The Amritsar Massacre: Another Step Toward Indian Independence
Narrow entrance into Jallianwala Bagh
World War I brought India one step closer to demanding its independence from Great Britain.
Indian regiments sailed overseas and fought alongside their Canadian and Australian counterparts. (If you visit the memorial gateway at Ypres, you will see how many of them died in defense of the empire.) Indian nationalists loyally supported the British government during the war, fully expecting that British victory would end with Indian self rule on the dominion model.
Instead of self-rule, India got repressive legislation. The Rowlatt Acts, passed by India's Imperial Legislative Council in March, 1919, continued the special wartime powers of the Defense of India Act. The new act took powers originally intended to protect India against wartime agitators, including the right to imprison those suspected of "revolutionary conspiracy" for up to two years without trial, and aimed them at the nationalist movement.
Indian members of the legislative council resigned their seats in protest. Mahatma Gandhi took the protest further, declaring a national day of work stoppage in the first week of April as the first step in a full-scale campaign of non-violent, non-cooperation against the so-called "Black Acts".
The first implementation of the new laws occurred on April 10 in the Sikh city of Amritsar. The government of the Punjab arrested Indian leaders who had organized anti-Rowlatt meetings were arrested and deported without formal charges or trials. When their followers organized a protest march, troops fired on the marchers, causing a riot. Five Englishmen were killed and an Englishwoman was attacked. (She was rescued from the rioters by local Indians.)
Brigadier General Reginald Dyer was called into Amritsar to restore order. The situation called for diplomacy and good sense. Dyer used neither. On April 13, he announced a ban on public gatherings of any kind. That afternoon, 10,000 Indians assembled in an enclosed public park called Jallianwala Bagh to celebrate a Hindu religious festival. Dyer arrived with a troop of Gurkhas and ordered them to block the entrance to the park. Giving the celebrants little warning and no way to escape, he ordered the soldiers to fire on the unarmed crowd. They fired 1650 rounds in ten minutes, killing nearly 400 people and wounding over 1000.
In Britain, Dyer was widely acclaimed as "the man who saved India." The House of Lords passed a movement approving his actions. The Morning Post collected £26,000 for his retirement and gave him a jeweled sword inscribed "Saviour of the Punjab."
The government of India censured Dyer's actions and forced him to resign his commission, but did nothing to stop local officials from continuing to inflame public opinion. In the Punjab, which remained under martial law for months following the Amritsar massacre, government officials acting "in defense of the realm" repeatedly humiliated and offended the people under their rule with actions such as making Indians crawl through Jallianwala Bagh.
Instead of "saving India", Dyer accelerated Indian nationalist activity. Many Indians who had previously been loyal supporters of the Raj now joined the Indian National Congress, India's largest nationalist organization. Bengal poet Rabindranath Tagore resigned the knighthood he had received after winning the 1913 Nobel prize for Literature. Motilal Nehru, president of the Congress and father of the first president of independent India, declared that "all talk of reform is a mockery". Attempts to become equal partners within the Raj were almost over. Soon the push for independence would begin.
This post previously appeared in Wonders and Marvels.
History of the World in 12 Maps
This post is about a book, a book review, and the discussion that the review sparked.
As I've mentioned before, I review books for Shelf Awareness for Readers. Mostly history, a little reference--and the occasional cookbook because writer does not live by history alone. Some of the books I receive for review are on subjects I'd never think to read on my own.* Others scream my name immediately. Guess which category A History of the World in Twelve Maps fell into?
Here's my review for Shelf Awareness:
Mapping is a basic instinct, argues Jerry Brotton: humans and animals alike use mapping procedures to locate themselves in space. Map-making, on the other hand-- using graphic techniques to share spatial information-is an act of the human imagination. It is never objective; the map is not the territory. And maps of the world are more subjective than most, embodying the worldview of the culture that produced them. In A History of The World in Twelve Maps, Brotton, a British history professor, looks at twelve world maps, the people who created them, and what they tell us about the time and place in which they were made. In the process, he tells the reader a great deal about how we view the world today.
Beginning with Ptolemy's Geography and ending with the virtual maps of Google Earth, Brotton considers maps and geographical theory from Islamic Sicily and fifteenth century China as well as the more familiar worlds of medieval England and Renaissance Europe. He looks at different approaches to shared questions: how a map is oriented (north is not the universal answer), what scale to use, where the viewer stands in relation to the map and how to project a round earth on a flat surface. Along the way, he considers politics, religion, cosmology, mathematics, imperialism, scientific knowledge, and artistic license. Each map is unique; all have features in common.
A History of the World in Twelve Maps is global history in the most literal sense: twelve variations on a universal theme.
Normally I would simply re-post the review here in the Margins, with proper attribution to Shelf Awareness, and hope that it directed a few more readers to an excellent book. However, this review prompted some interesting responses from readers that I would like to share.
Graham Thatcher wrote to me with an idea about maps and perception, which he has given me permission to share:
…while teaching a persuasion course, I took a National Geographic Mercator map of the world, blocked out the names of countries, and hung it upside down on the board. We had been investigating how our individual "world views" develop and when confronted with an antipodal projection, our literal world view was unrecognizable.
I think this is brilliant and intend to try it as soon as we move into the new house, where I'll have a bigger office and a bit of wall space.
On a similar note, fellow historian, and long-time co-conspirator, Karin Wetmore sent me the following link to an interesting map/memory/perception project: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/what-you-get-when-30-people-draw-a-world-map-from-memory/282901/
What ideas do you have about turning the world--or at least our map of it--upside down?
* Being knocked off my usual paths occasionally is one of the intangible benefits of reviewing.
History on Display: Wonders of the 1893 World’s Fair
Last Sunday My Own True Love and I cocked a snook at cold and snow* and headed out to Chicago's Field Museum to see what we thought was an exhibit on the 1893 World's Fair, aka the Columbian Exposition. We had neglected to read the subtitle for the exhibit: "Opening the Vaults". As is often our experience, what we got was much more interesting than what we expected. We thought we were going to an exhibit on the relatively familiar story of how the fair was developed: financial panic, Ferris Wheel, Little Egypt, and all.** Instead we were introduced to changing ideas about natural history and the story of how the Columbian Exposition led to the creation of what is now the Field Museum.
After a brief introduction to the fair itself,***the exhibit went on to consider four types of knowledge exhibited at the fair: animal, vegetable, mineral, and cultural. Using objects from the Field's collections that have not been on display since 1893, the curators explained the cultural assumptions that shaped exhibits at the fair, how the exhibits developed into the Field's collection, changes in the relevant academic disciplines in the intervening 120 years, and how modern scholars use specimens exhibited at the fair to answer new questions . If that sounds dry, it's my fault. The exhibit itself is fascinating.
Here were some tidbits that had me reaching for my pen and notebook:
- The Columbian Exposition, like the American space program, produced lots of unexpected spin-offs. For example, the company that insured the fair was worried about whether the unprecedented use of electric light bulbs was safe, so the fair's organizers hired electrician William H Merrill to inspect the grounds. Building on his work on the fair, Merrill later founded Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a company that still tests and certifies the safety of electrical products.
- Prizes were awarded to exhibitors for innovative product development. One of the first place winners still flaunts its success: Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.
- Two popular cereal products made their debut at the fair: Shredded Wheat and Cracker Jacks. Can you say "ends of the spectrum"?
- The fair organizers were interested in "economic botany". Many exhibits focused on plant products with economic potential, from raw indigo to cannabis seeds. Yes, you read that correctly. Cannabis seeds. As in pot.
- I was stunned to learn that Elmer Riggs, the Field Museum's first paleontologist, is credited with "removing 'brontosaurus' from the dinosaur vocabulary" ca 1903. Brontosaurus has certainly been part of my personal dinosaur vocabulary. (Thank you, Fred Flintstone.) A quick search revealed that the brontosaurus of popular culture was a mistake of the so-called Bone Wars in the early years of paleontology. Dang.
- Labrador Inuits who had been hired to demonstrate their way of life in one of the "native villages" were so outraged by the conditions provided by the fair's organizers that they sued the Fair, left the official village, and set up their own paid exhibit outside the Fair's gates.
Wonders of the 1893 World's Fair runs through September 7. It won't be traveling to another museum. If you're in the area, or if you're obsessed with the Columbian Exposition and willing to travel, it's well worth a visit.
*If you prefer your museum experience unhampered by other viewers, early Sunday morning is always a good choice. Early Sunday morning with blowing snow and falling temperatures is even better.
** Devil in the White City, anyone?
***Including the claim that the Columbian Exhibition is considered the greatest of the world's fairs. Personally I think the grand-daddy of international exhibitions, the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, has a good claim to that title.
Photographs courtesy of the Library of Congress.