The Blue Coat History Magazine

THE BLUE COAT HISTORY MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020 Welcome to this month’s edition of the Blue Coat History Magazine! In this issue, you can find information for opportunities in the History Department as well as lots of interesting articles to read about. New this year is a section on teachers’ History Heroes and Villains. This month, we interviewed Mr Pearson on his heroine, Emily Hobhouse and villain, Peter the Great. Our historical person of the month, written by Emily Maloney, is civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin. Also included is an article by Gabriel Haywood on one of Liverpool’s greatest contributions to the Allied war effort, and an insight into the history of impeachment by Holly Hunter. Hope you enjoy reading! Kimberley Cota (Editor) NEWS IN THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT Mentor sessions will begin from Monday 23rd January from 12:30 in C15 for Year 11s. The first session will be a voluntary drop-in session. Junior Debating Society takes place on Tuesdays at 12:30 for Year 7 and 8. Junior History Society takes place every Thursday from 12:30-1pm in C13. HISTORY HEROINE: EMILY HOBHOUSE An Interview with Mr Pearson rights of the dispossessed and What makes Emily Hobhouse a heroine to she drew a you? spotlight onto I have long been interested in people some of the more throughout history who took unpopular shameful aspects of stands and risked public criticism to do the the British right thing. Empire’s conduct abroad. A feminist, Like the abolitionists of the Nineteenth pacifist and welfare Century, Emily Hobhouse angered the campaigner, Hobhouse established the British establishment by championing the Distress Fund for South African Women and Children during the Boer War, and sailed for teach women skills so that they could the Cape Colony on 7 December 1900. become financially independent. On her arrival she discovered that Britain Towards the end of her life she met Gandhi had created 45 concentration camps to and was an avid opponent of the Great War. incarcerate thousands of Boer women and She was made an honorary citizen of South children. The conditions in these camps Africa for her humanitarian work and died were horrendous as the lack of hygiene and in 1926. the scarcity of food provisions had led to an outbreak of typhoid and to severe What was one moment that defined her life? malnutrition. Over The one moment that is the course of ‘Hobhouse was determined to expose likely to have defined eighteen months it is this ‘wholesale cruelty’ to the British her life and work is the estimated that people’ day that she met Lizzie 24,000 children had van Zyl. Severely died from these emaciated and suffering conditions, around 50 a day. from neglect, her photograph was used by Hobhouse was determined to expose this Hobhouse as evidence to support her claims ‘wholesale cruelty’ to the British people and of mistreatment in the camps. despite fierce criticism she forced the If you could meet Emily Hobhouse, what government to set up a commission to would you ask her? investigate and corroborate her claims. She continued to campaign, raise funds and If I could meet Emily Hobhouse I would be deliver speeches to highlight the plight of fascinated to know how far she was driven the Boers and their families. Once the war by her Christian faith to act and how she had finished she returned to South Africa to maintained her resilience in the face of overwhelming criticism. HISTORY VILLAIN: PETER THE GREAT What makes Peter the Great a villain to VIII would fall into that category for me as you? would Louis XIV of France and Peter the Great of Russia. There have been many monsters in history, people who have done unspeakable acts to When Peter the Great came to power in the advance their own power or to realise their late 17th Century he ruled a backward own warped visions; Adolf Hitler and nation that had completely sealed itself off Chairman Mao naturally spring to mind in from the rest of the world. Dominated by the 20th Century. the Swedes in the North and threatened by The Ottomans, Austria and Prussia in the However, when reflecting on ‘villains’ in West Russia was a long way away from history I think it’s important that they realising its potential as a great power. demonstrate a degree of theatricality and Peter was determined to change the that they have certain redemptive qualities fortunes of his nation and embarked upon a despite their inescapable brutality. Henry ‘Great Embassy’ which served as an extended holiday in Europe. What he saw in If you could meet Peter the Great, what the Netherlands and in Britain convinced would you ask him? him that he needed to ‘westernise’ Russia, but the way he went about this lacked a I would love to know whether Peter ever degree of subtlety. He literally ripped out had any regrets about his brutal methods the beards of the boyars with his bare and whether he experienced doubts about hands, brought the Church under his control what he was trying to achieve. Did he and set about modernising the army to genuinely believe that his son was launch a series of wars with the Swedes in threatening his legacy or was he just the North and the Turks in the South East. disappointed that Alexis seemed to represent everything he resented about ‘old Peter was an intimidating figure. He Russia’? towered over his people literally and metaphorically (he was thought to be six What was one moment that defined his foot eight inches in height) and his ‘hands life? on’ approach led to him cultivating a The moment that probably defined Peter’s fascination in woodwork, pottery, life was seeing the murder of his Naryshkin metalwork and shipbuilding. He also family on the steps of the Kremlin when he fancied himself as a dentist and practised on was just a child. This is likely to have his nobles without formal training. Peter fermented his hatred for Moscow and even went to the battlefield armed with a driven his ambitions to modernise Russia in saw. His first attempt the western style. at amateur surgery were declared – by ‘His first attempt at amateur surgery Thank you Mr Peter – to be a great were declared – by Peter – to be a Pearson! success even if the great success, even if the patient died patient died mid- mid-operation!’ operation! After a crushing defeat against the Swedes at the Battle of Narva (1700) Peter learnt from his mistakes, regrouped and won revenge nine years later at the Battle of Poltava. He established a new capital city of St Petersburg, that was designed in the European style so that by his death it was clear that he had ended Russia’s isolation and had attained great power status. It was, however, the Russian people who paid the price for his ambition. A notorious and violent drunk, Peter held irreverent parties to mock the church and to humiliate his nobles. Paranoid that all that he had fought so hard to achieve would be lost under his conservative son, Alexis, Peter had him arrested, tortured and strangled in his cell. HISTORICAL FIGURE OF THE MONTH Colvin was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery’s bus Claudette Colvin segregation policies, so her story made a Claudette Colvin was a pioneer of the Civil few local papers; however, Rosa Parks’ Rights Movement in America. In March same act of defiance was reported all over 1955, when she was the world. It is believed that Parks was used just 15 years old, as a poster girl for the Black Freedom Colvin was arrested Struggle because she had the right image: for refusing to give she was a kind, middle-aged woman who up her seat on a bus was a member of the NAACP and acted as a to a white passenger secretary to Edgar Nixon. The organisation in Montgomery, didn’t want a teenager in the role, especially Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks after Colvin became pregnant some months did exactly the same thing. later, as it would create controversy and people would focus on the pregnancy Colvin and her friends were riding a bus instead of the after school, sitting in a row a little more boycott. than halfway down when a white passenger stood in the aisle between them. The driver Following Parks’ arrest, ordered Colvin and her friends to move to the Women’s the back and stand so that the white Political Council passenger could sit. Colvin refused, citing (WPC) called for a boycott of the bus that it was her constitutional right to system. On 5 December 1955, 40,000 remain where she was. She later remarked: African American bus passengers boycotted “I would have done it for an elderly person the system and black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association but this was a young white woman… it felt (MIA), electing a young as though Harriet pastor, Martin Luther Tubman’s hands were King Jr, as their ‘Colvin was the first person to be pushing me down on one president. To sustain the shoulder and Sojourner arrested for challenging boycott, communities Truth’s hands were Montgomery’s bus segregation organised carpools and pushing me down on the policies’ Montgomery’s African American taxi drivers other.” charged only 10 cents – the same price as a bus fare – for fellow Two policemen boarded the bus and African Americans. On 20 December 1956, forced Colvin into a police car, proceeding the US Supreme Court ruled that to take her to an adult jail and put her in a segregation on the buses must end.

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