of unpleasant places and upsetting sights.

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by Joel | 10 February 2026 · 6:12 am

From Być Jak Polak & Nie o takim życiu marzyłam: 2 Engaging Stories in Simplified Polish for Polish Language Learners (Polski Daily Stories), by Paulina Lipiec. The italicized items in the following excerpt are helpfully footnoted and translated in the original text. This story is pitched at people whose Polish reading is in the range of A2 and B1 (high beginner and low intermediate). I find I can read it a page or so at a time if I add my own lookups. It’s not at frustration level, and it gives me more practice with past tense forms. I’ve finished all 30 sections of DuoLingo and now just get a round of review exercises each day.

Dopiero kiedy był studentem, poznał Kasię. Kasia studiowała razem z nim historię.
Only when he was a student, he met Kasia. Kasia studied history together with him.

Jej rodzina pochodziła z Polski, więć Kasia doskonale mówiła po polsku.
Her family came from Poland, so Kasia spoke Polish perfectly.

Pewnego dnia Kasia zaprosiła Jasona do swojego domu.
On a certain day, Kasia invited Jason to her house.

Następnego dnia mieli mieć ważny egzamin i chcieli się razem uczyć.
The next day they were to have an important exam and wanted to study together.

Kiedy Jason wszedł do mieszkania rodziców Kasi,
When Jason entered Kasia’s family residence,

przypomniał mu się jego przyjaciel z dzieciństwa.
he remembered his [Polish] friend from childhood.

W tym mieszkaniu wszystko było polskie.
In this flat everything was Polish.

W przedpokoju leżały kapcie dla gości.
In the hallway lay slippers for guests.

W salonie nad kanapą wisiał obraz Matki Boskiej z Częstochowy.
In the living room above the couch hung a picture of Our Lady of Czestochowa.

W szafce za szybą stały biało-niebieskie filiżanki i czajnicek do herbaty.
Behind glass in the cupboard stood white and blue cups and a teapot for tea.

Na stole leżał biały obrus.
On the table lay a white tablecloth.

Mieszkanie pachniało makiem, bo mama Kasi właśnie piekła makowca.
The flat smelled of poppyseeds, because Kasia’s mom was baking a poppyseed cake.

Jason był zachwycony!
Jason was amazed.

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Filed under education, language, Poland

by Joel | 30 January 2026 · 9:39 pm

Polish Realia: Imperatives

Ciągnać ‘Pull’ [cf. Pociąg ‘train’, Ger. Zug ‘train’ < ziehen ‘pull’]
Chwyć dowolne uchwyty ‘Grab any handles [on the equipment]’
Mów, pisz i czytaj [po Japońsku] ‘Speak, write and read [Japanese]’
Odkry ponad 70 smaków ‘Discover over 70 flavors’
Otwieraj i zamykaj ‘Open and close [here]’
Otwórz teraz ‘Open now’
Pal tutaj ‘Smoke here’ [in designated area]
Pchać ‘Push’
Pochyl się lekko do przodu ‘Lean slightly forward’
Poczekaj tutaj ‘Wait here’
Popłyń z nami do Szwecji ‘Sail with us to Sweden’
Trzymaj drzwi zamknięte ‘Keep door closed’
Siedź prosto ‘Sit up straight’
Skontaktuje się ‘Contact [us here]’
Skup/Sprzedaż ‘Buying/Selling’
Stań przed urządzeniem ‘Stand in front of the device’
Ustaw siedzisko ‘Adjust the seat’
Wykorzystaj kupon na zakupy ‘Take advantage of the coupon for shopping’
Zagłosuj tutaj ‘Vote here’
Zamów/Odbierz (tutaj) ‘Order/Pick up (here)’
Zeskanuj tutaj ‘Scan here’
Znajdź nas ‘Find us [here]

Negative imperatives
Nie hałasuj ‘Don’t make noise’
Nie odrywaj ‘Don’t tear off’
Nie skacz ‘Don’t jump’
Zakaz biegania ‘No running’
Zakaz palenia ‘No smoking’
Zakaz pływania ‘No swimming’
Zakaz picia ‘No drinking’
Zakaz wjazdu ‘No entry’
Zakaz wstępu ‘No entry/access’

Clickbait
Dowiedz się więcej ‘Find out more’
Kup teraz ‘Buy now’
Nowy sezon | Oglądaj teraz ‘New season | Watch now’
Pobierz aplikacje ‘Download app’
Przeglądaj ‘Browse’
Sprawdź ‘Check [it out]’
Szczegóły wydarzeń na [URL] ‘Details of events at [URL]’
Więcej na [URL] ‘More at [URL]’
Zagraj teraz ‘Play now’
Zarejestruj się ‘Register [yourself]’
Zarezerwuj ‘Reserve [here]’
Znajdź sklep ‘Find store’

Recruiting brochure
Zamieszkaj w USA na wakacje. ‘Live in the USA on vacation.’
Poznaj ludzi z całego świata, ‘Get-to-know people from the whole world,’
rozwijaj się i odkrywaj uroki Stanów ‘develop and discover the charms of States’
po zakończeniu programu wymiany. ‘after the end of the exchange program.’

Wyjedź na wakacje do USA! ‘Go-away on vacation to the USA!’
Spędź lato w Ameryce w ośrodku kolonijnym dla dzieci
‘Spend the summer in America in a [summer] camp center for kids’

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Filed under economics, education, language, Poland

by Joel | 21 January 2026 · 9:09 am

Wrocław: Każda podróż to opowieść

The catchphrase on a travel poster, Każda podróż to opowieść ‘Every journey is a story’, in our fine hotel in Wrocław caught my eye because Polish opowieść is cognate with Romanian poveste ‘story, tale’, an old borrowing from Slavic. The Romanian infinite verb is a povesti ‘to tell a tale/story/lie, etc’. But for a polyglot traveler, podróżnik poliglotów, călător poliglot, every journey is a vocabulary lesson.

We were in Wrocław sightseeing for a few days on the way to a conference in Szczecin for my better (unretired) half and some other foreign teachers in Poland and neighboring countries. One of Wrocław’s major tourist attractions is the hundreds of tiny krasnal ‘gnomes’ all over the city, but I found its topographical vocabulary more interesting, especially in contrast to Kielce, which was never a castle town (or a river town).

Like every old town in Poland, Wrocław has a ratusz ‘town hall’ in a rynek ‘central market square’ surrounded by its stare miasto ‘old town’. Our hotel overlooked one piece of the old moat (fosa) side of the old town. The Odra river, with its many branches, islands (wyspy) and bridges (mosty) bordered the far side of the stare miasto, which is nowadays typically criss-crossed with trams and busses. The large railway stations in both Wrocław and Krakow touch the edges of each city’s carefully maintained stare miasto, which is surrounded by przedmieścia ‘suburbs’, a bit like the Japanese jōkamachi ‘castle towns’ that lie outside the castle walls and moats. One such early suburb in Wrocław is Przedmieścia Świdnickie (formerly Schweidnitzer Vorstadt), which lay outside the Świdnica Gate.

By the way, every one of the (six or eight) young English-speaking staff we queried at our hotel had studied six or more years of German in school, then let that ability lapse in favor of informally acquired (often fluent) English! This seems to be the pattern throughout Polish Silesia.

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Filed under economics, education, Germany, Japan, language, Poland, Romania, travel

by Joel | 17 January 2026 · 8:46 am

Polish Diaspora in France

My latest compilation from Culture.pl has an article on the Polish diaspora in France. Here are some excerpts:

When we think of the Polish diaspora, France is rarely the first place that comes to mind – often overshadowed by the UK, the US or Germany. Yet the Polish presence in France is older, more complex and more deeply woven into the country’s cultural fabric than most realise.

Through interviews with contemporary Polish migrants and archival research into historical communities, a layered story emerges – one as much about shared histories as it is about work, struggle and identity. Beginning with 19th-century exile, expanding through interwar labour migration, and continuing into today’s cosmopolitan realities, Poles have long helped shape the life of their adopted country. And France, in turn, has shaped them.

The earliest sustained Polish presence in France took shape in the 19th century, following the failed November Uprising of 1830-1831. Thousands of officers, intellectuals and activists fled the Russian-controlled partition and sought refuge in France, launching what became known as the ‘Great Emigration’. This wave of political exiles – over 5,000 by 1833 – formed one of the most enduring diasporic communities of the era. Unlike other groups who returned after political amnesties, most remained as long as Poland’s partitioned status endured.

One bold but ultimately unsuccessful plan – to form a Polish legion to fight in Portugal’s Liberal Wars in 1833 – was led by General Józef Bem and reflected the enduring ideal of transnational solidarity. It gave lasting currency to the phrase ‘For our freedom and yours’ (‘Za wolność naszą i waszą’), which became a defining expression of Poland’s internationalist military ethos throughout the 19th century.

Polish émigrés built schools, charitable institutions and political societies. Some were initially settled in places like Belle-Île-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany, while growing numbers made their way to Paris, which would soon become a central hub of Polish cultural and political life in exile.

…

Building on these early foundations, Paris evolved into what some would later call ‘Poland’s second capital’. Throughout the 19th century, the city became a vibrant centre where Polish political elites, artists and intellectuals gathered, united by a commitment to preserving national identity in exile.

Nowhere was this more visible than at the prestigious Collège de France, where Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz was appointed the first Chair of Slavic Literature in Western Europe in 1840. His lectures, a blend of cultural commentary and political advocacy, attracted wide audiences – including figures like George Sand – and reflected diasporic longing for unity and liberation. Though ultimately dismissed for the political intensity of his teachings, Mickiewicz remained an emblematic figure in Franco-Polish cultural relations.

That same spirit of cultural continuity shaped another enduring institution: the Polish School in Paris, founded in 1842 by General Józef Dwernicki and fellow émigrés. The school aimed to raise children in Polish language and tradition, even as they grew up on foreign soil. With Mickiewicz himself serving as vice-president of its council, the institution embodied how deeply intertwined education, culture and politics were in émigré life – a place where Polish identity could be preserved and transmitted across generations born in exile.

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Filed under economics, education, France, language, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, Portugal, Russia

by Joel | 16 January 2026 · 10:53 am

Palauan Musical Obituary

Last October, Jim Geselbracht posted on his Palauan Music blog an obituary titled “Sorry, I Really Must Go” with his memories and also a long list of musical selections to listen to from the life of a very productive Palauan singer, composer, and educator, who began composing when Japanese enka and evocative Japanese phrases permeated many Palauan songs. Some of the recordings are very faint, pieced together from old tapes, but well worth a careful listen.

This week we lost another insightful voice in Palauan music: Mengesebuuch Yoichi K. Rengiil passed away at the age of 84 in Guam. Yoichi, both a singer and composer, was born in 1941 and grew up in Ngeremlengui. In the early 1950s, he moved to Koror to attend the Palau Intermediate School and then left for Guam in 1956 to attend high school and start college. He returned to Palau in 1963 and taught social studies at the Palau High School. In the 1960s, he teamed up with Aichi Ngirchokebai, Hidebo Sugiyama and Julie Tatengelel to perform at Aichi’s theater in Koror and at village bais on Babeldaob. He left Palau again in 1967 to complete his college education at the University of Guam and then obtained a Masters in Education Administration at UH Manoa in 1973. Yoichi was an active member of the Modekngei, serving as the Principal at the Belau Modekngei School in the 1970s. His professional resume is deep, and I will leave it to others to remember that part of his life, but in this post I would like to acknowledge his contribution to Palauan music.

Yoichi and I met regularly via Zoom over the past five years to discuss Palauan music, language and stories and he was an important mentor to me in understanding the meaning behind the rich musical legacy of Palauan music. From our discussions, I learned of seven songs that he composed between 1963 and 1987:

Did er a Sechou, 1963 or 64

Oh! Somebody Me Keleng Saingo, 1968

Sayonara, But I Love You, 1968 or 69

Chellelengem ma Klungiolem, 1969 or 70

Decheruk er a Capitol Hill, late 1960s (co-wrote with John Skebong)

Merat el Kerrekar, 1970

Ng Di Kmedu e ng mo Ngemeded, 1986 or 87

The first song Yoichi ever composed has become a classic: Did er a Sechou. Named for the bridge in the jetty at Ngeremlengui, the song was not autobiographical, as many people think, but rather Yoichi telling the story of a man from Ngeremlengui who was heartbroken over the end of his relationship with his wife and children. The first recording of this song is from the Ngerel Belau Radio tapes, recorded sometime between 1963 and 1967, with Yoichi singing and backed by the VOP (Voice of Palau) band consisting of Hidebo Sugiyama on mandolin and Aichi Ngirchokebai on guitar.

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Filed under education, Japan, language, Micronesia, music, religion, U.S.

by Joel | 31 December 2025 · 11:13 pm

Some Early Polish Ethnographers

My latest newsletter from Culture.pl contains a link to profiles of early Polish ethnographers, More Than Malinowski, by cultural anthropologist Patryk Zakrzewski. Here are some excerpts:

The beginnings of ethnology are intertwined with those of colonialism, as they developed simultaneously. In a Poland under occupation, however, this was primarily an internal colonialism – a nobleman examining the culture of its own servants. In places where the European imperialism was growing, the need for the ethnographer, arose, one who would study the ‘indigenes’.

Before the expeditions of Malinowski, ‘desk’ anthropology was the most popular method of study. Those working in it did no field research at all; instead, they analysed information supplied by merchants, seamen or missionaries….

Malinowski was destined to become a hero for students of the social sciences worldwide, as he developed a code of conduct for fieldwork – one which, in principle, has remained unchanged to our times. Long story short, it was based on ‘participant observation’, i.e. a long and intensive stay among the studied community (‘a tent put up in the middle of a village’). A researcher was also to avoid thinking in categories and stereotypes originating from one’s own culture, instead tasked with capturing another’s way of looking at things.

Ethnology in Exile

It’s possible that two eminent Polish researchers – Wacław Sieroszewski and Bronisław Piłsudski – would never have become ethnographers had they not been political prisoners….

Wacław Sieroszewski (1858-1945) didn’t have the easiest life: His mother died early, and his father received a long prison sentence after the January Uprising. Sieroszewski himself was expelled from high school – for participating in clandestine patriotic meetings and for brazenly speaking the Polish language, which was banned. He also joined a socialist movement, for which, as a 20-year-old, he was sentenced to serve time at the infamous 10th Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel. Not for long, however. After participating in a riot, during which he attacked an imperial general, and for circulating a prison bulletin, Sieroszewski was expelled to Siberia.

In 1880, he arrived at Verkhoyansk, where he married a young Yakut woman named Arina Czełba-Kysa. Twice, Sieroszewski tried to escape with other fellow prisoners, aided by his wife. But he was caught and sentenced for life as the leader of these deserters. This time, he was sentenced to a settlement ‘a hundred viorsts away from a trade road, river and town’.

Sieroszewski’s life among the autochthonous people resulted in his fundamental work Dwanaście Lat w Kraju Jakutów (Twelve Years in the Country of the Yakuts). A friendship with a Yakut shaman enabled Sieroszewski to describe local beliefs in detail….

As a law student in St. Petersburg, Bronisław Piłsudski (1866 – 1918), the Marshal’s elder brother, became acquainted with the circle of revolutionists gathered around an organisation called Narodnaja Wola (Nation’s Will). Piłsudski participated in a plot to assassinate emperor Alexander II. The traitors were discovered, and some of them were hanged (i.e. Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin’s elder brother), while the rest were sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia.

Sentenced to 15 years of hard labour, Piłsudski was sent to Sakhalin Island. First, he worked in the woods logging trees, then as a carpenter on a church construction project. There were few educated people in Sakhalin, so in time, Piłsudski was assigned various other tasks. He worked as a teacher and at an office, and was tasked with establishing a meteorological station.

Leo Sternberg, a well-known ethnographer also emprisoned in Siberia, inspired Piłsudski to study the culture of the Ainu people, who inhabited Sakhalin and the islands of Northern Japan. In 1902, Piłsudski married their leader’s wife, bearing two children and ultimately staying with the Ainus. This story, however, came to a sad end: In 1906, Piłsudski left the island illegally, but the tribe’s leader forbid his wife from joining the Pole….

Piłsudski was a pioneer in using multimedia methods in ethnography. He kept photographic documentation and recorded Ainu songs and rites on Edison’s discs, or prototypes of the vinyl record. (Today, these are housed at the Museum of Japanese Art and Technology ‘Manggha’ in Krakow.) In the 20th century, the Ainus were forcefully assimilated by the Japanese. After many years, they managed to reconstruct their ethnic difference, thanks to the research material collected by the ethnographer.

In 1903, Piłsudski and Sieroszewski traveled to the Japanese island of Hokkaido together, in order to continue their studies on the Ainus’ culture. Their contribution into the research of the Russian Far East and Japan cannot be overestimated, and they ultimately received numerous awards and invitations to prestigious associations. Today, their works are canonical for specialists in the cultures of this part of the world….

An ‘Outcast’ in Oceania

Imperial prison was also a part of life for Jan Kubary (1846-1896). At 17 years old, he participated in the January Uprising. When the rebellion was suppressed, he left for Dresden, where he agreed to collaborate with the police in exchange for the chance to return home. Kubary didn’t make the best spy, however – for warning young revolutionaries of their impending arrests, he was arrested himself and sentenced to exile. The sentence was annulled when he agreed once more to work with the police.

Such a life wasn’t for him, however, so Kubary escaped on foot from Warsaw to Berlin. In Germany, he worked as a collector of items for a natural history museum to be established in Hamburg. According to the prevailing trend, the museum offered German visitors the opportunity to view various marvels from exotic lands. Of Kubary, the newspapers wrote: ‘He travels across far seas and collects all the ethnographic and zoological peculiarities for one of the German tycoons.‘…

Living in the Pacific, he still had troubles in his private life. His employer went bankrupt, which left Kubary with no means. When he settled on the island of Ponape and established a plantation, it was destroyed during a riot by the local people, and post-revolutionary authorities expropriated him. ‘I am a poor outcast’, Kubary wrote in a letter to his mother.

Today, Kubary remains somewhat forgotten, if unjustly so. His research in Oceania was unprecedented, although he was self-taught, having left Europe equipped with no background in ethnography whatsoever. In his 28 years among the Papuan people, he integrated with local communities gained competence in their languages. Apart from ethnographic works, Kubary left behind many geographical and natural reports, as well as an impressive collection of items, which are now housed in European museums.

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Filed under education, Germany, Japan, language, migration, nationalism, Pacific, Poland, Russia, scholarship

by Joel | 20 December 2025 · 6:25 am

W. E. Clarke’s Misspent Sunday

From The Misspent Sunday, by W. E. Clarke, in Robert Louis Stevenson: Interviews and Recollections, ed. by R. C. Terry (Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), pp. 164-169:

Abstract: From ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa’, Yale Review, X (Jan 1921) 275–96. The Reverend William Edward Clarke (1854–1922) was the London Missionary Society’s representative in Samoa. About as knowledgeable a mentor as Louis could have hoped to meet, Clarke knew the people and their customs well, and took the new arrival around schools and communities on the island. A simple, devout man, Clarke had to keep Stevenson up to the mark where Sunday worship was concerned. For his part Stevenson, the one-time agnostic, probably benefited from Clarke’s practical Christianity. Louis wrote of Clarke: ‘A man … I esteem and like to the sole of his boots. I prefer him to anyone in Samoa, and to most people in the world’ (quoted in Field, This Life, 332). When Louis lay dying, Clarke was at his side. He accompanied the cortège to the burial place on Mount Vaea and recited Louis’s own prayer at the interment, part of which reads: Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns, return to us, our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts — eager to labour — eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion — and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.

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Filed under Britain, education, literature, migration, philosophy, religion, Samoa

by Joel | 19 December 2025 · 11:53 pm

RLS, Missionaries, and Chiefs

From Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press, 2025), Kindle pp. 625-628:

Westerners took pride in bringing faith to the heathen in the Pacific; that was often invoked as their principal justification for being there. By the Stevensons’ time, missionaries were ubiquitous, distributed variously by denomination depending on the region. Maps were published that indicated the predominant territories of Catholics, Congregationalists, United Presbyterians, Free Church of Scotland, Wesleyans, Baptists, and Mormons. In Samoa a minority were Catholics, but the dominant group was the “L.M.S,” the interdenominational London Missionary Society.

During the cruises on the Casco, Equator, and Janet Nicholl, Louis had formed a negative view of missionaries as moralistic bullies, but in Samoa he got to know a number of them well and gained great respect. They were less dogmatic theologically than he had been led to expect, and in fact took a deep interest in native beliefs and did pioneering work in ethnography. They knew and understood the people much better than foreign bureaucrats did, who didn’t bother to learn the language and were regularly rotated in and out of Samoa.

In 1892 Louis told a journalist, “Missions in the South Seas generally are far the most pleasing result of the presence of white men; and those in Samoa are the best I have ever seen.” He especially admired William Clarke, who had mistaken the family for traveling entertainers when he first saw them on the Apia beach. Louis wrote to Colvin, “The excellent Clarke was up here almost all day yesterday, a man I esteem and like to the soles of his boots; indeed, I prefer him to any man in Samoa and to most people in the world.”

Many of the missionaries were fluent in Samoan, and one of them, who gave Louis regular lessons, recalled that Louis “thought the language was wonderful. The extent of the vocabulary, the delicate differences of form and expressive shades of meaning, the wonderful varieties of the pronouns and particles astonished him.” The point is striking: he liked language to be complex.

The division between Catholics and Protestants was evident but not hostile, and there were adherents of both at Vailima (the Catholics were known as Popies). Louis’s closest missionary friends were Protestants, but he was fond of Catholic priests as well. “He had a special admiration,” Graham Balfour said, “for the way in which they identified themselves with the natives and encouraged all native habits and traditions at all compatible with Christianity.” Also, he enjoyed speaking French with them.

At one point Louis’s friend Adelaide Boodle wrote from Bournemouth to say that she was considering a trip to Samoa but had been urged to avoid places that had no Anglican clergy, presumably because she wouldn’t be able to take Communion in the authorized way. Louis replied, “Christ himself and the twelve apostles seem to me to have gone through this rough world without the support of the Anglican communion. I am pained that a friend of mine should conceive life so smally as to think she leaves the hand of her God because she leaves a certain clique of clergymen and a certain scattered handful of stone buildings, some of them with pointed windows, most with belfries, and a few with an illumination of the Ten Commandments on the wall.”

As Louis had discovered in Tahiti, islanders might embrace conversion but continue to hold on quietly to their old beliefs. “We may see the difficulty in its highest terms,” he wrote in his notebook, “when a missionary asks a savage if he believes it is the virtuous who are to be happiest in a future state, and receives an affirmative reply. The good man is much pleased with such incipient orthodoxy, while all the time they have been juggling with each other with misunderstood symbols. The missionary had Christian virtue in his mind, while the Tupinamba [an Amazon tribe] means by the virtuous ‘those who have well revenged themselves and eaten many of their enemies.’”

One of Louis’s unpublished fables, “Something in It,” explores the mutual incomprehension of belief systems. A missionary violates a native taboo and is carried off by a spirit to be baked and devoured. As a preliminary step he is required to drink ritual kava, which he refuses on the grounds that it is intoxicating and therefore forbidden. He is asked, “Are you going to respect a taboo at a time like this? And you were always so opposed to taboos when you were alive!” He replies, “To other people’s. Never to my own.” He is thereupon sent back to the world of the living, as unqualified to enter the spirit world. “‘I seem to have been misinformed upon some points,’ said he. ‘Perhaps there is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is something in it after all. Let me be glad of that.’” The taboo and the missionary’s rules, Roslyn Jolly says, “are utterly alien to each other, equally valid, with neither able to command universal authority.”

Well-meaning and sympathetic though individual missionaries might be, they were still complicit in the deployment of Christianity as an agent of imperialism. Louis would probably have appreciated Jomo Kenyatta’s comment in twentieth-century Kenya: “When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”