Noam Chomsky at the British Library, 2013 © Ander McIntyre

Ander McIntyre is a photographer and a Fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library.  He is an occasional contributor to this blog:

A portrait of Noam Chomsky just before he delivered a lecture at the British Library on 19 March this year, as part of the series of events under the banner of the Library's new exhibition Propaganda: Power and Persuasion.

In 1988, Professor Chomsky wrote, in Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures (MIT Press),

Work of true aesthetic value follows canons and principles that are only in part subject to human choice; in part, they reflect our fundamental nature. The result is that we can experience deep emotion - pleasure, pain, excitement, and so on - from certain creative work, though how and why remains largely unknown. But the very capacities of mind that open these possibilities to us exclude other possibilities forever. The limits of artistic creativity should, again, be a matter of joy, not sorrow, because they follow from the fact that there is a rich domain of aesthetic experience to which we have access.

A film of Chomsky's conversation at the Library with Jonathan Freedland is on our YouTube channel.

[A.M.]

 Above: Map of Acadie, c. 1740. Shelfmark Maps K.Top119.56 

These works are free of known copyright restrictions.

Last night's 18th Annual Douglas W. Bryant Lecture saw Lyse Doucet, BBC World News Chief International Correspondent, present, 'From Acadie to the Arab Spring: reflections on America's place in the world'. I won't fill the post with a synopsis of Lyse's talk other than to say it was excellent and wonderfully delivered - for the real detail you will have to wait for the Eccles Centre to post the podcast and pamphlet.

I will dwell on one of the main features though as Acadie and the expulsion of the Acadians by the British loomed large in the talk. In the spirit of honesty, this is not my strongest area of Canadian history but in recent years and as a result of talks like Lyse's my interest to know more has developed. One of the perks of being a British Library curator is the ability to go and find out more the very next day; as Lyse said during the lecture, the Library invariably has something on everything.

Above: Chart from the end of J. B. Chabert's, 'Voyage Fait par ordre du Roi en 1750 et 1751 dans l'Amerique Septentrionale'. Shelfmark: G. 14609

There are some cases where the volume of 'something' is greater than in others and a quick search for 'Acadie' in Explore brings up some fascinating results. First and foremost are the maps, with the King's Topographical Collection (K.Top) holding some beautiful items (although there are noticeably less than for other parts of the French Americas) and a number of printed books also containing striking maps and charts.

I suspect the presence of maps of Acadie in collections such as K.Top speaks to the colonial and imperial geopolitics its population found itself being pulled into and other items in the printed books collection bear this out. None perhaps more so than the 1756 published, 'A Fair Representation of His Majesty's Right to Nova-Scotia or Acadie' (Shelfmark: 1093.e.49) - a forceful title accompanied by the rather drawn-out subtitle, 'briefly stated from the memorials of the English Commissaries; with an answer to the objections contained in the French memorials and in a treatise entitled, Discussion Sommaire sur les anciennes limites de l'Acadie' (a microfiche copy of this treatise can be found at Mic.f.232, number 37790).

Above: Two editions of Evangeline; 'Évangéline; traduit et Imité de l'Anglais' (left, shelfmark: 11687.k.13); second Boston edition, 'Evangeline: a tale of Acadie' (right, shelfmark: 11689.aaa.49)

Above: Internal illustration from, 'Évangéline; traduit et Imité de l'Anglais' (shelfmark: 11687.k.13)

This is just one example of the many eighteenth and nineteenth century Anglophone and Francophone titles in the collection that discuss Acadie. The Library also holds numerous examples of the famous tale of dispossession in Acadie, 'Evangeline'; including translations in a wide range of languages beyond English and French. Above you can see two examples, an illustrated French version from later in the nineteenth century and a second Boston edition that also contains a dedication to 'The Lady Ashburton'.

All of this is a whistle-stop tour of some interesting items from the collections that tie into last night's talk but I hope it illustrates the depth of history invoked in Lyse's lecture and shows that, should you find yourself at a loose end in the Reading Rooms, 'Acadie' is not a bad random search to try out.

[PJH]



No, nothing to do with Kerouac this time. It’s conference season again and we’ve been busy sorting ourselves out in an effort to get to the major annual gatherings.

The British Association for Canadian Studies conference Crediting Canada: Canada as an economic world leader? has already kicked off at Canada House. Sadly Phil is unable to get to all of it but he will be putting in an appearance today, when the conference transfers to the British Library. And Professor Phil Davies, Director of our Eccles Centre, will also be around and will introduce Professor Rosemary Chapman’s Eccles-sponsored Lecture From Cannons to Canon: Writing the Literary History of Francophone Canada. 

Next up it’s the Society for Latin American Studies conference at the University of Manchester, and we’re pleased to report that it's luckily happening just before Beth goes off on maternity leave! She will be attending on Friday 12^th April and has convened (and will be chairing) the panel Peasants, Liberalism and Race in the Americas, which will feature speakers from Chile, Peru, Mexico, the U.S. and the University of Zurich.

And finally, Matt, Carole and Phil Davies will be 'Heading West' for the 58^th annual conference of the British Association for American Studies, to be held at the University of Exeter, April 18-21.  As usual, Matt and Carole will have to arrive promptly as the BAAS Library and Resources Subcommittee session is up first, with Jane Rawson (Bodleian Library) on “A resource for American Studies students@: simply delicious,” and Martin Eve (University of Lincoln) on 'Issues Surrounding Open Access.' The rest of the programme is as packed and diverse as ever (with no doubt the inevitable infuriating panel clashes), but we’re particularly looking forward to the Eccles Centre lecture by Professor Paul Gilroy on Race and Racism in the ‘age of Obama,’ not to mention the Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony, which will include the announcement of all the Eccles Fellowships.

So, if you're attending any of the above, look out for us and come and say hello. We’re happy to talk to you about your research and how the British Library’s collections might help you.

We should also flag up that there are a lot of Eccles events coming up over the next couple of months. Immediately after the BAAS conference we have an exciting one day film-related conference Movies for Hard Times: Hollywood and the Great Depression, which is organised in collaboration with UCL's Institute of the Americas, but there's also much more to look forward to. You can find the full listing of Eccles events here.

[C.H.]

 

Photo © Alexander McIntyre

Professor Philip Davies, Director of our Eccles Centre for American Studies writes:

In March of this year the Eccles Centre hosted its most recent week of Congress to Campus UK events. Twice yearly, in co-operation with the US Association of Former Members of Congress, the Centre masterminds a week of events featuring former Democratic and Republican Members of Congress. This year I was joined by Cliff Stearns (Republican-Florida) and Bob Carr (Democrat-Michigan) for a range of conferences, discussions and seminars with students, office holders, researchers and members of the public. We met more than 500 people, and among the many topics discussed the 2012 election results, and the parties’ future prospects, featured prominently.

The re-election of Barack Obama was followed by much speculation about demographic change in the USA, and the implied inevitable decline of the Republican Party in a country where, for example, projections suggest that one-third of the population will be defined as Hispanic/Latino by 2050.

This figure is especially telling. Latino voters made up 10% of the 2012 electorate. They voted 71% for Obama. This group of voters has increased as a proportion of the electorate steadily in recent elections, and has swung increasingly to back the Democratic presidential candidates. In 2004 the Latino vote for Democrat John Kerry was equivalent to 3.7% of the electorate. In 2008 Obama’s Latino vote made up 6% of the electorate, and in 2012, 7.1%. If this Democratic grip continues, the argument goes, as the Hispanic/Latino vote grows, then by mid-century the Democrats could have a bloc vote from this group alone amounting to 25% of the electorate.

There are other startling aspects of this demographic shift. In 1980 Ronald Reagan began his influential period as president with a clear victory over incumbent Jimmy Carter. At the core of this overwhelming result was the support of 56% of the white vote. Mitt Romney had the support of 59% of the white vote, and still lost. Almost 9 out of 10 American voters in 1988 were white, by 2012 this had fallen to about 7 out of 10.

Obama faced re-election as a president whose first term legislative achievements had provoked controversy, in a poor economic climate, facing a united Republican Party opposition. Republicans were confident of victory, but while there was a modest voter swing away from the president, the Republicans failed to erode his electoral appeal very much, and certain key groups, especially young voters, cast the majority of their votes for Obama. Pundits pointed to the Democrats’ more skilled use of social media – for fund-raising as well as messaging – and to a ‘ground game’ that amalgamated the latest data analysis with dogged door-to-door canvassing.

There was some schadenfreude that the hundreds of millions invested in the campaign by Republican supporter Sheldon Adelson, by Karl Rove on behalf of teams of Republican supporters and by other wealthy backers of Romney and Republican candidates had failed to achieve its aims. How could these investors save their party, it was asked, if the demographic imperative is against them.

This is all very plausible, but the decline of the Republicans is not a done deal, and those Republican political investors have plenty of opportunity if they remain interested. Certainly the potential for political investment remains strong if the appetite for it remains. Adelson’s losses in 2012 amount to tens of millions, but his estimated worth approaches $25 billion. Others are not so fortunate, but the Republicans could accumulate a considerable war chest. But do they have places to invest?

Of course they do. In 2012 the Republican presidential campaign was unsuccessful against the USA’s first African-American incumbent, and lessons need to be learned about modern campaigning. The Republicans’ campaigns for Senate seats were an exercise in failure and farce, as candidates who had been selected by deeply conservative primary electorates made statements extreme enough to alienate the general electorate not just in their home states, but via mass media, throughout the nation. Again, lessons must be learned. But the great Republican success in 2012 was in the US House of Representatives, where they retained control in spite of the Democrats receiving almost 1.4 million more votes.

The US House is gerrymandered. In most states the design of constituency boundaries is a political exercise, seen as a spoil of victory. The exercise is usually performed by some combination of the state governor and legislature. Republicans have been very successful in many state elections. After 2012 30 of the nation’s 50 governors were Republicans, and in 24 states the Republicans controlled the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature – the Democrats had similar one-party domination in only 14 states. The federal nature of US politics gives these states victories particular value. Most domestic policy spending is done at the state and local level. Political groups at state level can use ballot initiatives and referenda to influence the political agenda. A substantial rise in spending on state judicial elections in 2012 suggests an increasing awareness of the political potential at this level. The combination of these and other factors presents the Republican Party with substantial electoral opportunities in 2014 and 2016.

2014 will see the second midterm elections of Obama’s administration. The presidential party usually does not do well in midterm elections, especially in second midterms. The Democrats’ gain of four seats in 1998 is only example of a presidential party gaining House seats in a second midterm in well over a century. Turnout declines at midterms, and it may be that elements of the Obama electoral coalition that performed so well for the party in 2012 will be less enthusiastic without Obama on the ballot. In the Senate 21 of the seats up for election are held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans, and about one-third of the Democrat seats are in states that voted for Romney – the Democrats again present a large target.

In 2016, especially if there are not strong signs of recovery, the administration will face a disappointed electorate. And the American electorate has shown an inclination to change its presidency regularly. Since 1952 only once has a party held on to the presidency for more than two terms. President Obama will not be on the 2016 ticket, and while Democrat Hillary Clinton may be the best known potential candidate, the Republican stable – including Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio – looks healthy.

The Republicans have opportunities in the short term to maintain their strength at state level and in the House, to make gains in Senate, and to make a credible challenge for the presidency. They have to adapt their policies and their strategies to the changing demographics of the electorate. And while voting loyalties tend to remain influential over time, in the long term though a group’s political allegiances cannot be guaranteed. When I look at my US Latino grandchildren I am not sure whether either will be Republican or Democrat as adults, but I look forward to their campaigns for office.

[P.D.]

 

I’m in Stockton, California to do some research on the American (Scottish–born) naturalist John Muir, who is today known as ‘Father of the National Parks’ in America. Here at the Holt–Atherton Special Collections at the library of the University of the Pacific they have the most amazing Muir collection, including his letters, journals, notebooks and much more. Michael Wurtz, the wonderful archivist here, gave me a special tour of the collection and I would like to share one of the treasures with you – one of Muir’s letters, written in autumn 1870 to Jeanne Carr during an excursion in the Yosemite.

It’s my favourite Muir letter. I had read before because Muir’s correspondence is online.But to actually see the real thing was incredible because Muir wrote this rapturous love letter about the sequoias (those gigantic redwoods) with ink made of the sap of the trees. The writing still shines reddish purplish today.

Even the letterhead is fabulous ‘Squirrelville, Sequoia Co, Nut time’

John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. © 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust

And then Muir starts with: ‘Do behold the King in his glory, King Sequoia. Behold! Behold!’, rhapsodising about the magnificent redwoods. ‘But I'm in the woods woods woods, & they are in me-ee-ee. The King tree & me have sworn eternal love - sworn it without swearing & I’ve taken the sacrament with Douglass Squirrell drank Sequoia wine, Sequoia blood, & with its rosy purple dress I am writing this woody gospel letter.’

Here is a man who is not afraid of just letting go when it comes to nature.

‘I wish I was so drunk & Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods to all the juiceless world, descending from this divine wilderness like a John the Baptist, eating Douglass squirrels & wild honey or wild anything, crying Repent, for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at hand’

And later on a little attack on politicians and ‘civilised’ people in general: ‘living King-juice for all defrauded civilization’ and ‘sick or successful, come suck Sequoia & be saved’

You got to love this man. This was definitely one of those research days that I will never forget. And now I’m off to the Yosemite to get my own dose of being Sequoical.

Click here for the letter

 - Andrea Wulf, Eccles Centre Writer in Residence, 2013

 

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The route to the Americas curatorial team on floor 2 of the British Library is currently guarded by a 5 foot high sign indicating ‘Media Access’. A collection item on its way to accession, we’re lucky to have it. I wasn’t sure I would be able to haul it down the lamp-post on Constitution Avenue at all, and when I had it took a huge effort with my partner, Sarah’s pen-knife before it was fully liberated from its moorings. But Washington DC’s clean up team had been incredibly efficient, and a couple of days after the event we sighted only two from the hundreds of temporary President Obama second inaugural parade signs still languishing in place.

Parties of students swept past us in the gloomy evening light as they exited the Smithsonian Institution’s museums. Federal office commuters headed for the Metro. We diligently sawed thick plastic straps with a wholly inadequate 1.5 inch blade, then joined the commuters on the subway, carrying the signs like a third presence between us. The following day the staff of United Airlines decided that it certainly could be classed as free hand baggage: “Did you really come over just for the inauguration? Would you have voted for him if you could have? We did.” High fives all round.

There had been a similar response at an Obama rally in Concord, New Hampshire on the Sunday before Election Day. A friend and I joined 14,000 other of the President’s closest acquaintances from the surrounding area and on a beautiful fall day the town’s central streets were filled. My friend, a supporter, but critical that Obama had not pursued a progressive agenda strongly enough, was chatting as we walked to the venue, ‘You have to be a bit disappointed, though,’ he said, ‘what makes you still sure that he has your vote?’ The woman he addressed stopped walking, locked eyes, gained his full attention, and said emphatically, ‘Love’. She was so emphatic I thought she might nut him.

The day before the inauguration Washington was a particularly happy and relaxed place. Inauguration-goers in their hundreds of thousands were arriving from all over the country and many of them wanted to scout the lie of the land before rising early to be in place for Monday’s ceremony. Eastern Market had more than its usual visitation of tourists for breakfast, and to browse the stalls. Around the Capitol we exchanged photograph taking opportunities with visitors from Illinois and Indiana. We had souvenirs pressed on us as gifts, “You are international? You must have this...’. Near the Washington Monument we were interviewed for a California schools project.

It was a crowd of enormous diversity, but with a common purpose, signed by many hats, shirts, buttons, balloons: to celebrate the second inauguration of the first African-American president of the USA. It may be that some in these crowds were very well aware that, regardless of policy outcomes, Obama’s second inauguration may be more important than his first.  If the first non-white president had lasted only one term, what would be the message to major parties about nominating candidates outside the orthodox tradition of white men?

These were different Washington streets to those I used to walk when I lived here in 1972-4, the time of Nixon, ‘benign neglect’ of racial poverty, and the mistrustful atmosphere of Watergate. The sense of one family on the Mall in 2012 could never have been predicted 40 years earlier. Inauguration Day fell this year on Martin Luther King Day, and Obama’s second term began as the nation was celebrating the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. When we reached the Lincoln Memorial we found thousands of others were making the same journey.

After the exhilaration of inauguration day Washington returned quickly to its usual business of politics. The news media spent a few days discussing President Obama’s second inaugural address, agreeing that it was as forthright a statement of a political agenda as this president had ever made. As after election day, when many Republicans were shell-shocked at the degree of the Obama victory, there was some indication of potential co-operation across party political lines.

Other Republican voices wanted no capitulation, but instead a regrouping to take advantage of Republican election potential in the 2014 and 2016 elections. While one senior Democrat did mention to me the possibility of ‘twenty-five years of Democratic dominance’, and some Republicans were bemoaning a party failure that might last into the future, I certainly don’t see this being inevitable. The strategy for the Republicans to have single party control of the executive and the legislature in 2016 is every bit as plausible as that for the Democrats. There is all to fight for, campaign lines are already being drawn, and campaign funds already being raised.

Meanwhile the Library has a few inaugural pieces to add to its small collection of US campaign posters and other items, helping keep alive an event that within a few days seemed remembered most for the question of whether Beyonce Knowles lip-synched or sang live the national anthem.

- a guest post by Prof. Philip Davies of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library

Andrea Wulf is one of our two Eccles Centre Writers in Residence for 2013.  She will be posting here throughout the year.

The year 2013 started perfectly because the wonderful Eccles Centre for American Studies very generously made me one of their Writers in Residence. Equipped with my new staff pass (and canteen pass), I took my residency in early January — in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room at the British Library.

I’m researching my next book ‘The Invention of Nature. Alexander von Humboldt’s New World’ — a non–fiction book which tells the story of the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and how his visionary ideas of nature changed the way we see the world. On first sight that might not look very North American (i.e., as in the Eccles Centre for American Studies), but it actually is… because I’m looking at his influence on people such Henry David Thoreau, John Muir and Thomas Jefferson, among many others.

And though I read/work/research in the Rare Books reading room about a bunch of guys from the nineteenth century, it doesn’t mean that I’m not finding stuff which could have been written yesterday. Take last week – I had complained to a friend that a newspaper had recently changed a couple of my sentences in my piece without telling me. My friend reminded me of that fabulously outrageous Giles Coren email to his editor at the Times, in which Coren exploded over a deleted ‘a’. The next day I was in the Library, reading Henry David Thoreau’s Correspondence when by sheer coincidence I came across an equally furious letter which Thoreau had written in 1858 to his editor at the Atlantic Monthly.

Henry David Thoreau, by Samuel Worcester Rowse (www.walden.org/Institute/Images/VII.%20Rowse.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Having discovered that one of the sentences in his article had been deleted in a ‘very mean and cowardly manner’, Thoreau dashed off a letter that will still delight many writers and journalists today. ‘I do not ask anybody to adopt my opinions, but I do expect that when they ask for them to print, they will print them, or obtain my consent to their alteration or omission’, he wrote. First it seems as if he was still trying to control his anger somehow but by the last paragraph Thoreau explodes into this sentence: ‘I am not willing to be associated in any other way, unnecessarily, with parties who will confess themselves so bigoted & timid as this implies’. And it goes on.  He never wrote for the Atlantic Monthly again (at least as long as the editor James Russell Lowell was in charge). So, a hurrah to Thoreau and to the serendipity of research.

— Andrea Wulf, Eccles Centre Library Writer in Residence 2013

Ernest Hemingway relaxing in Cuba in the 1940s, sans Martha. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/JFK Library, Boston.

I wonder whether Ernest Hemingway, as he chewed his meal of moose after marriage to Martha Gellhorn in November 1940, hadn’t quite understood his new wife's taste for war. He may also not have fully understood how his third wife's taste for combat probably far surpassed her taste for him. Such a thought might have made the wedding moose all the chewier.  

Both Ernest and Martha had been war correspondents during the Spanish Civil War from 1937-39. In honeyed wartime, they seemed happy: Martha discovered the joys of war-reportage; Ernest, the joys of playing away from his second wife, Pauline.

Martha’s return to peaceful Cuba appeared a difficult transition. Surrounded by a fat crop of alligator pears and creeping bougainvillea, her desire to return to war strafes the page like a machinegun: ‘Only a fool would prefer to be actively achingly dangerously unhappy, rather than bored,’ she wrote, concluding: ‘I am that class of fool.’ Cuba, she complained, was drowning her in ‘flowers and martinis.’ 

As Ernest kept up the home front, and Martha finally found a job reporting on the European theatre of war from London, the marriage foundered. When Ernest cabled ARE YOU A WAR CORRESPONDENT OR A WIFE IN MY BED? one doesn’t need much imagination to know which of these identities Martha had already chosen. When Ernest finally did arrive in London, a fellow correspondent, Mary Welsh, caught his eye. She was to become his fourth wife a year later in 1946. 

Though for a time Martha was heartsick about the separation from Hemingway, what is remarkable in her letters is war’s totally energizing effect on her. ‘Maybe the reason one is so very gay in a war is that the mind, convulsed with horror, simply shuts out the war and is fiercely concentrated on every good thing left in the world. A doorway, a flower stall, the sun, someone to laugh with, and the wonderful fact of being alive.’

Ernest wondered, after their divorce, whether Martha wasn’t a little ‘war-crazy’. But Martha’s war reportage, it seemed, just made her sane.

Naomi Wood is one of the 2012 Eccles Centre Writers in Residence at the British Library. Her second book, Mrs Hemingway, is a historical novel that explores Ernest Hemingway’s four marriages to Hadley, Pauline, Martha and Mary. Excerpts from the letters are from The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn (ed. Caroline Moorehead). Martha’s war-reportage can be found in The Face of War.