United Nations Headquarters, New York: the Cultural-Political Economy of Space and Iconicity Jessica Field (University of Manchester) 19-36
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Issue 1 | September 2012 ISSN 2051-221X JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND CULTURES A peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to pioneering new research in history and cultures ] University of Birmingham historyandcultures.com [email protected] Journal Editors: Holly Ellis | Saima Nasar | Daisy Payling 1 Contents Articles Sincere Lies and Creative Truth: Recantation Strategies during the English Reformation Angela Ranson (University of York) 1-18 United Nations Headquarters, New York: The Cultural-Political Economy of Space and Iconicity Jessica Field (University of Manchester) 19-36 Ahafo: Big Men, Small Boys and the Politics of Regionalism in Ghana from 1896 -1986 Kwame Osei Kwarteng (University of Cape Coast) 37-50 The 1958 Tour of the Moiseyev Dance Company: A Window into American Perception Victoria Hallinan (Northeastern University) 51-64 Reviews Timothy Mitchell: Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil Andrew Jones (University of Birmingham) 65-67 Matthew Boswell: Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Culture and Film Diana Popescu (University of Southampton) 68-69 Jeremy Jennings: Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth Century Eric Brandom (Duke University) 70-71 Egodi Uchendu: Dawn for Islam in Eastern Nigeria: A History of the Arrival of Islam in Igboland Josip Matesic (University of Wollongong) 72-73 Sebastian Conrad: German Colonialism: A Short History Michael Amundsen (Tallinn University) 74-75 Robert Somerville: Pope Urban II’s Council of Piacenza Michael Tivey (Independent Scholar) 76-77 Andrew Thompson: Britain’s Experience of the Empire in the Twentieth Century Patrick Longson (University of Birmingham) 78-80 Nico Slate: Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India Zachary Wakefield (Auburn University) 81-82 2 Acknowledgements The journal editors would like to express their deepest appreciation to the JHAC committee members: Amy Edwards, Andrew Jones, Edward Rouse, Frederik Kooijmans, Jamie Perry, Patrick Longson, Rebecca Crites and Sam Humphries. They would also like to thank the following people for their help and support: Dr Kate Skinner, Dr Gavin Schaffer, Professor Karin Barber, Professor Robert Swanson, Dr Kim Wagner, Professor Tom McCaskie, Arthur Rose, Dr Jonathan Willis, Dr John Fagg, Professor Nicholas Crowson, Dr Dobrota Pucherova, Dr Helen Laville, Dr Pierre Purseigle, Professor Matthew Hilton, Professor Richard Schellhammer, Dr William Purkis, Dr Benjamin White, Professor Naomi Standen, Professor Scott McCracken, Dr Catherine Tackley and Professor Angela Vergara. Special thanks also go to Sue Bowen, Becca Isaacs and Katie Barnett. Holly Ellis, Saima Nasar and Daisy Payling 3 Journal of History and Cultures (1) 2012: 1-18 ISSN 2051 – 221X Sincere Lies and Creative Truth: Recantation Strategies during the English Reformation Angela Ranson University of York When necessary, some sixteenth-century reformers would lie in order to uphold the truth. Specifically, they would recant their religious beliefs when faced with hostility from the crown or the church. It is easy to assume that those who recanted simply failed in their faith, but in certain circumstances it was actually considered morally acceptable to recant, and indeed admirable. This paper will argue that some reformers’ recantations did not reflect real rejection of their beliefs, but a form of resistance to doctrines with which they did not agree. Through their submission to authority, they could successfully subvert authority. Such an approach to recantation fills a gap in sixteenth-century reformation historiography. Many historians focus on the martyrs, the recusants and the exiles of the sixteenth century. Although all three of these groups, in both major confessions, contain people who recanted, few historians consider recantation in their works. If recantation is mentioned, it is often accompanied by the implication that the recantation was a shameful act of cowardice, or a minor incident in the life of a martyr and a potential destroyer of his or her reputation. Peter Marshall mentions it as an impediment in the career of Thomas Bilney.1 Eamon Duffy, in his Fires of Faith, suggests that only the weak recanted, and continued to recant until they were bolstered into accepting martyrdom by a fear of hellfire.2 Sarah Covington, in her The Trail of Martyrdom, considers recantation a small part of the ‘evasive world’ of religious upheaval, an inevitable side effect of constantly changing definitions, authorities and values.3 In Charitable Hatred, Alexandra Walsham considers recantation as just one of many forms of religious vacillation that occurred in the sixteenth century.4 None of these, or indeed similar works, analyze the full range of possible reasons to recant, or look at the methodology of recantation. Nor do they examine in detail the interplay between crown and reformer during the process of recantation, which could be as useful as the study of scaffold speeches has proven to be.5 This leaves a blank page in the history of religious persecution and tolerance in sixteenth- century England. This paper hopes to contribute to some recent studies which are attempting to fill it, such as those of Susan Wabuda and Brad Gregory. These historians both suggest that the crown did not press for recantation only to maintain power. Wabuda notes that the crown used recantations to show Angela Ranson is a doctoral student at the University of York, studying the Church of England and the English Reformation. Her recent publications include an article about the Nicodemites of the Elizabethan Church in the University of Limerick’s journal History Studies and an article entitled ‘Recantation and the Ars Moriendi’, published by the University of Alberta in 2010. She can be contacted at: [email protected] 1 P. Marshall, Reformation England (London: Hodder Education, 2003), p. 28. 2 E. Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 163. 3 S. Covington, The Trail of Martyrdom (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2003), p. 3. 4 A. Walsham, Charitable Hatred (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 20. 5 See, for example, K. Kesselring’s Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 1 Angela Ranson: Sincere Lies and Creative Truths what was and was not current religious policy.6 Gregory studies the way that recantation was used to reclaim heretics from the danger of hellfire.7 Similarly, this paper intends to look at the purposes of recantation, but through the point of view of the reformers instead of the authorities. The reformers in this study used recantation to work around the crown’s expectations and fulfill their own goals. Recanting allowed them to maintain their salvation, to fulfill their duty of obedience to the sovereign without compromising their religion, to obey their personal conscience, and to promote their own faith. They had to develop means of skillful truth-telling, which required a certain amount of creativity and often caused the lines between truth and lies to slide subtly out of focus. This led to a form of subversion that is similar to the ‘ordinary resistance’ described in James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak.8 The peasants of Scott’s study employed such strategies as feigning ignorance and evading the authorities either physically or verbally. Many sixteenth-century reformers used the same strategies, but where Scott’s peasants subverted authority for reasons of economics or power, these reformers subverted authority as a reflection of passionate and personal religious conviction, mingled with a sense of civic responsibility. This can be seen more and more clearly as the sixteenth century progressed. The early Lollards almost all submitted fully, rarely making much of an attempt to sidestep or resist authority. They did not develop distinct methods to manipulate truth in order to simultaneously obey God and king.9 Reformers during the reign of Henry VIII, particularly William Tyndale and Thomas More, studied what constituted lies in order to try to reconcile conscience and the duty of obedience. This developed into more detailed studies of resistance theory during the Marian exile. Then, during the era of recusancy and Catholic missions in later Elizabethan England, the methods of creative truth employed at the beginning of the century contributed to the development of casuistry. The time period for this paper will extend from the reign of Henry VIII through to the beginning of Mary’s reign. Due to the constraints of space and time, Marian resistance theory will not come into the discussion. Also, casuistry will not be fully treated because it was a different means of creative truth, one which employed different strategies from those currently under discussion, and took place in a very different historical context. This paper will contribute to a study of recantation which will be useful to the understanding of the culture of persecution and martyrdom that developed in sixteenth- century England. It will examine the definition of lying and how it could be manipulated, and how reformers employed strategies of creative truth in order to reconcile their religious beliefs with their social and political obligations. Recantation Recantation involved revoking religious ideas once held, by making a public confession in the form of published statements, acts of penance, or public shame. It was designed to humiliate and subdue the people who were recanting, to bring them firmly back into the fold of spiritual and temporal authority, and to prevent others from following their example. However, the process of recantation could be manipulated in such a way that it had the opposite effect. As Susan Wabuda states, ‘persecuted 6 S. Wabuda, ‘Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The 'Subtle Shadows' of Dr Edward Crome’. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44:2 (1993), pp. 226-228. 7 B. S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 79. 8 J. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p.