Category Archives: Mediterranean

by | 1 March 2026 · 10:12 pm

Herodotus as a Child?

From Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski (Vintage,  2009), Kindle pp. 44-46:

When I immersed myself in various sources, however, I learned that we know little about Herodotus’s life, and that even the few facts we do have are not entirely reliable. For in contrast to Rabindranath Tagore—or, for instance, his contemporary Marcel Proust, both of whom meticulously parsed every detail of their childhoods—Herodotus, like the other great men of this epoch—Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles—tells us next to nothing about his. Was it not customary? Was childhood considered irrelevant? Herodotus says only that he came from Halicarnassus. Halicarnassus lies above a calm bay shaped like an amphitheater, in a beautiful part of the world, where the western shore of Asia meets the Mediterranean Sea. It is a land of sun, warmth, and light, of olive trees and vineyards. One instinctively feels that someone born here must naturally have a good heart, an open mind, a healthy body, a consistently cheerful disposition.

Biographers tend to agree that Herodotus was born between 490 and 480 B.C.E., perhaps in 485. These are greatly important years in the history of world culture. Around 480 B.C.E., Buddha departs for the other world; a year later, in the Lu principality, Confucius dies; Plato will be born fifty years later. Asia is the center of the world; even insofar as the Greeks are concerned, the most creative members of their society—the Ionians—also live in Asia. There is no Europe yet; it exists as myth only, in the name of a beautiful girl, Europa, daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor, whom Zeus, transformed into a white bull, will carry off to Crete to have his way with her.

The parents of Herodotus? His siblings? His house? All of this is in deep shadowland uncertainty. Halicarnassus was a Greek colony on land subject to the Persians, with a non-Greek native population—the Carians. His father was called Lyxes, which is not a Greek name, so perhaps he was a Carian. It was his mother who most probably was Greek. Herodotus was therefore a Greek Carian, an ethnic half-breed. Such people who grow up amid different cultures, as a blend of different bloodlines, have their worldview determined by such concepts as border, distance, difference, diversity. We encounter the widest array of human types among them, from fanatical, fierce sectarians, to passive, apathetic provincials, to open, receptive wanderers—citizens of the world. It depends on how their blood got mixed, what spirits settled in it.

What sort of child is Herodotus? Does he smile at everyone and willingly extend his hand, or does he sulk and hide in the folds of his mother’s garments? Is he an eternal crybaby and whiner, giving his tormented mother at times to sigh: Gods, why did I give birth to such a child! Or is he cheerful, spreading joy all around? Is he obedient and polite, or does he torture everyone with questions: Where does the sun come from? Why is it so high up that no one can reach it? Why does it hide beneath the sea? Isn’t it afraid of drowning?

And in school? With whom does he share a bench? Did they seat him, as punishment, next to some unruly boy? Or, the gods forbid, a girl? Did he learn quickly to write on the clay tablet? Is he often late? Does he squirm during lessons? Does he slip others the answers? Is he a tattletale?

And toys? What did a little Greek living two and a half thousand years ago play with? A scooter carved out of wood? Did he build sand castles at the edge of the sea? Climb trees? Make himself clay birds, fish, and horses, which we can study today in museums?

Which aspects of his childhood will he remember for the rest of his life? For little Rabi, the most exalted moment was the morning prayer at his father’s side. For little Marcel, it was waiting in a dark room for his mother to come and hug him good night. Which experience did little Herodotus anticipate in this way?

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Filed under China, education, Greece, Mediterranean, philosophy, religion, South Asia

by | 21 February 2026 · 5:34 am

Mincemeat and Mussolini

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. 291-293:

The most significant victim in the fallout on the Axis side was Mussolini himself. From the first Allied footfall in Sicily, Il Duce was doomed, though he refused to acknowledge it. Goebbels noted: “The only thing certain in this war is that Italy will lose it.” The Pact of Steel was cracking up. By July 18, the Allied front line had moved halfway up Sicily. That day, Mussolini sent an almost defiant cable to Hitler: “The sacrifice of my country cannot have as its principal purpose that of delaying a direct attack on Germany.” The Führer summoned him to an urgent meeting. Il Duce did not care to be summoned anywhere but went meekly. The two fascist leaders met in Feltre, fifty miles from Venice, where Hitler launched into a long harangue, lambasting the “inept and cowardly” Italian troops in Sicily and insisting: “What has happened now in Sicily must not be allowed to happen again.” In the midst of the tirade, an aide interrupted to inform Mussolini that Rome was under massive air attack, the first time the capital had been targeted. Mussolini sat impassively through the two-hour monologue. The great Italian bull seemed to be fatally gored, diminished, and distant. At the end of the excruciating meeting, he said simply: “We are fighting for a common cause, Führer.” It sounded more like an epitaph than a statement of solidarity. On July 22, Palermo fell to Patton’s American troops. Three days later, Mussolini was outvoted by the Fascist Grand Council, summoned by King Victor Emmanuel III to a private audience, and toppled. “It can’t go on any longer,” said the king: Mussolini must resign at once, to be replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the former chief of the armed forces. Italy’s deposed dictator left the royal Villa Savoia hidden in an ambulance, and the new government in Rome began the secret task of extracting Italy from the war and Hitler’s poisonous embrace. In Badoglio’s words: “Fascism fell, as was fitting, like a rotten pear.” The next day, Rommel was recalled from Greece to defend northern Italy.

Would it have fallen so fast, or rotted so quickly, without Operation Mincemeat? The invasion of Sicily was a far from perfect military operation, bedeviled by poor planning and personal rivalries between selfish and powerful men. A relatively small contingent of German troops successfully held up the advance of an Allied host seven times larger and then evacuated the island to continue the battle up mainland Italy. The fight for Sicily was grim, bitter, and costly. But how much worse would it have been had the Nazi high command been prepared for it? What if, say, the full-strength, battle-tempered First Panzer Division, instead of being dispatched to Greece to await an imaginary invasion, had been deployed along the coast at Gela?

It is impossible to calculate how many lives, on both sides of the conflict, were saved by Operation Mincemeat, or exactly how much it contributed to hastening the end of the war and the defeat of Hitler. The Allies had expected it would take ninety days to conquer Sicily. The occupation was completed on August 17, thirty-eight days after the invasion began. Looking back after the war, Professor Percy Ernst Schramm, keeper of the OKW war diary, left no doubt that the fake documents had played a critical role: “It is well known that under the influence of the letters, Hitler moved troops to Sardinia and southern Greece, thereby preventing them from taking part in the defence against [Husky].” In September, Italy formally surrendered, although the war in Italy would not end until May 1945.

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Filed under Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mediterranean, military, U.S., war

by | 20 February 2026 · 3:02 am

Nazi Intelligence Failure in 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. 229-232:

The first full German intelligence assessment of the documents was written on May 11 and signed by Baron von Roenne himself. It was addressed to the OKW Operations Staff, or Wehrmachtführungsstab, headed by General Alfred Jodl, and entitled, portentously, “Discovery of the English Courier.” It began: “On the corpse of an English courier which was found on the Spanish coast, were three letters from senior British Officers to high Allied Officers in North Africa. … They give information concerning the decisions taken on the 23rd April, 1943, regarding Anglo-American strategy for the conduct of the war in the Mediterranean after the conclusion of the Tunisian campaign.” Major Martin is described as “an experienced specialist in amphibious operations.”

Von Roenne went on to lay out, point by point, the misinformation prepared by Cholmondeley and Montagu. “Large scale amphibious operations in both the Western and Eastern Mediterranean are intended. The proposed operation in the eastern Mediterranean, under the command of General Wilson, is to be made on the coast round Kalamata, and the section of the coast south of Cape Araxos. The code name for the landings on the Peloponnesus is ‘Husky.’ … The operation to be conducted in the Western Mediterranean by General Alexander was mentioned, but without naming any objective.” Von Roenne, however, had picked up on the reference to sardines. “A jocular remark in this letter refers to Sardinia,” he wrote. “The code name for this operation is ‘Brimstone.’” The attack on Sardinia, he surmised, must be “a minor ‘commando type’ since Mountbatten had requested the return of Major Martin after the operation. This indication points to the invasion of an island rather than of a major undertaking. … This is another point in favour of Sardinia.”

Just as important, Von Roenne relayed the news that Sicily was not a real target for the Allies, but a decoy: “The proposed cover operation for ‘Brimstone’ is Sicily.” That lie would sit, immovably, at the center of German strategic thinking over the coming months: the attacks would come in the east, in Greece, and in the west, most probably in Sardinia; evidence of any planned assault on Sicily could safely be dismissed as a hoax. The only uncertainty, von Roenne warned, was that of timing. If the two divisions identified in Nye’s letter—the Fifty-sixth Infantry attacking Kalamata and the Fifth Infantry Division aimed at Cape Araxos—were deployed at less than full strength, then the “operation could be mounted immediately” and the offensive might start at any time. However, the Fifty-sixth Division, von Roenne noted, had two brigades “still in action” at Enfidaville. If the entire division was to be used in the assault, these troops “must first be rested and then embarked. This possibility, which necessitates a certain time lag before the launching of the operation, is, judging by the form of the letters, the most likely.” In von Roenne’s mature estimation, Germany still had “at least two or three weeks” to reinforce the Greek coast before the attack.

That was also enough time for the British to change their plans, which they might well do if they knew the information had reached the Germans. Von Roenne now turned to this important consideration. “It is known to the British Staff that the courier’s despatches to [sic] Major Martin fell into Spanish hands,” he wrote, but “it is not perhaps known to the British General Staff that these letters came to our notice, since an English Consul was present at the examination of the letters by Spanish officials.” The letters had been reinserted in the envelopes and returned to the British, and a senior officer of the Madrid Abwehr station had personally inspected the resealed envelopes before they were returned to Alan Hillgarth. The British might suspect but would have no proof that the letters had been read, let alone passed to the Germans and copied. “It is, therefore, to be hoped that the British General Staff will continue with these projected operations and thereby make possible a resounding Abwehr success.” In order to convince the British that their secrets were still safe, von Roenne suggested that the Germans mount their own deception: they should give no indication that they feared simultaneous attacks in the eastern and western Mediterranean and instead “initiate a misleading plan of action which will deceive the enemy by painting a picture of growing Axis concern regarding Sicily.” The Germans should pretend to reinforce Sicily, while doing nothing of the sort.

Von Roenne ended with a security warning. “News of this discovery will be treated with the greatest secrecy, and knowledge of it confined to as few as possible.” The baron’s assessment was remarkable in many ways: it hauled on board every single aspect of the deception and even launched a corresponding deception plan to reinforce it. But perhaps most astonishing of all was the ringing endorsement that accompanied the appraisal: “The circumstances of the discovery, together with the form and contents of the despatches, are absolutely convincing proof of the reliability of the letters.” The army’s chief intelligence analyst, from the outset, utterly dismissed the possibility of a plant.

This was, to say the least, strange. The analysts of FHW usually distrusted uncorroborated information emanating directly from the Abwehr, knowing the inefficiency and corruption of that organization, and tended to be skeptical of Abwehr revelations “unless these were clearly corroborated by more tangible evidence.” Von Roenne’s natural caution seems to have deserted him. He knew only what the Madrid Abwehr station had told him about the discovery of the body, which was secondhand information derived through Adolf Clauss. The report detailing the results of the second meeting with Pardo on May 10 had not yet reached Berlin. No additional checks had been made, the body had not been examined, and the original documents had remained in German hands for only one hour, far too short a time for forensic testing. And yet he chose to describe the documents as incontrovertibly genuine.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived. The betrayed lover sees only the signs of love and blocks out the evidence of faithlessness, however glaring. This unconscious willingness to see the lie as truth—“wishfulness” was Admiral Godfrey’s word for it—comes in many forms: Adolf Clauss in Huelva wanted to believe the false documents because his reputation depended on believing them; for Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, any intelligence breakthrough to his credit, no matter how fantastic, made him safer, a Jew among anti-Semitic killers. Von Roenne, however, may have chosen to believe in the fake documents for an entirely different reason: because he loathed Hitler, wanted to undermine the Nazi war effort, and was intent on passing false information to the high command in the certain knowledge that it was wholly false and extremely damaging.

It is quite possible that Lieutenant Colonel Alexis Baron von Roenne did not believe the Mincemeat deception for an instant.

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Filed under Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mediterranean, military, Spain, war

by | 7 February 2026 · 4:18 am

Displaced Poles in World War 2

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes an article by Juliette Bretan on Polish refugees abroad during World War 2. Here are some excerpts.

Britain proved an early home for thousands of Poles following the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces in September 1939. Polish civilians, and those in the armed forces, fled over the Carpathian mountains to Romania and Hungary, with around 90,000 military personnel known to have escaped by the end of September. Many of those in the armed forces reached France via then Yugoslavia and Italy, where new divisions were organised.

After France fell, thousands of Poles in the armed forces, and the Polish government-in-exile, transferred to London. In August 1940, an Anglo-Polish agreement allowed for the Polish land sea and air forces to be organised and employed under British command. Polish fighter and bomber squadrons were created, with Polish pilots destroying nearly 1000 enemy aircraft and dropping nearly 15,000 bombs and mines during the course of the war.

Persia

Following the Nazi invasion of Russia 1941, a treaty – the Sikorski-Mayski agreement – was signed between Poland and the Soviet Union, which included an ‘amnesty’ allowing for the release of many of the Poles who had been deported east. However, many Poles in labour camps were unaware of the development, and even those who were had only limited assistance from the Soviet authorities. Thousands of Poles, however, did manage to move south, joining Władysław Anders’s army as they moved through Russia and central Asia. In 1942, General Sikorski received permission to evacuate Poles into Persia (now Iran), across the Caspian Sea.

Africa

As Zdzisława Wójcik notes, more than half of the 37,000 Polish civilians who left the USSR with the Polish army found new homes in Africa, in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. Some arrived by sea between 1942-43, and were housed in former POW camps or new settlements, whilst others were transported from refugee camps across the world:

The settlements […] operated their own businesses: farms, canteens, butcher shops, bakeries, and fabric–weaving, sewing and shoemaking shops […] the population in the Polish settlements had a specific demographic profile: about 47 percent were women, over 41.5 percent were teenagers and children, and only 11.5 percent were men. (Wójcik, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

According to Wójcik, the Catholic Church played a prominent role in structuring Polish communities in Africa, although the number of priests varied by settlement. Support for the refugees was also provided by the Polish Red Cross and bureaus in Nairobi, with schools and orphanages established for children. However, the food available in these orphanages often left much to be desired, as Vala Lewicki – who was based in Uganda – remembers:

Meals were never elaborate affairs. The quick breakfast varied only between a plate of baked beans and a slice of bread with tea and coffee one day, and two slices of sparingly-buttered bread with cocoa or tea the next day. Occasionally we had powdered eggs which tasted like…powder. We had sandwiches for lunch, while dinner consisted of bean soup, a slice of meat and baked beans. Always baked beans! (Vala Lewicki, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

New Zealand & Mexico

Just under 1000 Poles – 733 children and 105 adults – also found a new home in New Zealand during the war, after Prime Minister of the country accepted the refugees.

Arriving in Wellington in 1944, the refugees were settled in a Polish Children’s Camp in the town of Pahiatua, where Catholic services and Polish schooling and scouting trips were provided. Many of the Polish refugees also chose to settle in New Zealand after the war, finding ample opportunities for work as mining and logging industries expanded.

Meanwhile, a community of 1400 Poles also settled in Santa Rosa in Mexico, where they were welcomed by an orchestra playing the Polish national anthem. The settlement in Santa Rosa included living quarters and a school, where a Polish curriculum was used, as well as gardens and playing areas.

India

It is estimated that around 5000 Poles also found safe haven in India, after the wife of the Polish Consul General to Bombay, Kira Banasińska, petitioned the Maharaja of Nawanagar. The Maharaja had longstanding links to Poland – his father had been friends with pianist Ignacy Paderewski – and said that he was ‘trying to do whatever [he] can to save the children.’

Refugees settled in several camps in and around Bombay, as well as in a settlement built at the Maharaja’s summer palace. Polish culture remained an integral part of life, with Catholic teaching organised, Polish books provided, and the children also encouraged to give performances featuring traditional Polish dances and music. Sport was also encouraged: following the arrival of pre-war Lvovian footballer Antoni Maniak, a stadium and running track was built, and regular training sessions established to improve the children’s health and wellbeing. The Maharaja donated money to purchase sporting equipment – and the children proved themselves worthy foes against local teams.

The refugees dubbed the settlement camps ‘Little Poland’.

The Polish Red Cross supported the orphans who were being settled in India, although Ordonówna accompanied the first transport of children out of the Middle East, despite battling the symptoms of tuberculosis, which would later kill her.

Post-war resettlement

At the end of the war, many Poles were unable to return to their homeland. The British government recognised the contribution of Poles in the Allied forces, and established the Polish Resettlement Act, the first mass immigration legislation, in 1947, which offered British citizenship and support for hundreds of thousands of Poles. Following the act, transports were provided to enable their relatives to also reach the UK. Four thousand Poles arrived in overland transports from Italy by rail, whilst several ships carrying hundreds of displaced Poles arrived in ports in Southampton, Liverpool, Hull, London and Glasgow in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This included a transport of 66 Poles from Santa Rosa in Mexico, who travelled aboard the Empire Windrush in its historic passage to London in 1948; around 400 Poles – including many orphans – from Kilindini Mombasa in Kenya on the SS Scythia, which docked in Liverpool; and 600 displaced women, children and elderly Poles from Cape Town on the RMS Arundel Castle, which arrived in Southampton.

On board one transport from Lebanon in 1950, on the SS Oxfordshire, were also several unexpected passengers – two hives of bees, brought by one man in his 60s. The man was allowed to keep the bees, which he took to Haydon Park resettlement camp. By the early 1950s, over 100,000 Poles were registered in Great Britain. Among them were pre-war cultural figures, including Polish poet and songwriter Marian Hemar, and singers Adam Aston, Zofia Terné and Włada Majewska; as well as artists, including the Themersons and Stanisław Frenkiel. Many of these figures played a significant role in forming Polish communities in the UK post-war.

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Filed under Britain, France, Germany, India, Iran, Kenya, Mediterranean, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, South Africa, USSR, war

by | 24 August 2025 · 3:02 am

First Portuguese Toeholds in India

From Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, by Roger Crowley (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 119-120:

GAMA SET SAIL FOR Lisbon in February 1503, leaving behind two fragile toeholds on the Indian coast—the trading posts at Cannanore and Cochin—and a furious and humiliated samudri in Calicut, additionally enraged with the sultan of Cochin for defying his attempts to uproot the Portuguese pirates. It was clear that there could be no peaceful negotiations with these intruders, whose visitations were assuming an ominous regularity. With the dying of each monsoon, their ships returned, sometimes in small squadrons, sometimes in major shows of force. They announced themselves with displays of flags and volleys of cannon fire. They came with intemperate demands for spices and for the expulsion of the deep-rooted Muslim community; they flouted the taboos of Hindu culture and backed up their threats with traumatic acts of violence beyond the acceptable rules of war.

The Portuguese now started trying to introduce a toll system for shipping along the shores of the Malabar Coast; they issued safe-conduct passes, called cartazes, that ensured protection for the vessels of friendly powers. This was effectively a tax on commerce. In time it would require merchant shipping to trade in Portuguese-controlled ports and, additionally, pay substantial import and export duties. The cartazes, stamped with the image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, marked a radical shift in the Indian Ocean. With the coming of the Europeans, the sea was no longer a free-trade zone. The cartaz system introduced the alien concept of territorial waters, a politicized space controlled by armed force and the Portuguese ambition to dominate the sea.

The full implications of these threats to Indian Ocean trade were now echoing across the wider world. In December 1502, the worried Venetians established a Calicut committee with the express purpose of soliciting action from the sultan in Cairo; this was to be undertaken by their ambassador, Benedetto Sanuto, “to find rapid and secret remedies.” The utmost discretion was essential. The potential scandal of aiding Muslims against their Christian brethren made Venetian overtures extremely delicate, but Sanuto’s mission was clear: to highlight to the sultan the threat posed by a Portuguese blockade of his spice route, to urge him to put pressure on the samudri to expel the intruders, and, to the obvious advantage of the Venetians themselves, to lower tariffs on spices traded through Egypt to compete with the Portuguese.

In Cairo itself, the sultan, Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri, had other things to concern himself with—outbreaks of sedition, threats to the pilgrim routes to Mecca and Medina from Bedouin tribesmen, an empty treasury—but the sudden appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean was as disconcerting as it was inexplicable. “The audacity of the Franks knows no limit,” reported the chronicler Ibn Iyas of their growing incursions.

They say that the Franks have succeeded in effecting a breach in the dyke constructed by Alexander [the Great]…this breach has been made in a mountain that separates the China Sea [the Indian Ocean] from the Mediterranean. The Franks have been striving to enlarge this cutting to allow their ships to pass into the Red Sea. Such is the origin of this piracy.

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Filed under economics, Mediterranean, migration, military, nationalism, piracy, Portugal, religion, South Asia

by | 10 August 2024 · 6:03 am

Role of Sugarcane in the Islamic World

From The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, ed. by Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (U. Chicago Press, 2013), Kindle pp. 69-71:

Sugar and slavery, key components that helped shape the colonial Caribbean, were present in the medieval Mediterranean world in both Muslim and Christian areas. Elements that contributed to the development of the plantation complex in the early modern Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas had long Mediterranean histories: the use of slaves, slave trade, sugar cultivation and refining, merchant capitalism, and marketing networks.

The Muslims first introduced sugarcane growing and refining to the Mediterranean after they found the crop under cultivation and production in Khuzistan in Mesopotamia, just north of the Persian Gulf. When the Muslims conquered the region in the seventh and eighth centuries, they established a labor force imported from East Africa to work in the cane fields, thus foreshadowing the links between sugar production and black slavery. Still, in the Islamic world and the Christian Mediterranean, free labor predominated in sugar production.

From Khuzistan, sugar refining spread to Baghdad, which lasted as a refining center until the end of the Middle Ages. Egypt was the next step along sugar’s westward march; the first sugar plantations were established there in the early eighth century. From Egypt, the Muslims spread sugarcane to Yemen and to the lands around the Mediterranean: Syria, Sicily, southern Morocco, and southern Spain. In ancient and early medieval times, the Mediterranean had not known sugar; sweetening came from honey and fruit juices. Honey remained a luxury because its supply was limited and could never be expanded much. Sugarcane was entirely different, its growth limited only by the availability of suitable land and labor.

By the 10th century, sugar production was thriving in several places in the Islamic world, and cane sugar traded widely in the Muslim markets and afield to the Byzantine Empire and the Christian West. Because of the special requirements of successful sugarcane production, it was mainly large landholders who could afford the necessary investment. The intensive nature of the industry has been a feature of cane sugar production ever since.

Egyptian sugar processes became famous throughout the world. The Egyptians probably invented the manufacture of cube or misri (Egyptian) sugar. They had long used two minerals, natron (sodium carbonate) and alum (aluminum potassium sulfate), for the refining of honey, and around the 11th century they began to refine cane sugar with the same minerals.

The first written evidence of sugarcane in Spain appears in the 10th century, even though Muslims conquered most of the Iberian peninsula early in the eighth century and, from the time of the emir ’Abd al-Raḥmān I in the mid-eighth, were introducing and acclimating new crops in palace gardens in southern Spain. The Calendar of Córdoba first mentions sugarcane around the year 961, but this source may reflect conditions in Egypt more accurately than in Spain, or may be referring to all territory under Cordoban control rather than Córdoba itself. Certainly in Muslim times, sugar was grown in a wide stretch of southern Iberian territory, from the wetlands of the lower Guadalquivir south of Seville to warm coastal valleys along the Mediterranean coast from Málaga to Almería and occasionally as far north as Castellón.

…

During Islamic times, sugar was a luxury product, used extensively in pharmacology and medicine and as a significant component of cuisine. Muslim physicians, following Galen’s approach, used it to balance the four humors. Honey and sugar, usually dissolved in water, were used to treat disorders of the respiratory, urinary, and digestive systems. A 15th-century Egyptian allegorical tale showed the personification of sugar leaving the ranks of the army of medicine and joining the army of the foods, reflecting the increasing availability of cane sugar. Sweets, including candy and sweet baked goods and other confections, were popular throughout the Muslim world. Equally important was the common use of sugar, along with fruits and other sweeteners, in meat dishes and vegetable recipes throughout medieval Christian as well as Islamic lands. In modern times the cuisine of Europe has tended to shed such recipes and to confine sweetened foods to the dessert course, whereas in North Africa main courses of meats and vegetables sweetened with sugar and fruits have remained popular.

Egyptian sugar production prospered in the 13th and 14th centuries, with sugar exported to the commercial centers of Italy, France, and Spain. Yet at the same time, the sugar industry in the Near East began to fall victim to the same forces that were causing an overall decline in the economy of the Islamic world, including deforestation and the Christian advance in maritime power and trade. Sugar factories began to close around the middle of the 14th century, and that process accelerated in the 15th. Cairo had 66 sugar mills in 1325; by the first years of the next century, nearly half had been abandoned.

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Filed under Egypt, food, Mediterranean, migration, religion, slavery, Spain

by | 8 June 2024 · 9:35 am

U.S. Enlists Mafia to Invade Sicily

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 316-317:

When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Mussolini declared his support for Hitler, with whom he had concluded the so-called Pact of Steel four months before. He did not immediately declare war—the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, having warned him that Italy simply did not have enough tanks, armored cars and aircraft. To get involved in the European conflict at this point would, said Badoglio, be tantamount to suicide. Nine months later, however, the situation had changed dramatically. Norway, Belgium and Holland had been invaded; France was falling. On June 10 Italy declared war. Mussolini had hoped to help himself to Savoy, Nice, Corsica, Tunisia and Algeria from the French, but to his disgust Germany signed an armistice establishing the collaborationist government under Marshal Pétain at Vichy, which retained control over southern France and all its colonies.

So far as North Africa was concerned, only Egypt was left; and in September 1940 the Duce sent a large Italian force across the Libyan border. The British troops stationed in Egypt were at first hopelessly outnumbered; their counterattack, however, proved far more successful than expected and resulted in massive numbers of prisoners. So decisive was the Italian defeat that Hitler was obliged to send out his Afrikakorps, under the command of General Erwin Rommel. Only then did the British lose the initiative, ultimately to regain it at the Battle of El Alamein in October–November 1942.

The story of the Desert War is not ours, but it exemplifies the several successive humiliations suffered by Italy between 1940 and 1943. Mussolini’s invasion of Greece in October 1940 once again forced Hitler to send troops to his rescue; and by the beginning of 1943 disaster threatened him from every side. Half the Italian troops serving in Russia had been annihilated; both his North African and his Balkan adventures had been dismal failures. The Italians had had enough. Then, in July 1943, the Allies launched an operation which, as well as giving them a foothold in Europe, promised to remove Mussolini from the scene for good. They invaded Sicily.

For Sicily, hitherto, the war had been disastrous. As an island, it had suffered even more acutely than the rest of Italy. The ferryboats to the mainland were disrupted; the export market largely disappeared, while imports became irregular and uncertain; sometimes the Sicilians had found themselves with virtually nothing to eat but their own oranges. The rationing system was a bad joke; the black market reigned supreme. For the Mafia, on the other hand, conditions could hardly have been better. With a good deal of help from its branches in New York and Chicago, in the last years of peace it had already begun a swift recovery from the Mori reign of terror; and by 1943, whatever Mussolini might have said or believed, it was flourishing.

American intelligence officers, somewhat better informed than the Duce, understood that for the projected invasion to be successful it was vitally important to have the Mafia firmly on the Allied side. They therefore made careful approaches to the dominant boss of gangland crime in the United States, a Sicilian named Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano. He had in fact been in prison since 1936 on compulsory prostitution charges, but was still very much in command. In late 1942, after long discussions, the two sides struck a deal. Luciano would have his sentence commuted; in return, he made two promises. The first was that his friend Albert Anastasia, who ran the notorious Murder Inc. and who also controlled the American docks, would protect the waterfront and prevent dockworker strikes for the duration of hostilities. The second was that he, Luciano, would contact other friends in Sicily, who would in turn ensure that the invasion would run as smoothly as possible.

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Filed under Africa, Germany, Italy, Mediterranean, migration, nationalism, U.S., war

by | 24 May 2024 · 4:46 pm

Sicily Under Bentinck, 1811

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 244-247:

At this point it becomes hard to believe that Maria Carolina was still completely sane. Both the Duke of Orléans and Maria Amalia pleaded with her to be more moderate and not to condemn as Jacobins all those who dared disagree with her, but as always she refused to listen. In July 1811 five of the leading barons, including their principal spokesman the Prince of Belmonte, were arrested and deported to various small islands “for preparing to disturb the public peace.” Louis-Philippe was summoned to the palace but, fearing to suffer a similar fate, refused to go. His horse stood ready saddled in case he had to take refuge in the country, though this fortunately proved unnecessary.

But now at last the Queen met her match. Lord William Bentinck had arrived in Palermo four days after the arrest of the barons, as both ambassador to the Sicilian court and commander in chief of the British forces on the island. The son of that third Duke of Portland who was twice Prime Minister, he had been Governor of Madras at twenty-nine and had then returned to Europe to fight in the Peninsular War, having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant general at thirty-four after the Battle of Corunna. He was now thirty-six. He had been thoroughly briefed by Amherst and others, and—determined not to take any nonsense from Maria Carolina—he began as he meant to continue. But even he seems to have been surprised by the strength of her opposition to everything he proposed. Within a month of his arrival he had returned to London to obtain yet wider powers.

On September 16, while he was still away, the Queen suffered an apoplectic stroke. Any other woman of her age would have sought peace and quiet for a gentle convalescence; she, as soon as she was able, was back at her desk, plunged once more into the fray. She was desperately weak, befuddled by opium and no longer able to face Bentinck—who returned on December 7—with quite the energy that she had formerly shown; but her determination was undiminished, and he decided to waste no more time. He now spelled out his demands, making it clear that the annual subsidy being paid by the British would be suspended until all of them were satisfied. First and most important was the supreme command of Neapolitan-Sicilian forces, which he himself proposed to assume; among the rest were the return of Belmonte and his colleagues from exile and the formation of a new ministry under the Prince of Cassaro. Neither the King nor the Queen were to be involved in the administration. Should there be any objections, Bentinck declared that he would not hesitate to ship off both of them—and if necessary the Hereditary Prince as well—to Malta, putting the Prince’s two-year-old son on the throne under the Regency of the Duke of Orléans. Fortunately, this last threat had its effect; but Bentinck had already sent orders to the British detachments in Messina, Milazzo and Trapani to march on Palermo when, on January 16, 1812, the King formally transferred his authority to his son.

The new ruler was far from ideal. He was neat, methodical and bureaucratic, a conscientious husband and father, and would doubtless have made a moderately competent manager of a local bank; but of political understanding, let alone of courage or charisma, he possessed not a shred. His instinctive caution, timidity and “littleness of mind” frequently drove Bentinck to distraction; but—at least for the moment—he served his purpose.

ONE OF THE FIRST actions of the Prince Vicar—as the Hereditary Prince was now called, since he was standing in for his father—was to recall the exiled barons, three of whom were immediately appointed to serve in the new government, the Prince of Belmonte as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The most important task before them, as Bentinck emphasized, was to draft the new constitution, based on the British model and abolishing the feudalism that had for so long been the bane of Sicilian life. The next was to get rid of the Queen. Her health was now rapidly deteriorating, but she was intriguing with all her old determination against the new ministry. She was also developing persecution mania. “The French government murdered my sister,” she said to the British consul, Robert Fagan, “and I am convinced that your government intends to do the same to me—probably in England.” Perhaps for this reason, she was fighting like a tiger to remain in Palermo, and her husband and son took her side—not because they did not deplore her behavior as much as anyone but simply because they had always deferred to her and found the habit difficult, if not impossible, to break.

At one moment Bentinck decided to request an audience with Ferdinand, in the hope of persuading him to reason with his wife and to explain to her the harm she was doing; he was simply refused an audience. The only channel of communication open to him was through the royal confessor, Father Caccamo, who was happy to reveal Ferdinand’s true feelings about his wife. His Majesty was, he said, forever writing to her “andate via, andate via!”*2 and had described his marriage of forty-four years as a “martyrdom.” But, as he put it, “he had not the heart or the courage to force his wife out of the island.” His son the Prince Vicar felt much the same way.

Not that the Prince’s relations with his mother were in any way friendly; rather the reverse. She had never forgiven him for accepting the Regency; she had called him a revolutionary and a traitor; and when on the evening of September 26, 1812, he fell suddenly and seriously ill, her first reaction—before worrying about his health—was that he must immediately resign. The symptoms, as Bentinck reported to the British Foreign Minister Lord Castlereagh, were suggestive of poison, and “general suspicion was fixed on the Queen”—a suspicion fully shared by the Prince himself. When Bentinck suggested to his doctor that the illness might be due to the unwonted heat, the patient, trembling with fever, cried out, “Ce n’est pas la chaleur, c’est ma mère, ma mère!” It turned out not to have been deliberate poisoning after all, but the Prince never altogether recovered; his illness left him prematurely aged—bent, gray-faced and shuffling.

Meanwhile, in July 1812, the new constitution had been drafted and duly promulgated. Its fifteen articles granted the people of Sicily an autonomy that they had never before enjoyed. Executive and legislative powers were rigidly separated, and the feudal practices that had been observed for some seven hundred years were finally abolished. All this proved, however, surprisingly good news for the Bourbons, at least in Naples. There was increasing anti-French feeling in the city, where Murat was effectively a dictator, while Ferdinand—hard as it may be to believe—was seen as an enlightened constitutional monarch. In the country, by contrast, the constitution was a good deal less popular; the people seemed simply unable to take it in. Many of the barons too who had actually voted for it were horrified to find their former powers and privileges gone forever.

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by | 16 May 2024 · 5:20 am

Sicily Under Spain, from 1479

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 148-149, 152-153:

The accession of [Aragon’s King John II]’s son Ferdinand in 1479 was of immense historic importance, since Ferdinand was already married to Queen Isabella of Castile. This marriage united the two kingdoms and created a third—that of Spain itself. Sicily thus suffered a further loss of importance. But a worse misfortune lay ahead. In 1487 there arrived the first members of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition. This had been established by Ferdinand and Isabella as early as 1481—with the blessing of Pope Sixtus IV—and remained under their direct control. It was intended principally to ensure the orthodoxy of those who had recently been persuaded to convert to Christianity from Judaism or Islam; and after the royal decrees of 1492 and 1501—which ordered Jews and Muslims to convert or leave the country—it substantially tightened its grip. Few converts slept soundly in their beds for fear of accusations that they were secretly observing the old customs, the punishment for which was burning at the stake.

Both the Inquisition and the expulsion decrees struck Sicily hard. The Muslim population, which had once been a majority in the island, was now relatively small, but the Jews were many; in the cities and towns they may well have constituted more than a tenth of the population. And Sicily needed them: they were active as merchants, as metalworkers and weavers, and especially as doctors and of course moneylenders. Doctors tend to be popular among the people; but moneylenders are less so and there were, after the middle of the century when interest rates climbed above ten percent, occasional outbreaks of anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, the citizens of Palermo appealed to Spain on behalf of their native Jews, protesting that they were doing no harm and begging that they might be allowed to remain. Their request went unheeded.

History shows us all too many cases of Jewish persecution, and in every case the persecuting country ends up impoverished. Spain and Sicily were no exception. We do not know the numbers involved—how many Jews decided to emigrate rather than deny their faith and how many “converted”—although the converts too lost much of their property, and even then were never safe from the Inquisition. But whatever the proportions, there can be no doubt that Sicily—like Nazi Germany in more recent years—lost a vast number of her most skilled, talented and intelligent citizens. And her economy suffered accordingly.

Another somewhat unsettling trend made itself evident during the sixteenth century’s opening decade: a steady increase in royal authority. For well over two centuries the barons had had things very much their own way. Thanks to corruption, carelessness on the part of the authorities, or quite often simply the passage of time, many of them held estates that were technically crown property, or had long since been allowed to forget their feudal obligations. But those days were over. With every passing year it became more evident that King Ferdinand was gradually tightening his grip. This was confirmed in 1509, with the appointment as Viceroy of a general named Ugo Moncada, who was bent on the conquest of North Africa and saw Sicily as the obvious springboard. From the beginning the barons hated him. Not only did he show them no respect; on his arrival he instituted searching inquiries as to their legal positions—in many cases with extremely embarrassing results. Arrests were made, frequently leading to imprisonment; fiefs were confiscated, including several that had been formally claimed by the Church. Meanwhile, the Inquisition was making its presence increasingly felt, particularly after it began burning its victims alive in the public squares.

…

The events of the last decade of the fifteenth century had changed the civilized world. On April 17, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella had given their formal approval to Christopher Columbus for his voyage, putting at his disposal three tiny caravels—the largest of them little more than a hundred feet long. Moreover, just four years before the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María set sail, the Portuguese Bartholomew Diaz had rounded the Cape of Storms (renamed by John II of Portugal the Cape of Good Hope); just six years afterward, on May 20 1498, his compatriot Vasco da Gama had dropped anchor at Calicut on the Malabar coast. Not only had he found a continuous sea route to India; he had proved that Portuguese ships were capable—just—of getting there and back.

The stories of these three great adventurers are not ours; what is important to us is the effect they had on the fortunes of the Mediterranean. Henceforth the writing was on the wall. Until now, even if the Turks did not make trouble—as they usually did—all cargoes bound for the further east had to be unloaded in Alexandria or some Levantine port. Thence they would be either transported overland to the pirate-infested Red Sea or consigned to some shambling camel caravan across central Asia which might take three or four years to reach its destination. Now, merchants could look forward to a time when they could sail from Lisbon—or London—and arrive in India or Cathay in the same vessel. Meanwhile, thanks to Columbus and those who followed him, the New World was proving infinitely more profitable than the Old, possessed as it was of fabulous wealth, the lion’s share of which went to Spain—and legally too. Within only seven months of Columbus’s first landfall, the Borgia Pope Alexander VI—himself a Spaniard—had issued the first of his five bulls settling the competing claims of Spain and Portugal over the newly discovered territories; within twenty-five years the galleons were regularly returning to their homeland loaded to the gunwales with loot. No wonder the successors of Ferdinand and Isabella had their eyes fixed so firmly on the west.

It was not immediately apparent that this sudden opening up of the oceans on both sides had dealt trade in the Mediterranean what would prove to be a paralyzing blow. Gradually, however, men realized that, at least from the commercial point of view, the Middle Sea had become a backwater. East of the Adriatic the Turks now allowed passage to western ships reluctantly or not at all. To the west, it was still indispensable to Italy; but France was nowadays finding her northern ports on the English Channel a good deal more useful than Marseille or Toulon, while Spain, now entering her years of greatness, had other, tastier fish to fry. Not for another three centuries, until the building of the Suez Canal, would the Mediterranean regain its old importance as a world thoroughfare.

And Sicily, as always, was the loser.

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by | 14 May 2024 · 6:02 am

Sicily Gets the Boot (of Italy)

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 83-84:

When the news was brought to the Byzantine headquarters that the Sicilians, led by the King himself, were advancing in formidable numbers and strength, the Greeks saw their fellow fighters fall away. The mercenaries chose, as mercenaries will, the moment of supreme crisis to demand impossible increases in their pay; meeting with a refusal, they disappeared en masse. Robert of Loritello deserted, followed by his own men and most of his compatriots. The Sicilian fleet arrived first; then, a day or two later, the army appeared in the west. The battle that followed was short and bloody; the Greek defeat was total. The Sicilian ships effectively prevented any possibility of escape by sea. On that one day, May 28, 1156, all that the Byzantines had achieved in Italy over the past year was wiped out as completely as if they had never come.

William [the Bad] treated his Greek prisoners according to the recognized canons of war; but to his own rebellious subjects he was pitiless. This was a lesson he had learned from his father. Treason, particularly in Apulia where it was endemic, was the one crime that could never be forgiven. Of those erstwhile insurgents who fell into his hands, only the luckiest were imprisoned. The rest were hanged, blinded or tied about with heavy weights and hurled into the sea. From Brindisi he moved to Bari. Less than a year before, the Bariots had readily thrown in their lot with the Byzantines; now they too were to pay the price for their disloyalty. As they prostrated themselves before their King to implore his mercy, William pointed to the pile of rubble where until recently the citadel had stood. “Just as you had no pity on my house,” he said, “so now I shall have no pity on yours.” He gave them two clear days in which to salvage their belongings; on the third day Bari was destroyed. Only the cathedral, the great church of St. Nicholas and a few smaller religious buildings were left intact.

One lonely figure remained to face the coming storm. All Pope Hadrian’s allies were gone. Michael Palaeologus was dead and his army annihilated; the Norman barons were either in prison or in hiding. Hadrian himself was all too well aware that, if he were to save anything from the disaster, he would have to come to terms with the King of Sicily. The two met in the papal city of Benevento, and on June 18, 1156, an agreement was concluded. In return for an annual tribute, the Pope agreed to recognize William’s kingship not only over Sicily, Apulia, Calabria and the former principality of Capua, together with Naples, Salerno, Amalfi and all that pertained to them; it was now formally extended across the whole region of the northern Abruzzi and the Marches. William, negotiating as he was from a position of strength, obtained more than had ever been granted to his father or grandfather. He was now one of the most powerful princes of Europe.

Thus, in the three years separating the Treaty of Benevento from the death of Pope Hadrian [the only English Pope ever] on September 1, 1159, a curious change occurs in the relative positions of the three principal protagonists. Alignments were shifting. The Papacy, brought to its knees at Benevento, rediscovered a fact that its history over the past hundred years should have made self-evident—that its only hope of survival as a potent political force lay in close alliance with its neighbor, Norman Sicily. The German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, impressed despite himself by the speed and completeness of William’s victories over the Byzantines in Apulia, looked upon him with undiminished hatred but a new respect, and decided on the indefinite postponement of the punitive expedition to the south that he had long been planning. Instead, he resolved on a campaign against the Lombard towns and cities of north Italy which, though technically part of his imperial dominions, had recently been showing a quite unacceptable tendency toward republicanism and independence. The result was the supreme paradox: the Lombard towns began to see the Sicilian monarchy—more absolutist by far than any other state in western Europe—as the stalwart defender of their republican ideals, hailing its King as a champion of civic liberty almost before the dust had settled on the ruins of Bari. And in the end they were victorious: on May 29, 1176, Frederick’s German knights were routed at Legnano by the forces of the Lombard League. It was the end of his ambitions in Lombardy. In Venice in the following year he publicly kissed Pope Alexander’s foot before the central door of St. Mark’s, and six years later, at Constance, the truce became a treaty. Though imperial suzerainty was technically preserved, the cities of Lombardy (and to some extent Tuscany also) were henceforth free to manage their own affairs.

William returned to Sicily with his international standing higher than it had ever been; but the last years of his reign were anything but happy. His Emir of Emirs—the title given to the Chief Minister of the kingdom—a certain Maio of Bari, was assassinated in 1160; and the following year saw a palace revolution in which the King’s young son and heir, Roger, was killed and William himself was lucky to escape with his life. The disorder spread through much of Sicily and into Apulia and Calabria, the King as always leading his army in person, captured rebels being punished with hideous brutality. Worst of all, when he returned to Sicily in 1162, he found Christians and Muslims at each other’s throats; the interreligious harmony which the two Rogers had worked so hard to achieve had been destroyed forever.

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