by | 15 April 2009 · 6:16 am

No Plebiscites for Germans, 1919

From The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, by Niall Ferguson (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 160-161:

Applying the principle of self-determination proved far from easy, however, for two reasons. First, … there were more than thirteen million Germans already living east of the borders of the pre-war Reich – perhaps as much as a fifth of the total German-speaking population of Europe. If self-determination were applied rigorously Germany might well end up bigger, which was certainly not the intention of Wilson’s fellow peacemakers. From the outset, then, there had to be inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, in the way Germany was treated: no Anschluss of the rump Austria to the Reich – despite the fact that the post-revolutionary governments in both Berlin and Vienna voted for it – and no vote at all for the 250,000 South Tyroleans, 90 per cent of whom were Germans, on whether they wanted to become Italian, but plebiscites to determine the fate of northern Schleswig (which went to Denmark), eastern Upper Silesia (to Poland) and Eupen-Malmédy (to Belgium). France reclaimed Alsace and Lorraine, lost in 1871, despite the fact that barely one in ten of the population were French-speakers. In all, around 3.5 million German-speakers ceased to be German citizens under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Equally important, under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye, more than 3.2 million Germans in Bohemia, southern Moravia and the hastily constituted Austrian province of Sudetenland found themselves reluctant citizens of a new state, Czechoslovakia. There were just under three-quarters of a million Germans in the new Poland, the same number again in the mightily enlarged Romania, half a million in the new South Slav kingdom later known as Yugoslavia and another half million in the rump Hungary left over after the Treaty of Trianon.

The second problem for self-determination was that none of the peacemakers saw it as applying to their own empires – only to the empires they had defeated.

1 Comment

Filed under Austria, Belgium, democracy, Germany, Hungary, Italy, nationalism, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, U.S., war, Yugoslavia

by | 14 April 2009 · 8:11 pm

Aboard the Yasukuni Maru to London, March 1939

From Orwell’s Diaries (On Board SS. Yasukunimaru (NYK) Crossing Bay of Biscay, 28.3.39):

Yasukuni is 11,950 tons. Do not yet know, but from the vibrations judge that she is a motor-ship. Apart from the bridge, only 3 decks above water-level. Cabins and other appointments pretty good, but certain difficulties in that [the] entire crew and personnel are Japanese and apart from the officers the majority do not speak much English. Second-class fare Casablanca-London £6.10. As the boat normally goes straight to London from Gibraltar & on this occasion went out of her way to deliver a load of tea, fare from Gilbraltar would probably be the same. P. & O. tourist class is £6.10 London-Gibraltar. Food on this ship slightly better than on the P. & O. & service distinctly better, but the stewards here have the advantage that the ship is almost empty. Facilities for drinking not so good, or for deck games, owing to comparatively restricted space.

Do not know what the accomodation° for passengers would be, but presumably at least 500. At present there are only 15 in the second class, about 12 in the third, & evidently not many in the 1st, though I don’t know how many. One or two of the 2nd & 3rd classes are Danes or other Scandinavians, one or two Dutch, the rest English, including some private soldiers who got on at Gibraltar. It appears that for its whole voyage the ship has been as empty as this. Since the Chino-Japanese war English people from the far east will not travel on the Japanese boats. All the P. & O. boast said to be crowded out in consequence.

Leave a comment

Filed under China, Europe, Japan, war

by | 14 April 2009 · 8:08 pm

Japan Through Ethiopian Eyes, early 1900s

From Mutual Interests? Japan and Ethiopia before the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-36, by J. Calvitt Clarke III, presented at the Florida Conference of Historians in 2000 (endnote references omitted):

Many Japanese wished to join the West in Africa’s exploitation, and some saw Ethiopia as a potential gateway. In 1899, Dr. Tomizu Hirondo, a professor of law at Tokyo Imperial University, published a short pamphlet, Afurika no Zento [The Future of Africa]. Admiring Cecil Rhodes and Harry Johnson, he concluded that Japan had to expand its influence and profit in Africa before Europeans completely controlled the continent. During the First World War, recalling Tomizu, some Japanese wanted to send troops to occupy Germany’s African territories [just as the Japanese Navy occupied Germany’s Micronesian colonies in 1914—J.].

The Japan Mail Steamship Company began regular service to Europe via the Suez Canal when the Tosa Maru left Japan in March 1896 and arrived in London in May. Stopping at Port Said, Japanese merchantmen set up direct commercial connections with Africa for the first time. Tokyo got first hand information on Africa by sending official economic missions, establishing consular offices, and by using the information networks established by shipping companies and trading houses. Japan designed its economic penetration to secure a cheap and stable supply of raw materials, especially cotton, as well as to capture markets. By 1899, silk thread from Japan was entering Ethiopia through Harar. And by 1918, Japanese cloth had superseded American unbleached muslin, which had dominated Ethiopia’s imports.

European colonialism in Africa, however, blocked Japan’s military and political penetration and confined Japan’s African relations to trade and commerce. Not necessarily by choice, Japan could and did claim “clean hands in Africa.”…

Young, educated Ethiopians responded. One of them, the future foreign minister Heruy Wolde Sellassie, published in 1932 Dai Nihon [Great Japan] in which he explained that, “Ethiopia was not knowledgeable of the situation in the East until the [Russo-Japanese] war. Because of the war, we learned tremendous amount about Japan from Russians living in Ethiopia, and our Ethiopian people started to admire courageous Japan.”

An Eritrean intellectual, Blatta Gabra Egziabher … was one of many young Ethiopians who saw Japan as a living example for Ethiopia in liquidating feudalism and developing capitalism through the agency of the modern state and revolution from above. Called “Progressive Intellectuals,” “Young Ethiopians,” or simply “Japanizers,” these foreign educated, young intellectuals stressed the similarities bonding the two non-Western nations. These included myths of eternal dynasties and similar histories in overcoming European powers. Japan’s dramatic and rapid transformation from a feudal society—like Ethiopia’s—into an industrial power by the end of the nineteenth century attracted Ethiopians. Further, Japan’s military victories convinced these Japanizers that they too could master western scientific and technological skills and turn them against Europeans. The appearance of the Japanizers created contradictions within the feudal ruling classes, enlightening some while hardening others. Hence arose the conflict between what one Marxist scholar has called the “liberal,” “enlightened feudalists” on the one hand and “ultra feudalists” on the other.

Gebre Heywet Baykedagn well-represents the ideas of the Japanizers. Born in 1886, he studied in Germany and Austria, and returned to Ethiopia in 1905. Exiled in 1909, he returned in 1911 to become palace treasurer and head of customs for Menelik’s grandson and heir, Lidj Iyasu. Convinced of the need for sweeping administrative and fiscal measures, by 1914, Gebre Heywet had become a confidant of Täfäri Makonnen—the future Emperor Hayle Sellase….

Japan’s victory over Russia impressed Prince Täfäri, an ardent student of military matters, and his trusted adviser, Heruy. Täfäri, whose original interest in Japan probably had been inspired by his father, Ras Makonnen, understood that Japan and the United States were the new centers of the world economy. By 1906 when Ras Makonnen died, the thirteen year-old Täfäri clearly had developed his goal, an essential part of which was to draw on the Japanese model. Japan had proved that a non-European nation could embrace modernization and stand as a cultural and technical equal to Europe….

As emperor, [Ras ‘Head’] Täfäri imitated the Japanese Emperor in his “attitude of exclusiveness,” because he thought it would help create “an imperial dignity lacking in Ethiopia.” Later as the Italo-Ethiopian war was brewing, the British Minister to Ethiopia, Sir Sidney Barton, explained: “the Emperor has always been interested in the achievements of Japan and his imagination sees similarities between the two countries which—however incredible it may seem to foreign observers—lead him to dream of Ethiopia as the Japan of Africa.”…

Ethiopia’s constitution of 1931 shows Japanese influence. Modeled on the Meiji Constitution of 1889, it concentrated and made more emphatic imperial power than did the Japanese. A Russian-educated intellectual and “Japanizer,” Takle-Hawaryat Takla-Maryam, wrote the draft of the Ethiopian Constitution, and the Emperor with his advisers Heruy and Ras Kasa modified it.

Even more dramatically, Foreign Minister Blaten Geta Heruy, special envoy of the Ethiopian emperor, left Addis Ababa on September 30, 1931, bound for Japan. Officially, his party was visiting to repay the Japanese Emperor for Japan’s representation at the recent coronation in Addis Ababa. In cultivating mutual relations, Heruy also wanted to see if the Ethiopians could carry out their plan for modernization along Japanese lines. Heruy and his mission were grandly treated. He later wrote: “Upon our arrival in Japan, I heard people’s joyful cries. Many Japanese citizens awaited us at the port waving Ethiopian and Japanese flags. The route to the hotel was flooded with people acclaiming us. Everywhere we went, it was the same phenomenon.”…

The Japanese welcome had impressed Heruy. After returning to Ethiopia, in 1932 he published a book to introduce Japan to his countrymen. Entitled Mahdara Berhan Hagara Japan [Japan: The Source of Light], it was probably the first book by an African to make a serious attempt to introduce Japan to Africans. It was translated into Japanese as Dai Nippon [Great Japan] and published with a preface by the former foreign minister Sidehara in Tokyo in 1934….

It would seem the true reason for Heruy’s journey to Japan in 1931, however, was to seek arms and munitions from the Japanese government. But then, Japan was dealing with the Manchurian Incident and had worries other than supplying arms and munitions to Ethiopia.

Heruy’s admiration for Japan as a model alarmed the Western powers that had no wish to see a second Japan—this one in Africa. One European wrote in 1935 that during the previous four years Ethiopia had “embarked, with the close cooperation of Japan, on a life-and-death struggle with the white race, the consequences of which are incalculable.” He added that Italy was fighting the battle for sake of all colonial powers in Africa….

Despite the fervent adulation by Japanese civilians, in the end Heruy got none of the tangible aid he had hoped to get. Japan’s government eventually adapted itself to Italy’s conquest of the Ethiopian Empire by exchanging recognitions with Italy—Ethiopia for Manchukuo. This led in turn to the Anti-Comintern Pact, a wartime alliance, and, ultimately, to mutual devastation and defeat for Italy and Japan. Ethiopia, on the other hand, in 1941 became the first Axis-occupied country to be liberated.

Leave a comment

Filed under Ethiopia, Japan, nationalism

by | 13 April 2009 · 9:37 pm

Commissar Trotsky’s Military Tactics

From The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, by Niall Ferguson (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 145-148:

Between May and June [1918], the Czechs swept eastwards, capturing Novo-Nikolaevsk, Penza, Syzran, Tomsk, Omsk, Samara and finally Vladivostok. Meanwhile, Russia’s former allies sent expeditionary forces, whose primary aim was to keep Russia in the war. The British landed troops at Archangel and Murmansk, as well as at Vladivostok; the French sent men to Odessa, the Americans to Vladivostok. The Allies also supplied the White armies with weapons and other supplies. The Japanese seized the opportunity to march across the Amur River from Manchuria. Meanwhile, the cities that were supposed to be the headquarters of the Revolution emptied as factories closed and supplies of food and fuel dried up. When Denikin called on all the White forces to converge on Moscow in July 1918, it seemed more than likely that the Bolshevik regime would be overthrown.

On August 6, 1918, White forces in combination with the renegade Czech Legion captured Kazan. The Bolshevik 5th Army was haemorrhaging deserters. Ufa had fallen; so too had Simbirsk, Lenin’s own birthplace. Another step back along the Volga would bring the forces of counter-revolution to the gates of Nizhny-Novgorod, opening the road to Moscow. Having resigned his post as Commissar for Foreign Affairs in favour of Military Affairs, Trotsky now had the daunting task of stiffening the Red Army’s resolve. He was, as we have seen, by training a journalist not a general. Yet the goatee-bearded intellectual with his pince-nez had seen enough of war in the Balkans and on the Western Front to know that without discipline an army was doomed. It was Trotsky who insisted on the need for conscription, realizing that volunteers would not suffice. It was Trotsky who brought in the former Tsarist NCOs and officers – many of them hitherto languishing in jail – whose experience was to be vital in taking on the Whites.

Trotsky had two advantages. Firstly, the Bolsheviks controlled the central railway hubs, from which he could deploy forces at speed. Indeed, it was from his own specially designed armoured railway carriage that he himself directed operations, travelling some 100,000 miles in the course of the war. Secondly, though the Bolsheviks lacked experience of war, they did have experience of terrorism; like the Serbian nationalists, they too had employed assassination as a tactic in the pre-war years. It was to terror, in the name of martial law, that Trotsky now turned.

When he arrived at Kazan, the first thing he did was to uncouple the engine from his train; a signal to his troops that he had no intention of retreating. He then brought twenty-seven deserters to nearby Syvashsk, on the banks of the Volga, and had them shot. The only way to ensure that Red Army recruits did not desert or run away, Trotsky had concluded, was to mount machine-guns in their rear and shoot any who failed to advance against the enemy. This was the choice he offered: possible death in the front or certain death in the rear. ‘We must put an end once and for all’, he sneered with a characteristically caustic turn of phrase, ‘to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life.’ Units that refused to fight were to be decimated. It was a turning point in the Russian civil war – and an ominous sign of how the Bolsheviks would behave if they won it. In the bitter fighting for the bridge over the Volga at Kazan, Trotsky’s tactics made that outcome significantly more likely. The bridge was saved, and on September 10 the city itself was retaken. Two days later Simbirsk also fell to the Reds. The White advance faltered as they found themselves challenged not only by a rapidly growing Red Army, but also by recalcitrant Ukrainians and Chechens to their rear. The Czechs were weary of fighting; the Legion disintegrated as it was driven back to Samara and then beyond the Urals…. By the end of November Denikin had lost Voronezh and Kastornoe.

The end of the war on the Western Front was well timed for the Bolsheviks. It undermined the legitimacy of the foreign powers’ intervention, especially as they now had left-wing outbreaks of their own to deal with. Only the Japanese showed any inclination to maintain an armed presence on Russian soil, and they were content to stake out new territorial claims in the Far East and leave the rest of Russia to its fate.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, Czechia, France, Japan, Slovakia, U.S., USSR, war

by | 13 April 2009 · 6:27 pm

Novelties of Turning States into Nations

From The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, by Niall Ferguson (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 74-77:

Nation states were a comparative novelty in European history. Much of the continent in 1900 was still dominated by the long-established and ethnically mixed empires of the Habsburgs, Romanovs and Osmanli. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was another such entity. Some smaller countries were also ethnically heterogeneous: Belgium and Switzerland, for example. And there were numerous petty principalities and grand duchies, like Luxembourg or Lichtenstein, that had no distinct national identity of their own, yet resisted absorption into bigger political units. These patchwork political structures made practical sense at a time when mass migration was increasing rather than reducing ethnic intermingling. Yet in the eyes of political nationalists, they deserved to be consigned to the past; the future should belong to homogeneous nation states. France, which had nurtured in the Swiss political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau the prophet of popular sovereignty, also provided a kind of model for nation-building. A republic forged and re-forged in repeated revolutions and wars, France by 1900 seemed to have subsumed all its old regional identities in a single ‘idea of France’. Auvergnais, Bretons and Gascons alike all considered themselves to be Frenchmen, having been put through the same standardized schooling and military training.

Nationalism at first had seemed to pose a threat to Europe’s monarchies. In the 1860s, however, the kingdoms of Piedmont and Prussia had created new nation states by combining the national principle with their own instincts for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. The results – the kingdom of Italy and the German Reich – were no doubt very far from being perfect nation states. To Sicilians, the Piedmontese were as foreign as if they had been Frenchmen; the true unification of Italy came after the triumphs of Cavour and Garibaldi, with what were in effect small wars of colonization waged against the peoples of the south. Many Germans, meanwhile, lived outside the borders of Bismarck’s new Reich; what historians called his wars of unification had in fact excluded German-speaking Austrians from a Prussian-dominated Kleindeutschland. Nevertheless, an imperfect nation state was, in the eyes of most nationalists, preferable to no nation state at all. In the late nineteenth century other peoples sought to follow the Italian and German example. Some – notably the Irish and the Poles, to say nothing of Bengalis and other Indians – saw nationhood as an alternative to subjugation by unsympathetic empires. A few, like the Czechs, were content to pursue greater autonomy within an existing imperial structure, keeping hold of the Habsburg nurse for fear of meeting something worse. The situation of the Serbs was different. At the Congress of Berlin (1878), along with the Montenegrins, they had recovered their independence from Ottoman rule. By 1900 their ambitions were to follow the Piedmontese and Prussian examples by expanding in the name of South Slav (Yugoslav) national unity. But how were they to achieve this? One obvious possibility was through war, the Italian and German method. But the odds against Serbia were steep. It was one thing to win a war against the crumbling Ottoman Empire (as happened when Serbia joined forces with Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece in 1912) or against rival Balkan states (when the confederates quarrelled over the spoils of victory the following year). It was an altogether bigger challenge to take on Austria-Hungary, which was not only a more formidable military opponent, but also happened to be the principal market for Serbia’s exports.

The Balkan Wars had revealed both the strengths and the limits of Balkan nationalism. Its strength lay in its ferocity. Its weakness was its disunity .The violence of the fighting much impressed the young Trotsky, who witnessed it as a correspondent for the newspaper Kievskaia mysl. Even the peace that followed the Balkan Wars was cruel, in a novel manner that would become a recurrent feature of the twentieth century. It no longer sufficed, in the eyes of nationalists, to acquire foreign territory. Now it was peoples as well as borders that had to move. Sometimes these movements were spontaneous. Muslims fled in the direction of Salonika as the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians advanced in 1912; Bulgarians fled Macedonia to escape from invading Greek troops in 1913; Greeks chose to leave the Macedonian districts ceded to Bulgaria and Serbia by the Treaty of Bucharest. Sometimes populations were deliberately expelled, as the Greeks were from Western Thrace in 1913 and from parts of Eastern Thrace and Anatolia in 1914. In the wake of the Turkish defeat, there was an agreed population exchange: 48,570 Turks moved one way and 46,764 Bulgarians the other across the new Turkish-Bulgarian border. Such exchanges were designed to transform regions of ethnically mixed settlement into the homogeneous societies that so appealed to the nationalist imagination. The effects on some regions were dramatic. Between 1912 and 1915, the Greek population of (Greek) Macedonia increased by around a third; the Muslim and Bulgarian population declined by 26 and 13 per cent respectively. The Greek population of Western Thrace fell by 80 per cent; the Muslim population of Eastern Thrace rose by a third. The implications were distinctly ominous for the many multi-ethnic communities elsewhere in Europe.

The alternative to outright war was to create a new South Slav state through terrorism. In the wake of the annexation of Bosnia, a rash of new organizations sprang up, pledged to resisting Austrian imperialism in the Balkans and to liberate Bosnia by fair means or foul….

The Black Hand’s leader was Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, nicknamed ‘Apis’ (Bee), one of seven officers in the Serbian army who were among its founders. It was Dimitrijevic who trained three young terrorists for what was from the outset intended to be a suicide mission: to murder the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne when he visited Sarajevo. The assassins – Nedjilko Cabrinovic, Trifko Grabez and Gavrilo Princip – were sent across the border with four Browning M 1910 revolvers, six bombs and cyanide tablets. As if to entice them, the Archduke chose to visit Sarajevo on the anniversary of the fourteenth-century Battle of Kosovo – the holiest day in the calendar of Serbian nationalism, St Vitus’ Day (Vidovdan).

Leave a comment

Filed under Europe, migration, nationalism, war

by | 8 April 2009 · 9:43 pm

Tokelauan Diaspora Language Revival

The Far Outliers recently had the chance to attend a Polynesian music and dance performance by Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika ‘The Future of Tokelau in America’, and I’ve added a few photos of it to my Flickr account. They recently won the Po Fatele competition at the Tokelau Festival in New Zealand. One thing that appealed to me about the performance was the combination of vigorous dance and wonderful Polynesian choral harmonies at the same time. You don’t get that combination so much these days in Hawai‘i, although you can hardly beat the vocal harmonies at the Kamehameha Song Contest or the hula at the Merrie Monarch Festival each year. Two other nice features of the Tokelauan troupe were the youth of the performers, the youngest of whom were learning by doing, just as they would in a less formal village setting; and the atoll-authentic percussion instruments: a slit-gong (pate), a biscuit tin (apa), and a wooden box (pokihi).

The background story about how this group got started is chronicled by two linguists, Yuko Otsuka and Andrew Wong, in an article in Language Documentation & Conservation 1, no. 2 (December 2007), from which I’ll excerpt a few of the highlights:

Tokelauan is a Polynesian language closely related to Samoan. Together with English, it is an official language of Tokelau, an island territory of New Zealand, with approximately 1,400 speakers (Gordon 2005). The total number of speakers of Tokelauan is estimated to be approximately 4,000, including those living in American Sāmoa, New Zealand, and the United States. The first missionaries came to Tokelau from Sāmoa. Noting the resemblance of the language spoken on the islands to Samoan, they decided to use the Samoan Bible instead of translating it into Tokelauan. Thus, Tokelauans read the Samoan Bible till this day….

Like many other Polynesian peoples, more Tokelauans live outside their homeland than in it. The vast majority of Tokelauans reside in New Zealand. According to the 2001 census, 6,200 Tokelauan people live in New Zealand. That is four times larger than the population in the homeland. Sixty-six percent of them were born in New Zealand. In 2001, only 44 percent of those living in New Zealand were reported to be able to hold an everyday conversation in Tokelauan, down from 53 percent in 1996 (Statistics New Zealand 2005). These figures suggest that language maintenance outside Tokelau is crucial to ensuring the future of the Tokelauan language….

Tokelauans in Hawai‘i come from Olohega (also known as Swains Island), the southernmost atoll of the Tokelau island group, which lie three hundred miles north of Sāmoa. Geographically, the Tokelau group consists of four atolls: Atafu, Fakaofo, Nukunonu, and Olohega. Politically, however, only the first three belong to Tokelau, an island territory of New Zealand. These islands became a British protectorate in 1889 and were transferred to New Zealand administration in 1925. Olohega followed a separate course of history. In 1856, an American, Eli Jennings, came to Olohega with his Samoan wife and turned it into his private copra plantation. In 1925, Olohega was annexed to the United States and was placed under the jurisdiction of American Sāmoa.

Jennings’s son imposed forced labor on all residents of Olohega. In 1953, the residents of Olohega went on strike in protest to the violations of civil and labor rights. They drew up a petition and submitted to the American Sāmoa attorney general. In response, the acting Governor ordered a state-sponsored eviction of over half the population of Olohega. Many families ended up as refugees in Pagopago, American Sāmoa. Living there was not easy for Tokelauans. Even though they were American nationals by virtue of the annexation, Samoan law precluded them from owning land or businesses. The hardship of life in Sāmoa turned their eyes to the United States (Ickes 1999, 2002). In the 1950s, a student from Olohega, who was on scholarship at the Lā‘ie Community College (today’s Brigham Young University Hawai‘i), saw the opportunities in the pineapple plantations in Central O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. He sent for his brothers and they brought their families to live in the plantation labor camps provided by Del Monte (Ickes 1999, 2002)….

Since 2004, the Tokelauan community in Wahiawā, Central O‘ahu, has been making active efforts to revitalize the Tokelauan language as well as culture within the community. Two organizations play a key role in initiating and promoting the community’s efforts for language maintenance: Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika (The Future of Tokelau in America) and Te Taki (The Guide) Tokelau Community Inc.

In July, 2004, a youth group from Tokelau visited Honolulu on their way to the Palau Pacific Arts Festival. They performed for the Tokelauans who hosted them in Wahiawā. This encounter sparked a keen interest among the Tokelauan youth (teenagers and young adults) of the community in their Tokelauan heritage. They were deeply impressed by the richness of their cultural heritage and at the same time were shocked to realize that they knew very little of it. The children asked their parents why they had never taught them their own language and culture. It was a rude awakening not only for the children, but also for the parents, who had not seen any value in teaching their children Tokelauan, thinking that they would be better off with English.

This incident led to a sudden awareness among young members of the community that the language was gradually disappearing within the community. Deeply moved by the children’s yearning to learn their heritage, two young parents started a Saturday school to teach the Tokelauan language as well as songs and dances. This is how Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika came into being. The elders of the community welcomed the opportunity to share their knowledge of the language and culture. As it turned out, they had long been concerned about language loss, but had never voiced their concerns until then. Te Lumanaki’s Saturday morning gatherings thus brought together an intergenerational group of Tokelauans who were eager to share the language, songs, and dances.

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, language, migration, music, New Zealand, Polynesia, U.S.

by | 7 April 2009 · 8:42 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Kipuka

I learned a new English borrowing from Hawaiian today, a scientific term probably borrowed around the same time as the terms for two types of lava: clinkery aa (a crossword-puzzle favorite, from Hawaiian ʻaʻā) and smooth pahoehoe (from Hawaiian pāhoehoe). Kipuka shows up as a headword in the Encyclopedia Britannica and in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (unabridged). English Wikipedia, however, spells kipuka, aa, and pahoehoe with all their Hawaiian diacritics, as if they have never been assimilated into English orthography and usage.

Here’s an English definition from the introductory paragraphs of “Soil-Vegetation Relationships in Hawaiian Kipukas” by D. Mueller-Dombois, and Charles H. Lamoureux in Pacific Science 21(1967):286-299.

KIPUKA, the Hawaiian word for “opening,” has come into scientific usage as a term used to designate an older area on the slopes of volcanic mountains that has been surrounded by more recent lava flows. Kipukas are common landscape features on the slopes of Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes on the [Big Island] of Hawaii, where they can be readily recognized as islands of denser vegetation in the vast, sparsely vegetated areas. They range in size from a few square meters to hundreds of acres.

Kipukas are of special interest for several reasons. As vegetation islands they provide seedsource centers for the invasion of vegetation on new volcanic material. As vegetation islands they represent somewhat simplified ecosystems, analogous to bogs or lakes, that are very suitable for studying internal ecological relationships. The isolation of small populations in kipukas provides unique opportunities for evolutionary studies.

The usual Hawaiian (and Hawaiian Pidgin) term for ‘hole’ in the sense of ‘perforation, gap, blank (in a form), zero’ (vs. lua ‘pit, hole in the ground, latrine’) is puka, as in one-puka-puka, the U.S. Army’s 100th Infantry Battalion. Hawaiian kīpuka may be a puka with an intensifying prefix, and it has an interesting range of meanings that have nothing to do with lava. Here’s the full entry from Pukui and Elbert’s (1986) revised and enlarged edition of their Hawaiian Dictionary:

1. Variation or change of form (puka, hole), as a calm place in a high sea, deep place in a shoal, opening in a forest, openings in cloud formations, and especially a clear place or oasis within a lava bed where there may be vegetation. 2. Short shoulder cape; cloak, poncho. 3. Loop, lasso; snare, as for catching owls (a rat was tied to a sharp stick in a net; the owl, pouncing on the rat, was pierced by this stick).

Ouch!

UPDATE: As its Hawaiian etymology suggests, the kipuka is usually a hollow spot in a lava flow. A kipuka that projects above the surrounding lava is a steptoe, “named after Steptoe Butte, a quartzite protrusion above the Columbia Plateau lava flows near Colfax, Washington” or a dagala, from an Italian term for “an islandlike mass of older land surrounded by later lava flows,” according to the (1960) second edition of the Glossary of geology and related sciences: A cooperative project of the American Geological Institute.

Leave a comment

Filed under anglosphere, Hawai'i, language, science

by | 5 April 2009 · 1:50 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Sawa-azami, Hime-gonomi

During our day-trip to Gifu, Japan, last summer, we picked up an easy-to-carry packet of a local food specialty from the gift shop of a hotel whose lobby we relaxed in while waiting to see the cormorant fishing that evening. The box languished in our cupboard until recently, when we finally used it as a side dish in a somewhat Japanese-style meal.

沢薊 sawa-azami (Cirsium yezoense) ‘marsh thistle’ – This particular species of thistle is not even listed under Cirsium in English Wikipedia. In Japanese Wikipedia, however, it is not only listed under azami (Cirsium); it even has its own separate entry as sawa-azami: Cirsium yezoense (Maxim.) Makino, a thistle found along mountain streams along the Japan Sea side of northern Honshu and southern Hokkaido (old Yezo country). Kamchatka, too, seems to have its own species of thistle, and several subspecies. This particular package of pickled thistle was labeled as coming from the Neo (根尾 ‘root hair’) region of Gifu Prefecture, right on the border of Fukui Prefecture, which faces the Japan Sea. And, speaking of root hairs: Did you know that another genus of thistle—Arctium, burdock—was the inspiration for Velcro? Don’t dis thistles! (I used to know a weekend sailor who named his sloop Thistle Dew.)

姫ごのみ hime-gonomi ‘princess-fond (= flamboyant)’ – The package of lowly thistles is labelled somewhat incongruously as both (一) coming from the inaka ‘countryside’ (田舎, a kanji combination I didn’t recognize, but a word I know well), and (二) fit for a princess, that is, for one who is flamboyant. The -gonomi part can also be written -好み, as in お好み焼き o-konomi-yaki ‘cooked as you like it’, which nowadays means something quite different from the better-known ‘cooked as you like it’: すき焼き suki-yaki. However, as far as I can tell, the following three constructions all describe the same type of showy, flamboyant woman: 派手好み hade-gonomi ‘flamboyance-fond’; 派手好き hade-zuki ‘flamboyance-fond’; and 姫ごのみ hime-gonomi ‘princess-fond’.

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Japan, language

by | 4 April 2009 · 9:00 am

Russian Pacific Colony of Atuvai, Nigau, Ovagu, Mauvi?

Here’s a surprising passage from volume 7 (1973) of the Hawaiian Journal of History, whose back volumes are now online at the Oceania Digital Library Project hosted by the University of Hawai‘i Library’s digital repository.

On 21 May (2 June) 1816 G. A. Schäffer apparently achieved the improbable. In a solemn atmosphere Kaumualii—”King of the Sandwich Islands of the Pacific Ocean, Atuvai [Kauai] and Nigau [Niihau], and Hereditary Prince of the Islands of Ovagu [Oahu] and Mauvi [Maui]”—humbly requested “His Majesty the Sovereign Emperor Alexander Pavlovich … to accept the mentioned islands under his protection” and promised eternal allegiance to the “Russian scepter.”

This passage comes from a translation by Igor V. Vorobyoff commissioned by the Kauai Museum of an original publication in Russian: Bolkhovitinov, N. N., “Avantyura Doktora Sheffera na Gavayyakh v 1815-1819 Godakh,” Novaya i Noveyshaya Istoriya, Russian, No. 1, 1972, pp. 121-137. Here is a bit more historical context from the same article.

The history of Russian America is rich with striking events, courageous voyages, grandiose projects, and rather modest practical results. One of the oddest and most exotic episodes in the history of the Russian-American Company (RAC) was the Hawaiian adventure of Dr. Schäffer….

At the start of the 19th Century King Kamehameha (1753-1819), who was referred to as the Napoleon or Peter the Great of Polynesia, became the sovereign of the entire archipelago with the exception of the two northernmost islands, Kauai and Niihau, where his rival Kaumualii was entrenched. Kamehameha’s attempts at organizing an invasion of Kauai in 1796 and 1804 were foiled by natural calamities—first by a violent storm, and latter by a plague epidemic. The superiority of his forces was so obvious, however, that in 1810 Kaumualii decided to officially recognize his vassalage and agreed to pay a modest annual tax….

On 8 May 1819 Kamehameha—the most outstanding Hawaiian ruler, the founder of a united monarchy, and one of the great statesmen of his times—died at an age of about 70. In the summer of 1821 Kamehameha’s son, Liholiho moved Kaumualii from Kauai to Oahu where from that time on he lived as an honored prisoner, but this did not keep him from marrying Kamehameha’s widow, the famous Kaahumanu….

In 1820 an agent from the American Consulate and the first group of missionaries arrived in Hawaii. Sandalwood traders, and later American whalers witnessed increasing business. “The political relations of the people and king,” reported M. I. Murav’yev to St. Petersburg on 15 (27) January 1822, “remain as before; the king squanders, the people suffer, and the Americans get richer, but not for long: Sandalwood is becoming more difficult to get by the hour and, consequently, its price is going up.” … The general conclusion to which the governor of Russian possessions in America came was entirely unequivocal: “In truth I do not know how the Sandwich Islands could be useful to us, especially under the present circumstances. Schäffer performed a humorous comedy for which the company payed very dearly, and I do not think that it could be resumed. But there is no obstacle whatsoever, nor can there be any, simply to finding a berth there while enroute and replenishing the stocks with fresh provisions.”

Words in Kaua‘i dialect of HawaiianLANGUAGE NOTES: During the 1810s, Hawaiian dialects did not yet have a standard dialect or spelling system, so the Russian transcriptions (here transliterated into Latin equivalents) of Hawaiian names represent their own practices, including the representation of foreign /h/ as g (Cyrillic Г) and [w] as v (Cyrillic В), and ignorance of phonemic glottal stops.

Hawaiian /h/ is not guttural like Russian /x/, and there is an established tradition of transcribing foreign /h/ as g, as in gegemoniya ‘hegemony’, gumanizm ‘humanism’, or Gitler ‘Hitler’. Still, it’s a bit amusing to see Hanalei rendered as “Gannarey.”

The Hawaiian [w] sounds transcribed as v in the excerpts cited above do not correspond to the Hawaiian phoneme /w/, which is in fact slightly fricative in some contexts. The [w] sounds written as v in Atuvai, Ovagu, and Mauvi are just predictable transitions between a round vowel /o, u/ and its adjacent unrounded vowel /a, e, i/. But a real /w/ gets the same treatment in “Vegmeyskaya” [Waimea] Valley, which turns up elsewhere in the article.

The western dialects of Hawaiian retained earlier *t, which is reflected in Standard Hawaiian as /k/, the reflex in the eastern end of the archipelago, from which the western islands were subjugated. In many English sources from the early 1800s, the name of Kaua‘i is spelled Atooi or some variant thereof, while the name of Kaumuali‘i is spelled Temoree, Tamoree, and the like, from Teumuali‘i or Taumuali‘i (and the name of his rival Kamehameha is sometimes rendered as Tamehameha, Tamaamaah, etc.).

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, language, Pacific, Russia, U.S.

by | 30 March 2009 · 10:06 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Dappokusha/Talbukja

How widespread is the economic downturn across the globe? Well, it’s now affecting many North Koreans, because funds from South Korea that might help them escape their workers’ paradise are not as plentiful as they once were, according to an article in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun. I’ll quote just the first paragraph from White Peril‘s translation.

The number of dappokusha fleeing from North Korea … has decreased substantially [to] Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, China, which abuts the PRC-DPRK border. It’s the biggest stronghold of the refugee business, but the activities of the brokers who maneuver behind the scenes guiding refugees through are at a standstill. This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and in addition to a heightened level of alert at the border, the effects of the financial crisis have stopped the money that gets to them from South Korea. However, the defections supported by the brokers are a “necessary evil.” Beyond the border, there’s a backlog of desperate people.

The term dappokusha 脫北者 (lit. ‘escape North person’) caught my attention. The same compound is read 탈북자 in Korean (talbukja in the official SK romanization), but its usage in SK is now discouraged in favor of the euphemistic 새터민 saeteomin, which I’ll translate here as ‘new localites’.

The agentive sense of 脱 datsu ‘escape, desert, quit’ also shows up in the following compounds.
脱船 dassen (‘quit ship’) ‘jump/desert ship’
脱線 dassen (‘quit line’) ‘jump the (train)track’
脱サラ dassara (‘quit salary’) ‘quit one’s job as a salaryman’

But a similar 脱 datsu, in the agentive or instrumental sense of ‘remove’, occurs in some more common words.
脱水機 dassuiki (‘remove water machine’ =) ‘dryer, dehydrator’
脱脂乳 dasshinyuu (‘remove fat milk’ =) ‘skim milk’
靴脱ぎ kutsunugi (‘shoe removal’ =) ‘place to remove shoes’

Without an agent or instrument, the same kanji translates as ‘missing’.
脱文 datsubun ‘missing passage (of text)’
脱字 datsuji ‘missing word/character (in text)’

HISTORICAL/COMPARATIVE NOTE: One of the more remarkable regular sound correspondences between Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese is SK *-l and SJ *-t (the latter often -tsu in final position, or assimilated to the following voiceless consonant), as in 出発 : 출발 chulbal : しゅっぱつ shuppatsu (< shutu + hatu) ‘departure’. This sound correspondence is part of what gives Korean its characteristic abundance of rolling liquid sounds and Japanese its characteristic abundance of staccato geminate obstruents amid otherwise open syllables (like Italian).

4 Comments

Filed under China, economics, Japan, Korea, language, migration