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I
welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gatri it
was a shot that resounded across the
world gavo princip a young Serbian
nationalist stepped forward on a Saro
Street and assassinated the Archduke
France Ferdinand exactly 100 years ago
the arch duuke was the heir to the austr
Hungarian crown and the hapless fellow
fell victim of the rising tide of
nationalism within the ramshackle Empire
which was in danger of falling apart at
the seams but the Empire had powerful
friends principally the burgeoning power
of the new Germany forged by bismar only
just over 40 years before but already
emerging as the great Continental power
France which had been crushed by bismar
in 1870 panicked at the possibility of
Germany on the March again and call on
its Ally Russia to come to his Aid she
called on Britain too which was
initially reluctant to join in but
belatedly when the invading German
crushed neutral Belgium Britain too
joined the freey and so the first World
War Began Germany Austria Hungary and
the Turkish Ottoman Empire versus
Britain France and Russia it would
quickly envelop the world joining us
today is our own house historian on
matters of War Max Arthur obbe Max
thanks very much for uh joining us your
bestselling stunning uh book forgotten
voices of the great Wars now sold half a
million copies and it's going like hot
cakes where I bought that uh and this
tells the real story but for the viewers
who haven't read it yet was it really
all about the arch duuke France
Ferdinand it I think it was the first
sparkler in a great bonfire which was to
come really anything could have lit that
torch really anything I mean I think if
uh uh an Austra if a Serbian had trodden
on a on a austral Hungarian solders toe
it would have started some sort of it
was there was too much adrenaline
pumping from so many countries which had
very large armies which had not seen War
since 1870 the British had their own art
of fights in South Africa but small
pennies really but I think in the vision
of what in the lives of the people at
home we many I've spoken to many of the
veterans can remember as children
watching the men returning from the B
war and in their Reds and looking Grand
and horses and things and somehow they
thought this is the image that maybe one
day I can take on so from the British
side of things there there was a great
Readiness to go into war and I remember
talking to someone he said uh he was man
then in his 80s or 90s and he said he
was at
Oxford and he was down for the summer
and insisted on getting into uniform so
he could be do his fighting and be back
for the mlus term in October and that is
the every all be over be it all be over
by melas which is even better line than
that but you know there was so many
intrigues going on so many treaties that
had to be soal verified or abandoned but
I mean Russia was a big powerful force
that frightened the Germans once the
Russians Miz huge Army huge Army
absolutely gigantic Army and France
France relied upon that I mean that the
France was in a sense very much so
squaring up to people with the thought
of someone else's arming fighting yes
that's happened a number of times in
their history um so it took the uh the
Russians six weeks really but of course
the Germans then realized wo gosh this
is going to be bigger than we thought so
they term was really I think somewhere
in the back of their heads was always
not just to conquer Europe but to C take
over Russia as well I mean it's even
then even then even before the the
mineral oil contents everything that
Germany wanted could have been supplied
through Russia yeah so this leban round
before the before the term was coined
was in their mind but you can imagine
the number of conversations must have
gone on between austr hungarians the
serbs they were just going to belittle
the serbs whatever happened it was just
an excuse really to get this again
fairly giant army into action it meant
that the French then had to do something
about it the Belgium remained on this
sort of neutral plane and didn't quite
know where they were and so really
although they were very brave when the
the Germans swept through it was a
futile defense really as and only the
French really held but I don't think
people quite realize that in 1914
that war could have manover in 1914 won
by the Germans they pushed through at a
remarkable rapid rate as they did in the
second world war and drove them to
Dunkirk here the British held them at
the man uh actually with a number of
Indian forces which never get mentioned
there were probably about 100,000 Indian
troops holding them there as well uh and
then slowly for the next four years the
war of very very high harsh attrition
went on slowly taking the Germans back
to Berlin but it was four years George
four solid years and the fact that I've
checked recently was it's about
460 young Lads have been killed in
Afghanistan that was the average loss of
life on the British forces every single
day of the war every single day so when
they started in the beginning the times
putting lots of photographs up they
realized after a while you know just
couldn't they couldn't couldn't go this
attrition and that level of loss uh
changed Britain forever didn't it I mean
just let's look at the I was going to
call it banal it's not really banal but
how many women therefore then never got
married because all these men had been
killed and therefore never had children
and we never got the benefit uh of the
efforts of these men and the children
they never had how did it twist or
distort British I think greatly and I
still think it's with us I mean uh you
know a little of this being leader of
your party and things but you have to
somehow look now for leaders and quite
hard to find natural charismatic who you
would just go along with because it's
sheer Charisma is sheer demands which
were tempered or thought through or
sensitive you followed him
these men are rare many so so many are
killed on the Western Front I'm doing a
book at the moment on a young lad uh of
20 he was a young leftenant captain of
Harrow you know everything ahead of him
poof gone and I lived in asr's house for
many years where he'd heard of the death
of his son um on the Western Front born
born to the leadership born to World of
politics knew it inside out back killed
by single bullet you know and you think
what a waste they had no idea of what
was ahead of them most of the people
going to the front uh they might well
have studied the American Civil War uh
which 35 40 years hence are behind them
but which nonetheless showed the sheer
casualty scale of casualties that such a
war of attrition and with the new
technology and so on but they didn't did
they they didn't
600,000 killed in those those years and
no the photographs were there brilliant
photographs the Dead the maimed but I
suppose always in the back of a
soldier's head having been there is it
ain't going to be me but even so not
to show more clearly what was ahead of
them what a machine gun could do you
know just put a cabbage up just run it
through that's what's going to happen to
you you know and it was a machine gun
which changed in many ways everything
but the the heaviness of the artillary
the world has never seen you know you
could drop it as they did at Jutland
over 12 mile distance with accurately
onto another ship those bombs are almost
as strip proof as they are now um so we
had no concept of the reality of the war
which we were going into our last
encounter was against gorillas
who we call gorillas in the B War you
know they didn't fight as regiments
there was so Battalion level we
conducted quite good Wars but suddenly
the generals who had
been active in the B War suddenly then
had no longer a th000 men to look after
they had 20,000 30,000 men which they
had to move time and time again at speed
often detaching many of them and losing
many of them but the only tactic they
knew was to
advance after heavy heavy heavy
bombardment whereas War had swung in
favor of Defense hadn't it this
technology uh argued that actually the
man sitting defending something rather
than trying to move forward was the man
to beat going back to the arch duuke
most people have forgotten that the
austr Hungarian empire ever existed
I've described it as ramshackle how
ramshackle was I don't think it was that
ramshackle it was it was in it was a
benevolent sort of despot that was
looking after it he was not loved the
heir to the throne who was killed um and
he they they all thought he was he'
married benath his class and so she was
ordered on All Occasions to walk behind
him so I suppose in many ways the loss
of him to that country was probably as
great as it should have been um because
it meant the old man stayed on but of
course he was quickly seduced into an
attack on Serbia and that the the others
could not accept Serbia was a real live
poent threat absolutely yeah the serbs
proved then uh and subsequently in the
Second World War uh that there were very
formidable Fighters and and since and
since and since yeah and since um now
War comes with propaganda of course and
about the German side it was said uh
that they were behaving extremely
ruthless they were raping NS and
throwing babies over Tower tops to what
extent is that in Belgium in Belgium in
the neutral Belgium of course course if
you want to get a a group of people off
the ground moving quickly tell people
about the assaults on women on children
and you'll get Mas grows
anywhere most armies kill civilians
somewhere on the line they have to CU
they're not sure what repercussions of
passing by someone uh would be because
the communications were still there on
the telephone so let's kill them um
there were undoubtedly atrocities in
Belgium but the way the propaganda
worked was oh we can't have this and the
English are very prone to
defending the in that is that what
triggered the the British not quite it
kind of pushed uh Britain they did into
the war yeah when some of the arguments
in the cabinet were were against it Max
we've run out of time I must say it's
been reissued your Bo half a million
copies sold it deserves to sell half a
million more thank you I must say it's a
fantastic piece of work Lov our own
historian Max Arthur OB coming up after
the break Dutch historian Dinka Hondos
on slavery Europe and Blackness I
promise you you won't want to miss it
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welcome back to Sputnik the European
Empires grew vastly rich on the ghastly
trade of enslaving other human beings
chaining them throwing them into the
holds of leaking verminous ships and
sailing them thousands of miles to work
as beasts of burden and the so property
just like his cattle and his sheep of
their owners slavery largely though not
wholly died out but the racism which
underpinned it never did Britain was of
course a preeminent European slaver but
the Netherlands nowadays synonymous with
liberal values was a brute slaver too
and perhaps first in the race to
racialize all discourse they did invent
the concept of apartheid after all our
next guest Dr Dinka Hondas teaches in
Amsterdam but writes powerfully across
the world on slavery and its twin racism
she's written a new book called
blackness in Western Europe and I'm glad
she joins us now Dr Dinka thanks for
coming on the Sputnik I I haven't read
your new book yet but I did read your uh
Heritage uh slavery guide to Amsterdam
and I thought to myself we could do with
one of these here in London and Bristol
and Glasgow and so on uh so slavery was
around a long time uh most of the
European Empires were deeply involved in
it uh tell us how you think and this is
what I think is the thesis of your new
book how slavery has never really gone
away it's been replaced in the sense
with this kind of racism this kind of
fear of Blackness we are involved in a
lot of debates about racism today and
anti-racism and how to fight it what
forms it takes but to understand how it
developed we have to go uh away from the
21st and the 20th century and really go
back to the 16th century when uh uh
black and white people first met it is
in those first meetings that um European
uh Supremacy white superiority feelings
have developed and uh somehow uh
remained intact for a very long time and
this has not been very visible within
Europe here in London or in Bristol as
you said or Liverpool or in the
Netherlands in Amsterdam and in
middleberg and in Rotterdam uh the
history of slavery remained very
invisible all the decisions were taken
here in Europe in all the the beautiful
houses and the offices here those
decisions were made but the enslaved
people themselves were not here so uh
the color line remained uh not
completely but virtually intact and that
made it easier for white Europeans to
continue that that long history of
enslavement and the slave trade and
after the abolition of slavery in 1863
and in um Britain in
1833 this history was more or less
forgotten uh but traveling to Europe uh
from the British colonies and from the
Dutch colonies remained very very
difficult and so um both Britain and the
Netherlands and also France remained
virtually white and it is that whiteness
that has remained intact and that has
kept the idea of uh whiteness as extra
extra beautiful extra powerful extra
natural intact for a very long time
until the 20th century then we see the
postcolonialism growing but only then
only later in the 20th century do we see
a real change and then uh both the
postcolonial presence enters Europe but
also racism comes back to Europe and now
we have to deal with that so we are so
prior to the 20th century then uh
Blackness and slavery were a synonym
really I mean the there were no black
people living amongst us we never met
one uh but we profited from the
existence of black people yeah what I
show if you see the cover of the book is
uh uh is not a slave is a black
servant uh a beautiful boy or could be a
beautiful girl so there was a very
selective black presence in Europe very
few people were allowed entrance usually
as beautiful children who were then uh
made the black servants in beautiful
homes here in Britain but also in uh
Scandinavia and in Germany and in
Austria everywhere in Northwestern
Europe and how were they treated well we
know still very little about that but uh
since their presence was so exceptional
uh they were able to develop friendships
and they were accepted as uh uh yeah as
trophies really as as special gifts uh I
don't know how you can maybe as a kind
of pet you can compare it to that so one
Merchant would give uh a little child uh
to the other as a kind of gift as a
special gift to treat but the 20th
century all that changes uh there begins
to be especially in the second half of
the 20th century big movements of people
uh from the hether to colonized and even
enslaved countries or of the people we
used to colonize and enslave and the
impact of that on European Society was
what well for the first time the Empire
came back into Europe and you know white
and white people have to deal with the
presence of black people and of Asian
people then from then on so that is H uh
quite a change and people of uh uh your
generation of the generation of my
parents can still remember the first
time they saw a black person or an Asian
person person if you interview people
white people they will still remember
that why is it so hard to deal with that
I mean you you wouldn't remember the
first time you saw a red-haired person
uh or uh well that's a good question
that's a good question why is that so
why why is it so
impactful I think uh images about black
people and Asian people had been around
for those centuries but not actually uh
living persons very very few so there is
no uh tradition of ordinary interaction
uh common living together just you know
that uh is still recent this is still a
recent phenomenon so it's it still takes
getting used to uh and is it because
this is my untutored thesis that having
enslaved and conquered and colonized
people you have to persuade yourself
that you are superior to them otherwise
how can you justify taking them and
taking their things and having persuaded
ourselves over centuries that we were
the master race it's very difficult now
to treat equally those uh that we forly
colonized and enslaved I think that
is high very likely nobody gets over
centuries of colonialism just like like
a snap of a finger what what about
looking at it for a minute from the
other side you might be better placed uh
for that
um if if white people find it difficult
to deal with the relatively recent
presence of large numbers of people of
color how do people of color feel being
in the presence of a great majority
still of of white
people do you want to answer that well
the thing is that um we're talking
specifically about black people but the
Dutch in specific also enslaved
Indonesian specifically from java and
they transported them to Surinam amongst
others so um there is definitely a sense
of I feel very connected to this topic
anyway I mean when you go into a
restaurant for example and almost
everyone there is white do you notice
that I do I do very much I have a I have
a very I have a very high conscious of
that conscious consciousness of that of
being the only Asian or or woman of
color and in some group or setting and
especially living being born and born in
and living in in the in the west
actually in the actual country that
colonized my my family's country it
makes me even more aware of it what did
what did your researchers doctor uh tell
you about that particular Point well uh
it's it's very uh good to stress uh the
element of slavery history in Asia
because that is something we know still
very little about when we think of
slavery and the slave trade we think of
the Caribbean and we think of the
movements from West Africa to the to the
Americas but the Asian Empires were also
full of this history of enslavement and
of the slave trade and that has not
really been addressed uh in my book I
show that and also in the walking guide
for Amsterdam we show that uh the same
families in Amsterdam had shares both in
the East India Company and in the West
India Company so we can locate that in
the same houses along the canals in
Amsterdam so there you see that the the
start in point and the Investments and
the insurance companies were you know
they they put money in the west and put
money in the East now in anthropology
and in history that have become very
separated Fields but when you bring it
back to the cities in Europe you can see
that it is very con same owners yeah
same owners I always say uh I mean I say
it as a joke but it's real that many
white people are afraid of black people
but I always point out to them that the
black fellow has got far more to be
afraid of you uh than you have of him
after all it was People Like Us who
enslaved people like him and he's here
because of that uh are we ever going to
reach a stage where we'll go into a
restaurant and we won't notice the color
of the people there I think to to deal
with this history we first have to
recognize the impact of color of
Blackness and of uh um the just simple
skin color the impact of that we first
have to recognize that and then maybe it
can be become less important you talk
about fear I think uh most white people
are not so much afraid of black people
but they uh they have a problem uh
dealing with uh black and Asian people
as adults regarding them as full scale
uh adult human beings as opposed to CH
children yes the image really is one of
the child a sort of permanent child
white people have a yeah but but really
a sort of childishness and uh and that
also def the explains the idea that
white people are feel Superior in in
teaching and uh you know well yeah the
British Empire went uh went to Africa
and further a field just to teach them
how to be like us Dr Dinka best of luck
with that book blackness in Western
Europe and thanks for coming on the
sputnick thank
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you and now it's your turn to tell us
what you think through the portals of
social media what's rattling gy oh what
a lovely War the film from
1969 was it really all about the arch
Duke France Ferdinand fi moriarti
replies it surely was not it was to do
with an arms race ego essentially and
Roger the Dodger answers like most War
it was about power money and egos had
very little to do with what concerned
most ordinary people at the time the
history of slavery and Europe what do we
actually know Rea Grant replies many
settlers in the west who are the product
of European slave system no nothing
actually and A to Z replies earlier
common public used to be direct slaves
but now they are being managed through
puet governments well that's it for this
week
now we to might be three by the time
they next see us together again well do
please keep in touch with us anyway on
Twitter at rtor Sputnik and on Facebook
you can like us on Sputnik on Russia
today it's goodbye from me gri and from
me George Galloway it's been marvelous
oh
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