Category Archives: military

by | 24 March 2024 · 4:43 am

Weimar’s 1921 Communist Uprising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by | 22 March 2024 · 5:43 am

Aftermath of the 1920 Kapp Putsch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by | 15 March 2024 · 6:22 am

The Kiel Mutiny, November 1918

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 48-50:

The anti-war propaganda campaign unleashed by these left-wing socialist groups made a deep impression on sailors in the High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte), who opposed a German admiralty plan, codenamed ‘Plan 19’, scheduled for 28 October 1918, for one last make-or-break North Sea battle. Hopelessly outnumbered by the Allied navies, which included British, French, and American ships, the plan had little chance of success. Few sailors were interested in sacrificing their lives on such a pointless suicide mission. The Naval Supreme Command had sanctioned Plan 19, on the basis that the British would demand the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet as part of the armistice agreement.

The centre of the agitation against Plan 19 was in the port city of Kiel, on the Baltic coast, which along with Wilhelmshaven formed the anchorage base of the Kaiser’s fleet for the duration of the war. Blockaded by Allied ships, it had remained inactive ever since the inconclusive Battle of Jutland in late May 1916. Kiel also contained 50,000 troops stationed in barracks, and many industrial workers were working in armaments factories and shipyards. On 29 October, sailors on two major ships at Kiel failed to return from shore leave. Within hours, the mutiny spread to a number of other battleships and cruisers, forcing the Admiralty to abandon Plan 19.

The mutineers held a meeting on 2 November on a large parade ground in Kiel. They wanted the release of their comrades who had been imprisoned during the rebellion. The key speaker was 27-year-old Karl Artelt, a committed revolutionary and a member of the USPD [Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands], who called not only for the release of all the rebel sailors, but for the abolition of German militarism and the overthrow of the ruling classes. The sailors held a further meeting on 3 November 1918, again supported by USPD members, attended by about 6,000 people. They demanded the immediate release of the imprisoned sailors. The demonstrators then moved in the direction of the Waldwiese, a beer hall temporarily acting as a naval prison. The guards fired on the demonstrators, killing seven and wounding 29 others. On the next day, the rebel sailors moved through the town, and soon brought public and naval institutions under their control, detaining their officers, and taking control of their ships. By the end of 4 November, about 40,000 rebels in Kiel had formed councils elected at mass gatherings of sailors, soldiers, and workers. The Revolutionary Shop Stewards announced that a general strike in Kiel factories would begin on 5 November 1918.

Within Prince Max’s government, there was concern over the wider implications of the Kiel Mutiny. A sailors’ mutiny at a time when armistice negotiations were at a very delicate stage could only weaken the hand of the German government. Scheidemann feared the rebellion in Kiel might ignite a revolution against the old order and he was worried the formation of sailors’ and soldiers’ councils would turn the naval mutiny into a broader Marxist uprising.

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by | 14 March 2024 · 5:11 am

Germany’s Military Collapse in 1918

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 26-28:

Victory in Russia gave the German people real hope of victory in the war. On 21 March 1918, Germany launched a spring offensive, better known as the Ludendorff Offensive, on the Western Front. It aimed to knock Britain and France out of the war before significant numbers of US forces arrived in Europe. Unfortunately, German expectations of victory proved illusory. Scarcely in the annals of military history has there been such a spectacular reversal of military fortune as Germany suffered towards the end of the war. By early June 1918, it was clear that the Ludendorff Offensive had failed. On 8 August, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), spearheaded by tanks and supported by massive numbers of newly arrived American troops, launched a surprise attack between Amiens and St Quentin in northern France against the German Second Army. It punched a huge hole in the defensive line and captured 15,000 German soldiers. The significance of this decisive British breakthrough in the Battle of Amiens was not lost on Ludendorff, who called it ‘the blackest day of the German army in the history of this war’. He knew the Allies were now able to deploy thousands of tanks on the Western Front while the Germans had been able to manufacture only 20. Fritz Nagel, a German officer in the German anti-aircraft artillery, later recalled: ‘The German armies were in bad shape. Every soldier and civilian was hungry. Losses in material could not be replaced and the soldiers arriving as replacements were too young, poorly trained and often unwilling to risk their necks because the war looked like a lost cause.’

A two-day military conference on the critical situation on the Western Front was held on 13–14 August 1918 at the headquarters of the Supreme Military Command in Spa, Belgium. Hindenburg chaired it, and Paul von Hintze, the new Foreign Minister, and Ludendorff were present. Ludendorff said Germany now needed to adopt a purely defensive strategy, but he thought it might still be possible to sue for peace with the western Allies on favourable terms. Hindenburg agreed with Ludendorff’s judgement about continuing with strategic defence, while Hintze thought the German Army was in no condition to fight a successful strategic defence, and he felt diplomatic steps had to be taken to bring the war to an end.

When Kaiser Wilhelm II was apprised of these discussions in a Grand Council meeting, he seemed blinded by the optimism of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and instructed Hintze to refrain from making a direct peace offer to the Allies and to wait for a more favourable moment. This proved wishful thinking, as Germany’s Central Power allies now began to collapse. On 24 September 1918, the Bulgarian Army was defeated when the Allied armies based in Greece broke through the Macedonian Front. The Bulgarian government, which had previously been under German control, requested an armistice and accepted it five days later. This placed the Austro-Hungarian empire, Germany’s principal ally, in a precarious position. Emperor Charles I of Austria, desperate to end the war, sent a circular diplomatic note inviting all the belligerents in the war to send representatives to Vienna to a confidential conference to discuss the basic principles of a peace settlement. On 27 October, Austria-Hungary ended its formal alliance with Germany, and the subject nationalities of the Habsburg Empire all declared their independence. On 30 October, the Ottoman Turks signed a regional armistice. Germany was now left without any allies.

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by | 13 March 2024 · 2:45 am

Germany’s Eastern Victory in WW1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by | 12 March 2024 · 9:22 am

Bypassing the Reichstag in World War I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by | 1 March 2024 · 5:30 pm

Australia’s Currency Lads and Lasses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Equal opportunity remained a hot issue in the colony.

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by | 27 February 2024 · 10:27 am

Macquarie’s Egalitarianism in NSW

From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 382-385:

The appointment of Lachlan Macquarie as governor in January 1810 brought much needed stability and efficiency to the colonial administration. With William Bligh’s reputation reinstated, the settlers had hoped that Macquarie would follow a similar policy of assisting small farmers to increase food production in the colony. However, although Macquarie gave assurances of his support for this policy, his actions by no means matched those of the Bligh administration. The governor’s first priority was to try and heal the serious rifts still in the community, and he avoided overt favouritism, initially at least, to any particular sector. In his hands, the colony’s overall economy began to recover from the mishaps of the rebel administration.

Nevertheless, Macquarie made it clear that grain production was a priority for the government, and the free and emancipist settlers quickly understood this. Most importantly, with the removal of the New South Wales Corps from the marketplace, the financial rewards to farmers who cultivated large crops rose sharply. Fair-trading became the norm and grain prices were stable and predictable. Macquarie made sure the government civil servants and the court officials treated everyone equally, independent of their social status or occupation. His policies eventually enabled people from all sectors of the community to be promoted into important positions in the administration, and he insisted that emancipists in the community be given the same social and business opportunities as free settlers.

It was not long before Lachlan Macquarie realised that some ‘better members of society’ were excluding emancipists who had become successful through hard work and entrepreneurship from legitimate recognition in the colony. Such unjustified discrimination clashed with his Scottish and military upbringing, and he was determined that it be stamped out. As early as April 1810, Macquarie appointed the emancipist farmer-industrialist Andrew Thompson as a Justice of the Peace and Magistrate in the Hawkesbury District. Thompson was the first ex-convict to become a Magistrate, and Simeon Lord, another emancipist, was the second. Lord was appointed as Magistrate on the Sydney court benches. These appointments were strongly criticised by wealthy free settlers and civil officers, who argued such men had no place in respectable society, and that granting them positions of power would corrupt the social order. Macquarie believed these criticisms were made by people who had only recently achieved social standing in the colony and did not want this diluted by nouveau-riche emancipists.

Reverend Marsden was one of the most outspoken opponents of Macquarie’s encouragement for widespread social equality. Marsden’s views on the importance of social distinctions were in stark contrast to those of the governor, and he became a persistent critic of all aspects of the Macquarie administration. When Marsden refused to join a trustee board of which Andrew Thompson and Simeon Lord were members, Macquarie considered it an act of civil disobedience. Like Bligh, Macquarie was a military man who had little tolerance for dissent. He was hostile to those opposing his egalitarian efforts, maintaining that equality was essential to the harmony of such a diverse community.

Andrew Thompson gained wide acceptance in the community for his courage, honesty and fairness as a magistrate, and became a regular dinner guest at Government House. Unfortunately his health deteriorated rapidly following his heroic rescues in the Hawkesbury floods and he died in October 1810 at the age of 37. He was one of the colony’s wealthiest settlers with an estate worth in excess of £20,000 (over £2 million today). Thompson, who was unmarried, bequeathed a quarter of his estate to Governor Macquarie for recognising his abilities, and a quarter to his friend and fellow emancipist-magistrate Simeon Lord. The remaining half was to be equally divided between his brother, and four nephews and nieces in Scotland. Bizarrely, they never accepted the inheritance – perhaps believing that benefiting from a transported criminal’s honest earnings would taint their good name. Their refusal to benefit from Thompson’s estate is a telling example of 19th century propriety and prejudice, befitting a Charles Dickens tale. Andrew Thompson had been an honest, industrious and successful young man, of whom any family would have been proud if they had known of his achievements and good deeds.

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by | 26 February 2024 · 8:24 am

Captain Bligh’s Foes and Fans

From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 365, 377-381:

In one sense, the life of Bligh is a tragedy, but a tragedy in the grand manner. He was the victim of two mutinies, one at sea, the other on land. In neither case was he the victim of his own tyranny. The objective of the Bounty mutineers was immediate return to the Lotus Land of Tahiti. In the case of Bligh’s New South Wales administration, the thought of forcible rebellion was probably suggested by the fact of the prior Bounty mutiny. It is only a child who would reason that, because there were two mutinies against Bligh, he must have been guilty of conduct justifying both.

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William Bligh was a blunt opinionated man who vigorously opposed anyone who disagreed with him. He had little time for the fripperies and subtleties of society; he lived by simple rules and expected others to do so as well. Despite the colony’s small size and isolation, it had strict social protocols and etiquettes, and the veteran mariner’s language and brusque manners probably shocked upper-class sensitivities. For people who knew him well, Bligh’s social crassness was more than offset by his courage, his honesty, and a generosity to those he thought deserved it. Few leaders, then or today, could rise above the indignities and pressure he had been subjected to, and fought so strongly for what he believed in. In a very real sense Australia’s egalitarian society and fair judicial system survived because of Bligh’s determined spirit. He had fought against entrenched opposition and won.

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The minor penalties imposed on [Rum Rebellion leaders] Johnston and Foveaux are unlikely to have satisfied William Bligh. While the courts had clearly vindicated him and his government, the sentences imposed on the rebels were unusually light. From all accounts, Bligh shrugged off his disappointment and moved on. In 1812, Bligh was promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue, and in 1814 to Vice-Admiral of the Blue. In 1812, he was invited to give advice to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transportation, and a year later was granted a full government pension. Vice-Admiral Bligh died on 7 Dec 1817, aged 63.

What can be said about the contribution of this controversial man to the fledgling colony? The Hawkesbury settlers regarded him as a person of courage and honour; a heroic fighter against what they saw as a corrupt system. He was considered ‘one of them’, who had fought for their cause and had been arrested as a consequence. Portrayals of Bligh’s character vary greatly in contemporary history, ranging from a fractious troublemaker to inspirational leader. But all assessments agree that Bligh’s actions were always honest. He strived to do the right thing by the colonialists who battled the hardest, however, he appeared unable, or unwilling, to rally the entire colony to his causes. Bligh either lacked, or undervalued, the political and diplomatic skills needed to convince the businessmen that his goals would lead to a successful prosperous colony. His blunt edicts were uncompromising, and this outraged the trading community who expected some give and take in government transactions – in any case, since Hunter’s time they were accustomed to get what they wanted. Bligh’s rigid no-compromising reforms came as a real shock, and those most effected believed they had no option but to fight against them.

In modern times, the support or damnation of the Bligh governorship seems to be divided along ideological lines. One right-wing opinion is that the rebellion ‘was caused not by rum but by the code of honour, which set out how gentlemen should behave. Governor William Blight was overthrown by the powerful people of Sydney because he was no gentleman’. Those in the opposite corner, claim that Bligh’s battles with Macarthur and the Corps were to protect the underprivileged, and to preserve democracy and equality. Overall, the latter camp appears to have many more historical facts on their side.

The commonly cited negative traits of Bligh are difficult to reconcile with our knowledge that he was a devoted family man and was considered something of a hero by most of the small farmers. Some settlers named their newborn sons after him and the use of ‘William Bligh’ or ‘Bligh’ as forenames for boys born in that era are evidence of this admiration. One example of this is William Bligh Turnbull, who was born in 1809 in Windsor, and is the ancestor of a former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull.

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The earliest writings damning Bligh were written by the colony’s educated elite who supported his overthrow. The written opinions of the illiterate emancipists went largely unrecorded, but the few surviving letters and petitions show their determined support and admiration. Probably the most learned and detailed analysis of William Bligh’s governorship is that of the socialist politician, lawyer and historian, H.V. Evatt. In his book Rum Rebellion Evatt reveals that he is an unapologetic admirer of Bligh. This is not surprising. Knowledge of Evatt’s own character, and his fierce battles in the Australian Labor Party and Australian Parliament, leads one to suspect that he and Bligh would have been the very best of friends, had their lives coincided.

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by | 23 February 2024 · 5:23 am

Misrule of the NSW “Rum Corps”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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