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Begins Tuesday 19 April 2005, 3.00-3.30 p.m |
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Sue Cook and the team answer listeners' historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all 'make' history. |
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Series 11 |
Programme 9
14ÌýJune 2005 |
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"By jingo"
How the word 'jingo' took on its patriotic meaning in the 19th century.
Making History listener Brian Farrell is related to the Victorian music hall artist The Great Macdermott (Gilbert Hastings), and it was he who made 'The Jingo Song' popular. It was known as Macdermott's War Song, and he found the piece immensely popular at the London Pavilion during a diplomatic crisis in 1878. Both Macdermott and the songwriter G W Hunt took themselves seriously as commentators on foreign affairs, an opinion not necessarily shared by Britain's foreign policy decision-makers!
Useful links
- the background to the diplomatic spat with Russia
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Romans in China
Did the Romans ever send a diplomatic or trade mission to China? Making History consulted Raoul McLaughlin, a PhD student at Queens University in Belfast. This is what Raoul told the programme:
The Romans knew very little about the ancient Chinese. As far as we know they never realised that on the edge of Asia there was a vast empire like their own. Most contacts were blocked by Rome's enemy, the ancient Persian kingdom of Parthia.
Most of what the Romans did know of China came from maritime trade. Over a hundred Roman ships sailed every year from Egypt to India. They brought back goods for sale in Roman markets. In AD 70, a Roman merchant wrote about his experiences in a pamphlet called Periplus Maris Erythraei (The Voyage around the Erythrean Sea ). He had heard reports that far inland beyond the Ganges was a place known as 'Thina', where silk came from. He said it was remote and few people ever came from there.
It was not until AD 150 that the Chinese Empire appeared in another Roman work, when a geographer named Ptolemy used the accounts of Roman merchants to construct a map of the Far East. One of his informants was a merchant named Maes from Macedonia. In AD 100, Maes managed to send his agents on an overland route through Parthia. They seem to have visited a Chinese city. Interestingly the Han Dynasty record that a strange people from the distant west came to China at this time. The foreigners were from a place called Meng-ch'i-tou-la, which may have been Macedonia.
Ptolemy knew of a land beyond Malaysia called 'Sinae', which was the coastal edge of the Han Empire. He relied on an account written by a Greek merchant named Alexander who had sailed to Malaysia. From there he heard how to reach a Chinese port called Cattigara, which may have been ancient Hanoi or Canton. The Chinese sources suggest that Roman traders were visiting parts of Cambodia and Vietnam. Gold coins of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius have been found near Ho Chi Minh City.
Interestingly, at the time of Marcus Aurelius the Han chronicles say that Roman representatives met the Chinese Emperor. The Romans said they were sent by Antun. Now was this the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus? It is possible the Roman emperor sent these representatives. War had broken out between the Romans and the Parthians. The Chinese said that the Romans only offered mediocre gifts. Maybe they did not understand Chinese diplomatic protocol.
But the Roman accounts make no mention of any attempt by Marcus Aurelius to contact the Chinese. Now if the diplomats had returned to Roman territory they would have found the Empire decimated by the smallpox plague - the first pandemic in human history. It killed a tenth to a third of the population of both empires. Neither would have been able to exploit new diplomatic contacts.
But earlier the Chinese had tried to make contact with the Romans. In the late first century AD the Chinese invaded the Tarim Basin. Their army pushed on into Central Asia almost to the shores of the Caspian Sea. They had reached the frontiers of Parthia, Rome's old enemy.
The Han commander Ban Chao sent an ambassador to make contact with the Romans. The ambassador was named Gan Ying and he made it to the Persian Gulf. From there he planned to sail around Arabia to reach Roman Egypt - a round trip of three months. But local sailors tried to take advantage of him. They told him that he would have to pay for three years' worth of provisions as the journey might be delayed by bad weather. Their scam failed as Gan Ying used this as an excuse. He immediately returned to his commander and reported that the Roman Empire could only be reached by a horrendous sea journey. He added a personal comment that a man could die of homesickness.
Only a year later the Roman Emperor Trajan came to power and subsequently launched his own invasion at the other side of Parthia. But by then the Chinese had already retreated from much of their western conquests. Neither empire knew how close they had come to direct contact, and so an incredible opportunity was lost.
Further reading
D D Leslie and KHJ Gardiner, The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources (Bardi, 1996)
Gary K Young, Rome's Eastern Trade (Routledge, 2001)
Eric Herbert Warmington, The Commerce Between the Roman Empire and India (Curzon Press, 1974)
Useful links
- a collection of historical texts
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Local history hero
This week's nominee is Barry Williamson, a history teacher at Bristol Grammar School. In 1999 he and some Year 9 students researched one of the names on the school's 'roll of honour'. The name was Stanley Booker, and not only did Barry and his class find out about him and his war service on the Western Front, they also unearthed his letters back to his family in England. These letters and Booker's story have been put together in a book edited by Barry Williamson.
Barry Williamson, editor, Dear Mother... Great War Letters from a Bristol Soldier (Redcliffe Press, 2003; 81g Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 3EA)
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Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ±«Óãtv, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ±«Óãtv Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý