Rainy day

I'm a mere 200 words away from finishing this essay on assimilation, but I've decided to hold back until I receive the full feedback on my first essay, which should arrive in the post by Tuesday. It's a grey wintery day here in Brunswick. Apart from staying indoors listening to Os Mutantes, I went for a psychogeographic excursion through the rainy streets.

Racially based immigration policies

My essay on assimilation is due today, but I've been given an inadvertant extension, due to delays in receiving feedback for my first essay. That feedback arrived today, and I'm very happy with the results. The first essay was on the economic depression of the 1890s, and how the trade union movement pushed a vision of national identity which focused on race, in order to block the import of cheap Asian labour, particularly on Queensland sugarcane plantations. Of course, the connecting point between this and the subject of the next essay (assimilation), is the White Australia Policy, which guided Australian immigration policy for around 70 years. A central plank of this policy was the diction test, whereby potential immigrants could be tested on their knowledge of a European language. The trap was that the immigration officials got to choose the European language, so even if an Asian immigrant was fluent in English, the test could be done in German. Thus, impartiality could be claimed, averting any claims of racially-biased immigration policies. It was a thin disguise for an obviously racist policy. In the news today - recent calls for compulsory English language tests, and knowledge of 'Australian values'. It's shaky ground, not necessarily because of any implicit racism in such a task, but because of the ambiguity of 'Australian values', and whose definitions we attempt to enforce.

The importance of coffee

As it transpires, I’ve chosen to write the next essay on the shift from the exclusionary White Australia Policy, towards Assimilation, and that whilst assimilation is a dirty word today, it acted as a coping-mechanism for Australia’s part in the post-war global migrations of people, and was a necessary stepping-stone towards cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. From John Murphy’s Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia:

…if the idea of assimilation was partly a reassurance that the ‘way of life’ would never change, it was also a transitional strategy, while the vast social and cultural transformation resulting from migration began to work its way towards more diverse imaginings of national identity.

And from Gwenda Tavan's 'Good Neighbours: Community Organisations, Migrant Assimilation and Australian Society and Culture 1950-1961':

As a transitional doctrine, assimilation allowed Australians to make sense of, contain, and ultimately accept social and cultural change, by gradually, if equivocally, incorporating the reality of an ethnically mixed population into popular conceptions of the Australian nation.

I also like this exposition on the importance of coffee in the reverse-assimilation project:

This sense of cultural change and diversification partly explains the iconic status of espresso coffee in the period, as a happy contrast to appalling coffee substitutes made of chicory essence and boiled milk. Italian coffee bars were represented as a ‘romantic whiff of continental life’ with ‘the last word in décor and style’.

Millennium

Felipe Fernández-Armesto's Millennium arrived in the mail today (via an Ebay auction). I first discovered this historian whilst at the State Library, looking for something glossy to rest my text-weary eyes on. I found Fernández-Armesto's Ideas That Changed The World, published by the masters of glossy, well-designed non-fiction, Dorling Kindersley. Each page of Ideas That Changed The World focuses on... umm... an idea that changed the world - from socialism to cultural relativism, from liberalism to the idea of god, from relativity to... you get the idea. I became so absorbed that I had to head immediately to a bookshop to buy my own copy, which now sits by my bedside - and I try to read a page or two before lights-out - it's something for the brain to chew on whilst I doze off, instead of dwelling on useless things like frustrations with work colleagues or how little money we have. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing Fernández-Armesto stretch out, unrestricted by a page-per-idea.

Another essay down

The essay on the uprising of Palmyra in 270 AD has been completed and submitted. 2483 words, 71 footnotes. Next is an essay for my other subject, which doesn't often get mentioned here - this will be on Australia's national identity in the post-war period, and will either be with respect to the Cold War and the rise of suburbia, or the White Australia Policy and assissted immigration schemes of the 1950s. This is due next Friday (28 April). After that, I've got three weeks to write another 2500 word essay, probably on the rise of Christianity in Rome's Near East frontier (due 19 May). In the middle of that three week period, I've got my grandfather's 80th birthday to attend in Adelaide (7 May). Following that essay, I've got a couple of weeks before I have an exam (1 June). Two interesting subjects lined up for next semester - one on the history of education in Australia, the other on the history of newspapers.

Arab dandyism

The Scriptores Historiae Augustae on Herodes, son of Odeanathus…

…he was the most effeminate of men, wholly oriental and given over to Grecian luxury, for he had embroidered tents and pavilions made out of cloth of gold and everything in the manner of the Persians. In fact Odeanathus, complying with his ways and moved by the promptings of a father’s indulgence, gave him all the king’s concubines and riches and jewels that he captured. Zenobia, indeed, treated him in a step-mother’s way, and this made him all the more dear to his father. Nothing more remains to be said converning Herodes.

Zebba and Jadhima

I spent the majority of this wet Easter cooped up in a cabin in Marysville, reading about Palmyra for an essay which is due on Friday. Richard Stoneman’s account of Zenobia’s uprising is just the kind of historical work I love; it’s tight, engaging, and filled with interesting sidetracks. In chapter 7 of Palmyra and Its Empire, he ventures into the works of ninth century Arab historian Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari, recalling the meeting between the queen of Palmyra (here she is named Zebba) and the king of the Tanukh people, where they are to discuss a marriage proposal…

The two parties met at a place called Rabbat-Malik-ibn-Tauk. The accounts of the meeting vary slightly, but the central feature is that Zebba responds to Jadhima’s assent to the idea of a marriage by lifting her skirts to reveal her private parts. The length and quality of her pubic hair (the name Zebba means “with beautiful long hair”) astonishes Jadhima, and Zebba remarks that one with such an appearance is hardly a suitable bride for him. The point being made is not altogether clear, but the scene recalls interestingly the meeting of Solomon and the queen of Sheba, when the king induces the queen to walk across a mirror that he pretends is a stream, As she lifts her skirt to do so, Solomon catches sight of her hairy legs and ceases to find her attractive.

As it turns out, Zebba’s beautiful muff wasn’t the only the only reason she agreed to the meeting, for she also planned to besiege Jadhima, her arch rival.

A squadron of Zebba’s cavalry now surrounded Jadhima, unhorsed him, and brought him to the queen. “How do you wish to die?” she asked. And he replied, “Like a king”. He was served a meal, with plenty of wine. As he began to doze off with the effects of the alcohol, he was placed in a leather blanket and the veins of his wrists were opened. His blood was collected in vases, since it was believed that the blood of kings had special virtues against madness.

Never too old...

Martin Sheen's post-West Wing plans (from this New York Times article):

At 65, he has decided to make good on a promise he made to himself long ago: to enroll, for the first time, in college. A graduate, though just barely, of Chaminade High School in Dayton, Ohio, nearly five decades ago, he will began taking classes next fall — in English literature, philosophy and, he hopes, oceanography — at National University of Ireland in Galway, in the country where his mother was born.

Relieves my anxiety about finishing mine at the age of 33.

A Little History of the World

I dropped into the Brunswick Street Bookstore on Monday evening's journey home from work, specifically to check out A Little History of the World. A friend had told me about this recently - a history of the world written for children by the Austrian art historian Ernst Gombrich in 1935. Although it's been translated into numerous languages, Gombrich held off on an English translation, because he felt the English were too insular to appreciate the wider context of world history. Finally, just before his death in 2001, he decided to allow for an English edition. There is a 'delightful' article here. At $50 for the current hardcover, I'll be waiting for the paperback edition.

Palmyran ambitions

I received back my essay on the Alexander Severus' war against the Persians. I am pleased with the result. The next essay is due on 21 April. I've decided to write about Palmyra c. 250-272 AD - the merchant city in the Syrian Desert, where one could find statues of caravan leaders lining the bazaars, as though they were emperors themselves. The city which, under the leadership of Odaenathus, won back the eastern provinces for the bungling Roman Empire, and which later, under the command of Odaenathus' wife and son, went all Kurtz and attempted to establish its own empire throughout Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Zenobia, the aforementioned widow of Odaenathus, was captured and brought to Rome in gold chains, an event which seems to have sparked some Gorean imagination.

Miriades, the crooked

Miriades, a crooked Syrian, killed his father and stole his fortunes, before siding with the enemy Persian army (c. 253 AD). He convinced Shapur, the Persian king, to attack Antioch, Miriades' home town. Ammianus Marcellinus describes the attack;

For it happened one day at Antioch, when the city was in perfect tranquility, a comic actor being on the stage with his wife, acting some common scene from daily life, while the people were delighted with his acting, his wife suddenly exclaimed: 'Am I dreaming or are there Persians here?' The audience immediately turned round and then fled in every direction while trying to avoid the missiles which were showered upon them.

Libanius, Greek sophist and "one of the most influential pagans of the fourth century", continues;

[The people of Antioch] were attacked as they sat in the theatre by archers who had occupied the mountain top.

An anonymous contributor to Cassius Dio's history sinks the boot into the working class;

The respectable classes fled the city but the majority of the populace remained: partly because they were well disposed towards Mariades and partly because they were glad of any revolution; such as is customary with ignorant people.

Antioch was attacked, plundered, then destroyed. The Persians repaid Miriades by decapitating him for betraying his own people.

A shitty way to die

From the Historiae Auguste, on Philip the Arab's murder of Timesitheus;

Philip, they say, was mightily in fear of him for many reasons and on this account plotted with the doctors against his life. He did it in this way: Timesitheus, as it happened, was suffering from diarrhoea and was told by the doctors to take a portion to check it. And then, they say, they changed what had been prepared and gave him something which loosened him all the more; and thus he died.